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The power of a social media audience

by JimRaffel on February 28, 2011

Recently, I was reading an email from Seth Godin about his new book “Poke the Box” that he is releasing through his new publishing venture The Domino Project. Seth was excited because enough of us had tweeted about and purchased the book to bring the price of the Kindle version down to $1.00. Yes, you read that right $1.00 for the digital version of a new Seth Godin book. He accomplished this by reaching out to his social media followers, but that’s not my story.

How the power of my social media audience blew me away

I’d already pre-ordered the limited edition print version of this book for $75. So, while I may order the kindle version, it immediately occurred to me that I needed to share this opportunity with as many folks as I could. I clicked on the Amazon.com link in Seth’s email. Because I’m an Amazon affiliate, my Amazon toolbar also appeared at the top of my browser. I took the easy way out and clicked on the “Tweet This” button. I added a few words of my own about the opportunity and then wandered off to bed for the evening.

I woke to a stream of about 20 retweets (re-sharing of my message on Twitter for those that don’t use the service). Pretty cool, I thought as I scrolled through them and sent thank you messages for sharing the good news about Seth’s new book. Then, I got to the one that blew me away. Brian Clark (@CopyBlogger on Twitter) had started this whole thing. Brian was the first retweet and from there it had gone kind of nuts. While I’m fairly proud of the audience of 3,500 followers I’ve built up on Twitter, @CopyBlogger has about 73,000 followers.

The power of sharing the good stuff

The Amazon statistics tell the story. The link included in my original tweet resulted in 1,520 click-throughs to Amazon.com. Then, those 1,520 clicks turned into 175 items purchased (mostly “Poke the Box”), which is an 11.5 percent conversion rate. Brian Clark has one engaged and faithful following. Me? I got lucky – or did I?

Keep sharing the good stuff and you will be rewarded. Brian, like me, is a Seth Godin fan. I’m sure he would have retweeted the first tweet he saw about the $1.00 offer or found it himself eventually (I can only assume he subscribes to Seth’s “The Dominio Project” email list). The point is that on this given day he was my “audience of one.” That tweet caught his attention and he shared it.

New relationships were born. I try and take the time to thank most people who retweet my tweets. As a result, I ended up having more than a few engaging conversations with some of Brian’s followers who had jumped on the retweet bandwagon. I’m following some new and interesting people and some of them are following me back.

Your number of followers matters less than remembering to always engage online as if you have an “audience of one.” At the end of the day, you are communicating with folks one at a time.

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Continue Reading 7 comments }new media, social media, Twitter

Audience Engagement: It’s All About Them

by JimRaffel on July 20, 2010

When preparing to speak, choose talking points that focus the dialog around the audience point of view and will resonate with them. Here is how I prepared for the opportunity to speak for the Milwaukee Likemind group about using your blog as a homebase for all on-line activity.

Jim Raffel speaking at Milwaukee LikemindTopic selection. When Jeff Larch contacted me with only two weeks until the meeting date I knew we would need to work together to pick a topic I was currently focused on. I’m currently putting lots of effort into improving my company and personal web-sites(blogs) as homebases for the ColorMetrix and Jim Raffel brands. Blogs as a homebase also gets lots of play as a topic on the A-list blogs these days so it seemed to Jeff and I the topic would result in audience engagement.

It really is all about them. I can talk in front of a mirror or video camera anytime. Doing this will actually improve your delivery skills if that is the kind of thing you want to work on improving. When I get in front of an audience, however, it all changes. Now, it’s time to share knowledge and shorten learning curves for the attendees if you can. You’ll know if you achieved audience engagement by the liveliness of the question and answer session that follows most presentations. Seems to me lots of good questions means you achieved the it’s all about them goal.

Q & A time is the payoff. If you’ve really done your job well, you will learn as much as the audience from the questions and answer session. The questions will tell you two things for sure. First, what topic areas did you get the group thinking about. Second, perhaps you’ll want to cover that area in more depth next time you get to speak. I’ve watched the Q&A section of the video a few times and am planning to watch it more. I’ve pulled some topic ideas from it and learned a few things myself.

If you’ve got a spare 45 minutes… The video above is the entire Linkmind presentation. Even if you only get the chance to watch a short portion your feedback in the comments for this post would be greatly appreciated.

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Continue Reading 5 comments }blogging, Blogging 101, conferences, Marketer, motivation, personal development, public speaking, Writing

Public Speaking 101: It’s Not Your Slides

July 2, 2010

Presentation slides are OK if they are well done. Just remember it’s not the slides the audience came to see…..it’s you. More speaking this year with fewer and simpler slides. It’s interesting that I have done more speaking this year and prepared fewer and simpler slides. It’s not an accident. I have colleagues who have [...]

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Public Speaking 101: One Person At a Time

July 1, 2010

Note from Jim: This week all my posts are themed around public speaking. That’s because late last week and early this week my focus has been growing my public speaking presence. Why not write about something that is near and dear to my heart at the moment and that I am immersed in – right? [...]

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Keep After Your Masterpieces

June 10, 2010

Yesterday, while working on an ebook for my ColorMetrix audience the one useful piece of information it will leave them with finally jumped out and bit me. Your masterpieces will take longer. The actual writing of a blog post rarely takes me more than and hour and is quite often done in 20 or 30 [...]

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Produce and Ship Daily

March 2, 2010

With the release of Seth Godin’s Linchpin (which I have yet to read) there has been a whole lot of buzz in the Blogosphere about “shipping it.” It’s good talk folks about the need to produce deliverable product each day and you should be paying close attention if you are not already doing so. Ask [...]

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