Social Media: Anyone actually making money with it?
I've got a serious question for you today.
Are you *making money* (and not merely making Friends / Fans / Followers) Twittering, Facebooking and Bookmarking?
Is anybody you know making money Twittering, Facebooking and Bookmarking stuff?
Is anybody you know reliably or predictably making sales, doing that stuff in any kind of systematic fashion?
I seriously want to know.
What are you actually doing? How well is it actually, measurably working?
Post your response in the comment form below. I'd like to hear from you.
Thanks-
Perry
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About the Author
Perry Marshall's books on Google Advertising are the most popular in the world. He is referenced across the Internet and by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Entrepreneur Magazine.
He has helped over 100,000 Google Advertisers save billions of dollars in Adwords stupidity tax.
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We have posted some sales promotions to twitter and seen new customers sign up using those promo codes. I also think our basic efforts of participating on twitter have helped because we've seen customers posting positive reviews for our service.
Mark,
Did new customers come to you from Twitter or were they already your customers before?
Perry
No, still can't figure out how.
No.
But I think the value of social media is in the contacts that you make. The who-do-you-know game.
For example a customer might feel better about spending money if I have Perry Marshall, Dr Glen Livingston and Sunny Hill following me on Twitter.
Perry,
Down here in Brazil, where I am, and in Latam, we still have few results, specially concentrated in big companies, such as the Real Estate sector, which reports some successful cases.
Small businesses continue testing this media and up to the moment they say that it is a lot of time invested for such small results.
I am speaking for myself and also from my customers’ feelings. As you say, I think that we are all making a huge effort to keep updated, but we don’t have a critical mass yet.
A symptom of the doubts is that yesterday when FB and Twitter were off-line, many people felt that the day turned out to be more productive.
Finally, trying to draw some juice from the theme (tentando tirar suco do tijolo), Saturday, August 22, online in Clube 14-Bis, I invited 4 small businessmen to discuss exactly those issues, to tell us what they have discovered and how they use SM.
best regards,
Jorge
I've heard of a local restaurant using twitter to build a local following and then tweeting specials.
I think this is brilliant and fulfills Paul Zane Pilzner's predication.
Have not seen proof of this personally.
Chris.
I've seen this stuff work occasionally as a re-inforcement to sales activity (people like opinion leaders who seek to make sense). But I have just watched one of our clients develop over 2,000 Twitter contacts over 6 weeks and we are all dead keen to see all these wonderful new enquiries coming in…
So maybe it is all about opinion development, rather than sales development.
Hi Perry! love your info!
Not sure if this counts, but I am a recrutier, specializing in a very niche area – I've used social media ( facebook, blogging, etc) to "give value" where pertinent, and that's not only brought me pertinent candidates I've placed, other recruiters I connect with approach me to work split comission deals.
so, to me, SM is more about building profitable relationships.
Tom
Twitter:
May 1st. 2000 followers. Special store wide 3 hour sale from large retailer.
Direct links to retailer focusing on one specific item. $30,000 in sales.
June 1st. Retailer changed TOS so that we have to link through a personally owned site.
July 1st. 7000 followers. Again special 3 hour sale from same retailer. This time did a broad campaign for 25 items.
Linked through my site. $6,000 in sales.
Too many variables changed to see EXACTLY why the sales dropped so dramatically, but I have a feeling that asking the Twitter follower to click that extra time greatly affected the total sales.
FaceBook.
Works well for touchy, feely items but I have had no luck yet for hard goods. (there are a LOT of women on Facebook)
Hey Perry,
Yes, I am making money from social media – especially Twitter. I am not yet a Facebook expert.
I send all my autoresponders out via Twitter. People tell me that they heard of me on Twitter.
I have done VERY well during Internet launches via Twitter. In fact during one large launch, nearly all my sales – in the tens of thousands of dollars, was via Twitter.
When I have run a sale on my own products, I have done well via Twitter.
I have brought lots of people to my blog via Twitter.
These people turn into subscribers.
So is Twitter making me money? Yes.
But Twitter takes a lot of work. And it's important that you do it right.
Before questioning how much money you make ON Twitter, the more important question is how much value you bring TO Twitter.
Thanks Harlan.
Social media has become one of the best ways to generate traffic and increase sales.
This is a great question, but one that is tough to answer fully.
Here's what we are doing. Genoo was launched a year and a half ago, and I read David Meerman Scott's book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, and decided that we were going to see what we could do to get the word out about Genoo using those sorts of methods.
Not long after that, i think I found you through exploring Google Adwords and one of your books I bought at Barnes & Noble. Anyway, I digress.
In March of 2008, we founded the B2B Online Marketing Group at LinkedIn. Preceeding that, I started really exploring LinkedIn, and started participating in the Questions & Answers area for Sales & Marketing related questions, since that is our target audience. I learned that when you get marked as "Best Answer", you will have a star next to your name for all the questions you answer from then on, letting people know that your answer has been selected as a best answer – and I think since kindergarten, we've paid attention to those with stars by their names.
Anyway, I saw that people were joining groups, and so I started to do that too, but all the conversation (delivered via email) centered around B2C — so I created the B2B Online Marketing Group. Back then when you defined a group, you added a URL. You could also upload a graphic logo for your group, but there was NOTHING else available for group members. You couldn't post a question, but have it be viewed only by your group, etc. So we created the B2B Online Marketing Pros website and hooked it to the Group. It aggregates topics of interest for B2B Online Marketers, and then we'd send out monthly or quarterly emails letting the people in the group know that we'd got a new subject up.
Response to these emails was always in the 20% clickthrough range, which we thought was pretty good, and we were adding value. Genoo sponsored the microsite we created, and so we were getting some awareness going.
The group now grows by about 200 members a month, and has 2300+ members now, a little over a year later, and LinkedIn has augmented their group functionality to include discussions, etc. which is also good.
We spend about 5 hours a month updating topics on the website, vetting users who request to join the group, and monitoring the discussion posts to try to keep the area "clean" from blatant advertisers.
In Feb. of this year, I was on vacation in Mexico, checking Twitter, and I saw a tweet about Genoo. I thanked the person who had tweeted it, and asked how she had found Genoo.
She told me that she was in my B2B Online Marketing Group at LinkedIn, and had checked out Genoo. She's a Marketing Consultant that works to help organizations with their marketing implementations, and knew that a bunch of her contacts need Marketing Automation, lead nurturing, etc. so she tweeted about us — she had 700+ followers.
Subsequent to that, I got a request for a live demo, and when we got on the phone I asked how they found me. The answer was, they were following a Twitter stream of one of our competitors, and someone said people should check out Genoo (wasn't us). Later he was doing a Google search for Marketing Automation, and he saw our Text Ad, and clicked through – watched our online demos and then requested a live demo.
I've also gotten people contacting me directly from LinkedIn, who have become Genoo customers.
So, I spend a few hours a week on different stuff specifically focused on social media. That's all. I've got your marketing system, and spend more time working to get those concepts implemented with my team at Genoo — and that is also starting to work!
Thanks for the question. I think it's merky, but you can create a sort of "web effect" or "net effect" but it's a long-tail sort of thing, like SEO.
Perry, I'm so glad you asked this question, I'm dying to see the answers from the sort of serious people that follow you. I signed up a fake twitter account to get past a sales page once and now I have a dozen people following me even though I never "tweet". If I was to participate in this whole social media craze I'd feel like a twit.
So far you're looking like making me feel better about my aversion. I'll be watching this page as closely as the Adwords Guide!
-Matt
I've gotten a few people to some of my blog posts using Twitter where they have actually bought software that I recommended through my affiliate links. And, I did gain one new client with FaceBook, but that was when FB was new on the scene. I have found that as time has gone on, these work less and less as far as being a productive use of my time. But as far as meeting contacts, it has value as other commenters have noted. Twitter is nice as far as giving opinions and somewhat creating a buzz although, good old email can create a greater buzz.
Hi,Perry. I have no results yet.It takes lots of time. There is a lot of buzz about how great it works,especially from some new "gurus".But for most of people it seems like a game: "Buy from me a course how to make money on …..". If somebody buys they probably make few bucks. I personally delete those messages- it is not attractive.
Our company has been using social media to supplement our sales efforts and as "reputation building" We had a salesmen who was monitoring twitter catch a tweet where a customer was complaining about our boring trainer. We immediately reached out via twitter and turned a detractor into a supporter.
Hey Perry,
If you are in the Internet marketing scene at all (which I sure that you are), another Perry (Perry Belcher) has just launched a mega-course about monetizing social media. You might want to check out his free stuff. It is pretty good.
He says he is making 50 grand a month after 9 months of work on it…
Yanik and Frank Kern and the crew all promoted his stuff.
So, he says it can be done and he is doing it. Regardless of its success, his ideas are very good.
Bests,
Ryan
I have used Twitter in the past but only for communicating with current clients, I wasn't getting new clients that way. I've since stopped and am focusing more on FaceBook – I can see my friends and family there AS WELL AS clients … I like FaceBook because it's visual – easy to post pictures, and everyone loves a photo
I'm on vacation in Paris and my clients love seeing those pictures, too, even if they're not strictly work related. It's relationship building, and photos really help with that.
~ Shelley
Hi Perry !
I personnally use it a lot to grow my network and to add value around me. I'm using it the way you're using it with emails follow up.
It's kind of a catalist to me, i've integrated these tools in my communication strategies. I've a blog with around 100k subscribers, each post is automacally synchronised on my twitter account (3122 followers) and on my facebook account (3845 friends). I treat my followers differently on twitter & facebook and on my blog. I have a group on facebook too that i use like a list to push email to my core network.
As my group trust me, when i ask them for something, invite them to my events for example, they're responding. Recently i've used it for an event i'll do on october 10 and closed 10K sales for 100 seats in less then 24 hours using twitter only. Today we're at 166 confirmed participants and i haven't revealed the content of the event yet !
It's all about value and trust in the end.
Did your Twitter followers come from your blog followers, or did the Blog followers come from Twitter?
@Staff : It's a 2 way working relationship between the blog and twitter. The blog have generated qualified followers on twitter and twitter generate qualified readers on the blog.
Restaurants – yes. Using promo tweets like "reverse happy hour tonight" or "2 for 1 entrees tonight.
Problem – Restaurant administration/staff/management unwilling to learn concept of Twitter (or spend more time) so they only use it to post promos and will not engage in conversations.
Me – yes. Monitoring specific keywords and then having a conversation with people based on their tweets around certain topics. **But not buckets of money. Just gained a couple of paid accounts and a lot of great contacts.
Problem – I don't have time to monitor it like I should and spammers are posting for their products from 10 different profiles and clogging up my alert software.
I've been on the fence with the whole social media idea, that is, until I was on a webinar with Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss. Perry made a lucid, logical and insightful presentation on social media and why it works today and why it will become more important in the future. His analysis of social media and the reasons it has grown so rapidly hit me hard. I didn't buy his multi thousand dollar product but I did learn a lot and am now thinking about how to integrate it into what I am doing.
As some of the earlier comments said, it really is about relationship building with both new and old friends, clients or customers and then takes advantage of the viral nature social media. Building trust, value and authority is key.
Phil
Like Tom says, we have been using Twitter to recruit staff and found it to be great for that. If only more people realised the potential of Twitter for jobhunting…
Perry,
This blogging is an excellent way to get correct information from your news letters subscribers and from actual users of social media.
We do posting on Twitter, Face book, Linked in, Squidoo on a daily basis. We have multiple registrations in all of them. Our posting is more associated with our key phrases related to our business. Some of the examples are 1. How to create, edit and publish landing Pages in minutes. 2. How to get Google quality score 10/10 for your entire ad words etc.
We add daily 5 to 10 followers in each of the social media. This builds our followers base. As of now we have more than 20,000 contacts in 4 to 5 weeks.
You may have read an article in Wall Street journal July 20th about How you can increase the number of visitors instantly by giving some free gifts etc. The URL link is given here for interested readers of this blog.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124805161394863097.html
The 1st paragraph of this Article is given below:
“On July 1, Moonfruit was a below-the-radar Web-site building company with 400 followers on Twitter. Just a few days later, the London-based company had acquired 47,000 followers on the micro-blogging site, traffic to its home page had increased by 1,300% and the word "moonfruit" was popping up all over the Internet”
Reading this article will help your readers what they can achieve thru social media.
Honestly so for we have not made any money directly from social media. We get very good natural search ranking in Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. for our web sites http://www.Landingpagemaker.net and http://www.cbssys.com. We monitor who is visiting our web site from which social media web sites. We have complete statistics of all our visitors using our web tracking software http://www.viztracker.com.
There is definitely a good value over a period of time.
Best Regards
Peri
Facebook – we are making money off it. We are doing PPC ads – tough balancing act, gradually reducing bids a cent a day, problem being is, when you go 1 cent too low, you drop off the face of the planet and just adding back the one cent, doesn't get you back on their radar. Anyhow – our hook is we give away a FREE building once a year. Our ad drives people to register to win the free building, once on our site, we are getting them asking for building quotes, which sells buildings. All of the extra traffic from Facebook, is also improving our website rankings in general. We find those who are entering our website from Facebook are spending (on average) a greater amount of time browsing the information on our site.
No, haven't made any money yet. Twitter seems like a bunch of SPAM all day long and facebook ads keep not approving my ads for some reason that I can't figure out. Don't have a clue what the answer is, just know it isn't making me any money.
@Phillip, I also attended Perry Belcher's webinar. I have to say, although his insights were valuable I was completely underwhelmed by the amount of hype. That and his background isn't as polished as you might like (just do a search on Perry Belcher and you'll see what I mean)
Making money through social media begins with building relationships. Not based on sales pitches, but just like in the blogosphere, with good value content. The way I see it, it's just another avenue to attract people to your blog.
social media is great to build a community of like minded people. I think the actual money meking opportunities are down the road after you establish a group of followers.
Hi Perry,
Yes, I am making money via social networking.
I primarily focus on Twitter (although I do blog and use facebook and linkedin.com as well) and have been using it to find and meet other people in the technology, web design, and web marketing industries here in Vancouver.
I'm not as aggressive with it as I could be but would estimate it's been worth at least $10,000 in new business for me this summer. I provide consulting services and am meeting people and being followed by people who either refer me business or contact me directly.
My focus is investing a little bit of time daily in talking about things I am doing that might be of interest to others, thing relevant to the services I provide.
As an aside, I wanted to say thanks for your book, for the emails you send every week and just about everything I've ever read of yours. You have taught me a lot (right now I am busy buying up old direct mail/copywriting books to help me write better ads, emails and landing pages) and I continue to enjoy your material.
Up to this point I have ignored my Twitter account. Based upon the comments I've read here, I'll continue to do so for now. "Social" media is just that, it is not directly associated with "sales," like Adwords.
Yes, it appears that there are businesses that benefit from the trust building, but a serious strategy and implementation program need to be in place to make the social aspect work.
Once your Adwords, landing pages, offline advertising, and internal marketing (customer service, call handling, faxing, incoming voice and voice broadcast) systems are in place and effective, THEN I think it would make sense to go after Social Media. If those factors are ignored, then your "buzz" will be bad.
So where does one go to discover how to TWEET properly?
Some quotes extracted from the posts so far:
"Regardless of its success, his ideas are very good."
"Our company has been using social media to supplement our sales efforts and as "reputation building."
"I've gotten a few people to some of my blog posts using Twitter where they have actually bought software that I recommended through my affiliate links."
'This is a great question, but one that is tough to answer fully."
"I've seen this stuff work occasionally as a re-inforcement to sales activity"
"I've heard of a local restaurant using twitter to build a local following and then tweeting specials…. I think this is brilliant."
"No. But I think the value of social media is in the contacts that you make."
"Reading this article will help your readers what they can achieve thru social media…. Honestly so for we have not made any money directly from social media."
"I have used Twitter in the past but only for communicating with current clients, I wasn't getting new clients that way. I've since stopped and am focusing more on FaceBook – I can see my friends and family there AS WELL AS clients …"
"Me – yes… **But not buckets of money. Just gained a couple of paid accounts and a lot of great contacts."
It sounds like an equally important questions is: Regardless of if you're making money with it right now, would be screwing around with anything several hours a day that made you the amount of money you can track back to twitter or facebook?
I'm not against it, but this has been eye-opening. So far the most specific answer has been – It gave me $30K on a furniture promotion once and $6K the next time and I have no idea why on either account.
BTW – No offense to Perry Belcher and his course, but extrapolating success from an "I'm going to teach you how to make money on twitter by showing you how I made money on twitter by showing other people how to make money on twitter" angle isn't exactly universally transferable.
Who knows where it will head in the future, but for know it reminds me of Dan Kennedy talking about the sales guy who has a few yes's, no No's, and a whole bunch of maybe's.
I've focused my blogging/social media efforts on building relationships with prospects instead of selling directly and it's been working extremely well.
In the past 12 months since attending Perry's 4 Man Intensive and leveraging social media, I've tripled my client base and my social media classes sell out every time without spending a dime on marketing. Not bad in the worst economy of our lifetime!
Perry taught me that having the right mindset is the key to succeeding, whether its online or offline. I left Perry's house with a fresh perspective and I've never looked back. Opportunities keep popping up, many of them from the connections I've made through social media.
I highly recommend attending Perry's 4 Man Intensive if you want to take your business to the next level. It's 2 days that will change your business and life forever.
Thank you Perry!
Perry, ran some sales tweets on specials and such. Not advertising the same thing elsewhere and picked up a couple of sales.
You know we're more of traditional brick and morter website with established product line and not informational sales.
I did see that Best Buy had set up a twitter account and staffed it with customer service people to answer techie questions "pre-sale". I sure this immediate short response technique converted sales with no-wait one-on-one responses. We get a lot of phone call with specific product questions, but most of those folks also call because they want to really talk with someone, not type with someone. I'm interested to see how this customer service tweeting plays out.
t
The quality of Perry's audience is astounding. It is like a pre-filtered discussion group here.
A lot will be based on "realness" and "your branding" in the future. Soon, people will be able to get a profile of you in seconds…and will do so before every purchase if they feel they are buying from you (i.e., a person).
It gives you the opportunity to put "you" out there–really out there in a virtual way.
How you use that, well that is your call.
And I love the "measurably" stuff as much as you do, Perry. But some things are valuable and difficult to measure…love peace joy
Hi Perry – me and a marketing buddy have been experimenting with several different strategies to get free/low cost advertising via twitter and discovered that with a bit of effort and a bit of automation you can achieve just that on Twitter at least. We have found it’s a matter of getting your quality content/recommendations ratio correct for your niche. Keeping your reputation intact and having a clear vision about what you are trying to achieve is important too.
Social media is also a great way to get your message out to the people you want to reach too – have you compared the facebook advertising system and compared it to googles? – it’s very useful for certain items as you can target by a defined personal profiles, location, age, gender etc. So you are only spending to reach your target audience.
If I get a few free hours over the next few weeks I’ll put a quick guide to tweet automation together.
Anyways, love your e-mails and loved your book/audios – one of the best investments I ever made – it’s paid for its self at least a thousand times now!
Social Media is just another "tool" like any other media tool. It will work when the right offer is presented to the right audience at the right time. On the advertising side these tools (i.e. Facebook ads or Twitter Tweets which are offers) are much akin to the Content Network in that you are interrupting a conversation that is social in nature versus presenting a motivated buyer a relevant result when they are searching for something on Adwords. However, the social nature of these tools allow you to get people to "know, like, and trust you" if you don't spam them with constant offers and instead provide content (whether it be social or professional) – see Perry's 70/30 rule.
Not really. But..
At my company, Boost eLearning, we "train knowledge workers to effectively find high value information," and we just did a webinar on how to use Google to search sites like Facebook and Twitter to find information that you could not otherwise find using the search features on those sites. So we are not making money from facebook and twitter in terms of leads, but we can show how to find information to help make money from those sites.
Thanks for the conversation Perry.
Jeff Alhadef
Perry,
We have been using Facebook advertising as well as groups on Facebook to get people on teleseminars (where they buy) and to get to actual real seminars in the "real world" not online.
To us it is still about building a list and getting them in our "loop" just like planet Perry.
Social media is just another means for us to bring people into our loop.
Joey
It was fascinating watching the Perry Belcher/Ryan Deiss launch of their how to make money with social media product a few weeks ago. The lesson that I took out of it is that, yes, they've built huge following on social media sites like Twitter, FB, etc. but when it came to selling the course on social media, they still relied heavily on autoresponders, long sales copy (in the form of videos, autoresponders, etc.) to actually close the deal. Social media can get an enormous number of people in your sales funnel, but to actually get them to open up their wallets you still need to turn to the tried and true methods that copywriters and marketers have been using for decades.
Yes, I have made about $3,000 from using Facebook and Twitter, mostly facebook. How? Add friends in my niche, occasionally put up links to my big product and updates for new blog posts.
Most people spend way too much time on social sites, don't track their results, and try to justify their wasted time by calling it "work".
No, not really. I have about 2000 twitter followers and have made a grand total of zero tracked sales.
However, I did meet a few contacts that later turned out to be valuable for twitter (one content expert who interview for my membership site, and also one of our bigger affiliates).
IMO social media is over-hyped as a sales device, but still has some value for networking purposes. My goal now is to meet some type of partner or person to work with on twitter, rather than to make sales.
By the way Perry, your newsletter is amazing and IMO the most content-rich, valuable internet marketing newsletter out there.
-Dan
Also, these comments have been very enlightening. The consensus seems to be, NOBODY is making any real direct sales using social media. In fact, the only person who even claims to be making serious money from it is Perry Belcher. I find his claims to be a little suspect considering as he is a convicted felon and has an aggressive style of salesmanship.
Dan
Living Streams' heavier use of social media grew out of a desire to get more subscribers to our free news article service (about 5 per week) on internet developments – targeted for business owners/managers. It's costing quite a bit per month for a team of independent journalists to write the articles – and I just wanted to see more people get value from reading them.
Micro-blogs on the articles in Twitter, Facebook, Ecademy and LinkedIn are now supplemented with snippets of other news.
All this effort has doubled the monthly website visitors but also significantly increased the bounce rate. I can detect no ongoing increase from people subscribing to any of the news RSS feeds.
Living Streams is a digital business consultancy, so I'm looking for potential consultancy clients rather then online sales. The only contacts it has stimulated so far are from companies wanting to extract as much free consultancy as they can from us on the phone and then disappearing.
The expenditure on the news articles may well stop soon if publicising it in the social media doesn't significantly increase the ongoing readership.
Regards
Tony
Tony,
What about measurable financial results?
Perry
Simple… never done it but it makes sense:
1). Create a free report with a clever, keyword rich title. "How I Cured Impotence with a Raw Food Diet" or "7 Ways to Sleep Better with Raw Food" or "How to Sell Your House if You're Underwater"
2). Send out Tweets to these articles/reports/blog posts
3). Have the link point to a squeeze page like Eben Pagan and Frank Kern are making. Throw up a video further hyping up your report and have your visitors give you their name and email.
Pick a good enough niche and this could work really well.
Raza,
I'm not asking for theory here today. Did you DO it? How much money did you make?
Perry
Perry,
Haven't done it myself and I'm not convinced that it works for every niche. I have a few things in mind though.
Concept seem straight forward enough, but that's like everything in life. Execution is key. I'll let you know my results if you're interested.
Raza
What a coincidence…
I just got off the phone with a guy named Nick who is very into all of this "social media stuff" for his beekeeping business.
I recommended him to you your site for your white paper guide and email series without knowing this post was here, how perfect is that?
-Trevor
I WAS making money from Twitter. I'm a clinician nearing retirement and I set up a free self-help video series for people with depression, with books and consultation available if required.
Twitter somehow read me as a scammer or spammer and suspended my account, and steadfastly refuses to respond to my inquiries, via their web form or via email. They simply tag my inquiries "closed".
So I spent hours learning how to use Twitter correctly, building relationships with my followers (well over 1000) and delivering quality tweets and information.
Hits to my site increased 4300% (from almost nothing) and I made a few hundred dollars.
But it's all gone down the drain and it's not something I'd ever let an external site control again.
Deb and I still have a lot to learn whether social media works or not. Really can't comment with any authority yet, still too early to tell… it all depends if the follower has any interest in the offer or unique selling proposition. Deb will mention or tweet about our line of "nutrition and weight loss" products from time to time, along with our current campaign,(i.e., the "Body By Vi" 90 Day Challenge), etc. Some distributors have done well with it as social media marketers while we get a lot of viewership but no takers so to speak. Obviously we are still doing something that is missing the mark when we point them to check out…http://peter.myvi.net
In my opinion, this is much simpler in theory than many people think. However, the technical difficulties and the legal implications may prevent anybody from implementing it.
First we have to hook some kind of monitoring software to the social media sites where people post messages on their walls, in other words, where they are having a conversation in real time. Thus, our software would be capable of reading every single one of the social media posts in real time. Then we have to analyze these posts and find what people are having a conversations about. The analysis would happen based on figuring out which keywords are being used most often. We already know our most important keyword on our product or service that we want to sell and the most closely related keywords as well. Once we identified a positive match among the conversations taking place, then a virtual agent (another piece of our software) representing us would join the conversation and pull the participants to our site. We already know what keywords trigger a positive match, and we can track down which user eventually came to our site based on the positive keywords identification that we previously made so we would be able to measure conversion rate, cost of acquiring a new customer and profit/cost per action, thus ROI.
However, there are many issues with this solution:
- Monitoring millions of conversations in real time is no easy task and would require some significant server power.
- There are privacy issues that may prevent us implementing such solution. Google successfully weathered the privacy fearmongerers so far, but we are not Google.
- I have not seen a truly intelligent artificial agent software yet that is capable of recognizing what the real intentions of people are. Technically we can be reported for spamming if the virtual agent is seen as a bot (virtual machine) that tries to spam people.
Now of course we do not have to monitor the conversations in real time. Maybe it is enough to read a feed and try to identify the prospects based on the feed by including the posts only that has our keywords describing our product our service and send them a message based on the identifications, but we still have to be very careful not to be seen as a spammer. I am just thinking loud here.
In my opinion it is best to catch the prospects on the spot when they are having the conversation and get into that conversation. To automate all this and do this on a large scale and to measure the results is no easy task.
I am sure that anybody who would crack the problem of measuring conversions and ROI on social media will make a lot of money.
Great question. I was asking the same thing here: http://SocialMediaAltitude.com/contest (we have a lot of video responses coming in saying THANK YOU SOCIAL MEDIA)
I was looking for a way to create more results for my real estate business. Started leveraging social media and ended up consulting other small businesses. Brought in several thousand with that. I think the best part would be the connections and business partnerships I have made. As a young entrepreneur, getting to connect with Stephen Covey, John Assaraf, Spencer Johnson, Bob Burg and Guy Kawasaki and have them as guests on our teleseminar was extremely rewarding.
Perry I hear you are in the burbs…I am just west of you. Love your work and have your book. Cheers to your success!
Bradley Will
@BradleyWill
I thought about it more and here's the problems I see with Twitter:
1). Although my theoretical example of creating a free report and tweeting it COULD work, (and does work when promoting a site via SEO, PPC, etc.) the barrier to entry is so low with Twitter, it's easy for any idiot to spam articles. This happens to me a lot so I've almost stopped using Twitter completely. At least with SEO and PPC the marketer has to work hard to promote their content. Twitter makes it easy to promote crap.
2). I use Twitter on my Blackberry only. There's no way I'd go to Twitter and watch the tweets roll in. If I see a useful article, I'll click it, but the site won't be able to get my email and build a list cuz I ain't filling out a form on my Blackberry. The best bet for the marketer is to send out lots of informative tweets and build trust with me so that I naturally want to visit their site the next time I'm at a computer.
I don't want to sound too skeptical, because I'm sure there were lots of people doubting that the internet would ever make anyone money. Twitter specifically seems useful when you already have a tribe, but not the best way to build a tribe.
Thoughts?
Raza
We've had three good sales directly attributable to Twitter and LinkedIn. Those were for web design and seo work.
Other than that, I've had no luck at all selling hard goods, or even information products, and I've tried.
I think people don't want to know that social networking may not be all it's touted to be.
Nick said,
"No offense to Perry Belcher and his course, but extrapolating success from an "I'm going to teach you how to make money on twitter by showing you how I made money on twitter by showing other people how to make money on twitter" angle isn't exactly universally transferable."
You hit a home run with that comment, Nick. You are one of the few who see through the fog.
I've tried to clone one of our best adwords campain in Facebook Adds. Our adwords campain works quite well with 3,5 CTR and 20% Conversion (opt in landing)but the same message on FaceBook gets CTR 0,2 and 1% conversion.
It was just an experiment, because I knew that theese % would be worse but … It looks like if we were veeeeeery far from making an EURO with that.
My firt impression? … I think social media will be a good way for promoting some kind of products but with be a dificult moor for profesional products like ours (bussines software).
I'm surprised by some of the comments here.
As far as Facebook goes, PPC on Facebook is NOT PPC on Google.
PPC on Facebook is far better.
Facebook has the single most accurate targeting of demographics of anything online.
Want to target people who graduated a certain school? You can.
Want to target people who teach yoga? You can.
Want to target overweight woman age 40 and up? You can.
One of my clients did so well on Facebook, making hundreds of thousands of dollars, Facebook cut his purchase because they couldn't understand his success.
Later they came back to him begging him to purchase more inventory but he had moved on.
Here's what I'm seeing on this thread:
People are trying the same techniques they use on PPC on Social Media sites and guess what?
It's not working.
Social media is a horse of a different feather.
Learn how to use it properly and you will make money.
Do things the way you've always done them and lose your shirt.
Peace.
Harlan
Hi Harlan,
I'm completely sure that the biggest problem with my Facebook Ads test was "me". Since the very first moment, I felt that I really didn't know how this marketing in social media was going on. I wish I'll have time soon to work with it as it deserves. But my first feeling was to be very far from making money with any of our professional software products because I could easyly find an "overweight woman age 40 who likes to prepare pizza in her weekends" but I couldn't find any "pizza restaurant owners", because at least in Spain and at least at the moment those social media are not used to speak about our jobs at all. Nothing about any professional interests .
Hi Perry,
I have just run a couple of seminars on Social Media. Thye were both sold out, which is unusual because seminars about ebusiness matters don't normally strike a chord with business owners in the UK. People really wanted to know how to use it properly, which has led to me developing a new product.
My research for the seminars did reveal some interesting facts though. Dell directly attribute several millions of dollars of sales to their use of twitter; in the fist half of 2009 they have generated over a million dollars dollars in sales from offers sent only to twitter followers. BUT the conversion was done at the website end; the tweets brought the traffic, the website did the selling.
Harley Davidson, now losing sales because of demand decline in the baby boomer marketplace, have turned to Facebook to lift flagging sales.
I recently wrote an aricle on Cybermugging that likened the way that may people use Twitter to a stroll through a Tunisian Soukh.This echoes many of the sentiments of your posters, but there is a definite rosy future for Social Media – provided that it is done in the right way.
Perry,
I have been moving forward regularly with Social Media Networks ranging from Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, LinkedIn and various industry networks as well.
I can, certainly, trace a sale or two here and there to these outlets, but that is not my purpose.
As I use Social Media, and as I would recommend all others to view it as well, it is a networking tool designed to increase product and brand awareness, not to directly sell. In fact, the more you try to sell, the worse results you are going to get.
I have seen incredible results in growing my network, and people are talking about me, personally, in relation to my industry and products much more frequently that they were even 6 months ago. I have only just begun in Social Media Marketing, and I have already seen impressive results. I just can't wait to see the results after I have some experience under my belt and more regular content to offer.
Twitter has been of great help for me to make new business contacts and get in touch with existing customers. It's been an important element in my marketing strategy.
Hi Perry,
I haven't personally. But I have seen few people claiming to do so in training courses and pre launch videos.
I am going to twitter soon. Hope I can figure it out.
Is anyone making sales? Explore the Twitter and Facebook activities of United Airlines (Twares), Marriott (Deal of the Day) and Joie De Vivre Hotels (Twitter Tuesdays and Facebook Fridays)for examples of how big corporations are trying to build incremental sales (or simply lower their cost-of-sales).
What is admirable is that all are tightly controlling the sales message stream; price-led offers are time limited (creating a sense of scarcity and appealing to bargain hunters) and routed through dedicated web-sites which means measurable tight tracking (and the opportunity to hook into parent web sites for additional cross-selling – UA currently has a up-sell offer for more leg-room at an extra $5 on its Economy plus seats).
Commercially effective? I've not found any info that gives specific numbers on how well these tactical sales 'campaigns' are doing, but factor in the current market conditions and the need for airlines and hotels to fill seats or rooms; every time an airplane takes off and everyday a hotel room gets turned-down, and this appears to be an incredibly effective way to promote awareness and drive actual sales.(And down the line, imagine starting up a new route or open a new hotel?).
Both UA and Marriott have tens of thousands of Twitter 'Followers' and JDV isn't doing to bad as a regional hotel company (California)with 4,000 followers and then there's the 'hidden' element to Twitter. The number of times (and therefore people) a sales message is passed on to as a 'retweet'. This is the 'currency' of Twitter and indeed its true 'added-value' which is extremely hard to measure – other than in extra sales (which must tough, having to report how much more revenue is being generated, eh!).
And as long as it's so called 'distressed' inventory that's being sold, there's no erosion of margin.
http://www.united.com/page/article/1,,50062,00.html
http://www.marriottdealoftheday
http://www.jdvhotels.com/promos/summer
I'm usually not one for longer posts.
Let's pretend I have an acquaintance. They want to get started on the internet. I'll tell them about Perry Marshall's free course.
Over time, as I get to know them better, I'll start recommending they buy Perry's ebook or souped up version.
If they are really good friends, I'll recommend Perry's Bob Sled run as a great way to jump start their business.
But if they are my best friends, I'll recommend Perry's Four Man Intensives.
Not all of our friends are the same.
But the key word is friends – not prospects.
Social Media is about relationships first, second, and third. Out of that, sales may come naturally.
Now Perry and I are old friends. Let's say Perry came for a visit. What would we say?
We'd talk about families.
We'd talk about business.
We'd talk about where we were headed.
For darn sure, we wouldn't be selling each other stuff.
For years, people have had one model of selling.
Now, there's another.
People who don't want to spend the time building the relationship aren't going to be successful at Social Media.
Think of it this way.
When you use PPC, you may get a percent of people coming to your site who buy the first time.
Great.
But, as Perry tirelessly teaches, the real money is when you did deep and do auto-responders.
50, 100, or as I do, 3 a week always on something new and usually current.
That's relationship building.
And they buy.
I just released a new product.
And my list is going crazy buying it.
And I'm making sales off Twitter too. How do I know?
People are telling me.
If you are looking to Social Media to be a quick fix, you are going to get burned and throw down your ball and bat and say it doesn't work.
But if you take the time – months – to build relationships and network, you'll be amazed.
Social media done right is a huge source of traffic.
On one of my recent projects, most of my traffic came from Twitter.
So I've probably proven both sides right.
You can't sell in Social Media.
You can build relationships.
Which is more valuable for your time?
Hint? Which media is on the increase?
Direct traffic from Facebook ads to a retail website converts sales at 0.65% and newsletter opt-ins at 1.50%. Responsible for 53% of revenue with average CPC @ 7 cents and CTR @ 0.2%.
hi gang,
I've gotten over $100,000 worth of leads using youtube for my backstage pass service. And my videos were shot in my bedroom or at concerts, check it out below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22juY3mu730
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NksO7YoTbtE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKh3h3ysYK4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEQHSEsFmyo
Adam
We've been using FB ads alongside Google ads and other website ads. We track the results and compare costs. We are doing HR recruiting, not making dollar sales, so things work a bit differently for us with costs, etc. But for our work, things like web banner ads on specific sites are our most effective source, followed by FB, followed by Google.
We simply use the FB ads like we do Google ads – split-test & measure ads, and all ads go to the same corporate website.
Andrew
Great question, great learning from the comments. Thank you.
How about comparing with a prior technology?
"Socializing: Anyone actually making money with it?"
Yes. I'd like your free mini-course "9 Great Lies of Sales & Marketing" delivered to me via email.
Hey Perry and all,
Anyone out there reducing budgeted costs (vs. making new money/sales) by using social media tools? e.g. Job recruiters: How much are you saving on admin costs by mining LinkedIn?
Some employees really let it all hang out there on LinkedIn. Have you "lost money" at your company because a top employee was stolen away by someone who found them via LinkedIn?
I believe there's much more to social media than just a new way to form a sales pitch. The amount of information out on the internet to be mined is a bit mind-boggling.
Thanks Perry!