Call it what you want, “Social Media,” “Web 2.0,” “Twitter,” or even “YouTwitFace,” the big buzz right now in marketing is to, somehow, even if you have no experience personally in any of the networks, squeeze, cram, and force your brand into every online social space possible.
Every marketing publication and PR firm is pushing Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In right now. To make things worse, thousands of people are fleecing companies by offering services as social media “experts.”
The problem is that very few companies have had any direct quantifiable return on investment (ROI) on their investment in social media.
As a marketing professional, I’m struggling to find ways to measure the results of all the posting, publishing, and commenting that I’ve been doing. Sure you can simulpublish content, but to really be building a relationship with your customers/audience, you need a live person to do the commenting and @ reply tweeting. How do you track the value of all that time spent?
One nice thing about the Big Four social networks is that they all let you set up a presence for FREE.
First, we need to establish the value of each social media platform:
Facebook – Is it for work or play, or both? I can’t figure this out, either. Pop products (hey there, Coke and Pepsi) as well as companies that cater to niches (geographically or topically) will, and have done well here. If you or something you sell has a cult following, CREATE A FAN PAGE NOW! If you’re selling insurance, though, you’re going to need a good strategy to be successful on Facebook.
Twitter – Anything goes here, but the value of Twitter comes from it’s ability to let you establish awareness, and speak directly to your customers’ problems/pain. Also, if you are in the content creation and publishing business, the value of Twitter is in the power of passed links.
Linked In – People go here to network professionally. You won’t find individuals looking to choose between Coke and Pepsi, but if you are looking to build your brand as a visible, authoritative, thought leader in it’s vertical, this is a good place to start. You’ll mostly meet people looking to find a job, though.
MySpace – Forget it, it’s dead!
That’s the Big Four of social media. From the three that are worth any investment, you can expect to derive value from:
1. Creating awareness/building traffic – You certainly don’t want to look dead in the water by not having a profile on each of these networks. Do at least enough to get by on each: Set up a company/product profile with the canned info/pitch from your website, and make sure you are going to get email notifications if anyone hails you (sends you a messages, @ tweets you, posts a comment to your LI group, et cetera) on any of the platforms. Make sure your company’s Linked In profile is up to date.
If you’re ready to experiment and invest some time/resources into the networks outside of just planting a flag, I would recommend:
- Setting up a Twitter profile for your company, following others in your industry and anyone that tweets about you or your product, and tweeting at least three times a week about something interesting that your company is working on. Offer coupons/specials to the first, tenth, or hundredth person that RT retweets your post!
- Setting up a company group on Linked In as a place for fans of your services, company employees, and company alumni to come together and chat. Post questions (what new feature should we add to our product in the next release).
- Create a Facebook fan page for your company/product, and if you are catering to a niche, update it with interesting, exclusive, or insider information.
- Any time your company/product is mentioned in a publication, post links to the story or article across all your social media presences. Automate this if possible!
- Make everyone in your company and any strategic partners aware of your presence on these social networks, and encourage them to join/follow/fan you.
Finally, in regards to building awareness, be open to conversations across your social network presences. If someone compliments your product, service, thank them–retweet them! (Check out their background and what info is readily available about them, and then) Hail them as a supporter! If someone criticizes you, respond openly. On Twitter: Offer empathy, respond quickly, engage honestly. Make the offended party feel like they have your CEO’s ear (even if they don’t!). Make sure you respond first in the medium that the complaint was lodged, and offer to take the conversation offline to a phone call or in-person meeting. Admit mistakes, and work with the offended party to remedy the situation. I think this will work wonders for your brand, and will breed positive buzz and word of mouth.
2. Establishing your company/brand as an innovative, visible, authoritative, thought leader in your vertical. Write a whitepaper. Commission and publish studies about your services/industry. Tweet about what your company is doing to be different. I haven’t really figured out the best way to accomplish this goal, but I’ve seen companies do this through social media (and I’d love to hear ideas about how to do this). If there is demand for your product or service, and your are the thought leader in your area, you will be successful.
3. Lead generation and sales. For most execs that have heard the social media buzz, and those that haven’t yet been cheated by someone calling themselves a “social media expert” the biggest misconception about social networks lies in the fact that they will directly generate business. This is simply (currently) not the case. It’s also very hard, without spending a lot of money on technology like SalesForce.com, to get a good handle on how pageviews and awareness are contributing to sales. I don’t think anyone not catering to niches is deriving a lot of direct sales from social networks at the moment (except from paid advertising), but as it becomes easier to directly link a customer’s social media profile to a company’s online checkout system, I think conversions will become more common (and will definitely be more quantifiable).
OK, OK, finally, here are my thoughts on how to measure the ROI of your efforts on each social media platform:
- Use a link analytics service like www.cli.gs to track click-throughs. Every link you post through a social media platform should be a tracked link.
- Segment traffic by sending users to specific landing pages on your site. Analytics, such as Google Analytics, will give you a window into the success of your social media forays by letting you see which sites are referring traffic to these landing pages, and showing you if visitors are sticking around to learn more about you (and where they are going to do this), or if they are jumping ship. Have forms on these landing pages as gateways to exclusive deals or information, and from these forms, try to gauge visitors’ intent to purchase.
- Post surveys to your customers (offer one lucky randomly-selected participant an iPod–and actually give it out!) and ask what you are doing right, what you could do better, and what they would like to learn about your service or product. Survey customers about what drew them to buy from you. Survey lost prospects (again offer them something in return) about why they did not purchase or went with someone else. Let everyone know that you have a presence across social networks and provide links!
I’m a multimedia designer and producer in Annapolis, Maryland. Follow my twitter feed: www.twitter.com/jeffreyahaines