My relationship with Twitter is flourishing and it seems to be a better fit for our organization than Facebook. We got 130 followers in the first 6 months (compared to our 115 Facebook fans, even though our Facebook is older). We have several local and national non-profits following us and we get retweeted often. We get #FFs and shout-outs and new followers. All is well… except for real-world results.
Where are the conversions? I haven’t had anyone come in to a training yet saying that they heard about us or the event on Twitter. I’ve had training participants tweet that they just went to a great training after the fact, but I’d love people to hear about us and then act on it solely based on our Twitter efforts. That’s the goal… Or at least it was at the start.
Maybe customer service, increasing our brand awareness, and interaction with leading organizations in our field are enough. The results aren’t necessarily tangible, but tweets don’t occur in a vacuum and all of these RTs are getting us in people’s heads and eventually some will become clients… right?
What do you think? How long should you try a social media strategy before changing your approach to achieve your original goal? Or does the ever-changing nature of social media demand that you adapt your goals to reality?
Social media is an ever-changing medium so don’t give up your goals after such a short amount of time. You should set some small, tangible goals for your organization for the coming year. Maybe if things seem way off base after 6 months you can do some reevaluating, but you have to think long-term. Also, don’t have too many goals at once. Pick a few that you can easily measure.
Checkout http://www.mashable.com for some great articles on social media for marketers.
Twitter is great for pointing to online content, but as for getting people to do things in real life, I think the jury is still out on that one. It certainly happens, but I feel like you need to have a pretty wide net to cast first, especially if your audience is highly specialized. Keep at it.