Increase social media conversions to website visitors by putting your URL in the right place
Ok, I should be preaching to the converted here – using social media is a great way to attract more visitors (and therefore potential clients) to your website. So today’s top tips are 3 very simple fixes to increase the chances of those ‘listeners’ converting to visitors. And it’s all about where you put your website address.
No such thing as a small twitter campaign – big numbers from small intentions
We had a very simple idea to make a little splash for World Backup Day – offer a year’s backup for a very low price. Almost a loss leader, this would benefit us long term if people renewed at the full price plus boost our profile.
A couple of little tweets and a facebook post made sure that lots of people around Whitstable would know more about the service we offer plus hopefully they would benefit from a bargain offer. A nice little twitter campaign.
Why I won’t follow you on twitter rule 1: you use twitterfeed
Twitterfeed is a (potentially) useful service that allows you to easily convert RSS feeds into tweets or facebook updates. A great way to notify your social networks if your main outlet is your blog – every blog entry gets tweeted and walled.
So why don’t I like it?
Because 99% of twitterfeed users (ok, that may be an exaggeration, but it feels like it) do not use it to convert their own feed. They use it to convert someone else’s feed so that it looks like they are generating lots of useful content.
This is a typical ploy of the so-called social media guru. You need lots of followers, so you follow lots of people. Some people will just automatically follow back (fools), others will look at your tweets first. If they see lots of interesting news they may be tempted. Until they realise that you are just tweeting the same as everyone else because you’ve hooked twitter feed up to mashable.
At least 3 times a week I am followed by such people. Scrolling through their tweets, I have to go back days before I can find a genuine, self-made tweet. And I’m counting retweets and 4square updates as self-made! All their other tweets look like they are real, until you see the “via twitterfeed” and search for the same text. Sure enough, the same tweet has been made by hundreds of others.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love to see a good RT or a link, if it has been hand-picked as something the tweeter genuinely thinks their followers may be interested in.
So, there you go, rant over.
P.S. I would pay for a twitter account that allowed me to filter out tweet sources or particular people direct from my feed. That’s how much I hate them!
How twitter keeps me (relatively) sane
In this job – computer repair in case you’d forgotten – you tend to see a lot of progress bars. Those little blue or green lines that slowly, sometimes oh so slowly, mark the progress of whatever task you are doing at the time.
The progress bar - not serving drinks but turning 100s to alcohol every day.
Sometimes they fly by, sometimes they are slow but don’t hog the system so I can continue working in other areas. Other times the client is sat there, quite happy to chat, whether it be to discuss their business and any networking opportunities or just put the world to rights.
But there are times when there is nothing to do but watch that bar crawl across the screen. My moral code prevents me from doing other work when the client is paying for my time, so I need something to prevent brain implosion. There may be a couple of quick emails I can respond to if they don’t require too much thought but, most of the time, it is twitter that comes to the rescue.
The people I follow are a constant source of useful links for me to read, amusing one-liners or local news. And so it was in the early hours of this morning, as I coaxed a machine back to life in a lonely, darkened room in East London, that I was tweeting #lessambitiousfilms and the merits of old CRT televisions.
Thank you twitter… I think therefore I tweet.
Oh, and thank goodness for good online backup too – otherwise I’d still be there!
Why @TweetDeck has rekindled my love affair with Twitter
Not long after setting up my Twitter account, I downloaded and started using TweetDeck, and a great client it is too.
However, having this great PC client did have a few downsides. Either the little pop-up notification would appear just as I wanted to click something underneath it, or something so interesting would pop up that I would immediately click on it. And then I’d be distracted, time would fly and I’d be doomed to get nothing done. Plus, if I was out seeing a client, there would be such a queue of updates waiting to be read that I’d fall so far behind and just skip a day. Or two.
But then they released a beta of TweetDeck on Android.
Twitter problems?
Having a whale of a time?
When Twitter has problems you’ll find the famous fail whale appearing at twitter.com. Why does this appear? What if the problem is at your end and not Twitter’s?
Great article from tweetsmarter: In the Belly of the Whale: How to get your Twitter problem fixed
What to do if you were caught by the iPad twitter scam
While we all love free things, they’re very rare. However, our desire for these freebies puts us at risk of scams.
We’ve all seen them on facebook, now we’re being targeted on twitter.
Take a look at this page from the Twitter Help Center (sic – urgh): My Account Has Been Compromised
It includes useful tips on…
- How to tell if you’ve been ‘hacked’
- Changing your passwords
- Revoking permission given to other applications
- How to avoid it happening again!
Good luck tweeps!