Twitter: a profound waste of time for marketing

[Toby Frost]

I would say I only actively read about 10% of those I follow, because 1) they aren't aggressively promoting or aggrandising their work; 2) their tweets are either funny, informative or generally entertaining; 3) they actually engage with their followers, having proper conversations rather than just using twitter as a bulletin board.

I think that's a good point. I see big publishers selling books on Twitter and I'm get tired of the covers pretty quickly. Likewise films (this week, I have been mostly bored by Eddie Redmayne's freckles and Deadpool being "hilarious"...). As far as I can tell, Twitter is only really good if you're exceptional at one-liners or you're linking to free product - and even that assumes that you've got lots of followers to like it. It's certainly not the place for nuanced or meaningful discussion, assuming that that happens somewhere on the internet (except here, of course).

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Twitter makes no money, its plan is to copy Facebook, a bunch of the top executives just left. Only really BBC and Newspapers take muck notice of it as the "trending" stuff enables them to have content without actually doing real journalism.

I think it will go the way of Friends, Mebo, Myspace etc.

To make so called "Social Media" work, you need to:
1) Be an interesting engaging character, some people might need to invent it all (been done).
2) Put a huge amount of time and effort.

I'd rather put the effort into real marketing and writing. Junk Mail (aka Direct Mail) has always been extremely poor unless you are corporate with a mass market product (Sky in UK & Ireland). Advertising generally is most useful to maintain a corporate brand, rather than increase sales (i.e. if not adverts are done in mass media, the sales fall).

Book marketing for the independent self publisher is really hard. Twitter or Facebook don't change that.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

It's certainly not the place for nuanced or meaningful discussion, assuming that that happens somewhere on the internet (except here, of course).

Even here, sometimes it's tricky. Twitter and Facebook are the Express of the Internet. Not even the Daily mail or Mirror. Shallow people looking for a fix of so called "Celebs". Look how many followers the people who are only famous for being famous have on "social media".

 

[pambaddeley]

Just to update - these days I'm finding the response rate to be nearer 0.5%. This is from Google Analytics tracking of Twitter links.

That means my observation is that for every 1,000 listed followers for a typical Twitter user, only 5 are actually active.

This varies according to size, with smaller Twitter accounts tending to have the larger % of active users, usually because friends and family are involved. However, once a user gets in the 10's of thousands, the % of active users drops markedly.

Additionally, I've found what I can only describe as the Twitter equivalent of Ponzi schemes running - where users agree to follow their followers. This results in large no's of followers being recorded by a small number of people. The trouble is, the situation means that most of the time the users and followers are ignoring one another's Tweets, resulting in lots of people talking and nobody listening, except perhaps for a short period at the start, The result is that the 0.5% active figure is going to be far lower.

I'm also astonished and dismayed by how many writers, editors, agents, and publishers, are simply using Twitter as a marketing channel, when Twitter is primarily a communications channel. That approach is so backward it's unbelievable. It means that their Tweets are often nothing more than spam - both in terms of message, and how that message is treated. No wonder the active user rate for such accounts is so low.

2c.

This is timely as I'm building up to joining Twitter ... I say building up because it has taken me years to join FB which I did this week, but only to create a couple of author pages. The received wisdom is to join Twitter and try to create awareness by posting helpful, non spammy things, but I wonder if I would be drowned out by the thousands of writers spamming people with 'buy my book'. This article is full of business speak but it's interesting what it says about 'monthly active users', i.e. accounts on there that are active - There is a possibility that the quality of Twitter's users is deteriorating

 

[pambaddeley]

I run a retail website for other kinds of products and have used both Facebook and Twitter for years. You're right, they are both terrible at direct marketing. But they are good at establishing a name for yourself, keeping up a positive reputation, helping you gather a group of like-minded followers who can be helpful in other ways, and with establishing customer loyalty. I also recently found that when I stopped using Twitter and Facebook, the traffic, and therefore the sales, to my website went down dramatically. I don't think this was because my traffic came from Twitter or Facebook, though. I think it was because a large part of Google's algorithm for searches is based on how much social media a website engages in. So even though tweets and facebook posts aren't found in a Google search, Google still looks at how much people are talking about your website and will rank it above or below other similar sites accordingly.

Yes I think Google definitely figures in all this.

 

[pambaddeley]

Twitter makes no money, its plan is to copy Facebook, a bunch of the top executives just left. Only really BBC and Newspapers take muck notice of it as the "trending" stuff enables them to have content without actually doing real journalism.

I think it will go the way of Friends, Mebo, Myspace etc.

To make so called "Social Media" work, you need to:
1) Be an interesting engaging character, some people might need to invent it all (been done).
2) Put a huge amount of time and effort.

I'd rather put the effort into real marketing and writing. Junk Mail (aka Direct Mail) has always been extremely poor unless you are corporate with a mass market product (Sky in UK & Ireland). Advertising generally is most useful to maintain a corporate brand, rather than increase sales (i.e. if not adverts are done in mass media, the sales fall).

Book marketing for the independent self publisher is really hard. Twitter or Facebook don't change that.

Having read a lot on the Goodreads forums about people's experience with e.g. Amazon, Facebook and Goodreads ads, I would say all the PPC stuff is a total waste of money as well.

 

[Martin Gill]

This is my actual real, paid job. I work for a market research company that looks at how consumers use tech.

Building a social media presence on just one touchpoint is pointless. The most effective brands do it through a comprehensive mix of paid, owned and earned presence on their own branded properties and the large and small social platforms. Asos and Sephora for example. There are some good examples of firms that use Twitter as an affective customer service channel - but most /all of them have spent hundred of thousands of pounds on teams, social listening software, sentiment analysis algorithms and more. For example - Virgin Media has a team of 4 or 5 people plus a bunch of expensive software dedicated to managing social interactions for customer service.

Twitter is being eclipsed by Google Plus and Instagram in terms of sheer user numbers - and interestingly if you index the number of users against the level of brand interaction, Instagram is the most effective channel for marketers (it has the highest fans to interaction ratio by a long way). Pinterest is next.

20% of the UK adult online popn uses Twitter on a monthly basis. 63% have interacted with a brand there - at least once ever. 18% like/comment on a monthly basis. The primary motivation is to look for coupons or discounts. This skews younger. You can roughly double the interaction rates for millennials. So YA authors out there, take note.

But yes, twitter alone is pointless.

For my professional life I have approx 1500 followers. Its taken me 5 years. I publish a monthly blog that I retweet and release data and new content as an enticement for customers to click through and buy paid content. My firm has 345k followers. Our social team retweet my content from the copmpany handle. I get maybe 10-20 retweets or mentions from other people a week. The 2% engagement stat at the top of this thread is probably accurate.

What it means. If you want to build an online presence, you need to go all in - blog, twitter, FB, Instagram and keep your content fresh and interesting.

 

[Dave]

Twitter is being eclipsed by Google Plus and Instagram in terms of sheer user numbers...

You were automatically signed up to Google Plus if you got a GMail or GoogleMail account and it also gives you an account if you buy something from them. The majority of those people don't even know they have them, nevermind use them. The sheer insidious nature of Google is frightening.

I'm not disagreeing with your assessment though. Twitter and Facebook are the future MySpace and Bebo. There will always be something else shiny and new to look at.

 

[Cathbad]

Twitter and Facebook are the future MySpace and Bebo. There will always be something else shiny and new to look at.

I have always found Facebook a bore! There is very little originality from site to site! I won't miss Twitter at all! What's Bebo?

 

[pambaddeley]

Another interesting article about Twitter Are We About to See the End of Twitter?


Talking of once big social networks that have closed down, Friends Reunited have recently announced their closure. FriendsReunited — the sunset of an era

 

[NbDawn]

What it means. If you want to build an online presence, you need to go all in - blog, twitter, FB, Instagram and keep your content fresh and interesting.

Based on my experience, this is exactly right. When I was actively involved with blogging, tweeting, FB, G+, & Pinterest, my retail website did really well overall. And slacking on any one of these would decrease sales. The more I slacked, the more sales would go down.

If you don't like tweeting every single day, use Hootsuite.com's free version to post your tweets in advance. It's good to follow a lot of people on twitter, but you can also use Hootsuite to narrow down to your favorites and occasionally check them to see if they've posted anything worth replying to or retweeting.

 

[thaddeus6th]

I hope Twitter doesn't go down. I rather like the brevity of it, and the ease of direct connection with people. I have a blog and website as well, and usually go on Goodreads a few times a month, but don't want to spend excessive time on the social aspect (writing takes a lot of time after all).

 

[Martin Gill]

You were automatically signed up to Google Plus if you got a GMail or GoogleMail account and it also gives you an account if you buy something from them.

I meant in terms of brand engagement, not just customer numbers. People are more likely to follow or share brand content there than Twitter. Google+ is the one forum I don't use personally though.

 

[Martin Gill]

There are firms, like ASOS and Modcloth as 2 good examples, that have really ramped down their investment in paid search, PPC and the like. They drive most of their web traffic from social and content marketing. It still costs money though. Just rather than invest in paying Google for clicks, they spend money on people to build content and curate online communities. I'm not as connected in the media world so I don't know if there are any good models to look at, but if you are serious about building your personal author brand (like any brand) in the C21st you can't ignore digital channels, and you need to invest the time and effort.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

So, I just an experiment. I linked a thread in my forum to my twitter feed and within a minute seven people had hit on it. I have a reasonably good profile although am not hugely active, tending more towards Facebook these days, with a weekly at least original blogpost sent out on relevant mostly writing topics.

I also put out a free short to Facebook (a specific group), twitter and google plus and have 20 hits in the first five minutes. As this story has already had hundreds of hits, that's pretty good. I'll see if I get any sales out of any of it.

 

[Zebra Wizard]

i always saw social media as a platform to reach out to your fans, rather than a place to find them.

 

[Dave]

Jo, you have been active on Twitter for some time already, but more than that you are an established author now. People will follow you precisely because they have read your book. I mentioned that I use Twitter effectively to promote a community group. I know it works because when new volunteers come along to the project they say that they found us online. Mostly that is Twitter. A little is the website, but the website is only high in the Google rankings because of Twitter and Facebook. However, an unpublished author starting on social media for the first time tomorrow is a very different story. The amount of effort required just wouldn't be worthwhile. Once they become famous then they can join Twitter. Jamie Oliver has 5 million followers. Do you really think he is that interesting?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Jo, you have been active on Twitter for some time already, but more than that you are an established author now. People will follow you precisely because they have read your book. I mentioned that I use Twitter effectively to promote a community group. I know it works because when new volunteers come along to the project they say that they found us online. Mostly that is Twitter. A little is the website, but the website is only high in the Google rankings because of Twitter and Facebook. However, an unpublished author starting on social media for the first time tomorrow is a very different story. The amount of effort required just wouldn't be worthwhile. Once they become famous then they can join Twitter. Jamie Oliver has 5 million followers. Do you really think he is that interesting?

But when I started on twitter I had four followers, all Chronners. (I also think you flatter me somewhat ) any unpublished author starting in twitter tomorrow would have to do the same as someone like me or the Chronners with good profiles - build slowly, post regularly, try to be themselves...

 

[Martin Gill]

the website is only high in the Google rankings because of Twitter and Facebook

Which is another good online marketing point, that Google promotes well linked pages so the more you are referencing and linking to your website on social media, the more the links get shared and the more Google takes notice.

I'm interested in the clicks to conversion rate though on the above experiment. The average online retailer sees about a 3-5% conversion rate from browsers to buyers, and that's once people are on their website.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Which is another good online marketing point, that Google promotes well linked pages so the more you are referencing and linking to your website on social media, the more the links get shared and the more Google takes notice.

I'm interested in the clicks to conversion rate though on the above experiment. The average online retailer sees about a 3-5% conversion rate from browsers to buyers, and that's once people are on their website.

The problem is to see that on books you'd need to be able to see how many people click on the book sample, which kindle doesn't indicate. Plus, if someone does like it and is on KU I might not see that for a week or two until they read the download.