As many of you do, I use Twitter as a tool to build awareness for my blog, and to increase traffic. In fact the site is the top referring site for this blog, and has been since Day One.
Usually, I spent anywhere from 30 mins to a couple of hours on Twitter a day. My activities include sharing links (here and to other sites), and interacting with others. Recently, I’ve been spending less time on Twitter, and am averaging about 600-700 tweets a month for the past few months. But when you consider that about 300-400 of those tweets come from #blogchat, that means that I’m not spending a lot of time during the week on Twitter.
So I wanted to conduct a little experiment yesterday with my Twitter usage. I decided to amp up my usage, spending several hours, sharing dozens of links, and interacting with others all day. I wanted to see how big of an impact it would make on this blog, and my Twitter network, versus the time required. To measure the effectiveness of this strategy, I set four goals for Monday:
100 new Twitter followers (Avg is 20-50 per day)
75 retweets on Monday’s post (Avg is around 30 per post)
5 new email subscribers (Avg is 5 new subscribers in a MONTH)
300 visitors to this blog on Monday (Avg is around 150)
I wanted to first walk you through exactly what I did during the day.
First, over the weekend I set up HootSuite to tweet a link to a new post/article every 5 mins, starting at 7am, and ending at 9am. At 8am, I linked to yesterday’s post for the first time. I linked to yesterday’s post a total of 5 times yesterday, starting at 8am, then every 3 hours, ending at 8pm.
So as far as sharing links, on Monday I shared a total of 36 links, 6 were my own, 30 were other sites. So that’s a 5:1 ratio of other people’s links to my own.
I left a total of 182 tweets on Monday, and for reference, I left 711 tweets in all of April.
Now let’s look at the actual results:
For new followers, the goal was 100, and I actually got 75. That’s not bad and well above my avg, but still missed the mark. I think the discussions that I was engaged in throughout the day probably played a role in helping get me followers, although the links at the beginning of the day helped as well.
The second goal was to get 75 retweets of Monday’s post. I actually got 85 RTs. I decided to link to Monday’s post 5 times during the day in order to drive more RTs. I think this was effective in the morning and afternoon, but seemed to be less effective at 5pm and 8pm. Tomorrow I am only going to link to Tuesday’s post 4 times, at 8am, 12pm, 4pm and 8pm. I’m thinking that 2-4 times per day is probably the right range for linking to your new posts.
The third goal was 5 new email subscribers, and I actually got 5 new subscribers. I did two things to try to encourage new email subscribers. The first is I moved the email subscription form to the top of the blog on the first sidebar. The second thing I did was ask readers that found the post to please subscribe, either by email or reader, and linked to the Feedburner reader subscription form.
The final goal was 300 visitors to the site on Monday, and there were actually 716 visitors, which was well over double the goal. I was a bit surprised by how high the traffic was. However, I wanted to show you the hourly traffic to point out two things:
First, notice that the 5 spikes in traffic came during hours that I linked to the ‘How I got 20,000 followers on Twitter’ post. That’s understandable.
Second, notice that each spike is followed by a sharp drop-off in traffic immediately after. But also notice that the drop-offs are much more pronounced after the 3rd, 4th and 5th times I link to the post.
Also notice that the traffic jumps from 6am to 7am. At 7am is when I started sending links to Twitter via HootSuite, and did so every 5 mins till it stopped at 9am. So the fact that traffic jumped a bit BEFORE I started linking to the ‘How I got 20K followers’ posts at 8am suggests that simply linking to OTHER people’s posts was actually driving traffic back to MY blog.
And from around 11am-3pm I was interacting with other people on Twitter. This corresponds with the above graph and the sudden traffic drop-off that you see from 4pm through the end of the day when I wasn’t interacting very much. Minus the two spikes at 5pm and 8pm from my tweeting links to the ‘How I got 20K followers’ post.
So ALL of this suggests that three actions drove traffic back to this blog yesterday:
1 – Linking to the ‘How I got 20K followers’ post five times.
2 – Linking to other people’s posts a total of 30 times.
3 – Participating in conversations on Twitter.
The first is obvious, but I think the second two are very interesting because by directly promoting others and interacting with others, it seems I was also giving people the incentive to check out my site.
But I think the biggest lesson here is to track and test your social media efforts constantly. Even with this experiment, I will need to test further to get a better idea of exactly what happened. And it remains to be seen how much of a cumulative affect spending this much time on Twitter EVERY day, could have. I got great results from yesterday’s experiment, but I probably invested 5-6 hours into it. That’s a big chunk of time to invest even every weekday, and the results would need to be pretty significant to justify the time investment, I think.
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Mack,
Those are really compelling data!
What I find particularly interesting is that the every 5 minute schedule didn’t lead to follower burnout. I wonder if you lost any yesterday in response to the frequency of update vs. those you gained.
Also, did you do any prep work? I.e. did you spend the preceding days saying @ (hi) to your followers to amp up their attention to your tweeting?
Given the tendency toward ADTD (Attention Deficit Twitter Disorder) I would wonder if there was any need to prime the pump to get a higher level of engagement on the day of the test.
In any case. Love the data, any quantifiable results are always of value.
Will
.-= Will Scott´s last blog ..Top 10 for the Weekend =-.
Hey Will, I didn’t really engage more on Twitter last week, but I did write 4 posts here, and the ‘introverts guide to speaking’ post was popular, so I bet that played a bit of a role.
Also, I think the traffic rising while I was sharing links could point to more people using and viewing Twitter as a way to exchange links more than messages. CK was commenting on this yesterday, how she checked her stream and every single tweet had a link in it. I checked mine and saw the same thing.
But as for engagement, one thing I have ALWAYS noticed on Twitter is that if I am actively engaged in conversations with other people, I gain followers. Just that simple.
Anyway, I am going to try to do this every day this week and do a followup post next week. Having 5 days worth of data should be more valuable than just Monday’s.
Mack,
I enjoyed the post and so now I am a subscriber of your blog.
Will there be a day 2 experiment? See you at #SMMackChat.
Matt
Thank you Matt! I am going to try to extend this to the entire week, then report back with follow-up findings on next Monday.
Mack
Very interesting information. My question to you is “Do you feel your message is going to the right audience on twitter?” Those people who signed up are they your target market?
Also, the time involved, 5-6 hours is quite a bit.
I think the fact that you had 716 hits also shows that a number of people on twitter are listening and not always engaging. Converting and tracking these people may need to be a part of your next study
Great Information!
Brent
.-= Brent Pohlman´s last blog ..Where is your focus with your marketing? =-.
Brent that’s one of the key considerations in all of this. It’s awesome that traffic spiked, but at the end of the day, the extra time invested has to benefit my wallet. This is one reason why I wanted to track email subscribers yesterday. Over time, I think I’d also need to track email contacts about work, referrals, etc.
The biggest question I have concerning the time involvement is, how big can this get? 5-6 hours a day wouldn’t justify the results I saw yesterday, IMO, but if I did that every day for a month, what would the results then be? If we are talking about 3,000 visitors and 25 email subscribers and 2 referrals/contacts a day at the end of a month, then the time might very well be worth it.
I wondered why you seemed to be on Twitter so much yesterday!
I suspect the optimum times to post, RT, etc. may vary for me because my audience seems to follow a somewhat different schedule than yours might. I do a lot of RTing right after 9 a.m. because I follow a lot of tourism and arts/culture orgs that seem to keep a more conventional 9-5 schedule (a lot of my RTs concern events in the Midwest U.S. sponsored by such groups that might be of interest to folks considering traveling to the region).
I generally Tweet my new posts once in the morning (again around 9 a.m.) and try for once or twice subsequently during the day. I sometimes find I have decent results RTing around 11 p.m. or again during the day on Saturday. I’ll also occasionally RT one of my “vintage” posts on weekdays that I haven’t posted something new…or RT a “vintage” post if there’s a tie-in to an event, or maybe even a convo happening at that time on Twitter.
As far as “engaging” on a schedule…no. I’ve developed relationships among my followers over time and let the “engagement” happen organically.
.-= Dominique´s last blog ..Frankenmuth’s Bavarian Inn serves up chicken, German beer and nostalgia in Michigan =-.
That has definitely perhaps one of my social media shortfalls. I run my program very spontaneously with a seize the moment kind of approach. I will give some thought to a disciplined approach. I have been very happy with the results I have seen so far but have yet to try a combined approach with strategic postings as of yet. Thanks for the article Mack.. have a great Tuesday.
Interesting experiment, Mack – thanks for sharing the results with us. I had a couple caveats/considerations:
With the majority of frequent Twitter users interacting via third-party apps, you don’t have to unfollow someone to in effect “hide” them. I have a private Tweetdeck group called “buds,” and I read every tweet from the people in it. I must confess: with your every 5 minute tweeting yesterday Mack, you got demoted. You’re now in the group I have for important people who tweet mostly links (yes, I actually have a column for that). You’re still my bud though. 🙂
Also, I think some people over-rely on scheduled tweets (I’m sure it becomes very easy to fall into this, once most of your tweets are scheduled). So, when they tweet a link, they aren’t around when their followers reply to them about it. A user can be broadcasting (vs. engaging) even when the tweets are sharing information that is not self-serving.
I think your long-term record of being a valuable community member affords you more goodwill than most. I look forward to hearing how the rest of the week goes!
.-= Kellye Crane´s last blog ..Managing Your Solo PR Business =-.
I understand Kelly. If I have one person that is dominating one of my groups of friends (so I cant see what everyone else is tweeting) then I do the same thing.
It’s always a trade-off. Funny because a couple of people were pissed at the very title of the post yesterday. Can’t know till you try 😉
PS: You’re still my (very photogenic) bud too 😉
Mack,
Thanks for sharing this. It’s really an interesting experiment. What is really revealing is that the “cardinal rule” of promoting other people’s stuff more than you promote your own really ended up paying off more than most people would immediately realize. I think I’m going to model out what you did and write a follow up post to this. One thing I do wonder however is if this would be as effective for somebody who has a significantly smaller following on twitter than you do. I guess the best thing to do is just to test it out 🙂
.-= Srinivas Rao ´s last blog ..Ashley Ambirge:The Voice Behind the Madness at The Middle Finger Project =-.
I was wondering what you were doing as you seemed to be posting more often to a couple of your posts yesterday than usual.
Thanks for sharing the results.
You said you actually got 75 new followers is that a net number? Did you track at all whether or not you lost subscribers due to the frequency of your posting?
Good question on followers, it’s a net number, I might have lost some due to excessive tweeting. What’s a good site to track that?
I get regular updates from NutShellMail. Even though I don’t really use it to read tweets, one of the great things it shows is who’s followed you or unfollowed you since the last update. I know there are other tools. I just signed up for chirpstats, but I haven’t used that one yet.
Very cool experiment Mack. You know how there’s the old sales principle “ABC: Always Be Closing”? Well, I think in the online world, there should be “Always Be Testing”. It helps you and the more effective, the better you can reach your goals.
.-= Mike Stenger´s last blog ..A Message To Facebook Users =-.
Ah HA! I knew something was up yesterday! Here’s another interesting result from your experiment: *I* got 50 new followers. I usually get more like 2-5 a day. I’d bet some others involved in our afternoon conversation had a similar result.
See? That proves that engagement = more followers. I started noticing this a LONG time ago on Twitter. Every time I engage in a conversation on Twitter, I get more followers.
Course you were smokin’ smart yesterday Alison, so that helped!
Try it guys, it works!
Great experiment. I wondered what you were up to — was seeing a whole lot of MackCollier in my stream.
To me the 3rd point is solid — conversation does drive new followers. I notice that when i participate in Tweet Chats I routinely pick up 10-20 new followers depending on how large and active the chat is that day.
Good stuff and thanks for sharing, especially the behind the curtains stuff like daily readers, etc.
.-= Tom Martin´s last blog ..Why Social Media Experts Hate Being Called Experts =-.
Nice data collection. I never studied the data like you have here but I definitely see a correlation between my Twitter activity and followers.
The more I engage in conversations, the more followers I tend to acquire.
I have watched my blog analytics and noticed that I get more hits if I stay active on Twitter shortly after linking.
Thanks for the great info, looking forward to seeing the rest of the week’s data.
Sweet experiment, Mack! Love your openness and willingness to share this type of data! I was wondering what you were up to, but loved getting the links.
One of the things to try next time is to add a tidbit of the content in the tweet vs. just the title of the article. This might increase your click-through rate.
hugs!
.-= Ekaterina Walter´s last blog ..15 Tips on Effectively Engaging with Your Facebook Fans =-.
Hi Ekaterina! Yes I always struggle with whats the best way to promote the links, and I usually just go with the title and URL, cause I want to leave people plenty of room for RTs. Chris Brogan is a master at writing context that helps get opens, think I’ll go tell him he needs to write a post on that 😉
Mack,
Hey found this to be the the most thorough and detailed analysis of return on engagement that I’ve come across to date. Thanks for the time and for sharing the results. I do wonder if the a.m. increase was due in part to morning habits of paying closer attention to one’s twitter stream – the ‘morning news’ if you will. Also I for one would be interested in seeing similar analysis directly associated with direct engagement via RTs and @replies, etc.
Joel I would bet you are right, which is a big reason why I wanted to concentrate my link-sharing from 7am-10am.
Also, every morning I publish and link to my post for that day at 8am (today it was at 9am). But I start sharing links at 7am, and there has usually been a spike in traffic HERE starting at 7am. So that suggests that simply sharing links to OTHER people’s content is pushing traffic back here, to some degree.