Thanks for the great question Rich!

I’m in a unique situation - 

• As a Mental Clutter Coach I offer TONS of advice on my site/blog. I’m currently hammering out a model that would include paid subscriptions to “weekly challenges” via email but also access to monthly webinars.
• As a Social Media Coach: my business partner & I just started our services in December and we’re finding that offering a “starter package” with intake & weekly phone calls has been a great way for folks to dip their tow in our waters as well as get to know us.

How did we get here?

Tools, tools, tools.

I use GetClicky for our backend analytics – I love that it’s affordable ($10/mo) plus they have a great feature “spy” that allows me to watch what users do on the sites – in real time! 

This is how I realized what advice on the blog was most read (and could be built out as a paid option) and that folks were going to our intake page but not engaging (we needed to prove we were worth the money).

As for strategy – Pinterest has been a brilliant move for me in the consulting industry. I have boards set up for organizing products I recommend – advice I’ve written – but also things like Giggle, Honey-Do List & even a “Man Bucket List“. My entire profile showcases my personality – both personally & professionally. When I go to the stats I can see that Pinterest is one of my biggest sources of traffic.

And in the spirit of social media – it’s important to always check to see what others have pinned regarding your site, I don’t want to get “caught” having social media happening to me! (case study on our FlirtingWithSocial.com site)

I can’t wait to hear what others are using/doing.

I’m still in a “low budget” phase, so I’m always eager to learn new things that could help!

I’m a heavy Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics user. Love both tools. If you’re a Google Analytics power user (or you’d like to get better using it), you might want to check out this Custom Report Sharing site a friend turned me on to recently: http://www.customreportsharing.com/ There are all kinds of custom reports there you might find useful for tracking performance of various types of sites.

I’ve also used CrazyEgg to track which items on a page are getting clicked. I found out on some pages people were clicking on images (that weren’t actually links). So I made those images click through to something — a landing page with more info and a call to action. Worked pretty well.

I was never a fan of the ebook incentive to sign up for email lists. So I set up my own site that way. I was giving away my Twitter for Beginners ebook as an appetizer without requiring an email address. The ebook was getting a lot of attention and downloads, but my email list wasn’t growing.

So I decided to create another ebook and use it as an incentive. I’ve found that greatly increased my subscribers. The conversion rate for that form (unique visitors vs. subscribers) is nearly 70%, so more than half of the people who read that page end up subscribing.

My lesson: Don’t assume that everyone thinks like I do. I had to push myself to be willing to try something new. 

@fawnmorgan Sure, how’d you do?  Did you notice anything about the winning forms? 

@Ted-Kolovos Thanks for sharing that. Since I figured that out, I’ve been trying it everywhere. It not only keeps me fresh, but many times I’ve found things just work better when they are not the way I prefer. Many time.

@charlene-kingston I agree with Ted great sentiment!

Thanks for all the great ideas everyone!! I currently work in marketing in the Architecture and Engineering industry and many firms are not quick to apply social media and a conversational style or strategy to their marketing plan.  However, us marketeers see a great deal of value in social media and conversational marketing because in the services industry its all about our people and the relationships we have with our clients.

To try to increase engagement on our website we have linked back to our social media profiles and have tried implementing the contact form on our campaign websites.  However, the number of people writing in to join mailing lists or contact us has been pretty small as of yet. 

After reading the above suggestions perhaps its time we brought out social media thinking to the website itself rather than just linking to our blog sites  and social profiles that implement that social thinking.

I will say that Google Analytics has been a great tool in helping us see where on our site the audience has visited and in turn allows us to contact them regarding a certain topic or expertise.  Also hootsuite, while our conversations are still something I’m trying to grow on twitter, hootsuite has been a great tool for measuring that interaction.