We all know sharing is caring, who I follow and who follows me really is a large concentration of people within the internet marketing industry. Every day we see fresh content in our streams and since we are all at different stages within our careers what may be old news to you is a fresh new avenue to discover for others. I decided I would gauge what kind of engagement I would receive by feeding SEO news directly into my twitter stream.
How did I do it?
Firstly I needed a reliable source of steady fresh news, I do have my own decks for this but on this occasion I used the RSS feed for the slashtag /seoblogs within Blekko. I know this to be a healthy and monitored slashtag because I am an associate editor along with 6 others including Tad Chef.
Next I would need a way to feed the RSS into Twitter, there are quite a few tools out there to do this but after playing with it previously on other projects I settled on Dlvr.it (free), this has an array of features like scheduling, adding content pre & post message, hashtagging, tweet stats etc. All the usual suspects. I opted for the clean and simple “Just post the latest message with the shorty URL”.
What Was My Aim?
If I am honest I did not have an overall aim beyond seeing how engaged my following was with the content I was sharing from resources they may have never come across before, I knew the content I was sharing was actually relevant to those that followed.
How Did it Turn Out?
In the week of testing the most popular posts clicked via my sharing from my first tweet to my last were;
- Google Biggest Ever Update – Greenlight (34 Clicks)
- Live from #SMX East – Google Survivor Tips – Search Marketing Sage (19 Clicks)
- What’s that tweet worth – Analytwics have arrived – Tamar (15 Clicks)
- Best Free Broken Link Checker Tools – Check Web Site for Broken Links (14 Clicks)
- Hot At Sphinn – Quitting Your SEO Career, SEOs Still Buy Links & More (13 Clicks)
More Numbers
Beyond those 80 clicks to posts there were a total of 314 clicks from 197 tweets.
I did see an increase in followers.
Increased followers (via Crowdbooster)
While not a huge fan of Klout there was an increase in “Influence score”. How much stock you put into Klout is up to you, but I know some of you take an interest.
Increase in Klout score (via Klout)
Conclusions
Along the way I did manage to bookmark a few of the articles that I was auto-tweeting and some will go in the end of year round up, I would never have discovered some of the great content being posted and have found new reading resources that I may also be adding to SEO Bloggers.
Funnily enough along the way I also noticed @Graywolf making reference to sharing content from other sources beyond your own self promotion (from SMX) and something along the lines of sharing 15-20% of others content, I may have over egged the pudding a little but I can see exactly where he is coming from and with a modicum of control you too can share the content by setting up your sources to a similar percentage from your trusted sources of SEO info and share it with me!
How did you find my sharing along the way? Useful?
Thanks for sharing the results of your test. I think the key is limiting the amount of autoposted content. Personally, I’m watching my timeline and UNfollowing anyone whose tweets look like a news feed. A few news items in an otherwise diverse group of tweets is no problem, as it suggests that the poster actually selected these as being worthy of distribution. I also look for signs that the poster read the article before tweeting the link, like a couple of words of commentary.
Roger
I feel the same way about those feeds that look like a continuous stream of auto as well, it was a good gauge of the reaction to the shares as I had mixed it in with my usual stuff. Finding the right balance is key and developing the conversations on the content we find and share will be of more benefit.
Cheers for stopping by Roger, appreciate it.