Case Study: Twitter, Ultimate Guide to Harvest the Incredible Power of Social Media
Even though it is very obvious that Social Media is extremely powerful many of you guys weren’t convinced. After I created the twitter category and started suggesting all of you to join twitter, I was getting emails asking is twitter really useful. Those of you who never had any social media experience have many doubts in the power of social media. So therefore I decided to conduct this study to reveal the power of Social Media with Proof to my new users and those who still doubt it.
In the past every social media network I tried, I was trying them one by one. I never combined them due to lack of time. So when I recently started being active on twitter, I saw the true power of all Social Media combined. Things fly out from one place to another in a matter of seconds. That is when I decided to take on this secret mission. The mission to dominate every social media and examine the power of social media when it comes to traffic, advertising, increasing subscribers, and increasing popularity. In this study, I will show you exactly what type of results you get when you combine the power of all social media networks. And what you really have to do.
To spice it up for you and get you excited the results that I got looked something like this for 3 days:
68,038 Unique Visitors
122,469 Total Visits
653,984 Pageviews
5.36 Million Hits (5,362,635)
RSS Subscriber Count Increased by 1734 making my total count to 5321.
Literally, I doubled my stats from my whole last month in a matter of 3 days. Now seriously and truly, do you want to do this? Well then prepare for your ultimate guide which is this post.
Before I start, I will say that this article does not guarantee the same results because there are too many factors that go into it which I will mention. But what I can guarantee you is that you will see an increase. Maybe a little less than this, or a whole lot more than this.
So You might be wondering at this point how did I do this? Where was my traffic coming from? Obviously this is a blog, I must have written a killer article. Which I did. You can find the article here: 55+ Extremely Useful Online Generators for Designers.
And what got me the traffic was bunch of different social media networks and websites. The list includes: Twitter, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Delicious, Digg, tweetmeme, twitturl, and countless others.
I got 5 Stars in Stumbleupon
Frontpage on Reddit
Delicious Popular over 1400+ Bookmarks
Ofcourse you can see that the post retweeted on twitter over 400 times and by some of the most popular celebrities on twitter. But I will go on to say that none of the above was possible if it was not for twitter. Twitter is a place where the celebrities from all other social media networks interact. So if you convince the audience of this network, the other networks will be a peice of cake.
So JOIN Twitter. I have asked a few of my friends who also have a good influence in social media networks and they run quality websites. Here is what one of them say:
“Focus on twitter first, build a good reputation then after that you can invite them to follow you on other social media sites.” @naldzgraphics
So guys twitter is essential. But once you join what exactly do you do? Well the first thing you should do is follow me @syedbalkhi. Ah ok well here is what you should do according to Patrick:
“Be friendly and helpful to all and other Social Media members will pick up on that and start helping you as well.” – @Jenocide312
Follow his advice, and then read my article that lists 25 Tips to Increase Your Influence and Gain Followers on Twitter.
Now you should know somewhat of what you are doing on twitter. Your goal is to get as many people to know about your new article. Well then you should Retweet or as it is known on twitter as RT. Basically when you tweet make sure it is something interesting. That means write exceptionally great content that your audience will love. Having that said, it means not everypost deserves to be heavily promoted. Pick your best ones otherwise your friends will think you are spamming them. Before you ask anyone to Retweet anything for you, or do you a favor make sure you know them at least. Or as my good friend Tal Siach says:
“Get to know your friends and treat them the same as you would want to be treated” – Talsiach
Just follow the Ultimate Guide to Retweet and you should be set.
You need to make connections. When I started twitter, I had alot due to my experience in this industry, but you can do it as well. Provide quality tweets, and believe me others will follow you. You should search for users who are at the top in other social media networks such as Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and others. And follow them. So once you have the connections with all of the top users from multiple networks, then kindly present them your article and ask for a Retweet. If you get it, then you are all set.
So the whole idea is you need to show them that you exist. You can do it by Retweeting them, replying to their tweets, their sites, and so on. Well that is what I did and I got some of the top users on twitter such as Darren Rowse (@problogger), Calvin Lee (@mayhemstudious), Cheth (@cheth) to tweet that post for me.
Ofcourse alot of my friends and followers tweeted it, but followers of these users also retweeted. So you combine just the followers of these three and you have almost 100,000 people. That can definitely create a buzz on twitter. Note while you are creating a buzz on twitter, services like tweetmeme and twitturls are reporting the most tweeted urls on twitter recently. So if yours is one of them, then you are also being featured on these websites that also recieve alot of views from tons of good users.
Since you have friends in other social media networks as well, I am sure out of many a few got to be special ones. You can ask one of those to submit this into another social media, or you can just let it happen naturally.
All I did was ask a good friend on digg Bart Gatsby to submit it on digg for me. This article got over 170 diggs, even though it didn’t hit Frontpage, but I got the attention of these 170 people. If you look at them, alot of these users have very nice reputation in other social media networks.
Next thing I know is that I am on delicious most popular page at the top. Reddit’s front page, Stumbleupon 5 star popular post. And I am loaded with traffic.
So once again who said Quality Content can’t get you anywhere? Let me write a new formula for you:
Quality Content + Good Twitter Friends = Success in Social Media
Now making connections, posting good content, being the king of social media must take alot of time huh? Well it really depends on who you ask. Some says Yes it requires alot of time while others say it doesn’t.
“Get ready to spend some long addictive hours communicating with some of the nicest people online.” – @DinOthman
“Don’t think that you have to online 24/7 to be considered a solid contributor” – @bullfrogmedia
I am most likely to agree with the second one. You don’t have to spend alot of time to be a solid contributer. All you have to do is stay updated and share interesting stories. Now it gets addicting and you might end up spending alot of time, but in reality you don’t need to be online 24/7.
Well so are you ready to get the same results as me? Well then rock on the bandwagon of Twitter.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
Cool.. Thanks for the mention..
Excellent and very useful post for people who are still on the fence! The power of social media is amazing, I knew this for a long time because what I have seen it do but recently I saw some totally amazing things happening by combining them all like you suggest. I started a brand new site in Feb and due to promoting it via social media outlets I am averaging about 100-150k hits a month. The best part is I obtained some nice natural backlinks from cnn.com, spike.com, mtv, and many, many others. The rankings I have achieved in such a short time are pretty astonishing, and it seems whatever I post about now I end up ranking for very quickly.
That is a very convincing post to take to twittering. Amazing statistics.
Hi Syed Balkhi,
I like what you doing here.
Your blog is great I want to know if you can design my blog.
thanks
Nice for you to share how it impacts your blog,
I haven’t felt the impact of twitter yet,
but I enjoy interacting with fellow people who enjoy the similar hobby and interest…
nice post :
I’ve been using Tweeter but not as much as you and I haven’t really seen much craziness growth in it.
SMO is becoming more popular as the use of social networking sites has exploded and its really gaining weight, twitter as an example is gaining more power, its extremely valuable for anyone who have something to promote because you can easily and quickly build brand awareness and a loyal following, especially among bloggers, online marketers etc.
Awesome stuff there… I have never leveraged Twitter for all its power but have had awesome effects from Stumbleupon, Digg and Rediit.
When I get a chance Twitter is my next goal to conquer…
Syed — I “stumbled upon” your site — and your short articles speak volumes to me. I am building and preparing to launch a startup in Los Angeles and trying to figure out my social media plan of attack: mixture of article writing, blogging, twittering, etc.
I’m sure your site will continue to be useful to me in the future — keep up the good work. The little guy appreciates it.
-Omar Ting
Twitter: @omarting
http://www.omarting.com
http://www.leasemunky.com ==> under construction
64K unique visitors in 3 days is very impressive, and certainly something that deserves attention. What’s interesting is that you only have about 1,500 followers on twitter, and yet with all the combined social media avenues that you have tapped into, you were able to generate massive amounts of traffic to your website. It just goes to show you, that it can be achieved, and that in the future when you grow even more followers, etc, the traffic levels you receive could be doubled, which would be simply phenomenal.
I really need to start learning this twitter deal.
One thing you must not forget is that it is not the quantity of your subscribers, but it is the quailty of your subscribers. I can mass follow 60k people and have 30k follow me back, but I won’t know a single person. They won’t know me. So it would not help at all if I ask them via DM to RT something.
Sorry for this newbie question, but what is DM? What is RT? Direct message and something else? Thanks.
Well, I suppose this answers my question in the other thread about potential SEO benefits of Twitter. It definitely makes sense from a social networking perspective, which when I think about it, isn’t that different from a word of mouth referral in the 21st century.
Great numbers!
heck yea great numbers
Man this is powerful stuff.
Now that was a convincing post on the power of social media. I always knew that for instant traffic, social media was the best possible thing to do. I have a 5 month old Twitter account, but hardly made good use of it. I guess now I am gonna make use of it for better. Thanks!!
The power of social media depends on the community. With great community you can do anything. But getting a great community is almost impossible these days.
Probably the hardest part about Twitter is learning the point of diminishing returns. When does the time you’re spending on it stop being worth it.
I think you miss a point that even though you have thousands of Twitter followers, there’s no point if you are not friends with them (most of the people at Twitter only care about their own stats and hoping other people visits their links)
Yes Michael you are very right. Thousands of followers are no good, if you are not friends with them.
With all the stats you’ve mentioned here, this post stands as one of the best in its kind. It has been very enlighting reading through this. If used well, social media can be the very key to online success….
diminishing returns for twitter can easily be overcome through the use of several VERY nice apps such as hootsuite (which I use for several clients).
I was deeply impressed by the statistics you have delivered.That still exists whether it is good or not.
I myself read much about twitter and understand the meaning of it. But can’t find time and other oportunities to work more in this direction to get more results.
Your results simply amazes! I do not think that using Twitter, you can achieve those results.
Wow, I’ve received social networking traffic before but it’s just been the odd 500 uniques – it’s incredible to see just how powerful they really are when combined.
Wow, I’ve received social networking traffic before but it’s just been the odd 500 uniques – it’s incredible to see just how powerful they are when combined.
I have achieved in such a short time are pretty astonishing, and it seems whatever I post about now I end up ranking for very quickly.
Twitter is only one of tools,one of factors to be used for getting more results in business.But I thing it is necessary to combine many factors to be successful in it.
With twitter still developing is no wonder why the numbers are so great.
Twitter is one of the most popular social networking sites in the internet. In this anybody can easily follow another, or you will be followed by some other persons. So don’t miss this opportunity.
The statistics admires!No doubt Twitter does matter but it is not the only tool in the successful work.
wow those states are impressive and only in 3 days. Twitter is very powerful and is so popular, new stuff can spread like wild fire on it.
Great Post! Yes twitter is great if used effectively, if you are able to build trust, then relationship can be built. Once you have build relationships, then your business grow naturally.
Thanks for the post Syed. I too believe twitter can help build strong and lasting relationships and will help make your business a success.
I have definitely made use of facebook as a way to leverage social media, since I am a college student, I am more comfortable with facebook, I really feel facebook is powerful if done right…. As far as twitter, I guess I’ve been afraid to tackle twitter, because its something new and something I am not accustomed to. I guess for me facebook is just so much easier compared to twitter, and seems like alot less work too. Eventually though.. I will ride that twitter wagon once I feel comfortable enough to get on it.
I know… bad of me =(
Till then,
Jean
I have yet to master the art of marketing using social media. It seems that it only works well for very viral content though. So I guess I need to make great content before pursuing this strategy.
Thanks for the link to the ultimate guide to re-tweeting. If only more people would take that time to follow proper tweeting and re-tweeting etiquette.
ou can find a firm to handle your social media for as little as $500 a month. However, what you might want to do is create an E-Marketing Plan. This would distill your company’s brand, set forth your objectives, and allow you to allocate resources in an organizeed and tactical way. . It would be also serve as an emergency manual when you have to make tough decisions at critical junctures.
The statistics admires!No doubt Twitter does matter but it is not the only tool in the successful work.And very good share.
Great hints! I’ve been using Tweeter but not getting as much as you. I think i have to optimize my brand according Tweeter’s regulation.
One thing sure..the media is over due for public scrutiny…. it’s almost imbarasing to see so many americans under the influence of so few sorces of informative and unbiased information.