We're big fans of testing here at Digital Mums. We love it so much that it's one of the fundamentals we teach every single one of our students. In our recent #SocialDoneRight series we dedicated a whole week to sharing our unique testing model. And of course here at Digital Mums we like to practice what we preach; the Test, Measure, Reflect and Refine model has undoubtedly been a huge factor in our growth over the last three years.
And it's this love of testing that has meant, up to now, we've had two Twitter accounts. The first is our DigitalMumsHQ account. This is our original Twitter profile, the one that was set up by Kathryn and Nikki two months before they had even registered Digital Mums as a company back in 2013. It's been there from the very beginning and it works on a number of different levels for us. It's where we've run our most successful campaigns, where the heart of our Digital Mums community sits, where we connect with our influencers and potential customers. It drives disproportionate value for us as a business.
Our other one is @DigitalMumsBiz, which we created in our second year. One of the challenges we faced in that year (and still do, to a lesser extent) was how to drive two very different audiences towards us. Mums and businesses have completely different interests and motivations. We needed to test if we could achieve this in a more streamlined way. And so we created this second Twitter account; a more business-focused channel which would hopefully segment these two drastically different audiences.
Social media is all about the long game. Business results don't come immediately (unless you're already a huge brand or have a massive ad budget). Communities take time to build and there aren't any easy shortcuts to doing it. That's why we've been testing out @DigitalMumsBiz for around 15 months now.
And while our team and budget have grown significantly since starting out as a scrappy start-up, we're still a relatively small business. And when you're a small business, you don't have the luxury of being inefficient. Every pound spent has to be used wisely if you're going to grow fast enough to be sustainable and succeed. Things need to be tested and, once tested, either focused on if they work or stopped if they don't. Making sure we stay hyper-focused on what works is extremely important and essentially the main purpose of my job.
When it comes to our main Twitter account, we know that we have had huge success (that doesn't mean we're not always testing there too though!). Equally we know that email marketing converts people into sales. And that Facebook advertising drives lots of leads for us.
On many levels @DigitalMumsBiz has been a great success for us too. Over the past 15 months we have had some brilliant social media brains working on it. There have been some really successful campaigns on the channel which have driven some great leads for us.
But all this being said, it just doesn't drive the disproportionate success it needs to merit focusing on it at the expense of other channels. What we have also established is that a high percentage of our followers on @DigitalMumsBiz already follow us on HQ anyway. Increasingly, doubling up has stopped making sense.
Plus every hour we spend on @DigitalMumsBiz is an hour that could be spent elsewhere on channels where we are already going great guns. Or even more excitingly, testing out other channels to see their potential.
So that's why as of today, @DigitalMumsBiz will no longer be active. We'll be focusing our efforts elsewhere (watch this space as we've got big things to come soon).
@DigitalMumsBiz isn't a mistake or a failure. It's a test, one of countless ones we've done over the last two and a half years, and one of many more we'll do in the future. So if you're one of those few people that only follow us on the Biz channel be sure to come and join us over at HQ for plenty of social media expert advice and more.
Although on a personal level I'm sad to see it go, I'm happy that we're living and breathing our own Test, Measure, Reflect and Refine model. Thanks to all of you that have supported @DigitalMumsBiz over the last 15 months; we've loved it being part of our story.
But now the testing, measuring and reflecting is over. It's time to be brave and do the refining. We know goodbyes are hard but this is just another step on our Digital Mums' journey.
