I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read about why you should allocate money & time to social media. There are countless articles and posts about “conversion optimization tips”.
Tweet More. Engagement. More Likes. Gimme.
But do they actually make a difference?!?
Want the one email I send when I have something worth sending?
114,000+ entrepreneurs get it. One story from my business, one tactic you can use. No schedule, no fluff.
That’s the question that most people forget to ask.
So, I put out a tweet about my How to Make your First Dollar Course to find out for myself.
Out of 13,090 followers how many would you expect to click after I tweeted?
1,000?
500?
More like 109 clicks, a 0.8% CTR. WTF Twitter?!? Compare my Twitter conversion rate to my email conversion.
Either most of my followers are bots or something funky is going on.
How many times have you heard someone say “you have to be on YouTube” or brag about how many Facebook fans they have?
It’s distracting with case studies making it appear that social media is the new holy grail.
The real secret is that there is no same way that will work for marketing in all businesses.
So I was curious how many clicks I got via email from my 3,547 subscribers.
882 clicks!!! Holy shit
First off I love you.
Secondly, that’s a 24.8% CTR and 8x improvement over Twitter.
Bottom-line: I’m not saying you must go use email over Twitter but I wanted to plant the seed for you to focus on effectiveness vs hype…
When’s the last time you were surprised?
-Noah
P.S. It is interesting that when I asked my Twitter followers to join my email list I had a huge response. As we learned above email has a better click-through-rate so it’s worth asking your Twitter followers and Facebook fans on a regular basis to join your email list. It’s one of the best ways to get more subscribers.
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143 responses to “Social Media & Business: Don’t believe the hype”
Been grappling with this fro months, spent some $$ with very small results and realized they want you to be in it ‘for the long term’.. yeah till you stop breathing maybe? I Agree, everyone seems to chant the social media tune and you feel pushed to join the crowd, BIG BIG crowd, you get lost… frustrated with all the efforts and skimpy results, only to realize how much you wasted .
My question is how do you do this if your friends list is small? How can yan you get emails to build your list from twitter users? IMO friends waste your time.
What’s the way forward? Any suggestions? (And : Yeh Noah you got MY email, what’s yours?0.
Thank you so much for sharing this! I’m an interior designer turned full-time ID blogger and it’s going very well.
I tell anyone who’s interested that my blog is my social media. Take those silly links off of your website. You want people staying ON your site unless your primary means of business is on facebook or somewhere else.
However, for me, pinterest drives thousands of visitors to my blog every day. But pinterest is really a search engine.
The problem is that brands and retailers have bought the hype and are slow to understand the reality.
Thanks again!
Absolutely loved this post Noah! Some great things to think about so thanks for sharing. For me, the one remarkable thing that happened recently is private messaging people on Instagram. Just tee’ing relationships that I might be able to use in the future! Started with people a little further down the road than me and was completely honest with what I said. So far so good!
It seems like social media is largely a waste of time if not coupled with paying to boost the posts. We receive similar very low ROI on organic/unpaid social media posts unless it is a topic that really grabs people.
Thanks Noah for sharing those real numbers!
I guess it has the same philosophy as do vs talk. Unless I do and test by myself I rely on others’ experiences and journeys which might be completely different to mine…
Denise D-T’s marketing was exceptional for her latest launch – combination of email and social media. But I liked how after the campaign ended she acknowledged that she was sending out a lot of emails and then her email routine went back to normal. I liked this approach and was in contrast to other campaigns/methods I’ve experience when they just ramp up emails more and more which I really don’t like.
Great stuff as always. You keep delivering knowledge with every post and newsletter that you release. ?
I love this, “The real secret is that there is no same way that will work for marketing in all businesses.” It’s simple, not sexy but it’s true.
I appreciate your candid yet actionable approach to life and not simply marketing. We’re still marketing, selling, talking AT people. Everyone is different. It’s time to ditch frameworks and begin giving marketers something real.
Noah, spot on again! Twitter is ridiculous for me for marketing as I can’t cram what I want to say in 140 characters!!! Also, FB is becoming pedantic and unfocused- all over the place.
If I’m marketing food, I want a TARGET audience! Not sure if honing an email list is the best way, but I’m digging this hole deeper and will keep going that route! Thoughts??
I ran Facebook ads for a Father’s day sale I did for a local physical product I make. 9 optins, zero sales. I posted the product at full price on Facebook marketplace for free and sold 6! I have yet to hear a marketer mention selling locally on Facebook marketplace. Glad I did and still doing it!
I was surprised to see that, judging by the comments, you first published this in 2013 – I thought Twitter actually worked back then! But my experience now, albeit with (very) much smaller numbers, is that the ratio is about the same, maybe worse. Anything up to 50% CTR with email versus Twitter / FB….. well it’s mostly crickets.
Seeing ikea furniture in the Paris metro a few years back was surprising, entertaining and effective (i.e. I took a picture, shared it with my friends back then and still remember the experience fondly now)
And the numbers keep rolling in. Marketing organically on social media is a low ROI.
About time someone called BS on what passes for social media marketing by so many. Please keep it up as I find your posts informative, helpful and inspirational.
It’s also nice to know I’m not the only one who sees through a lot of the crap!
Something surprising: Our new rescue pup is 9 lbs of fur and fearlessness. The one thing that really terrifies him–making fart sounds with your mouth. He’s 8″ tall and that is the ONE thing that will send him three floors down and hiding under a sofa. Theories?
Additionally, I love this post. Especially since I did have good experiences with social media a decade ago, but that was then, and now only recently did I purchase Sumo Pro. I am excited for when I have a minute to integrate all of its tools with my site and see some carefully crafted magic occur!
Just yesterday a friend in Austin helped me work out a plan of action to grow my passion project into a legit, money-making business: write an ebook (writing is my superpower), give it away with email/newsletter sign-up, offer readers a discount on the Kundalini Yoga 40-day video plans I am working on, and make the world a better place 🙂
Thanks Noah for Sumo, your emails, and having fun in the process!
-Kristen
Noah – two things might skew the results in favor of the email campaign: 1) email list might be a “clicker” file vs general people who Opt’d in to your email list 2) email creative and subject line.
The difference between personal one to one and one to many, yelling into the darkness. Personalised is the way forward.
Oh most definitely, Noah.
I had a similar experience. And have heard many people share similar experiences. Email list will always be better than whatever you promote on social media. So it stands to reason that building an email list is the No. 1 thing you need to do for your business.
– Andrew
I don’t care about social media. I do believe you are one of the best for me to read.
I’m a grama just getting going on this internet thing. Stay sane and go for it!
Yes, it’s so true. I’ve got more leads via email than Twitter or any other social media. Email works because it’s not like facebook newsfeed where your post might get lost in the crowd. We read every email we receive or at least click on it to delete.
You asked what has surprised me! I’d say it’s people’s ignorance and negativity towards working from home. I initially thought network marketing was a fab idea to work from home and thought everyone else would agree and join my business! So I was surprised everyone said no and even friends ignore you!
This is really great idea..i would love to learn more..
Happy Thanksgiving
I was very surprised to learn that Jet was being acquired, despite a languishing business model. I guess Wal-Mart is feeling the squeeze, or out of better options! Good for the Jet folks though.
Noah, I think there is too much emphasis on trying to be on all social platforms. I think the first concentration should be on creating great content or products, building an email list nad then picking one or two social platforms to promote them and not 5 or 6. Just my opinion.
Good to know!!
I was surprised when Gangnam Style became the first Youtube video to reach one billion views and it was really just intended to be a sort of prank to mock hipsters. Goes to show, you never know what might go viral…
I follow you on twitter and don’t remember seeing the tweet you mentioned. But i did read your email. Email in box has about 30 emails each morning. twitter feed has 1000’s
its clear that email will get higher attention, from me any way.
I have never trully utilized twitter for anything rather than talking to my friends. I’m kind of new to online marketing and just learning things, putting content one day at a time. So to answer your question, I read blogs like your to learn things.
Loved the article thanks Noah. It’s a relief too, I find social media to be… not a good use of my time.
Enjoyed your email today, thanks for the real talk. So refreshing!
The last time I felt a ‘pop’ in my brain was when read the biography on Wikipedia of one of my top favourite therapy writers, John O. Stevens, and discovered he was the same person that Steve Andreas… another top favourite of mine. What a good taste I have!
What actually surprises me in online marketing (or marketing in general) is genuine, authentic people providing value for a reasonable price. The hype is so thick and so constant that actually culling through the bullshit becomes a skill. So, when I find someone authentic it’s quite refreshing.
Sciencing real, proven ways to market is a challenge, but the only real way to find methods that work.
Great article. Each product and service has unique selling points and require promotion through mediums to their demographic profile-Data Horticulture! It is all about conversion versus hype and the right mediums for communication. Great article,thank you!
I found out that you are in Austin! I am in Austin too working on a fitness startup. I sent the first email campaign in my life yesterday to a tiny list. I was super nervous when I was about to press the send button and kept refreshing the stats screen to see the numbers go up. Result is 30% open rate, out of which 25% either opened more than once, or clicked or subscribed to my list. Not a bad start. Can I buy you tacos in exchange for advice?
Im suprised you are sellingb those king sumo shoes en masse nk
Kudo’s to everyone sharing here…(nothing is more important to me right now over gaining other people’s perspective)
…Interesting topic; thought I’d chime in… To me, Twitter is perfect in terms of my social documentary…Reason being that I can get long winded at times and the 140 character limit solves that issue…Twitter to me is networking slash personal online diary… Facebook is more family check-in as well as page/group collaboration (I haven’t even started the contest’s yet)… ? If a company/person really wants to get at me on any serious business, they have to connect via #1)~Linked In~ ,2)Google hangouts, 3)my phone, or an 4) email that’s not bulk messenger related…
I don’t pit social media outlets against eachother…I look at each social media as a finger that when used together can grab the attention of industry leader’s…and they like it, as long as we don’t squeeze too hard… They can have ten thousand followers…I only want one follower…
“Creative Commons Corporation”
I advise any business that’s thinking on a global level to donate as much as they can…
…I waited thirty-six years to open my first Facebook & Twitter…You can believe that I’m after far more than follower’s…
LoL…this is why I tweet…
Love you guys…It’s difficult to find engaging intellectual conversation…I like to re-read old topic lines mostly… Take care all…And keep it coming Noah…This doesn’t happen w/out you…
Solid post! It’s always interesting to think about what’s behind the numbers and what the numbers *actually* mean.
You asked the last time I was really surprised by something. Well, this one’s marketing related. I was pretty blown away this morning to learn that AirBnB thought it was a good idea to run an ad campaign in SF that complained about the fact that their business had to pay back taxes. Whiny and weird. What’s up with that? How did they think it was a good decision to publicly bemoan their success? Bizarre.
Story here via Ad Week: https://www.adweek.com/news/technology/airbnb-backs-down-its-passive-aggressive-san-francisco-ad-campaign-167713
Anyway, keep up the great work!
I was super surprised today when my parents (my kids grandparents) showed no interest in my business that I pour my life into.
Thanks for being so focus on results and less in marketing! Love your practical tips. Greetings from Argentina. Pablo.
thanks so much for this post. we struggle with the likes and interaction on social media and I ‘m glad to see we aren’t the only ones!
I’ve been doing accidental research on a college campus (because I am currently transporting someone and waiting while they’re in class). At first I felt like this all was just really going to take me away from my work. And, in a way, it has. It’s taken me away from the way I generally work every day, and the way I often make business decisions by listening via social media. It’s been a pleasant surprise to discover what is and isn’t important to people by observing on campus. I watched two girls sit for a whole hour and chat endlessly about their dogs, while also scrolling through (and commenting to each other) about their Instagram feeds. I’ve met students who have terrifically terrible websites and are counting on Instagram to show their best to the world. I’ve heard a little chat about Twitter. I see a lot of people just happily talking to one another without gadgets at the center of it. My happiest surprise on that count was hearing one guy rave to another about the amazing poem “Ozymandias.” Really? People talk to each other about poetry? This was heartening to me. I don’t know yet what I’ll do with all this new listening, but it’s enough for now to be less tied to digital social media and more able to experience the surprises of actual social media (face to face conversations).
Hey Noah,
Been reading you articles for quite some time now. Really like your direct approach to writing. (bullshite proof) 🙂
I’ve been itching to use it at my company to see the results, but I think an effective way to engange your opted in users in the near future will be browser push notifications. Do you have any results regarding this?
I’ve opted in in some and the effect on my browser is crazy. Biased or not the it is just that I can’t not read the headline displayed. If it’s good, I’m going to click it. This is particular effective because the message appears right where Gmail notifications appear also.
Take a look at the effect with these guys:
https://www.producthunt.com/tech/pushcrew
https://www.producthunt.com/tech/mobiopush
https://www.producthunt.com/tech/roost
https://www.producthunt.com/tech/horntell
If you have any experience whit this please share!
totally agree. one of our fan pages went viral and we got 140K organic fans. that gives us a bit of traffic – I admit. but first of all, it’s like a flash in the pan – we post, we get some traffic. no post, no traffic.
SEO and content marketing are so much more stable and valueable. people who visit our website from google are 5x more likely to convert!
i’ve seen days we had over 12K people on our website from FB. We didn’t make much money on any of these days – it just increased our bounce rate stats 🙂
I was surprised about two things:
1. Blog post, huge traffic from Reddit and via addshare. Quite impressive reach for me, 1k unique visitors within one month.
2. Blog post: 3 times as much content, very high quality. Applied skyscraper technique, no Reddit, no addshare, so far, seems to reach the same amount of reach even though my line in the sand was to double it. No email sign ups
This is pretty cool, I wonder what how social media like twitter should be treated. Does it work better as a tool to engage an audience, where the atmosphere can be more conversational than an email list.
Thanks for posting. I can’t recall a surprised moment right now, but I’m glad to see a post about this. As a subscriber to many eNewsletters, I’m becoming more and more aware of the use and effectiveness of email marketing. Here’s an article with an infographic about how social media and email marketing go hand-in-hand: https://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/email-vs-social-media-marketing-which-is-better-infographic/624286. It supports the point you made about using social media to gain email subscribers. With the presidential campaign season underway, it could be interesting to see how both are used.
I like your content. Keep it up. – From Brazil.
Thanks, Noah. Awesome advice. Stoked to apply this to my business.
i’m continually surprised at how afraid we can be of failure (business or otherwise)!! it keeps us from seeing reality…today I presented to my company’s CEO a link “earning” strategy for our site. he threw it out as link “building” crap and said it would hurt our site and waste money. he was very reactive to what I had to say and the smell of fear was palpable. despite sharing two articles from authority in SEO…didn’t matter. reminds me we cling to our belief’s unless we’re brave enough not to
I’m consistently able to get a over 50% conversion rate doing facebook advertising using dark posts and sending a highly targeted audience direct from facebook to my clients product website. Even email isn’t the holy grail 🙂 But I agree email is totally more effective than twitter…but I’d argue that facebook can be even more effective then email marketing even given the right target audience, the right message, spoken in the right language and coupled with the right image. I do love your stuff though No-ahs-at-all. lol Keep em coming…
Noah, I only use social media to build relationships. Have you tested this lately now that your followers have grown?
I was surprised about how few backers came from Facebook during my successful Kickstarter campaign.
Even when others with half a million FB fans mentioned my project, it made very little difference.
The key was other influencers sending our campaign out through their email lists.
Winston Churchill said “truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” However, the net is “a fog of lies clouding over real truth!” Noah and his emails are the exception.
Noah,
Great article. I think this is the first practical study I have read about using Twitter as promotion. I would have never guessed you would have a CTR less than 1%. No wonder so many gurus sell expensive courses to help us market our sites. Thank you for the perspective.
IMO: The response you get might depend on the content.
As your tweet was obviously referring to quite private content without real news, I would think the response rate with offering information on business issues would have been higher.
But yes, for sure, the response rate on your email subscribers is always higher, as they are generally interessted in you.
The question, which is going through my head is: Is social media nevertheless quite nescessary, because it really helps to spread the word? Or in other words: What do you think: Where do your emailsubcribers come from?
Thank you for all the thought food!
Anecdotally I experience the same lack of click-through on Twitter. I would be interested to see you run this experiment on Facebook.
Like your emails. Think you are onto something. Tried to go through to share at this link: “Tell a friend, your Twitter followers or your Facebook network about this newsletter. (They can join at Okdork.com/join)” but you were having difficulties. Just thought you should know. Thanks!
Hi Noah, thanks a lot for sharing this experience. Nothing can substitute effective email marketing and your newsletter is a good example for that. I just read your email in one go without skipping a single line. I choose my newsletter subscriptions very specifically and spend around an hour just reading through my mails. But yes, social media is too much to filter, very often we miss the most relevant information.
Nice case-study
HUNDY P! I totally agree…I’ve done social media roles before and I’ve done growth roles where I have complete control over my lead generation initiatives and EMAIL IS KING – no matter what.
Social can assist in driving traffic and gaining recognition but when it comes to real-results and real conversions, email is where it’s at.
Happy to see this post!
Kevin
Twitter had a 1% return — about what I would expect for just throwing something out there, 1% is actually high. BUt 25% among subscribers is also believable since you have already sold them on responding. If you had had +50% on responders that would be hard to believe; 0.01% from Twitter would guarantee writing off Twitter.
Noah, I completely agree. There is a lot os “social media hype”, but testing is needed to see what works for your company.
I ran a test last year where I tweeted 20x per day for 30 days. I shared others’ content, pushed a little on our own, pushed an occasional offer. My results? Added over 700 followers, pissed of one of my friends, a lot more visits to our website and only 0.02% conversion on our site. Normally we run around 4% without breaking a sweat. To me, Twitter is fascinating — the whole world at my fingertips. But for our marketing agency business? Not useful. I’ll jump on the email marketing bandwagon any day 🙂
Yes, I am surprised at how USEFUL Noah’s emails from OKDork.com are. I am setting up a new business and he is pointing me in the right direction in many ways. THANKS Noah!
THANK YOU! Thank you for clarifying this mystery for me! Seriously, I couldn’t understand how my Kickstarter campaign within the first 24 hours garnered 105 views=10 pledges by using FB friends only ……and then 11 views out of 22,000 impressions via FB advertising or equally dismal conversion rates with Twitter and Google Adsense respectively. Bottom line: I’m gonna have to suck it up and borrow the 16k I needed to fill my Walmart PO….. ‘cuz Kickstarters first 24 hour success did NOT replicate by using the other social media COT’s.
Panera Bread had this e-mail advertisement that was a game, you clicked on these characters and it told a story how Panera was antibiotic free and blah blah blah. Normally I wouldn’t have spent so much time on something like that but I liked the animation and the way everything was drawn. Oh and they promised me something free after I was done playing this game. I don’t even know if I got it or not.
Social media are oversaturated with information, so it’s pretty difficult to reach all followers you have. Email became the only relevant way to reach as more your readers as possible.
Hi Noah,
The last time I was really surprised was today.
My son has food allergies, dairy, peanut, kiwi, macadamia, mustard, etc… For the last 13 years we have kept him from touching peanut residue because it could mean death. A couple of weeks ago we had a new blood test done and determined that he was a candidate fro a touch challange. Today I watched a nurse spread peanut butter on my son and he didn’t show any signs of reaction! MIND BLOWN! His world changed today.
If you hadn’t copied the entire post into the e-mail, the CTR would have been something close to 100%. 😉
This right here is the last time I was surprised! I expected the click rate to be higher on twitter, I was wrong.
Great article, Noah! I was surprised to hear we have similar experiences on Twitter; I thought it was just me! This is really helpful to know.
Hey Noah. I don’t know. I just like reading your emails. It’s nice to get automated emails that are not garbage. Thank you!
We were surprised to find that affiliates were benefiting from our TV advertising by running PPC campaigns that enabled them to earn commissions on traffic we paid to generate.
This is a great post, thank you. I’ve been wondering if email subscribers is the way to go, you’ve convinced me, and your plugin looks fantastic! I’m going to grab it right away. Thanks!
I still love email and this just proves that it still is that personal touch when you receive an email in your inbox. Great post and share Noah. Keep up your awesomeness 😉
I’ve been surprised by the lack of engagement on twitter as well. Every now and then, my facebook fan page gets good unpaid results in sending traffic but mostly, it’s become a pay to play game
Totally get this. Just this past week I wrote a blog post and was like “Meh. Not a fan of it but I’m hitting publish anyways.” And then it was one of my most popular posts to date. Crazy how that happens!
I have learned a lot from you Noah, you are one cool cat.
Despite all the worry about spam, people actually DO want to hear from you. All the time. I send out 5 emails a week, sometimes more, and get great feedback. Thanks Noah for helping me build my list so fast!
Been following you for a while, interesting stuff from an even more interesting person. Keep the good content coming Noah
I’m a big believer in social media, but a bigger believer in email, and that’s due almost entirely to what I’ve learned from your emails and blog posts. I came across a Slideshare yesterday about Growth Hacking that was really awesome and actionable. Guess who was featured: Noah Kagen and Appsumo. Nice. I tweeted it out and it has more RTs, Favs, Clicks than any other post in recent months.
Thanks. I don’t feel like such a loser when people ask me for my twitter handle.
So through some other digital marketing blog, I bought into some hype- they are pushing guest blog hosting on your blog as the ultimate way to generate tons of traffic. I would be intrigued to get your opinion or read a post of yours regarding the virtues and or process of becoming the host for guest posts.
thanks-
also love your blog-, its my “go to” for all digital marketing