A Look Inside A Social Media Campaign – Part 2
Last month I pulled back the curtain a little and gave a look inside a social media campaign that we are currently undertaking for soccer tickets online. The story generated quite a few comments and emails and I wanted to provide an update on how the campaign is going.
To summarize our initial efforts we created five targeted social media events focused around creating awareness for the web site. Two of the events went popular on Digg and two made the buzz page at StumbleUpon. As a result these two web sites sent over 5,000 visitors to the web site.
In addition to creating awareness about the site, one of the other goals from this initial phase of the campaign was to use social media to get this web site out of any search engine sandbox. This goal was also accomplished.
The next phase of our campaign was to focus on developing relationships with the soccer community, especially those sites that focus on MLS teams. While the initial Digg and StumbleUpon tactics were like an all out advertising blitz, this second phrase is much more tactical in its approach.
We will measure success of the campaign by the number of subscribers to the web site plus by the amount of traffic that comes from the search engines.
To reach into the soccer community we used Google, technorati and blogrolls to identify sites with our target market. Blogrolls are an often underutilized tool for finding sites within a niche market. For example we were searching for fan sites of the Kansas City Wizards. We came across a fan site called Oz City Soccer and from this site we were able to identify 10 other Kansas City Wizard sites.
Once we had created a list of fan and general soccer sites we reached out to the blog owners via email or blog comments to let them know about a post that we have written on their team. We have been extremely happy with this approach as many of the sites have linked directly to our post. Not only does this bring traffic to the web site, it also creates deep links within the site which helps us with our SEO efforts.
From zero subscribers at the start of the year the web site now a subscriber base that is in the double digit’s according to Feedburner. When the major league soccer season kicks off in a another week or so, we anticipate that the number of subscribers will jump into the hundreds.
Our other goal was to increase the amount of search engine traffic that the site receives. The table below shows the amount of search engine traffic by month:
- December – 56 referrals
- January – 270 referrals
- February – 877 referrals
- Last 30 Days – 1,762 referrals
Overall we are very happy with how the campaign is progressing. This phase of the campaign isn’t as flashy or sexy as getting on the first page of Digg or StumbleUpon’s buzz page. But a lot of that traffic (especially Digg’s) is very transitory in nature. It will not help the site grow in the long run.
By actively reaching out to other sites the web site is beginning to build stronger and deeper roots within the soccer community. This work will payoff over the coming weeks and months as the site is positioned to be a quality source of soccer information.