By Joan Stewart
Too many people make the mistake of looking for immediate sales as validation that they’re receiving a return on their investment of time at social media sites. That’s a mistake.
Here’s more proof on how social media participation can bring a not-so-obvious ROI.
During the webinar that book marketing guru John Kremer hosted with Jeanne Hurlbert, my business partner, and me on Wednesday, John mentioned two big benefits to participating on Twitter:
First, he made contact with a reporter from the New York Times who he started following. “I read one of his tweets, replied and commented on it, and he replied back to me and ask me if he could interview me for a story,” John said.
That was about 10 months ago. John was so busy that he didn’t follow up to see if the reporter mentioned him in the story. But he now makes it a point to find out if certain journalists are on Twitter and, if so, he follows them.
Second, the Alexa ranking at his site jumped dramatically since he’s been twittering. Alexa is a powerful free tool used to rank website traffic. It helps you determine quickly how your site ranks against the millions of other sites on the Web. The lower the Alexa ranking number, the more heavily visited the site.
“The biggest thing I’ve been able to track has been my ranking on Alexa for BoookMarket.com,” John said. “At one point, it was as low as 80,000. Right now, it’s 99,000. Before I started twittering, it was 169,000.”
Why does twittering mean more traffic to a website?
Because you can link to free articles, blog posts, sales pages or anything else you want your friends and followers to see. You can also encourage your friends to retweet your post and send even more traffic to your site by installing a plug-in like Tweetmeme on pages where you have helpful free content, like content-rich articles.
During the webinar with John, Jeanne and I offered dozens of social media tips and introduced our new product, Social Media Rx, which we’ll be launching formally in just a few weeks. It’s an assessment that gives users a 25-page customized report, along with their own formula, and it explains exactly what they should be discussing at social media sites, based on their answers to a series of questions. It comes with six handy checklists that show you at a glance which specific tasks you need to do each day, week and month at sites like Twitter and Facebook.
If you’re interested in partnering with us and introducing Social Media Rx to your friends, followers, fans and email list, we’d love to hear from you. Please complet the short survey that will take less than a minute.
Stay tuned for the launch…
Thank you so much for Social Media Rx. After listening to the interview you did with John Kremer, I bought your prescription. I’m really happy that I did.
After completing the assessment, I carefully reviewed your recommendations. I now have what I need to move forward – as John said on the webinar, the Checklists are particularly helpful.
By the way, I have completed several internet marketing courses in the past, and felt overwhelmed by this “new frontier.” Your program is truly the missing piece – a roadmap and very specific formula for action steps and content, to help me make the best use of my time….not to mention the other useful information in the bonus material.
Again, thank you…..
Here are my comments on my Social Media Assessment – my initial reaction is being a little overwhelmed.
There’s so much to learn, and I answered so many of the questions wrong. In some cases, I knew so little I wasn’t even sure what I was responding about (e.g. question 21 about social bookmarking sites. Haven’t a clue what they are.) I guess that brings me to one key recommendation I would make if it’s possible to program this – when the respondent answers a question wrong – or responds as I did in #1 that I don’t know how to participate in social media, it might be helpful to kick into a whole different level of assessment results.
Many of the responses assumed a level of knowledge I didn’t have. On the assumption I could understand more (or was willing to research to increase my understanding), the guidance provided did then give me some excellent direction. But as I said at the beginning of this, it’s a bit overwhelming.
I don’t have an assistant, and I work a full time job. I have to assume I’m not the only one in this dilemma. Okay, I’m rambling now – I guess what I’m saying is I need something like a Social Media 101 before I can take full advantage of your assessment and all of the other materials I accessed – and even then, perhaps some prioritizing of where to put your efforts when you can’t do it all.
That said, I appreciated the personal approach you have taken, both when I first signed up and got frustrated by the barrage of emails (I really am a novice at all this), and today when you called and patiently responded to my comments and questions!
Hi Jeanne & Joan – I just wanted to update you about how much I am enjoying and using the information your system provided for me.
I have hired someone with a lot of social media experience, to be my assistant. She is going to be developing a newsletter, creating and updating pages for me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. She’ll also be setting me up with Google Alerts, and will track the number of hits to my site that result from these new marketing strategies for my business.
I would never have had the time, nor do I have the expertise, to have started this on my own. Your helpful hints, the personalized information I received from you in My Social Media Rx, and your suggestions about hiring an assistant gave me the confidence to get started in this effort. Now that I have resources and support, I’m actually excited about getting involved in these sites.
I had applied to have Affiliate status with your product and I’m wondering when you’ll be making any decisions about that. I have 3 classes that I am currently teaching at CTA, and I am recommending that they go to your mysocialmediasolutions.com site and sign up for your newsletters and blog and read your articles. I’ll be using my own experiences in this new world of social media to better help my students to be successful in these media sites.
Warmly,
Nan Einarson, CTA Certified Coach
Coach Training Alliance Trainer/Mentor Coach