If there is one thing that i have learnt over the last two month’s is that you should not rely on a single source of traffic. Possibly even more so a single source of traffic that requires your constant attention and input to continue to send a stream of visitors to your website.
I realized that this was an issue when i slowed down my usage of Twitter. With the way that things were going with work, and the different hours that i was doing, i did not have the time or motivation to jump on Twitter as much as i had. Over the last two months this saw a drop in traffic of about 16%. Which is no huge deal, it could even just be normal fluctuation.
So far this month things have been moving along nicely, with a week off work, I was looking at a fairly good come back on traffic. This was for me assuming that i maintained how i was traveling so far for the month for the remained. Well, that was where things were. Late yesterday my Twitter account was suspended, with no reason, no explanation (to date) and no recourse but to send a support ticket. Which i did.
Reading the rules, i know i have not blatantly done anything against them, and cannot see a single one that would have been an issue at the actual time of the suspension. Even checking the @spam account of twitter shows no reference to my account. At this point it is going on close to 15 hours that i have not been able to perform any actions with my account, and the effect is showing, followers are down, and as i am sure you can guess no activity means nothing good usually.
Now at this point i do not know what sort of affect even a day will have on traffic, but i know that over the period of a month for me it will have a drastic effect. Unless i can replace it somehow. Which is not a task i envy looking at, right now. I mean yeah there are plenty of places to post links, to build networks and such. But pretty much every option i see a few months to develop it to the level that i was at with Twitter.
While i can understand a need to be vigilant, and to keep a close eye on people abusing the system, i see almost every day anything up to half a dozen if not more accounts that deserve to be suspended for major violations of the rules. As opposed to accounts being banned that it does not even appear to be something specific if anything more then an accident even. Of course if they can offer some valid reason why my account was banned, i will more then happily accept the consequences.
So anyone that relies on Twitter as their sole source for traffic, start now, look for something else to use for getting traffic to your site as well, so that you are not left open to a potential problem like this.