Social Media Our Case Study Part II

Back in June of last year I kicked off our case study with this post “Demonstrating Social Media Patience- Our Case Study”.  Within the article I talked about some of the different platforms I implemented and their overall affect.  To kind of get this article off on the right foot I wanted to reveal to you what did and did not work and where I had to make changes.

What Didn’t

Back in December 2009 I wanted to try out making Facebook pages based on topic.  Since we are a training company my theory and approach was to curate content based on a given topic and keep my viewers informed on the latest and greatest on that subject.  After careful analysis of traffic, views and interactions I came to the conclusion that this direction was not working.  As a matter of fact I feel it diluted the overall message of our brand.  Hence they are gone.  I kept the Fair Housing Education & News page for now since I have not finished analyzing those page stats.  It was a good lesson for me on many levels.  First of all it showed me you have to try something to really know it’s potential.  I could have theorized all I wanted about the concept but it took action to see what would really come of it.  Brand strength has always been a very careful science but when you employ the good old fashioned social media scientific method you have results that can steer your decisions.  I certainly don’t count this as a failure but a very interesting learning experience for me and for the work I am doing to strengthen The Training Factor brand name.

What Did

Out of the ashes of an amazingly crazy 2010 I am happy to say that overall there were many positive directions in using social media that did work.  I am going to touch on just one for today which is our blog.  Take a look at the image below and you can see the top ten referring traffic sources to our blog for 2010.

The first one I don’t lend to much weight to since it’s probably mostly me that directly went to site.  There are ways to filter out your IP address in Google analytics but the point is clearly stated in the next nine referring sources.  I jumped for joy when organic traffic was the next referring source but you will notice all the other social media tools that helped gain site traffic to our blog.  So that lends itself to the question: Did we just open up a Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter account and hope for the best?

The answer is an unequivocal no.  Like part 1 of my series states.  There are no Hail Mary’s in social media and there is no such thing as one hit wonders.  A solid consistent approach of being involved in the community and interacting with…dare I say…people is what generates an automatic result of reciprocation.  What’s in store for 2011?  I am only going to turn up the volume as Geno Church from Brains on Fire would say.  Our dedication is to continue to build a solid sociable community where education is at the heart of making the multifamily industry succeed each and every day.

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Written by Jonathan Saar