Sorry Twitter - You Lose in Generating Web Hits

I like to treat the internet as one big test subject, and when you have a couple of blogs, you can do some fascinating experiments in internet metrics and crowd behaviour. The aim of almost every posted video, picture, blog entry and image is to go viral. The holy grail of this technology-driven world is page views and web hits. There are entire books, websites and courses dedicated to generating website traffic.

Once you put something up on the internet, you can either wait for the search engines to find you, hope that the What's New section profiles you or you can link advertise on other social media. But very few people know the most effective means to get hits.

I decided to have a mano a mano, a head to head to find out ...... (are you ready) ....

THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO GENERATE HITS WITH LINK POSTING

In one of my blogs, I posted this picture that I took on the shores of Loch Awe in Scotland. It is the Robert the Bruce Chapel in St. Conan's Kirk. When I looked at it, I said "Holy Rigor Mortis, Batman, this looks like you dead!". Sure enough, it looks like the grave of a dead Batman. I thought that this was a suitable subject to go viral.

(click for larger image)

So, posted competing links on Twitter and Reddit. I used the same title "Photo of Dead Batman" and the same tags including #DarkKnight, #Photo, #DeadBatman.

Twitter generated six hits that hour. Reddit generated 170 hits in the first hour.

Clearly we have a winner when it comes to generating hits by link posting on social media. And to think that I have been ignoring reddit.com.

(Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Twitter or Reddit).