One of the most valuable aspects of social media is the ability to apply the scientific method to marketing techniques. It’s best to aim for pure tests, with control and experimental groups testing one variable at a time. It can be hard to pull off since life doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but you can get really close to that goal.
I recently held a Meetup, and given a bit of luck, was able to conduct a near-perfectly pure test of the power of relying only on search for thought leadership/group marketing. Here’s the timeline:
May 11 - A friend tells me he’s going to use Meetups as his primary tool for prospecting. The last time I gave Meetups serious consideration was the Howard Dean campaign, but evidently it’s still going strong so I decide to check it out.
May 12 – When it comes to thought leadership via social media, I advise clients to pick a super niche topic, create a group and then contact the stakeholders and invite them to join. This time, I wanted to see what would happen with zero external marketing. No emails, no ads, no posts. Nothing but relying on people searching Meetup.com.
May 13 - I also tell clients every effort must be authentic and have a degree of passion to it. No one’s going to join a group unless they really care about its topic and you can’t fake it. In my case, I care a LOT about people from disparate departments (PR, sales, customer service, HR) getting together and talk about how they’re using social media. I think there are a lot of lessons that can be gleaned from these different points of view, and the sooner they’re shared, the better everyone’s life becomes. But if you’re in a silo, it can be hard to ask a question since it might mean ceding some political ground.
With that direction in mind, I ran a search for “B2B” and “social media” on Meetup.com and found zero groups with both keywords. Nice. Zero competition means a pure search situation. No variables like prettier logos or established memberships to fight against for attention and loyalty. People finding this group would choose to join based solely on the strength of the topic and feelings of legitimacy generated by the name and logo. I came up the name, “B2B Social Media Roundtable,” bought an icon from iStockphoto.com for about $8 and created this logo using PowerPoint.
May 14 - Created the Meetup, wrote the mission statement, and decided to host the event at the famed Roger Smith “Internet hotel.” Group description:
“Using social media at a B2B company? Wish you could peek over the silo wall to see what other departments are doing? The Roundtable is the place for Public Relations, Marketing, Sales, Investor Relations, Human Resources and Customer Service professionals to freely exchange ideas, techniques and lessons learned.”
June 8-29: Keeping an eye on my Meetup stats, I tweeted three times to see what would happen. Yes, this violated the “no marketing” rule, but with the spike in traffic dying down (see chart below), I figured it’s worth a try. The tweets were repeated on my LinkedIn page. Here’s the text and click throughs.
June 8th: Hey #B2Bdance. Want more? Come to the first ever Meetup of B2B Social Media Roundtable. 6/29 in NYC. http://ow.ly/1VYmX (four click throughs)
June 23: Next Tuesday is inaugural meeting of B2B Social Media Roundtable @rshotel. RSVP here: http://ow.ly/22gNW #B2B #SM #Meetup #socialmedia #PR (18 click throughs)
June 29: TONIGHT: 1st MeetUp of B2B Social Media Roundtable! 6:30 in Lily’s Bar @RShotel. RSVP here: http://ow.ly/24HFq #B2B #socialmedia #sm #PR (one click through)
The end result? 38 people joined the group, 13 people RSVP’d for the event, and five (besides me) showed up. Total out of pocket: $40 (labels for name tags were $32). But that just tells the metrics side of the story. Other ROI I’d include are:
- Met five people passionate about B2B social media and care about the same niche topic of getting departments to share learnings
- Met a prospect
- One attendee said they joined in part because the logo made it seem “official”
- One of the attendees taught me the nitty gritty of how Facebook’s social graph works. Something I was trying to wrap my head around for a couple months
- Met an industry leader in social media research
- I got to share some of the things I learned and am doing
- Learned how a conference organizer is investing in social media and trying new techniques
- Had a great time — which has led to the nucleus of a real community forming; one that’s interested in meeting again.
- Learned how to use Meetup and its incredible event tools (profile photos easily printed onto name badges, table tent signs, post cards and a blog widget. You HAVE to try it to believe it. In the old days, this would have taken a mareking coordinator a full day to produce.)
- A few lessons learned on how to use Twitter and Meetup together
Here are the traffic stats from Meetup.com. Anyone else see interesting correlations?
Questions? Thoughts to share? I hope that sharing these metrics and lessons encourage you to experiment with a new social media tool and to share the metrics.
And feel free to join the next meeting of the B2B Social Media Roundtable on July 26th!
