Twitter and Squidoo

Do you use Twitter to promote your lenses?   I must admit I'm a little hit and miss when it comes to Twitter, I'll use it a little bit and then I won't get on it for a few weeks!   A lot of people have disregarded the value of tweeting, but I've recently taken the time to look at some stats as to my twitter clicks and I'm going to make an effort to use Twitter on a much more regular basis.

My Squidoo links get an average of 23 clicks per link which may not be hundreds or thousands, but considering how easy it is to tweet something I think it's pretty cool.

My Zazzle links don't seem to do as well only attracting average of 14 clicks per link and my combined blogs average is doing about as well as Zazzle.

Different links do better than others and I can see that my 80s blog alone gets an average of 27 clicks per link.   This isn't surprising as a poll in Australia a couple of months ago showed that Generation X were actually embracing Twitter almost as much as the Generation Ys.

I'm convinced that if I can get these clicks with my rather hit and miss approach to Twitter then if I make a concerted effort to use it I should be able to do even better.   Last year I used Amazon's tweet button once to try it out - the result?   I sold a kindle!   I really don't know why I didn't continue to use it - in the words of Homer (the Simpson, not the Greek) - Doh!

The only problem with Twitter is that I don't want to be on it all day as I can waste an awful amount of time.   I do belong to places such as Amplify where it will automatically send a tweet for me, but the other way around this problem is by using a program to schedule my tweets.

I use Social Oomph to do a few things.   I have started scheduling tweets through them (there's two versions a free one and a professional one - I only use the free version), this is very handy.

I have been using the shorten url link on Social Oomph - in fact this was the main reason I joined the site initially as it was bad enough keeping my tweets short enough let alone also adding a full url!

I also have it set to autofollow everyone who follows me - not something everyone would want, but I find it easier to unfollow people who send me too much spam than to keep up with everyone who becomes my follower.

You can set up a DM to be sent to all new followers, but I don't do this as I don't like to receive generic messages myself.

When tweeting there are things to think about - if all you do is send links I'm pretty sure you'll get unfollowed at worse or at best no clicks on the links.

I do get onto Twitter once or twice a day (when I'm using it which will be from now onwards!) and read through a couple of pages retweeting some things that I like or answering questions that people have asked.

I love some of the quotes that are around - yes I'm one of those people that used to like the quote a day desk calendar that we had when I worked in a major bank - I'll often tweet a couple of different quotes that I think are funny, inspirational, thought provoking etc.

I check if there have been any mentions of myself although lately social oomph have been sending me emails when someone replies to one of my tweets or mentions me (I don't know why this has started happening, but it's very handy).   I then make sure I reply if appropriate.

I have found that I can send tweets on my phone so I'll often send a quick tweet if I'm waiting on my daughter to get out of school etc.

I have read that there is a 30/30/30 rule - I'm not sure that you have to be exact, but it does seem that this would make sense - 30% tweeting your links, 30% re-tweeting, 30% personal comments or quotes - no links.

The other thing that I've done is used a second twitter a/c and you can log several with Social Oomph and they'll manage them all really well.   Unfortunately because I'm slack when it comes to tweeting this niche a/c while I'm sure was a sound idea, did not work for me :(

Making Sales With Amazon Part Two

In my last post I talked about finding your voice in order to make sales with Amazon, but another important part of converting your visitors into buyers is by knowing your audience.   Now I don't know about you but I have a wide variety of different interests and my friends range in ages from 20 years younger than me to about 20 years older than me.   Why am I telling you this?   Well I have totally different conversations with my different groups of friends and acquaintances and this is the same with my lenses.

I always remember a fellow lensmaster called kab commenting on Squidu about writing on different things versus having niche a/c's and she said that is you looked at all of the different things that she wrote about you'd think she was like a monkey on crack.    That vision just cracked me up, but the same could be said of my lenses.   How do you sell Agatha Christie books alongside Katy Perry Nail Polish?   Obviously you present them differently.

If you've read a number of my lenses you may have noticed that both my layouts and language changes with the different types of subjects the same as the way you talk to different groups of people change - you speak to your child differently to how you'd speak to your best friend and you speak to your child's teacher in a different way again.

Identifying your audience and then knowing how to talk to them will definitely help your sales.

I  think that there are a couple of different types of buyers, those that want lots of quality information and then you just have to hope that you swing them over while they're in the buying process and not 'find them' while they're still in the research phase.

Another type of buyer are the ones that know they want say a Big Bang Theory t-shirt, but they're not sure which one - these buyers actually just want to see what's available and don't need a lot of information on the product, they'll click on what they like and buy from there.

The main thing, which is worth repeating again, is to know your audience and know which type of buyer you're writing for and then (hopefully) you'll start to make regular sales.