Mastering the Art of Business

Have you ever asked yourself how much is a Twitter follower worth, from a business (sales) perspective? How about 10,000 or even 50,000 followers like I’ve seen so many times? What about 50,000 Facebook fans?

Think about it. You or your company spends countless hours on Twitter and other social media platforms in a hope to gain visibility, fans, followers, groupies, or whatever the term. But do you actually know what your conversion rate actually is? Of all those Twitter followers and Facebook fans, how many actually read your blog, register to your website, or dare I ask, actually purchase your products? In traditional marketing a good deal of effort is allocated to evaluating the efficacy and return on marketing campaigns because of the campaigns’ high cost. Whether you’re posting ads in a magazine or giving out promotional product samples, it takes time and a good deal of money. With the advent of “free” online social marketing, this “efficacy analysis” is something we may not think thoroughly about or even consider at all. If that’s the case, I believe we’re heading straight for the ground. Remember, countless hours are spent on these strategies which in the end may result in high cost, regardless of the apparently free advertising platform.

I’ve actually been doing some “field research” for the past few months on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. I participate, I observe, I analyze. For one thing, I can tell you that very, very few of my Twitter followers have actually clicked on any of my blog posts linked on my tweets. Well, perhaps my titles aren’t too appealing to some, but nevertheless I would expect higher conversion rates for supposed “followers”. That’s why you should always know how efficient your online campaign really is – you need to put your effort where there’s an actual ROI! To do this, look at the statistics available to you. For instance, there’s an interesting piece of information on WordPress’ Blog Stats feature called Referrers. This let’s you see where your blog visitors are coming from. So if they clicked on a link from Twitter, Facebook, or somewhere else, you’ll know. Google Analytics actually provides such a feature with more details, so if you’re hosting your blog, I would readily advise everyone on using it.

So ask yourself a few questions:

• Is there really any value in having all those Twitter followers and Facebook fans?
• What’s my actual conversion rate?
• Is there a conversation between me (my company) and my followers?
• Are they engaged in the conversation?
• If becoming a Follower or a Fan wasn’t as easy as a single mouse click, would they actually be part of my network?

I’d love to hear from anyone that has had great conversion rates from their online social marketing campaigns using Twitter and the likes!