Tweet Stats and Calculations
Remember, I sent 3 tweets per day for 28 days. During that time my twitter reach peaked at 90,000, and my combined tweets received 20,000 views.
Now, for a reality check let’s do the math per tweet. The percentages are based on my own twitter activity for a period of 28 day*, statistics are provided by Twitter Analytics:
On average, of the 90,000 possible viewers, only 0.26% actually saw any one tweet – that’s 236 people. But it gets worse, only 2.4% of those people (6) actually clicked on one of my tweets (the rate varies between 7.9% (19) at best and 0.0% (nil) at worst). Only 0.82% retweet (2), another 0.52 % favorite (1), and an additional 0.59% (1) follow the link to either Amazon or my website. To summarize: out of 90,000 possible views, only 1 person, per tweet, takes the action I want them to take.
If, by this stage you are thoroughly depressed, please don’t read on because it gets even worse. Twitter sales activity counts as a ‘cold lead.’ And as I know from my time in retail, from a ‘cold lead’ you can expect a sales conversion rate of about 4% (1 in every 25 visitors buys your book). To summarise again: if you have 5,000 twitter followers, then to sell one book, you need to send 25 tweets. Now you understand why there is so much spam out there.
Clearly, a substantially larger number of quality followers is needed, which is why I continue to build my follower base organically.
Ok, time to cheer us up again. We are not looking for ‘cold leads’ we are looking for ‘warm leads’ (people who already have a relationship with us), where the sales conversion rate is 40% – 70%. Here is what I am doing to build ‘warm leads’:
During the same twitter period as above I gained 1900 new followers, each were offered a free ebook in my automated ‘Thank you for following,’ response – again a ‘cold call,’ so I would expect a 4% take-up. These 76 people who read the free book magically turn into ‘warm leads,’ because they have gotten to know me through my writing. Not all will like my writing, but a take up rate of 40% is not unreasonable – a potential 30 book sales (still only 1 per day, but better). People who have already purchased with you are 70% likely to purchase from you again. So if you have more than one book in a series then you can expect a take-up rate of 70% per book as readers progress through the series. This is why writing more books is always the best marketing plan.
Another way of turning ‘cold leads’ into ‘warm leads’ is by using your website to provide interesting articles and blogs – this is true social media. However, before someone can truly be called a ‘warm lead’ they will need to get to know you, which generally requires about seven visits to your website. Which is why you need a good number of varied and interesting articles and blogs on your theme.
Combining your tweet activity and your blog/website activity increases your potential sales substantially. If 1 tweet = 1 visitor, and 7 visits = a 40% ‘warm lead’ sales conversion rate, then even with a 30% drop-off rate per visit you have still increased you sales conversion rate by 1175%* to just under 1 in 2 visitors making a purchase per tweet. Increase your twitter base to 7.5k and you could have 1 purchase per tweet, because your twitter reach expands exponentially.
Increase your follower base to 30,000 (I don’t think I could maintain a re-tweet for re-tweet policy beyond that number) and your twitter reach could be in the millions, but even at 2 million views per tweet, you could only get 30 ‘cold callers’ per tweet (1 sale per tweet). However, turn those ‘cold leads’ into ‘warm leads’ and you could have 14 sales per tweet.
All this proves how essential it is to have a good website where you can engage your readers and they can get to know you and your work.
* Your stats may be a lot better than mine, the sales conversion rates may be rough approximations, and my calculations may be way-off, but the principles still hold true: Twitter is useless for selling books (cold sales), but great for driving potential readers to you website where you can turn those ‘cold leads’ into ‘warm leads.’
Market slow; writer fast.
Nick Travers 