A memory popped up on my Facebook feed today for #PRprochat, a digital PR Twitter chat that I ran for years, in an effort to spread digital skills to the PR professionals looking to expand their skills, and as a tactic to build audience prior to my Above The Noise book release in 2016.
A lifetime ago.
(See the “best of” transcripts here.)
I was fortunate enough to land amazing guests, make friends I still have today, and hit reach numbers that boggled my mind. BUT. It didn’t grow conversion. It was one of the biggest disappointments of my career that I could become a Top 1% influencer in Digital PR, yet it didn’t grow my subscriber list the way I’d hoped, and it didn’t sell books.
Even when the book came out and won two awards, it didn’t get the support I’d expected from my fan base.
I learned a hard lesson. Even if you follow every “best practice” and invest YEARS in building audience, it doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t convert that influence into revenue.
I’m almost ready to start working on book number two. I won’t be using Twitter as a platform this time, I’m thinking Discord. We’ll see. But it will be different this time.
Marketers who say you should give everything away and provide value, value, value aren’t wrong – but to be successful at conversion, we need to master sales skills, too. It’s essential to connect those dots if the KPIs are revenue. It’s also the path to being a much better marketer.