28 Jun How to Overcome the “Twitter Hasn’t Made Me Money!” Objection
I hear two things all the time when presenting a Social Media proposal to our clients: “Who cares what I had for lunch!” and “I’ve been tweeting and I haven’t made a penny!” Have you heard them, too?
There are two parts to Social Media Marketing. From a marketing perspective, you must have a clear understanding of not only who your target audience is, but what their problems are and how you can solve them. That may sound like a tall order, but it’s what any business should understand when creating a marketing strategy of any kind, be it through traditional media, new media, or a balance of both.
Are you looking at your website analytics? Do you know where your traffic is coming from, and what key phrases they are searching to find you? What value do you offer on your site to make people want to stay and look around for a while? Do they have a reason to return? Is there fresh information posted regularly?
Do you put out surveys to your existing audience to find out what’s important to them right now? Social Media happens in real time. This affords you the luxury of getting real time feedback just as quickly and providing exactly what your audience is demanding.
An example: in reviewing on of our client’s website analytics, we discovered that the top Google search phrase people typed to get to her site was, “Autism support tools”. We then recommended her next blog post address this directly. That same day, she posted an article titled, “My Top 10 Autism Support Tools”, which listed her recommendations and feedback on various products, routines, and resources. The result? The post got picked up by numerous websites, retweeted instantly by many of her followers, and posted on myriad related discussion forums. We helped her find out what her audience was looking for and she filled their need. Did she make any direct sales from that post? Maybe, maybe not. But it rapidly got shared within a large, relevant network of influencers, which gained her exposure and opportunities to expand her following.
The second part of Social Media Marketing is – you guessed it – social. Just because you have over 1,000 followers doesn’t mean they will buy your product or service. If you are tweeting 140-character advertisements for your business you can pretty much start counting tumbleweeds.
Are you engaging these followers in conversation? Providing articles, resources, and other free information for them? Asking questions? Retweeting and promoting others in your network? Forming joint ventures? Twitter and Facebook are not advertising platforms, they are social playgrounds.
Yes, monitoring and participating in conversation with your audience is time consuming and labor intensive. But if done correctly, the payoff is huge! It most likely will not be measured penny-for-penny, rather by influence, voice, and engagement. Isn’t that what word of mouth advertising really is, anyway?
If you are struggling with the time to keep up with your social media plan or aren’t quite sure what kind of content to generate, drop us a line and we’ll gladly help you create a strategy!
