Social Media Marketing, LinkedIn vs. Twitter
April 13th, 2009 by John Rasco
Ran an interesting little experiment last week, testing the marketing effectiveness of promoting a new free SEO Web Design Tips PDF. Patrick’s blog post was too good not to use as link bait, but as you probably know, you can’t track the downloads of a PDF with on-page analytics tracking code.
However, link shrinking software CAN give you these metrics. Using a $4 account at BudURL, I created two shortened URLs, /SEOWebDesign and /SEOWebDesignTips. Then, I used LinkedIn’s News feature in all the groups I belong to, and sent out an announcement with a link to the new freebie. At the same time, I tweeted the news, using the shorter of the two URLs…at 140 characters, it’s not exactly a press release. I have about 100 followers, and I expected it would get retweeted, hopefully by some of the more popular Twitizens. However, in retrospect, I realized I should have specifically asked that people retweet.
The results? In a week, 271 page visits via LinkedIn, 2 via Twitter. Our site traffic was up 17% for the week, so all-in-all, a decent promotion. I’ll try retweeting the tweet this week with a specific retweet request, and see what we get.
I don’t think I’m any more well-known on the marketing groups on LinkedIn than among my Twitter peeps, but it’s certainly true that the audience self-selected in LinkedIn groups is better targeted. When you think about social media, don’t forget that you still need affinity, interest and motivation to see results…and, that if you measure your results, you can learn a lot about where you should be spending your time.
April 14th, 2009 at 2:53 am
This is good news for Linkedin users. It means that groups with discussions activated and active participants in discussions will create their own success.
Fits with my experience on Linkedin.
Thanks for posting
Simon Hamer
April 14th, 2009 at 5:45 am
Nice idea John but you’re not actually comparing apples to apples. More like apples to seeds. And for your Twitter approach to be effective (and I doubt you will come close to the 271 of linkedIn even if you Tweet your promo 100 times) you have to continue contributing juicy tidbits to your “followers.”
With all the noise out there it is a rare tweet that gets retweeted. And asking for a retweet is akin to asking to be “friended” or “followed” it doesn’t play in my experience.
Also, if you use bit.ly the tracking is there and there is no account fee.
Also, you might add a hashtag or two to your tweet so that it can be found by people looking for the info you are giving away.
Cheers,
@jmacofearth
BTW: it is okay to tweet it a couple of times over the course of 24 hours or so.
April 14th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Simon–learned yesterday that posting as news instead of discussion means you don’t get email alerts to new comments. Need to manually go to each group and check for comments. Well worth doing, by the way, as we had three prospects waiting in the wings.
Hi John–just an experiment to test out BudURL. Andy Meadows is a friend of mine, so helping to spread the word on BudURL as a favor. Thanks for the reminder about hash tagging; I tend to fill up my tweets. Why do you think it is that people on Twitter are less likely to respond?
April 14th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Hashtags are good. And I like bit.ly but Andy’s service is pretty awesome too, and not expensive.
People respond less to tweets because there are so many more of them. The tweet response ratio has got to be in the .001 range. And asking for a RT doesn’t help.
What helps is 1. the tweet is funny so people want to pass along the humor; 2. the tweet is really smart so those RTing will seem smart by association; 3. the tweet contains a call to action that the RTer cares about.
So often, a self-promotional tweet is not as effective as a headline-type tweet or a tweet with a twist. (humor)
And on tagging. While structured navigation within sites is essential, the unstructured nature of tags allows for crosslinking where traditional navigation does not make sense.
In the case of Patrick’s post, he is using 3 tags, “seo, web design, web development.” However there are additional connective ideas that might make sense to link into deeper content of your blog via tags. For example, “unique tips, avoid tricks, hate SEO, increasing conversions, top SEO tips.”
If you look at a blog such as the Huffingtonpost, they even go so far as to put the tags upfront at the top of the story, thus maximizing the SEO impact of their tags. I am not suggesting you go that far, but adding a wider net to attract SEO seekers, tip lovers and SEO haters might go along way to catching more client love in the long run.
Best,
@jmacofearth
April 14th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
As I have come to expect from one of Austin’s top social media gurus, you know a lot about ALL things web related. Thanks for the generous tips–our readers will love getting this sort of insight.
April 20th, 2009 at 10:19 am
I think Linked In is less noisy. So it is easy to get noticed there. If your 200 twitter followers also follow Tech publication, Scoblelizer, or any other high volume tweeter, your single tweet can easily get lost. Unless your followers are making an extra effort to track that topic. I’m not shocked on your results. Another benefit to LinkedIn groups? Those email notifications. Your content gets an extra plug daily or weekly.