21 | December | 2012 | Cristo Leon

I decided to run a: “Twitter Promoted Account SMO Experment” thanks to HootSuite and Twitter recognizing me as a Preferred Customer.

Yes I know they got me with a freemium strategy that latter is going to be expensive, but hey $100usd is a great freebie!

Anyway went and set up a campaign to promote my account on twitter ads.

This is a typical Cost Per Action (CPA), the action being “to follow @cristoleon_“, and starting this little SMO Experiment.

According to Twitter Ads:

I set a per day expense of $3usd my “Add” will be $90usd a month for 30 days, witch in my case is great because a need positioning not awareness.

You may notice they set up a maximum amount to pay (This in fact is your minimum or bottom line). that is how much you’ll pay for ever follower, and they say this will be everything from 24 to 34 new followers per day.

Let’s understand this microeconomy here:

My ideal balance is 26 to 32 followers for $2 usd each = 29

There fore I can predict 29 new followers per day at a $2 usd cost = $58usd a day.

Wow i can run out of money in 2 days!!!

That is why it is important to set up a Maximum to spend per day.

I have two options:

50 followers in 1 day = $100 usd ($2usd per follower)
50 followers in 30 days = $100 usd ($2usd per follower)

In this example I want to position my name for one month with the banner of promoted tweet, there fore i set a maximum to spend per day of $3usd In the case a will like to have 50 followers in one day I will put a maximum of $100usd.

What will happen if i double my bet?

Twitter ad is really clear you get an automatic estimate right there.

So the difference is obvious more followers!!!

USD	Min	Max
$ 3.00	24	34
$ 6.00	33	49

I am starting my test with this numbers

So for my free $100 usd I could expect

a minimum increase of 40 followers
a maximum increase of 10,000 followers

I like my average of 5,020 impressions (the amount of people that can actually see my brand been promote), but been realistic a 0.38% of follow is only 19 followers.

End result

40 min + 19 follow rate is a good 59 followers in a month for $100 usd, not bad, not bad at all.

Lets run the experiment and i will let you know the result of it one month from know on january 20 of 2012

APA

HootSuite. (n.d.). Main page. [Web page]. HootSuite. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from http://hootsuite.com/

Twitter. (n.d.). Main page. [Web page]. Twitter. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from https://twitter.com/

Twitter Ads. (n.d.). Main page. [Web page]. Twitter. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from https://ads.twitter.com

Leon, C. (2012). @cristoleon_. [Twitter Account]. Twitter. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from https://twitter.com/cristoleon_

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Cost per acquisition. [Wiki]. Wikipedia. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_action

Social media is such an Innovative field that it changes on a day-ly basis, making thinks not so simple to keep up with.

I love to educate my self to achieve simplicity.

I came across Simplify 360, (I love the name, it says it all).

As they express on its web site: “Simplify360 enables organizations to effectively implement social media concepts in to core business functions. Powered by Simplify360 Analytics^TM, we extend a sophisticated and user-friendly environment to realize value via actionable intelligence.”.- Simplify 360. (2012).

I came across their ideas thanks to SlideShare where I was searching for a study case on Twitter, and I was surprise to find that Simplify 360 have a presentation on exactly the same case that I was searching for: “How Dell Succeeded on Twitter : A Social Media Case Study”. (I download it 😀 ).

Eventually I was lure into their web page and requested a Demo, for my surprise they answer/contacted me in less than 06 hours with a personalized video conference with Arjun part of their sales team, and here the first tip of this post:

“On the costumer service side on social media: the fastest answer is the best one“

But in this case it means that they were really listening. Witch can mean: they are a small start up with no so many people communicating with them or they have 1,000 workers listening their channels for them or mmm… Could it be that they have a really smart CRM Analytic solution that does the hard part of searching and filtering communications about your brand on line? mmmm….

At the end I end it up loving the free demo and the Chat with Arjun, they send me their price list (really reasonably priced actually). Even better I obtain a trial of 15 days to play with it.

It is clear that Simplify understands their sales process as Turner, J., Shah, R. (2011 p.47). explain us:

They moved me from Prospect to Conversion in 2 hrs thanks to their understanding of their clients. They know that I had done my homework before even contacting them, I appreciated it.

On the following days I’ll be using their software and evaluate its potential and i will keep you updated.

Thanks for your time.

APA

Simplify 360. (2012). About us. [Web page]. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from http://simplify360.com/en-us/about.php

Simplify 360. (2012). Main page. [Web page]. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from http://simplify360.com/

Simplify 360. (October 18, 2012). Simplify360 : The Best Social Media Management Platform. [Video]. YouTube. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OUrTC-qDl-Q

Simplify 360. (n.d). Profile. [Web page]. SlideShare. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from http://www.slideshare.net/bexdeep

Simplify 360. (December 18, 2012). How Dell Succeeded on Twitter : A Social Media Case Study. [PDF document]. SlideShare. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from http://www.slideshare.net/bexdeep/case-study-dell-15680856

Slideshare. (n.d.). Main page. [Web page]. SlideShare. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from http://www.slideshare.net/?ss

Simplify360 Sales. (n.d.). @S360_Sales. [Twitter Account]. Twitter. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from https://twitter.com/S360_Sales

Simplify360. (n.d.). @Simplify360. [Twitter Account]. Twitter. Recovered on December 21, 2012 from https://twitter.com/simplify360

Turner, J. Shah, R. (2011). How to make money with social media. An insider’s guide on using new and emerging media to grow your business. Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as FT Press Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458, USA. ISBN-10: 0-13-210056-8 ISBN-13: 978-0-13-210056-4