Social Media ? The Mumbo and The Jumbo
For the better part of 5 years we?ve been out in the Adult Industry extolling the virtues and values of Social Media to reach the massive mainstream market. We?ve stood watching and scratching our heads as performers in the industry purchased 100?s of thousands of ?fake followers? on Twitter in some wild competition; and big production companies struggle with the concept of interacting with their consumer base for seemingly the first time through Social Media.
Even more confusing the folks over at Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr are constantly changing the definition of ?inappropriate content? that is so vital to the promotion and marketing of Adult Entertainment.
I?m frequently asked if Social Media is ?worth the time?, well of course it is ? for the first time in history we the story makers are also the story tellers. My 78 year old mother recently joined Facebook. She was amazed at how many ?friends? she had in mere days; and now has the ability to follow (and unfortunately comment) on the daily lives of her children. She?s an interesting demographic because she?s lived through the invention of television (and color television in case you didn?t know they were two different things), the moon landing, bellbottoms, fax machines, cell phones, satellite dishes and now Social Media. As we sit on the ?bleeding edge? of technology one has to wonder what will be the thing we?re amazed by in 78 years and just how much smaller can our world get?
The Mumbo
For the ?Mumbo? talk I often refer to Lauren MacEwen of 7 Veils Media. She and I have spoken on a number of adult and mainstream Social Media and Marketing panels together over the past few years. We also collaborate together for a number of high profile clients in the Adult Industry including Toy Manufactures, Production Companies and Website?
Organic vs Purchased
An organic tweet is a tweet you post on your timeline. This can include a link, and @ mention, hashtags, photos, or just text. Even if it is a tweet that is meant to drive traffic from your site, it is organic because you are not paying for someone else to tweet it or for amplification.
A purchased tweet is a tweet that you have paid to promote on Twitter. You have paid for it to be retweeted by a third party to increase your tweet reach or you have paid someone else to tweet your link or account on their twitter feed. A promoted tweet is a tweet purchased by an advertiser to assist them in reaching a wider audience to gain followers, engagement or clicks.
Twitter Promotions
Twitter offers its own ad service. You can promote a tweet or an account. Twitter promotions are primarily site (Twitter.com) and client (Tweetdeck, iphone app, Twitter for Android, etc) specific. However, some of third party Twitter clients will display promoted tweets, such as Hootsuite.
A promoted tweet is meant to drive engagement with the post, from retweet, to favorite, to clicking a link to a follow. Promoting a tweet means that your tweet will appear at the top of the newsfeed for specific search terms, and potentially at the top of your timeline. It will be marked as a promoted tweet so people know it is an advertisement, which is an FCC regulation that required paid Twitter ads to be marked as an ad by either a hashtag a phrase or a notaion in the presentation of the tweet. Twitter allows you to do highly targeted advertising. Targeting includes: gender, geolocation, device, keyword, interest, and username.
Promoting an account is designed to build your following. Your account will be featured in the ?Who to Follow? section, home timeline and search.
Twitter CPE (Cost per engagement) for a promoted tweet is generally between $1.50-$2.20, per their suggested bid. They say that CPE can be significantly lower than this amount. I have seen CPE drop below. $0.50.
Twitter CPE for a promoted account is between $2.50-$3.50 per follower. They say this can be significantly lower and with proper targeting I have seen it drop to $1 per follower.
The primary problem with a Twitter ad is that adult accounts and sites are generally not approved for advertising. Twitter directly prohibits advertising to ?Adult or sexual products and services? (https://support.twitter.com/articles/20170427). So though Twitter promotions can deliver a successful ad campaign, it is often not an available option for the industry. This is why we have to turn to alternate ad methods.
Organic
Twitter management is integral for lasting result on Twitter, whether you promote tweets or not. If you want to have a successful social marketing campaign on Twitter, you have to maintain your organic Twitter presence. A live, interactive Twitter account can boost social signals for SEO, increase your authority within your online community, improve your brand awareness, improve your customer retention, improve your sales and drive clicks to your site. The saying goes, ?The conversation is happening whether or not you participate?. As a brand, it is to your benefit to join the conversation and position yourself as an authority within that conversation.
Engagement marketing is when you directly engage your consumers with your brand. To be organically successful on Twitter you need to have a strong engagement marketing strategy. This means writing tweets that will help drive traffic to your site, talking to your followers and participating in the community. By doing this you will organically grow your following, pull people to your website, and encourage your followers to become brand ambassadors meaning they retweet your tweets and sing the praises of your brand to their followers.
Organic does not mean not-targeted. Engagement marketing can be highly targeted. You can use hashtags to help target your tweets to trends and topics on Twitter. Through SEO keyword integration, you can position your tweets to appear as top tweets in a topic. This means that for certain search terms your tweets appear in the top of search. You can also target influential Twitter accounts to talk to.
An influential account is someone who has a lot followers and a lot of community influence, meaning they are highly tweeted, retweeted and favorited. They are considered an authority in their community. If you build a relationship with an ?influencer? you borrow their authority by simply engaging with them. People will follow you and click your links because that person is talking to you. It can even increase your Klout score (a site that measures Twitter account influence). If they retweet you, you can significantly increase the reach of your tweets which can increase your click through rate and followers.
Stats
Whether you are doing a sponsored or organic Twitter campaign, if you want to gauge your success you need to keep track of your stats. These will let you know if your Twitter efforts are bearing fruit. But not all stats are created equal.
Despite what many people would like to believe, the number of Twitter followers is not your ultimate metric. Quality vs Quantity is a debate that thrives on social media. Big followings look impressive but they are not as significant and big engagement. It is better to have a highly engaged follow that is smaller than a big following that ignores you.
Metrics to pay attention to are:
? Tweetreach
? Engagement (mentions, retweets, favorites)
? Traffic
Tweetreach is the literally the reach of your tweet. It measure the number of Twitter accounts your tweets are reaching and the number of times your tweet appeared in a newsfeed (aka. Impressions). You can check your ?tweetreach? at How Far Did Your Tweets Travel? | TweetReach.
Engagement is any type of interaction with your tweets. These are retweets, mentions of your account in someone elses tweet, and people favoriting your tweets. Just as before, the quality of your engagement matters. It is better to have low engagement from more influential public accounts engaging with you than high engagement from people with a low following and private profile. The larger the authority of the people engaging with you the more weight and influence the engagement will have.
Traffic from Twitter can be tracked through your website analytics. It is tracked at T.co under referring websites. You can also track your clicks from tweets by using a traceable link shortener like Bitly.com.
There are some third party sites that will track your Twitter metrics for you: raventools.com, Hootsuite.com, socialbro.com are a few. Most of these cost money to use, however they can be as cheap as $5.99 (Hootsuite). Freemium metrics can be gathered through: How Far Did Your Tweets Travel? | TweetReach, Bitly | Custom URL Shortener, Link Management & Branded Links and twitonomy.com.
A strong organic presence on Twitter is key to a successful presence on Twitter. If you chose to advertise through Twitters native advertising platform or through sponsored tweets, a strong organic presence will help ensure the ongoing success of your ads. As your sponsored tweets gain followers and engagement, your organic engagement will continue to nurture those relationships. The organic engagement is the follow through for your sponsored tweet.
Continued...
For the better part of 5 years we?ve been out in the Adult Industry extolling the virtues and values of Social Media to reach the massive mainstream market. We?ve stood watching and scratching our heads as performers in the industry purchased 100?s of thousands of ?fake followers? on Twitter in some wild competition; and big production companies struggle with the concept of interacting with their consumer base for seemingly the first time through Social Media.
Even more confusing the folks over at Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr are constantly changing the definition of ?inappropriate content? that is so vital to the promotion and marketing of Adult Entertainment.
I?m frequently asked if Social Media is ?worth the time?, well of course it is ? for the first time in history we the story makers are also the story tellers. My 78 year old mother recently joined Facebook. She was amazed at how many ?friends? she had in mere days; and now has the ability to follow (and unfortunately comment) on the daily lives of her children. She?s an interesting demographic because she?s lived through the invention of television (and color television in case you didn?t know they were two different things), the moon landing, bellbottoms, fax machines, cell phones, satellite dishes and now Social Media. As we sit on the ?bleeding edge? of technology one has to wonder what will be the thing we?re amazed by in 78 years and just how much smaller can our world get?
The Mumbo
For the ?Mumbo? talk I often refer to Lauren MacEwen of 7 Veils Media. She and I have spoken on a number of adult and mainstream Social Media and Marketing panels together over the past few years. We also collaborate together for a number of high profile clients in the Adult Industry including Toy Manufactures, Production Companies and Website?
Organic vs Purchased
An organic tweet is a tweet you post on your timeline. This can include a link, and @ mention, hashtags, photos, or just text. Even if it is a tweet that is meant to drive traffic from your site, it is organic because you are not paying for someone else to tweet it or for amplification.
A purchased tweet is a tweet that you have paid to promote on Twitter. You have paid for it to be retweeted by a third party to increase your tweet reach or you have paid someone else to tweet your link or account on their twitter feed. A promoted tweet is a tweet purchased by an advertiser to assist them in reaching a wider audience to gain followers, engagement or clicks.
Twitter Promotions
Twitter offers its own ad service. You can promote a tweet or an account. Twitter promotions are primarily site (Twitter.com) and client (Tweetdeck, iphone app, Twitter for Android, etc) specific. However, some of third party Twitter clients will display promoted tweets, such as Hootsuite.
A promoted tweet is meant to drive engagement with the post, from retweet, to favorite, to clicking a link to a follow. Promoting a tweet means that your tweet will appear at the top of the newsfeed for specific search terms, and potentially at the top of your timeline. It will be marked as a promoted tweet so people know it is an advertisement, which is an FCC regulation that required paid Twitter ads to be marked as an ad by either a hashtag a phrase or a notaion in the presentation of the tweet. Twitter allows you to do highly targeted advertising. Targeting includes: gender, geolocation, device, keyword, interest, and username.
Promoting an account is designed to build your following. Your account will be featured in the ?Who to Follow? section, home timeline and search.
Twitter CPE (Cost per engagement) for a promoted tweet is generally between $1.50-$2.20, per their suggested bid. They say that CPE can be significantly lower than this amount. I have seen CPE drop below. $0.50.
Twitter CPE for a promoted account is between $2.50-$3.50 per follower. They say this can be significantly lower and with proper targeting I have seen it drop to $1 per follower.
The primary problem with a Twitter ad is that adult accounts and sites are generally not approved for advertising. Twitter directly prohibits advertising to ?Adult or sexual products and services? (https://support.twitter.com/articles/20170427). So though Twitter promotions can deliver a successful ad campaign, it is often not an available option for the industry. This is why we have to turn to alternate ad methods.
Organic
Twitter management is integral for lasting result on Twitter, whether you promote tweets or not. If you want to have a successful social marketing campaign on Twitter, you have to maintain your organic Twitter presence. A live, interactive Twitter account can boost social signals for SEO, increase your authority within your online community, improve your brand awareness, improve your customer retention, improve your sales and drive clicks to your site. The saying goes, ?The conversation is happening whether or not you participate?. As a brand, it is to your benefit to join the conversation and position yourself as an authority within that conversation.
Engagement marketing is when you directly engage your consumers with your brand. To be organically successful on Twitter you need to have a strong engagement marketing strategy. This means writing tweets that will help drive traffic to your site, talking to your followers and participating in the community. By doing this you will organically grow your following, pull people to your website, and encourage your followers to become brand ambassadors meaning they retweet your tweets and sing the praises of your brand to their followers.
Organic does not mean not-targeted. Engagement marketing can be highly targeted. You can use hashtags to help target your tweets to trends and topics on Twitter. Through SEO keyword integration, you can position your tweets to appear as top tweets in a topic. This means that for certain search terms your tweets appear in the top of search. You can also target influential Twitter accounts to talk to.
An influential account is someone who has a lot followers and a lot of community influence, meaning they are highly tweeted, retweeted and favorited. They are considered an authority in their community. If you build a relationship with an ?influencer? you borrow their authority by simply engaging with them. People will follow you and click your links because that person is talking to you. It can even increase your Klout score (a site that measures Twitter account influence). If they retweet you, you can significantly increase the reach of your tweets which can increase your click through rate and followers.
Stats
Whether you are doing a sponsored or organic Twitter campaign, if you want to gauge your success you need to keep track of your stats. These will let you know if your Twitter efforts are bearing fruit. But not all stats are created equal.
Despite what many people would like to believe, the number of Twitter followers is not your ultimate metric. Quality vs Quantity is a debate that thrives on social media. Big followings look impressive but they are not as significant and big engagement. It is better to have a highly engaged follow that is smaller than a big following that ignores you.
Metrics to pay attention to are:
? Tweetreach
? Engagement (mentions, retweets, favorites)
? Traffic
Tweetreach is the literally the reach of your tweet. It measure the number of Twitter accounts your tweets are reaching and the number of times your tweet appeared in a newsfeed (aka. Impressions). You can check your ?tweetreach? at How Far Did Your Tweets Travel? | TweetReach.
Engagement is any type of interaction with your tweets. These are retweets, mentions of your account in someone elses tweet, and people favoriting your tweets. Just as before, the quality of your engagement matters. It is better to have low engagement from more influential public accounts engaging with you than high engagement from people with a low following and private profile. The larger the authority of the people engaging with you the more weight and influence the engagement will have.
Traffic from Twitter can be tracked through your website analytics. It is tracked at T.co under referring websites. You can also track your clicks from tweets by using a traceable link shortener like Bitly.com.
There are some third party sites that will track your Twitter metrics for you: raventools.com, Hootsuite.com, socialbro.com are a few. Most of these cost money to use, however they can be as cheap as $5.99 (Hootsuite). Freemium metrics can be gathered through: How Far Did Your Tweets Travel? | TweetReach, Bitly | Custom URL Shortener, Link Management & Branded Links and twitonomy.com.
A strong organic presence on Twitter is key to a successful presence on Twitter. If you chose to advertise through Twitters native advertising platform or through sponsored tweets, a strong organic presence will help ensure the ongoing success of your ads. As your sponsored tweets gain followers and engagement, your organic engagement will continue to nurture those relationships. The organic engagement is the follow through for your sponsored tweet.
Continued...
Comment