I got to say I am in the gray area of social media as I like the concept and think it is something that is a must to help promote your services in addition to your search engine optimization and paid search campaigns but how to you justify the ROI? A client of mine has seen nice sales from Twitter and this is what we did:
- Have a strong Twitter follower base – They have over 1 million followers currently. The more you have the more you have the opportunity to market to.
- Send teaser tweets – About a week before the sale we started to tweet about the upcoming special. Get a theme like “Top 5 ways to ask for new golf clubs” and stay with that theme throughout your teaser tweets.
- Contests to increase your awareness of the sale – You have seem them before like “if we reach 1 million followers get 5 dollars off your next meal”.
- Tweet the day of the sale – Make it a grand opening and hype it up but leave your characters used to less than 140. Why? Because you want other to have the ability to add comments when they re tweet your message.
- Measure your response – Use a third party URL shorting service like TinyURL so that you can get the metrics from the click through (make sure they offer tracking as some don’t). Also having the ability to do 301 redirect shortened URL is helpful.
I got to say I am in the gray area of social media as I like the concept and think it is something that is a must to help promote your services but how to you justify the ROI?
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The ROI in the case of Micro blogging ala Twitter as is the same case of Blogging is all in the Long Tail. Twitter, Blogs etc are more for the Social Connection and Building Trust to gain Authority. Some call it Personal Branding or Whuffie or one could even call it Street Creds in the Social Media World. There are many stories of Individuals and Companies attempting to direct market i.e. Sell using these tools and they loose credibility when they do it too soon. Your idea above is one example of a Mobile Platform driving a successful campaign. It has to be done as an immediate call to action and something that will gain attention of those near by to want to take action. Yep it’s a lot of work….. so what’s the SMB to do about ROI ? Well if you don’t participate, your completion may just eat your lunch, as they now have the lead in establishing themselves as the Go To. Can you really afford not jump in now?