Your online party is a marketing event. You want to bring attention to your business and encourage people to buy your products. They may not buy on the spot, if you don’t already have a relationship with them, but you are building trust so they eventually become a repeat customer. That means you must measure how successful your online event was and how you can improve your next event.
(I enjoyed this banner because it’s true. You need engagement not just clicks.)
You can’t put an ROI on building relationships. I know you know this, but there are other metrics we can measure that help us get a small piece of whether you were successful or not.
When you throw a Twitter party you have to ask yourself these questions after the party is over:
- How many tweets occurred during the party?
- How was the reaction during and after the party?
- Who showed up? (How many new people compared to old members of your community.)
- If you offered a special deal how many people took advantage of your offer?
- Are people asking you questions after the party is over?
That’s why I love an online party. It helps you build relationships as well as build interest in your products. We’ll break down how you can use a party to help build your community then we’ll get a better understanding of measuring your success
Building Your Community
Every online business needs a community. These people are your power users. You keep them happy and they tell all their friends about you.
(Every business needs a community.)
I’ve seen online businesses burn out their people because all they do is keep sending emails asking their people to buy their stuff. You may make amazing products, but people hate to be looked at as cash machines. They want to know that you care about them. This means you have to give to get.
It’s why giving away free stuff has become a part of the marketing norm. Even 100 years ago bartenders would create tabs for people who they knew wouldn’t pay them back. The person was given a tab for a reason. Maybe they were liked by the community or maybe they created a festive atmosphere that brought more people into the bar. Whatever the case, giving away free stuff is a part of every business.
People feel someone is trust worthy that gives away something for free. I love bloggers that giveaway free information that helps build my business. I love when I go to a conference and get a flash drive even though I already have 10 of them. It makes me more likely to listen or read more about them. I give them away to friends and family who appreciate it. I get to do my friends a solid and in return I’ll take a few extra minutes to pay attention to what they are offering.
It’s why throwing an online party where you teach people valuable information and give away prizes is such a great community building tool. They show up because they want to learn more, win a prize and share in the experience that you’ve created. This creates a bond with these people. They may stop by your website and sign up for your newsletter. In the future they are more likely to click on a link from a tweet or Facebook post. As you build this trust they are more likely to tell their friends about what you do.
Your investment in creating this event will also pay off in creating stronger relationships. Once they attend an event that teaches and helps them connect with new people they never forget this experience.
ROI and Brand Building
Hopefully you enjoy community building, but you also have to measure how well the party went, so the next time you throw a party you can improve and take it to the next level of success. You want more tweets at the next party you throw, not less. More clicks to your website, not less. We aren’t worried about the quality of tweets or clicks, we are just measuring how many we had.
(Thought this did a good job of conveying mindless clicking doesn’t help your business.)
The ROI you can track is what will help you take your next party to the next level.
When you throw a Twitter party you’ll need to:
- Keep track of how many tweets occurred during the party.
- Find out how many people signed up and what the average followership was for the party.
- Screen capture the tweets so you can see the reaction of the people during the party.
- Figure out how many followers you had before the party and after the party.
- Know how many people were on the call with you. (If you create a teleconference with it.)
- Find out the trending stats that occurred during the party.
These statistics that you capture will give you an idea of how well the party went, but you probably won’t see the results for a few weeks or maybe a few months. The idea is to keep track of these stats so you can improve on each party.
Real ROI
Too often a business thinks that 100 people joining in during a party is good. It may be good and at first glance it could be considered a success, but if you look over the results you realize that you didn’t really do as well as you hoped. The reason I say this is because it’s very hard to measure engagement with your people. They may have stopped by the party, but maybe 90% weren’t very active and the other 10% were only semi active.
Creating a party that ripples through your community and spreads to new people is the kind of party that will pay off down the road.
You have to look at a party as a way to build long-term relationships. Scott Stratton over at UnMarketing wrote a insightful piece called – Things We Should Ask The ROI Question About Before Social Media. In his post he talks about what social media is meant to actually do.
Here is a little exerpt:
And even the smarter ones in business know that to be successful, you have to:
- Answer questions about our product or service
- Educate consumers
- Offer post purchase follow up
- Market research
- Discuss industry best practices
Too often companies don’t think about what an individual relationship can do to build their business. They want instant results.
You need to build an amazing business (Kristi of Kikolani put some awesome resources to help you understand how to build your online presence) that gets people telling their friends about you then when you are ready to throw a party and build your online community you know what you believe and stand for. The party is there to help you create a deeper connection and encourage them to tell their friends about your awesomeness.
In the last post, How to Use Your Party as a Slingshot, we’ll extrapolate on these concepts so you can use a party as leverage to growing your business.
Images courtesy of planeta, KittyKat3756, and Fotos Nikon D40/D50.