Social Media

Why You Should Ignore Twitter Engagement Metrics

April 4, 2013 by Christina Pappas Leave a Comment

Like many of you, I am a marketer who is committed to figuring out this social media thing. While trying to answer the question of ‘how will I get my return on investment’, I then ask ‘how do I begin to calculate it?’ I see others go back and forth with counting their followers or their ‘likes’ and stating publicly that they made their goal of 1000 retweets and 5000 likes over a period of time. But for someone like me who is focused on using social media to convert someone into a prospect, a like or retweet doesn’t go very far.

Engagement as a strategy

Last year I embarked upon a strategy to use Twitter Paid Ads. My goal was the same as with any other channel; conversion and acceleration. Now we all know that you cannot measure conversions with likes. I certainly cannot measure what the impact is of someone retweeting my post in regards to how it moves them further down the pipeline. Which is why I was surprised by Twitter’s mentality that the engagement of my paid tweet was important.

I get that Twitter cannot see what happens after the click. The platform does not know if someone filled out my form or performed the action that I wanted them to. What they can tell me is how many people clicked, how many people replied and how many people retweeted. But does any of that matter?

When looking at the numbers, the paid tweets in which I showed the highest engagement rates were actually the lowest performing when it came to conversions. I immediately stopped looking at this number. Turns out it actually didn’t matter if someone replied.

Conversion as a strategy

Now let’s get back to what’s important; conversion as a strategy. Now I know some of you will bellow and belch that retweets mean something and I don’t disagree. But they don’t mean anything to ME – the demand generation marketer.

When you are spending money on social channels, such as Sponsored Paid Tweets via Twitter, it’s important to track what is important to you and leave the rest ignored. I found the engagement statistics as unreliable in regards to my goals. Once I started ignoring those and paying attention to the intended action (clicks -> form completions), I was able to ‘rinse and repeat’.

Over a period of 9 months, my cost-per-lead was reduced by over $10 and conversion rates increased by double percentage points.

How you tried promoted tweets? How are you tracking success?

Filed Under: Analytics, Blog, Social Media

Taking Advantage of Invitations to Discuss

November 29, 2012 by Christina Pappas 2 Comments

I had some time to spend the other day so I thought I would venture over to LinkedIn and see if there were any discussions happening in the groups that I could jump into. I could not believe what I saw. Now a couple months ago, even a year ago, I saw this start happening. Those group members who creep into the discussion area to post a link to their blog or press release or whatever but don’t actually have an intent to discuss anything.

THIS IS NOT A DISCUSSION

Yes, I’m yelling. Why? Because I’m more than a little ticked off by our selfless promotion of all the glorious content we produce. Yes, we see your blog post. We get it, it’s awesome. But what about people, like me, that visit the groups hoping to discuss and collaborate with my peers?

It’s no longer serving the purpose.

Are group managers getting lazy?

I was one of two group managers for a group with over 100K subscribers for a few years. Let me tell you, it’s an undertaking! I dont think people realize what is involved – I mean, what is truly involved – in managing a group. Yes, it’s easy at first with your 10 members, but try managing 100K. It’s easy to get lazy. It’s easy to let the group run rampant and show up once in awhile to pick a manager’s choice post. If you want to be a manager, then please manage.

Why is LinkedIn ~~enabling~~ allowing this?

For one thing, Im not sure if they care if we are discussing or not. Do they? I mean, even though discussion are not happening, that doesn’t mean I will un-register from the site. It doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to use LinkedIn to foster and nurture connections with my network. So maybe they don’t care. Perhaps they should rename the Discussions tab to something like ‘RSS Feed’.

Nobody is listening

I doubt that the people who are making all these posts really care if we tell them that links to a blog article or press release or webinar invite belongs in the ‘Promotions’ section of the group. And frankly, I can only spend so much of my time moving all of these ‘discussions’ over there myself – yes, I am the one that flagged you. We can hee haw all day long about the ‘rules’ and ‘best practices’ but if people aren’t listening, then they aren’t listening. Deal with it or split.

Can we even generate leads like this?

Hey, your inbound traffic from LinkedIn went up – woopee do! Did you get any leads? When I was managing programs for a small start-up, I had minimal (cough zero) budget so I found LinkedIn to be a huge lifesaver for me when it came to generating leads. Now this didnt happen because I posted links to my blog articles and website pages in the groups and got referral traffic. This happened because I provided value and when the audience considered me as a helpful resource, they began to trust my company and the inquiries started to come in. I just dont see how this is possible anymore in the current state.

I’m sickened. Truly sickened. I always considered LinkedIn as a group resource, a place to mingle and exchange ideas with like-minded marketers. I might as well read my RSS feed instead of spending any amount of time in the groups. At least there I know I have chosen to consume the content.

What about you? Does this annoy anyone else?

Filed Under: Blog, Lead Generation, Social Media

Does Social Media Make You Feel Good About Yourself?

September 25, 2012 by Christina Pappas 1 Comment

I’ve been meaning to write about this for awhile and something happened today that reminded me that I wanted to write this so here we go. MarketingProfs published an article about our behavior on the social web and questioned if we act badly. It was interesting to me that a majority of the survey participants shared that social media actually improves their self-esteem and makes a person feel better about themselves. Their bonds are stronger with other because of social media.

Today over on Ken Mueller’s blog Inkling Media, he wrote about Social Media and our Shared Experiences. He too was sharing the fact the social media has enabled us to become closer and to share experiences that we otherwise would not have shared. I couldn’t help but think about the night of the Olympics’ Opening Ceremony which I spent alone (or rather, with Tini) on my couch with phone in hand and Tweetdeck open. Hours flew by in which I watched the ceremony and shared my experience with others. I didn’t even consider the fact that I was technically alone until I made the comment today on Ken’s blog. And then he replied ‘It makes me sad that you were alone, but glad we could all share those experiences! You need to make some friends!’ Haha Ken. But then I got sad (I’m not mad at you Ken – I promise). Did social media make me happier? Am I not as ‘alone’ when I have Tweetdeck ready and armed?

Does social media make you feel good about yourself?

Let’s consider this for a moment. Introverts have thrived as a result of the world wide web. The internet has provided an outlet to make funny remarks, reach out to people, engage, strike up a conversation with a stranger, publish your thoughts and any other number of things. We request connections from people we don’t know just because we like how they described themselves in their profile. We follow and re-tweet people because they said something smart. And you know what? Other people respond. They want to connect with us, and tweet us back and comment on our thoughts. They want to meet us in real life and hug us and tell us we are awesome.

Of course it makes us feel good! Why wouldn’t it?

While a majority of people that have met me will argue I am not an introvert, I have a very hard time at events in which I know nobody. You want to meet me for dinner? I am a bubbly, non-stop talking, very loud person. But I don’t know you and I’m stag at an event? I’m drinking wine and hanging by the food table hoping someone will talk to me first. Just being honest here. That does not make me feel good. That makes me feel bad.

But online, because of social media, I don’t have this fear. I reach out without hesitation. I tell someone I think they are great and sometimes they say it back. I share my thoughts on topics and ideas and give my opinion freely. I want to be here and participate and it’s less nerve-racking for me. You don’t get to see how nervous I am. You don’t get to hear the shake in my voice. You don’t get to see my hand shake so hard my wine nearly tips over. And thankfully, you don’t know how much I am sweating when I hit that send button.

I’ll leave you with this. My self-esteem has not improved because of social media but it does make me feel good but I think it has a lot to do with what Ken says and that’s really about the connections and shared experiences. Sharing a laugh with a friend or a good conversation – even in 140 characters – is never going to be a bad thing.

Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Social Media

The Future of Marketing is About WAY More Than Social Media

September 20, 2012 by Christina Pappas 2 Comments

Here I am, in Boston, watching the live stream of Marc Benioff at Dreamforce while practically everyone I know is actually there in San Fran. But I digress… what got me excited and then had me reacting quickly was the new Marketing Cloud that Salesforce.com previewed. I highly respect Salesforce.com for considering their product in much the same way that Facebook does; provide users with everything they need in one login so they don’t need to go anywhere else. This product does that and allows marketers to manage social media engagement within Salesforce and even tie activities back to revenue which is every marketer’s dream (maybe we solved the ROI of social media question?).

So why react then to The Marketing Cloud?

I dont know about you, but what comes to mind when you hear ‘marketing cloud’, knowing that Salesforce.com created it? Marketing program management? Source attribution and tracking? Marketing collaboration and function management? Marketing/sales alignment? Does ‘social media’ come to mind at all? Maybe a little bit but certainly not 100%.

This product (from what I saw ) is 100% focused on social media marketing and very specifically on Facebook. Recent acquisitions of Radian6 and BuddyMedia led to it which is why it’s so heavy on social (makes sense to me). But why does it have to be called ‘marketing cloud’? Maybe they have something cooking that will make this bigger and better and social media was just the natural place to start – that makes sense! But, if not…and we start considering ‘marketing’ in regards to lead gen, engagement, paid media, etc. in terms of social, then we are going to miss out on a lot. And that ‘lot’ is your future and potential customers which is rather important.

The future of marketing is about WAY more than social media

There’s a lot of hype, a lot of talk, a lot of swagger about social media. You must do it, they say. You must participate, they bellow. You have to do it because your competitors are doing it, they cry. Everyone is on Facebook, they exclaim. It goes on and on. We get it. What we often don’t get, or rather we forget, is the bigger picture. Social is one tiny aspect of marketing. It sure gets a lot of attention and we continue to have conversations about how the heck you track ROI, but at the end of the day it’s still just one piece. Calling something a ‘marketing tool’ and then having it be 100% social media is misleading. This is not all we do nor will it ever be.

I guess I just wish they hadn’t called it a ‘marketing’ cloud.

Filed Under: Blog, Marketing, Social Media

Can Facebook Really Be Used for Lead Generation?

May 29, 2012 by Christina Pappas 6 Comments

We all saw the major announcement that GM is pulling the plug on their paid Facebook display campaigns. First we wondered why, then we wondered if perhaps we should too. I know I did. While Ford had a different opinion, the decision by GM to focus more on their page and organically building a following of engaged fans seemed like a good course of action. On the other hand, why are some brands, such as Ford, benefiting so much from Facebook advertising?

First, let’s get over a couple things…

Facebook is for B2C, not B2B

Whether B2B, B2C or B2B2C, lead generation and customer acquisition is our goal. B2B’s have different channels and different means to reach their target audience same as B2C’s. I will say there are plenty of examples where Facebook advertising has worked for B2B’sbut you have to consider the goals of these companies. Typically the best use case for Facebook advertising when it comes to B2B, is to promote your fan page, lure the prospect in with your content and continue to engage with them – make it sticky!

Facebook is equivalent to Google PPC

Yes, it’s PPC (or you can choose CPM) but your ad is not displayed based on the fact that someone searched something relevant. The person must have raised their hand and said ‘hey, I like this thing or I am a member of this over here or I am interested in such and such.’ Just because someone searched “social media consultant” doesn’t mean anything – when it comes to connecting your ad with the inquirer anyways.

Facebook is not for me

It’s no secret that I m not a fan of Facebook – I just don’t like it. Ha! What I particularly don’t like is that unlike LinkedIn, you have to create your ads via your personal page. So you, yourself need to be active to use it for your business. Now there is a second part here and this is something I have talked about before. The whole idea of ‘I don’t like it so why would my audience?’ Get over yourself – I had to! If your audience is there, ready and willing, then you need to build a plan to reach and connect with them.

Now, back to the original question; can Facebook be used to generate leads? It’s a very good question and many jump and say yes and others are scratching their head and reading up on how to measure ROI. I will regurgitate and say that if your audience is on Facebook, then you should try it. Here are a couple tips from the Facebook ads team:

1. Use pictures of people (pets are even better). What do we do when we are on Facebook? Look at pictures of people. It’s no wonder these ads get more clicks. Just make sure your landing page is supporting the ad copy.

2. Use exclamations. We refrain from use exclamation points in emails and other pieces of content but they are highly encouraged on Facebook ads. So add them everywhere!!!

3. Tell them to do something. Don’t use up your precious characters describing your offer or why someone should like your page. Tell them to click here to like us – and don’t forget the exclamation mark!!

4. Image is most important, then header, then description. Put more thought into your image than your description. Should be simple enough.

Facebook ads can be effective at generating leads if your audience is there, if you are connecting with them the ‘right’ way, if your offer is compelling, if you track and measure everything you do.

What success – or not – are you seeing?

Filed Under: Blog, Lead Generation, Social Media Tagged With: facebook ads, facebook advertising, social media strategy

Mobile Marketing Is Giving Me That Déjà vu Feeling

April 1, 2012 by Christina Pappas 8 Comments

Think back to about 5 years ago or so when we first started getting excited about LinkedIn and the potential to generate revenue from participating in social networks. I’m speaking for myself (but many of you may have felt the same) when I say that I had no idea that my participation would pay off in the ways in which it did. At one point, LinkedIn was my second highest referral of converting traffic just after Google. Now, that’s not just traffic, that is traffic that converted into real deals in the pipeline.

So, my company decided to give me some more wiggle room to participate. My boss equated the converting traffic against my activity to that of a fire hose. The more you do, the more you get back. True, but not a very good ROI metric to play your hand on.

In fact, I struggled to put 2 and 2 together. Does this group yield better than this one? Does starting a discussion vs. participating make any difference? What if I connect with someone? Does that turn into a lead?

As Facebook and Twitter sprung up and we all leapt into action, again we struggled to wrap logical value around a tweet, re-tweet, follow, like, referral, etc. What happened after this action was performed? Was one action better than another? What could we do more of to get more people to convert?

Content and answers sprung up like daisies. Experts proclaimed they knew the answer to the impending question ‘what is the ROI of social media?’

Did we ever get our answer? Not sure. I can tell you that I figured out a way to calculate the ROI of my social media activities using a combination of tools (Google Analytics’, HubSpot and Salesforce.com) but I still have no answer to the question of what could I do more of to get more conversions…

The reason I bring this up is because I was having a conversation with Jamie Turner the other day and we started talking about mobile marketing. He just wrote a new book with co-author Jeanne Hopkins entitled ‘Go Mobile’. Now he and I both recognize that companies are fully aware of the impact of mobile marketing and the opportunities available. We also recognize that people are hesitating to participate. Why?

Most likely it’s because of the ROI. Let’s recall why so many brands were leery of social media to begin with. They knew what the impact was but just couldn’t articulate it to sell the potential internally. But the thing that got them through, the key element that allowed them to get the thumbs up to proceed was that it was seen as a no cost item.

Mobile, on the other hand, has a cost and it’s not cheap. You could dabble in Google’s AdMob which is a self-serve, location based mobile advertising tool (very cool and very easy to use) or you could build an app or you can integrate QR codes. There are many options available but very few that enable you to forecast and track on actually return.

You will never know if a particular customer sees your mobile ad then physically walks into your store and makes a purchase. The two cannot be connected – as least I have not seen this done yet. So we hesitate to participate and spend the money.

Everything in marketing has risks. Social media is perceived as being free so we participate and hope to get a return but there are risks. We are spending time there that we could be spending elsewhere. Mobile marketing is perceived to be high cost, flaky return so we hesitate to participate because we could be spending our budget on items that are solid such as CPC online campaigns.

With social media, we eventually got over ourselves and figured it out. Like me, we find a solution that works for our business to track the return. Why can’t we just take those learnings and apply them to mobile?

Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: return on investment, ROI

Subaru Using Memories to Share User Generated Content

March 22, 2012 by Christina Pappas 94 Comments

I have been seeing a lot of commercials lately for Subaru’s My First Car Story which encourages everyone – Subaru owner or not – to go online and share the story of their first car.

Now my first car, a 1989 Mercury Tracer hatchback, just makes me smile to think of it and I honestly couldn’t wait to share my story.

First step was to choose the model, color and condition.

My car was a 4 door hatchback, not a station wagon but this was the closest thing to it. My car was also not pink (but how cool would that have been?!), it was red-orange. And it was in awesome condition until it met me that is. And yes, we called it the Space Mobile because the hatchback was in this funny bubble shape and it was the first thing that came to our minds when we looked at it.

The site asks you to connect with Facebook before sharing your story so that you can tag your friends – who may have been participants in the journey – and also so you can share it with your network.

After submitting my story (just 150 words allowed), I am taken to a page to pick the soundtrack. So fun!! For all the times we belted out Cyndi Lauper tracks (Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – anyone?), I had to go with Girl Party!

Then once you have done that, you can narrate the story in your own voice.

So the end result is a video you can share via Facebook, Twitter or email but since I had popups disabled, I ended up losing my custom story L So for fun, I will share it here for you all the read, reminisce and laugh about.

My First Car Story:

I was really lucky to get a car the same day I got my license. My dad and I looked for cars for weeks prior to the day so that I would have one ready for me. We found a 1989 Mercury Tracer hatchback. If you don’t know what that is, here is a picture:

Pretty frickin awesome huh? Mine was red-orange and I decorated it with tons of bumper stickers (is this my car???). I also had a fetish for Happy Meals at the time and filled my glove compartment and every other compartment with toys. My friends call my call the Alien Mobile because it looked kind of like a spaceship.

I loved to drive – I couldn’t drive enough. In fact, I would offer to go grocery shopping and pick up my brother and sister from wherever they were. About 3 days after my license, I was picking up my brother from soccer practice at the high school. He was waiting out front and being the cool chick that I was, I didn’t realize how fast I was going around the corner. Until I hit the front of the school. He was so embarrassed and I couldn’t stop laughing. Ended up just being a busted tire and my brother told me to just drive home on the flat (I am SO lucky I didn’t bend my rim doing that!).

I had so much fun in this car it was unbelievable. My friends and I would race down the highway passing people in the breakdown lane and pushing the speedometer so hard that it was going around again. The memories are amazing and I cherish them.

That car lasted about a year before my Dad decided it was unsafe for me to drive. I guess I had crashed it one too many times and it just didn’t run anymore. I was heartbroken and it was a sad day when it was towed away.

Evoking emotion to generate user content

Subaru is doing a lot of things right.

1. They have connected several forms of media (I saw this advertised on TV, then visited the microsite for this project and shared it to my social network).

2. They are playing into an emotional period of our lives that we were extremely excited about and want to share. Anyone ever ask you for your first car story before? Probably not, but you also probably couldn’t wait to share it.

3. With the exception of some subtle advertising while you wait for your custom story to load, there is no advertising. My first car was not even a Subaru nor have I ever owned one, but I was given the chance like everyone else to be a part of this.

4. Without doing anything beyond building the site and letting people know it’s there, the user (i.e. me in this case) is doing all the work. I al creating the graphics, I am writing the copy, I picked the music, I created the audio track. It’s 100% user generated content without making the user feel like they did anything.

5. I got nothing for participating but I felt like I got a lot. I didnt get a free test drive of the newest, shiniest Subaru or the chance to win a new iPad. But what I did get was a fun experience and I couldn’t wait to share it with you all so you can go have some fun too!

What’s your story? Go have some fun and visit the Subaru site http://www.firstcarstory.com/ and create yours.

Filed Under: Blog, Communications, Consumer Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: multi-channel marketing, user generated content

Why I Am A Facebook ‘Resister’

December 19, 2011 by Christina Pappas 116 Comments

I was planning to write an upcoming post discussing why I am not on Facebook and don’t ever plan to be and then I saw this article in the New York Times on ‘resisters’ so I am writing it now.

I am extremely active in social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn so people are generally surprised when I tell them that I am not on Facebook (usually when they send me a link to something there that I can’t view). Seriously. I am not on Facebook.

Let me re-phrase that. I used to be on Facebook. Yes, I was one of the 800 billion mazillion people that are members of the site but within a year, I had shut down my account and haven’t returned since.

People have said that they enjoy the site because they are able to locate and re-connect with old friends or people they meet but didn’t exchange phone numbers. And yes there have been instances when I may say ‘what happened to my college roommate’. But the last thing I am going to do is login to Facebook to track her down. In fact, I would be more inclined to contact the school’s alumni office.

I have watched my cousin, who is 17, interact with her friends purely through Facebook status updates and text messaging and it makes me a little sad. She doesn’t even know how to have a conversation in real life anymore. And if you haven’t heard the story, my distaste for the site really came to light while I was out at dinner with friends one night and everyone at the table (except me) were on their phones updating their status throughout the meal. It went something like this:

“Hey, did you see my status I just updated?”

“One sec….LOL. That’s so funny. Wait. Hold on and let me update mine. Ok, go look at mine now.”

“Haha! The nachos are here! Wait, don’t eat them yet!! Let me take a pic to include with my status update”

“Are you serious? Im hungry” <- that was me

I am not kidding. This was my dinner. I couldn’t even tell you if we had a conversation that night that didn’t include having to look up something on a phone or check-in with someone on Facebook. It was really disgusting and I lost all respect for the social network’s ability to bring people together. Sure, we were together all right. Together with all our Facebook connections and their status updates.

I know there are concerns about privacy but that really hasn’t been my problem. I really cannot even pinpoint what my problem is with the site or why I don’t want to participate. I simply don’t see a need; there is no gap in my life that needs to be filled with Facebook. I haven’t at one time – ever – said that I need a Facebook account in order to accomplish xyz. Ever. Quite the opposite really since I was saying ‘I need to get rid of this Facebook account’ (when I had one) more times than I could count.

Will Brennan, a 26-year old quoted in the article indicates that his friends ‘are not always sympathetic to his anti-social-media stance.’ He says “I get harangued for ruining their plans by not being on Facebook.”

I can totally relate Will! If I had a nickel for every time someone said ‘I would invite you but..o wait, you’re not on Facebook, I forgot. How can you not be on Facebook?!?’

So I will continue to tweet and participate on LinkedIn and am even thinking about starting a YouTube channel and creating some videos, but I will not be on Facebook anytime soon or ever at all.

Why? Because there is no need for me to be! If you need me, then please pick up the phone and call me. If you don’t have my number, then email me or send me a message on LinkedIn, on Twitter or here on my blog. We don’t need Facebook to make or maintain connections to people. That’s just my opinion.

Why are you on Facebook or not? What has it done to improve your life? Are you communicating better?

Filed Under: Blog, Social Media Tagged With: Facebook

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