iA couple of weeks ago, I posted about the most effective ways to grow your email list, which was based on the latest Audience Growth Survey from ExactTarget, a digital marketing company.
The survey also provided feedback from more than 400 marketers on the tactics that worked best for attracting Facebook fans and Twitter followers.
According to the data, the two most used tactics for Facebook were not considered by marketers to be the most effective. In fact, some of the highest rated tactics in terms of effectiveness have the lowest user numbers, including:
- Sponsored Stories/Facebook Ads
- Facebook Display Ads
- Offering FAQs and how-tos
- Answering customer questions
Here is a chart that summarizes the most used/most effective Facebook tactics:
The findings for Twitter tactics were similar to those for Facebook in that the most used were not the most effective in attracting followers. Here is the data on Twitter tactics:
This survey points up the necessity of examining your tactics to determine if they are actually working to support your marketing goals. Just doing something for the sake of doing it is a waste of your time and money. With built-in metrics available for social media networks, there is no excuse for not measuring the effectiveness of your efforts and discarding the things that clearly don’t work for you.
