Social Media Challenge – 30 Days In

The social media challenge has been going for 30 days now and I want to provide an update and a few lessons I’ve learned so far.

I consider a social media campaign to be more like a marathon than a sprint.  Social media is about changing the way businesses do marketing and it can take some time to sink in.

I spoke with a prospective client yesterday who asked me about measuring ROI and I told him that’s not what it’s about.  It’s more about measuring influence and leveraging trust.

Regardless, I have placed some metrics on this experiment and am happy to share.

Facebook visits – 59

Facebook fans – 4

Twitter visits – 30

Twitter followers – 24

YouTube visits – 18

Not great, but it has generated a conversation about the credit card processing business.  Lisa Wise wrote

Thank you for the lead for A*** P****. We talked this morning and he will be following up with me before Friday to let me know what he’d like to do.

This lead was generated in real life by me, but I referred him to Facebook to make contact with Lisa.  It was easy to share this method of contact.

Concerning search engine optimization efforts, the term “social media challenge” is ranking well for the press releases, but I’ll put out some more this week that are optimized for “credit card processing.”  Lisa’s videos are all well ranked for the term “credit card processing Utah.”

I did learn a few lessons so far.

1.  Bit.ly didn’t work for the PR Log press release.  That means the numbers I reported earlier are probably a little higher.  That press release has been read 161 times.

2.  Using the autofollow feature for Twitter doesn’t work as well for new accounts.  That’s the first thing I do now for new clients that don’t have a Twitter account.  It takes about 30 days for a Twitter account to “season” properly and establish authority.

3.  When I initially posted the videos on YouTube, I didn’t have them titled properly.  After four days, I fixed that.

4.  I added a visual call to action on the videos on day five.

For the next thirty days I’m going to focus on following quality people on Twitter, updating the social profiles a little more and getting more help from Lisa.  Her “voice” definitely needs to be heard.  I also need her to extend invitations to her sphere of influence. 

I’ve found just inviting your friends to fan pages on Facebook is highly effective.  Both my radio show page and my company page have grown exponentially just by asking!  Plus, getting 25 fans will allow for a custom URL.

If you want to see more about how the social media challenge develops, come fan the page or follow us on Twitter.