I am pleased to announce that we’re staging another Bum Rush today, on Blog Action Day.

Each year any blogger who wishes to participate in Blog Action Day writes on the same theme. This year’s theme is water. So let me tell you about Charity Water. It’s a nonprofit organization that brings safe and clean drinking water to developing nations.

Now, every sale of Age Of Conversation III: Time To Get Busy goes to support Charity Water and help developing nations get clean, safe drinking water.

How cool is that? Please join our bum rush. You’ll learn more about the power of social media, and become part of the solution to one of the world’s toughest health challenges.

How do you join the Bum Rush? Generate more sales of book at Amazon.com. Purchase it yourself and encourage others to as well. If you work for an organization that hands out Christmas gifts, get them to pop for multiple copies. They make great gifts!

One caveat: Please only purchase 1 copy at a time because Amazon.com counts bulk orders as one.

You can buy the Kindle version here (it’s the Charity Water affiliate link). You can get the paperback version here and the hardback version here (the other two Charity Water affiliate links). What else can you do? Here are seven ideas:

1. Register for Blog Action Day.
2. Blog about Blog Action Day and mention Age Of Conversation: Time To Get Busy. Use the same affiliate links that are in this post so that Charity Water can get its contribution.
3. Join the conversation on Twitter. Use hashtags #aoc3 and #BAD10 for your comments about the book.
4. Trackback or comment on today’s post about the Bum Rush at http://ageofconversation.com.
5. Digg, Stumble and bookmark on Delicious.com all the posts you see about the event, including yours.
6. Become a Facebook fan of Age of Conversation 3 (“AoC3“) and interact with us on Facebook.
7. Send an e-mail to all your friends and get them involved too.

If we all band together and work for a common cause, we can make a difference. Join us in the bum rush on October 15, 2010 and help us raise money for Charity Water.

Now I’m even more excited about Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton’s latest project — as one of its 171 contributors. Age of Conversation 3 is published by the new digital publishing company Channel V Books. It’s available through all major online retailers, as a Kindle e-book, and in the ePub book format that woks with other major digital readers.

Here’s a quote for the publication press release:

Age of Conversation 3 captures the distinct shift from social media as a hypothetical consumer loyalty tool, as it was considered only a little more than a year ago, to its current state as a staple in the modern marketing toolbox …

“We have seen an incredible shift in the role of social media over the past three years. It has moved from an outlier in the marketing mix to one of the strategic pillars of any corporate marketing or branding exercise,” said Drew McLellan.

“And it doesn’t end there,” adds Gavin Heaton. “As the many authors of this new book explain, the focus may be on conversation, but you can’t participate in a conversation from the sidelines. It’s all about participation. And this book provides you with 171 lessons in this new art”.

The genesis for the series itself has all the makings of a thrilling read: regular correspondence between people around the world; a proactive collaboration between 15 countries; and two marketing professionals who have never met each other face to face, scrambling to learn how to publish a book from the ground up.

Raising Money For Worthy Causes

This book is a good read as well. It’s also a way for its owners to do good works.

The first Age of Conversation raised nearly $15,000 for Variety, the international children’s charity. The next volume raised another $10,000 for the cause. McLellan and Heaton used a social marketing campaign tactic they called the “Conversation Bum Rush,” described in my March, 2008 post.

All profits from the sale of this volume are donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a children’s charity nominated by me and a majority of the other 171 authors.

Find out more at the Age of Conversation blog. And feel free to join the Age of Conversation Facebook Fan Page.

The Authors:

Note: Get news on my expanded web design ROI workshops, to be held by C2 in Milwaukee and Madison.

Twitter As A Channel for Sales

It wasn’t too long ago that there were no definitive examples of strong positive ROI from Twitter. Since then several high-profile companies have publicized their successes. You might have read a recent account of how, according to Forbes and other sources, a division of Dell Computing has earned over $3 million from sales generated from its Twitter posts.

Here’s how your business can accurately measure direct sales — or track sales leads – generated by this powerful communication channel. All you need is a free Google Analytics (GA) account and the following new GA profiles (a special thanks to eConsultancy for their terrific post on this topic in May):

1.) Track all clicks from Twitter and major Twitter agents

a.) Add a new profile in Google Analytics

Name this new profile something like Twitter Traffic. If you’re creating this profile significantly later than the rest your Google Analytics set-up, you can add a date to the profile name. That will help you know how far back in time your results reach. In this case I haven’t:

b.) Add a filter for all Twitter-fed sources

This shows all of the possible sources of inbound links from Tweets — from you or anyone else:

b.) Then add a second filter to the Twitter Traffic profile — this one for URL-shortening services

Follow similar steps, but provide different input:

c.) Add a third filter — this one for traffic tagged URL traffic.

This is my favorite use of Google Analytics, because it allows for tracking individual performance in social media (in this case, Twitter).

The first two filters measured overall traffic from Twitter.

Here, it gets personal.

This filter uses tracking codes based on the Google URL builder. The system (described near the bottom of this post) tags your links before they are shortened and included in a tweet.

The filter allows you to track the tweets that you or other “deputized” Twitter-ers in your organization have posted. This is a great way to help your Twitter team see the actual strength of their network of followers, in terms of re-tweeting and thereby generating clicks.

Since these clicks are tracked by source code through Google Analytics, you can follow tagged visits right through to the goals you’ve set up. You could have a goal for requesting a quote. Or for purchasing a product. Each valuable action you track can now be viewed through the filter of a unique source code.

In other words, you can track direct ROI for individual members of your Twitter team, showing them their effectiveness at making the cash register ring!

So let’s get started. Once again this set-up starts with familiar steps, but uses some unique input:

Here is what the filter form should look like just before saving:

Once you save this filter, the bottom of the Profile Settings: Twitter Traffic page should show this (like other graphics, I’ve altered this slightly for legibility):

Generate Tagged URLs

Here’s an example of how I create a URL for promotions of likemind on my blog:
http://www.digitalsolid.com/?p=1733&utm_source=tweet&utm_medium=Twitter&utm_campaign=likemind

Everything before the first ampersand is the URL of the page I’m referring people to in my tweet. What follows that is three variables that Google can read. The first is the source code (utm_source). The source for this is a “tweet.” Similarly, the medium is “Twitter.” The campaign is “likemind.” If I were delegating these tweets to team members, I could make the first variable — the source code — the person doing the tweeting. For example, the utm_source could be “BillJones.” In this way, I can report by source code.

As it is, this is how the two campaigns I track using this method are measured, when I go into Campaign reporting in Google Analytics:

As you can see, in the last month I’ve received 41 visits from tweets I’ve posted and tagged, or re-tweets from others containing the same shortened URL. The leading campaign is a general campaign I’ve set to promote any blog entry that I’ve shared on Twitter.

I invite your thoughts or feedback.

Now don your pith helmets, and behold the authors of a book on social media. You will not encounter a more highly adaptive critter. How do they thrive?

Well, you wouldn’t expect them to typically run ads in the New York Times, or on the sides of cabs, for that matter. To promote the latest edition of their book, they are practicing what they preach. And they will succeed.

Watch and learn.

On March 29, join a social media movement (and help a good cause) by purchasing the latest Age of Conversation. And for an excellent blueprint for promoting the book, read Chris Wilson’s blog entry on the campaign (by way of David Berkowitz). The tactics Chris outlines are how the most successful social media “creatures” are surviving in this thrilling — and dangerous — new media jungle.

Watch and learn.

And, come the end of March, buy the book!