My Biggest Social Media Marketing GOOF! How You Can Learn From It.

 

200% Increase in Page Views Since I Changed One Part of My Social Media Strategy

Nobody ever said that marketing was a science, and certainly this is true of Internet Marketing.  Even if it was a science, the various spheres of influence change so quickly that any hypothesis, theory, or law that is proven this week will be all changed by next week.

Thus it can be said with certainty that all who claim any type of guru status when it comes to social media marketing, probably one of the least susceptible to rules, will completely blow it at some point.  I want to now introduce you to the biggest blunder of my local social marketing career.

I failed to see Twitter as a broadcast media capable of driving significant traffic to a business blog or other media even when they had no Twitter followers and no intention of engagement!

There.  I've said it.  I feel sooo much better now.  

We are now using Hootsuite to broadcast 10 tweets per day directed at long form content on each business blog.  The day we begin the new tweet plan, the numbers go up.  Then they start to ratchet.  There are minor differences based on the type of business and the quality of our initial Tweet posts, but on average we are up over 100% on page views.  Some clients have even seen an increase of 200%. 

So how does Tweeting help when there are no followers?  Simple.  Those who have their HootSuite or other Twitter search devise hooked up are on the hunt for specific keywords in their interest area.  Most have their antennae up for Kim Kardashian or IRS scandal.   But there are those who are looking for information on criminal defense lawyer or wedding photography.  And when you have millions looking at billions of keywords, you will likely even get some activity for underwater basket weaving.

I never know if my clients read my blogs.  But hopefully they won't read this.  A representative sample of my clients would have lost out on 2000 page views per month due to my error.  To make matters worse, the type of visitor we are getting from this effort is far more relevant than other methods.  They only click in if the 140 character tweet is in their wheelhouse, such as New Trek 2014 Fuel Ex 29er now in stock at Indianapolis bike shop, T3Multisport.  Keywords galore, but very specific.

I turn the discussion over to you.  Did you already know this?  Why didn't you tell me?  If you didn't know it, and you try it now, let me know your results.  Am I missing any other free or cheap ways to drive relevant traffic to my blogs. 

We are using Google+ (some success), Linkedin (good), the primary website (very good), other blogs (so-so), videos (sometimes very good), Facebook (eh), and email blasts (can be very good).