Frustrated with social media!

13 replies
I've been working VERY hard on building my social presence for one of my sites. I've spent weeks obsessing over my Twitter & Facebook, and I've increased Twitter follows 10x and Facebook friends 6x. Facebook likes have gone up 5x. In addition to increasing follows/likes, I've been boosting engagement. I contact every single new like/follow personally and get about a 75% response rate. My Klout score has gone up by 10 points, so I know I'm getting the engagement & relationship building that I need.

So I unveiled one of my new products: a $4 ebook on Amazon Kindle. It's the second in my series - the last sold about 50 copies and that was BEFORE my month of social focus. My new "friends" on social are telling me constantly that they're going over to buy the book. They re-tweet & share my statuses that talk about the new book. But thus far my book has been live (and very well-publicized) for 5 days and has sold ONE copy.

Now I'm just freaking fed up. I've poured 8-10 hours a day into social for the last month, all in preparation for this launch, which has been crap. And I'm very, very, very frustrated with all the stupid wankers who've been wasting my time & demanding my attention on social but can't be arsed to buy a $4 book.

So here's my question: Should I even mess with social anymore? I do know from my site analytics that people who come over from Pinterest (which I've been neglecting lately in favor of faster-moving social platforms like FB & Twitter) have a lower bounce rate and spend almost 5 times as long on my site as those from Twitter & FB. I also know that my search traffic has a lower bounce rate and higher time on site than social.

My primary keywords rank around 13-43 on Google. One of my secondary sets ranks 8-24 and the other secondary set ranks 3-12 (but it's a crap keyword; very few searches per month). Should I focus more on building search presence and just set my social to autopilot & ignore it? Or should I do something differently on my social? What I'm doing now is not driving sales.
#frustrated #media #social
  • Profile picture of the author Carlos Stratton
    Don't be frustrated. You can change your way to make money online.
    If you want to continue with social media and have budget, try to hire a social media manager.

    Carlos
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    • Profile picture of the author hollyda31
      Originally Posted by Carlos Stratton View Post

      Don't be frustrated. You can change your way to make money online.
      If you want to continue with social media and have budget, try to hire a social media manager.

      Carlos
      Carlos, I'm perfectly capable of managing my social media. Don't get me wrong - I'd LOVE to farm it out at some point, but that's not in the budget. But I work AS a social media consultant for other people, and they have good results, so I know what I'm doing.

      Did you have any suggestions for how *I* can fix it?
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  • Profile picture of the author melvinsh
    Social media works for you when you cross the 5k fan mark for me. But Facebook has really changed things and now your posts are seen less. If you had over 50k you would really see a huge impact as long as they are all interested in your service.

    It is very popular nowadays for authors to giveaway a book or kindle or Amazon gift card. I see these every week with same authors sometimes so maybe launching a giveaway might help you develop a bigger fan base.
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  • Profile picture of the author jasmeet7singh
    Banned
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    • Profile picture of the author kilgore
      Originally Posted by hollyda31 View Post

      I've been working VERY hard on building my social presence for one of my sites. I've spent weeks obsessing over my Twitter & Facebook, and I've increased Twitter follows 10x and Facebook friends 6x. Facebook likes have gone up 5x.
      You're talking about Facebook "friends" -- is this a personal Facebook account or a business fan page? If the former, I'm not really surprised that those "friends" aren't converting. People might like you personally, but that doesn't mean they like what you're selling.
      Originally Posted by hollyda31 View Post

      In addition to increasing follows/likes, I've been boosting engagement. I contact every single new like/follow personally and get about a 75% response rate. My Klout score has gone up by 10 points, so I know I'm getting the engagement & relationship building that I need.
      I'd be very wary of any social media scores or tools. I've not used Klout personally, but other tools I've used either have (a) oversimplified algorithms to determine a social media page's ranking or (b) one-size-fits al (and often very dated)l rules about how to increase your effectiveness or both. The only real way to know how you're doing and what works for you is testing and more testing. Moreover, from what I do know about Klout, it's more of a measure of the influence of someone -- which can be very different than a measure of how well they're achieving business goals using social media. You can be very influential and still be very broke.
      Originally Posted by hollyda31 View Post

      ISo I unveiled one of my new products: a $4 ebook on Amazon Kindle. It's the second in my series - the last sold about 50 copies and that was BEFORE my month of social focus. My new "friends" on social are telling me constantly that they're going over to buy the book. They re-tweet & share my statuses that talk about the new book. But thus far my book has been live (and very well-publicized) for 5 days and has sold ONE copy.
      I don't have experience trying to promote a single product over and over again on social media, but I imagine that would be a tough lift. People like choice. And on social media especially, they're looking for new information. Rehashing the same "I've got this great $4 Kindle eBook" for sale over and over again isn't going to cut it. My guess is the reach and engagement on posts like that would be very, very low. Most likely you're more savvy about posting about your book than just focusing directly on it over and over. But even so, there comes a point when people either want that book or don't and repeating the same offer -- no matter how you do it -- is going to have quickly diminishing returns.
      Originally Posted by hollyda31 View Post

      But I work AS a social media consultant for other people, and they have good results, so I know what I'm doing.
      If you're a social media consultant you should know that (a) social media doesn't work equally well for all businesses in all situations and (b) it takes a concerted effort over a long period of time to really make it work. I'd guestimate that over the last 2 1/2 years we've spent about 6 - 8 staff hours per day on Facebook alone. It's a big source of traffic and sales for us, but it's a long term investment not a quick way to boost short-term earnings.
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      • Profile picture of the author EzraWinter
        When I saw you posted "weeks" I got a little concerned, this is a process that can easily take YEARS, especially without a budget or other outlets to support your social.

        The first thing that comes to my mind is you might be too narrow in your focus: are you also using forums, aggregators like Reddit and channels like Tumblr?
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        • Profile picture of the author hollyda31
          Originally Posted by EzraWinter View Post

          When I saw you posted "weeks" I got a little concerned, this is a process that can easily take YEARS, especially without a budget or other outlets to support your social.

          The first thing that comes to my mind is you might be too narrow in your focus: are you also using forums, aggregators like Reddit and channels like Tumblr?
          My focus has been Facebook & Twitter. I do minimal work on Reddit, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, & Tumblr. Tumblr has always been a crap network for me personally.

          Here's what gets me: My last book sold much faster and many more copies than this one, and that was with me marketing to about 10% of the audience I'm marketing to now. So I can't figure out what happened... I don't know whether it's a problem with my new book, or whether it's a problem with my network.
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      • Profile picture of the author hollyda31
        Originally Posted by kilgore View Post

        I don't have experience trying to promote a single product over and over again on social media, but I imagine that would be a tough lift. People like choice. And on social media especially, they're looking for new information. Rehashing the same "I've got this great $4 Kindle eBook" for sale over and over again isn't going to cut it. My guess is the reach and engagement on posts like that would be very, very low. Most likely you're more savvy about posting about your book than just focusing directly on it over and over. But even so, there comes a point when people either want that book or don't and repeating the same offer -- no matter how you do it -- is going to have quickly diminishing returns.
        I work my promo posts into my regular posting schedule. Twitter gets about 8-10 posts per day (total), optimized for my follower activity (more activity when people are actually online). Of 10 posts, 3 will be retweets of my followers, 2 will be highly-sharable posts (either visual or tweet - usually some sort of inspirational quote or a quote from a beloved author or public figure in our genre), 3 will be links to interesting blog posts or other people's content, 1 will be promo, and 1 will usually be something like site news or a personal tweet. If I don't have a current promo going, I'll add another sharable post. Facebook (page) gets about 2-3 posts per day. Their numbers are about the same as on Twitter, but of course the retweets are replaced with shares of other people on Facebook. I'm also very careful to space my promos in such a way that they don't come out at the same time of day. For example, Monday's promo post comes at 6 am, Tuesday's at 8 pm, Wednesday's around noon, etc.
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  • You need to have a plan and execute that plan. You need to think of all the possible ways you could get targeted traffic to your offer. You don't even have to rely on seo. This can all be direct traffic from social media. The process could take months. If i was in your shoes and lets say i was starting fresh. I would create accounts on EVERY single social media site on the internet (that i possibly could) i would then make the profiles look extremely professional to the best of my ability. Then you need to find YOUR target audience and engage with them. Offer them a FREE report for following your page or liking your page. Once you have spent months on getting as many targeted followers on ALL of your social media profiles..(and i'm talking about at least a million targeted followers spread out over all your social media accounts) THEN you launch your product. And if you follow this guide i guarantee you will make a killing

    Remember this is a numbers game. That is all it has ever been. The person who has the most numbers wins.
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  • Profile picture of the author Terry Kyle
    H, the problem may be with the title (or content) of the book and implied offer/value there and not the audience.
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  • Profile picture of the author tgpros
    OP, I feel your pain! When I started out, I thought social media traffic was the holy grail - but after about six months I realised it wasn't. Back then, social media traffic (mainly Facebook and Twitter) had a sub 1% conversion rate on my website.

    I soon learned to spend my time and money on PPC, instead, which brought almost instant results. Sure, PPC was more expensive than social media - but the traffic converted much better, and I actually made some sales. I stopped bothering with social media, except to make the Facebook "Like" button and Twitter button on my website larger, and more noticeable. After ignoring social media for a few months, the number of followers grew organically. We're now at a point where the number of followers is growing organically on our most popular page, anywhere from 10-30 (real) likes per day. Not a huge number, but a number I'm very happy with.

    When I started out on social media I was trying to sell full price items to followers - which didn't convert. I've found "deals" and clearance offers go down well on social media because they have that viral, "share-able" factor. "Hey, Jenny, have you seen these cool pink sneakers? They're only $20, down from $70!!!!"

    Social media now forms an important part of our marketing campaign, but we mainly focus on promoting special offers to social media in order to get people talking about them and sharing our deals. We also spend a lot of time curating links to interesting content on third party websites - so our relationship with our fans and followers isn't just about us selling things to them.

    When I start a new website nowadays, social media takes a back seat - there are far better ways to drive sales in those early days.
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  • Profile picture of the author RachelTravels
    It happens!
    Make sure you are using automation tools which help!
    Spend a few hours scheduling posts (IFFFT is AWESOME) and spend just an hour or two a day interacting with your followers!
    That'll take the stress down.

    Great job on growing you presence!
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    Journey On,

    ~ Rach
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  • Profile picture of the author Oziboomer
    Have you linked your second book from your first and re-published your first book?

    Put links to your second book in your first.

    Add some bonus to people who buy all your books to opt-in so you can email the existing purchasers and say you are having a giveaway on a certain day to try to get ranking for the new publication.

    Ask for referrals in the first book and get them to connect on Facebook.

    Establish a small ad campaign to target like individuals or utilise retargeting in Facebook for people who click through to your site for a free couple of chapters of the new book.

    You can then start retargeting them specifically to buy the second book.

    Partner up and get some posts onto similar FB pages. Often a page owner may do a deal outside of FB to promote your offering ...better than advertising and you get in effect a review.

    hopefully that gives you something to work on
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  • Profile picture of the author Saywhaaa
    Maybe just really think what you would do if this was one of your client's social projects you were working on. Maybe your project is just too close to home for you to really see what needs to be done. Kinda like when some people can give great advice but they are not so great at following their own advice.
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