Last time I introduced you to Bitly.com, one way to track clicks. Since the post, I have used Bitly to track Bob’s Kindleboard signature line and the FREE book promotion we did this week.
One thing we noticed was that the Kindleboard sig line is getting a lot of clicks. Okay. Lets back up. What is the Kindleboard sig line? It’s the signature stamp on every post Bob makes on Kindleboards. Kindleboards is a chat board for Kindle authors, Kindle owners and everything Kindle.
This is a screen shot of a post of Bob’s and his sig line in Kindleboards.
On 21, February we had over 300 clicks on The Shelfless Book cover image and over 300 clicks on the Duty, Honor, Country cover. What does this mean? Simply that people like the images enough to see what it’s all about. Or maybe they just like Bob. Bob is a likeable guy most days. It doesn’t mean people are rushing out to buy the books, but they are interested enough to click on something. Its all about Presence Marketing, a term you will hear a lot from me in these posts.
FYI — 26 Feb The Shelfless Book has its official release (though you can get your copy now).
When I sent Bob an email with the Bitly statistics I half expected the usual “okay” email response. Instead I got “this is really useful information” and he pointed out we might be able to gauge interest and likability of the look of our covers. If one cover gets very few hits and another gets hundreds, it might tell us something about reader reaction to any given cover.
One thing I have found helpful with Bitly is to “bundle” your links. For example all the links on Bob’s signature line is one bundle. The next round of FREE ebooks will also have its own bundle. This way I can track if people are clicking on the buy links at the end of each book, or the click is something else. This, to me, is the most important measurement because if you just finished reading a Bob Mayer Factual Fiction novel AND you clicked on a book cover buy link at the end of said novel, then you are more likely to purchase the book you just clicked on.
I check these numbers 1 to 2 times a day. I’m looking at a couple of things, but only spending a few minutes each day pondering the results and checking where we have the most Klout. One could get easily get caught up in trying to figure this stuff out and its only one aspect of my role at Who Dares Wins Publishing. So, moving on.
In the comment section of the last post Klout was brought up.
Here is a video on Klout that I found interesting. I’m not sure I get how hotels will upgrade my room because of my Klout score, but hey, you never know these days.
Your Klout influence is based on the ability to drive action. According to my bitly analysis of Bob’s Kindleboard sig line, his name and book covers carry a lot of Klout!
In looking more closely at Klout, I think its something we can get too hung up on, but it does raise one big interesting question. Do I communicate with other people in social media who have the ability to drive action…influence others…giving me more reach…and more Klout?
When I look at who I influence, the highest Klout score is a 39. Huh, I don’t influence Bob, but he influences me? Weird. The highest score of those who influence me is 66. I just went and added some influencers (didn’t know I could do that). Maybe I can then influence more influencers. Yeah, Bob’s got a headache too.
Another interesting thing is your Klout Style. I’m a Specialist, meaning I’m focused and consistent (Bob, did you hear that?). That actually means that I tend to stay in my specific topic and industry when I participate in social media.
I also just compared Bob and myself. He kicks my butt on Twitter but I’ve got him beat on Facebook and Google. Sigh, he’s also a specialist. Go figure. Oh wait, I do influence Bob when I click on his influenced by. Whew. Good to know he listens to me.
I’m poking a little fun at this because its easy to get too caught up in it. I think its good to know this stuff exists, but put it in perspective by what it really means. Simply put, it means that the people at Klout ranked me based on my actions on social media and how other people have acted on my interactions and there are simple ways to increase your Klout–by participating. Caveat. Only so many hours in the day. Pick and choose which social media sites work best for you and work those to the best of your ability and beyond! (my ode to Buzz Lightyear.)
The key is social media does influence our actions and the actions of others, including our buying behavior. Anyone who says being active on social media is wasting their time, I have three words for them…
- Presence
- Marketing
- Discoverability
If you don’t exist on the Internet, do you exist at all?
Write It Forward!
From Bob: I’m not going to wait to comment: Huh? Actually, Jen is finally getting me to see the value of this (buzzword) metadata. It’s going to allow us to focus our efforts. We’re discussing right now whether it’s better to spread our Free on Select over every week or do a burst for one week every month. I’m leaning toward the latter because, beyond the marketing aspect, there’s the work aspect, where the priority is content and if we only have one week where we focus on marketing and promo we can have three weeks where we focus on content.
Excellent post, Jen! New to me is bundling your Kindleboards sig. Do you have a how-to? Or is there one somewhere on the web? Thanks.
Ruth–we use bitly. So, take your Amazon link and your link for the photo and shorten them with Bitly, then put that into the [url="http:.....][img[http://image....][/url] tag and then you can analyze it through your “bundle” (which you create on bitly).
Hey, someone hacked into my post! Bob brings up another good point: priority. Content is King. Got to have Content. Promotion is Queen. Got to find ways to promote effectively. When you master the time management between the two, then you’re golden. We tend to keep track of what we do in these massive spreadsheets, as we do things we evaluate what works and what doesn’t and then make the best SOP for us. The key is finding what works for you. Many roads to Oz.
I’m finding this stuff very interesting, but I have to remind myself not to obsess about it. My hours are limited and some of them have to be directed toward writing, or it won’t matter how influencial I am, I won’t have any books to sell.
I’m reading Jen, but also wondering how people manage to do all this stuff. I’m struggling with my 7 comments on the web each day. Maybe I should switch one of my comments to the kindle boards. But then I’d need to set up bitly as well – that’s when my mind begins to go blank…
We can do it because we’re a team. I don’t do the bitly links with every thing. Even I’m not that obsessive. The key is to do what you can, be consistent in those efforts and do it well. Start with little things and grow. You’ll get a system down and then every so often you’ll change it up. I honestly don’t spend a lot of time on Kindleboards. Bob does though. I also am enjoying Facebook, but find Pinterest confusing, but Bob is loving it, sort of.
My hope is to give you all a lot of information about various tools and then you can pick what works best for you.
And Kate–you have so much energy and I see you everywhere! Wish I could bottle you sometimes!
Oh, Jen, that’s not energy! It’s just one of the positive consequences of my job. I sit in classrooms all day, but I’m not a teacher. It’s rarely quiet enough to work on the wip, but I can comment on my favorite sites. It’s one of the trade-offs of having to work a traditional job while being a writer.
Ack! Sorry about the spelling – it’s too early in the am.
Thanks for the response on Klout. Rats. I’ll never get the hotel upgrade as I don’t use my author name for my reservation:-) I like the summary very much. Three things are easier to remember than a long list of do’s & don’ts. Do I have presence, what am I marketing, and how easiy is it from people to find me…PMD. Got it. .
I bundle my series for bit.ly. And yes, I believe Kindleboards is a hot ticket for indies. If nothing else, other indies know you exist and maybe they’ll pass along your tweets.
I’m constantly looking to break out of the “author bubble” search engines for social media keep putting me in.
Google, unfortunately, has gotten to be less information driven and more social media driven, which is a huge loss.
I’m all about the discoverability. I exist, therefore I am on the internet.
I didn’t know about the Kindleboards — thanks for mentioning that! I’ll have to prioritize that somewhere in the list of other social media to see where it falls on time availability! Keep sharing, Jen! You’re very helpful and I’m starting to understand you
“If you don’t exist on the Internet, do you exist at all?”
Love the last line! It needs to be on a t-shirt
And thanks for an thoughtful article!
Thanks for the post, Jen. I admit, I’m a bit lost on this bundling stuff and I’ve yet to discover the usefulness of Klout, but this is interesting reading.
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