Bud tweeted the other day about the numbers game in online marketing/social media.
Accruing people into one click fan relationships isn’t success
Get X twitter followers, get X comments, get X Facebook fans. They’re the initial connections yes but not the endgame.
So while a few comments on your blog are the very weak connections, something slightly less weak are fans of your Facebook page or YouTube subscriptions. When you update, they get told about it. If you don’t update, they’ll start to forget about it. So you have you connections so you best start looking after them. Add value add value add value.
Photo owned by jennaddenda (cc)
Add value to the 10 you have on Twitter while you still have 10 and don’t go out and follow everyone that mentions your business area. Work with the smaller numbers first. Work the inches first. It’s good for you and them. You’ll learn a lot even with small numbers. Try things out too and see what happens.
Subscriptions mean you have our attention, now don’t screw it up son. Numbers are fine if people don’t know how to measure real value. Numbers describe actions, not the value of those actions. It’s like knocking on 10 doors and converting them all to mormonology and knocking on 100 doors and getting no converts. You have to do more than just gather numbers.
Photo owned by maryatexitzero (cc)
For Twitter:
Interactions with your account. How many people interacted by asking you without solicitation about something? How many people follow these people who interacted on Twitter and so saw that interaction? That’s a better number than your followers number.
How many retweeted your information on Twitter?
How many times are people referencing @yourUsername
How many are clicking on a unique measurable link from your Twitter profile/Twitter messages?
Facebook Fanpage
Attending your event, how many?
Following a unique measurable link from your facebook page?
Interacting with you on Facebook?
How many times are your social ads clicked on in Facebook after someone becomes a fan? What’s the activity like on your Facebook page?
Website:
How many times do specialist sections on your site get linked to from blogs and websites after running a FB campaign for that page?
YouTube:
How many times have your videos been watched?
How many websites have embedded the videos?
How many times have the videos been directly linked to?
How many subscriptions for the channel based on first day of new video, over a week, over a month. Track increase in channel subs just for one video.
Has your video got annotations asking for people to subscribe?
Seeing the value now?
Good post Damien. Engagement is key. I see so many businesses that are simply opening SM accounts for the sake of it and using them as a news wall (traditional marketing “me, me, me”) 🙁 NO value at all.
I guess though that the numbers game for many might’s be because they feel they are late adopters and somwhow need to catch up with advanced users…
Really like the way three core platforms at the end of the post are broken down by key questions. Great way to get people do their homework. I’ll use that more often 🙂
All the best
Fred
This is one of the best articles I’ve read on social media marketing (and I’ve read lots). Rather than speaking in broadstrokes, it explains point-by-point how to assess the effectiveness of one’s social media marketing strategy and how to improve it.
Two other crucial points which aren’t mentioned – but are demonstrated:
(1) meeting your customers needs, rather than pitching your services
(2) a clever, attention-grabbing headline!
Thanks, Damien.
Great post Damien thanks. Especially useful to someone who, although a twitter convert, has yet to start working with social media to its fullest extent. The biggest messages to me are “provide value”, “not ramming a sales pitch down people’s throat” and the level of real interaction.
Thanks again