Measuring the success of your social media plan depends on what your goals are. You must ask yourself what are you looking out of this strategy and what is realistically obtainable. Researching your market beforehand will bring clarity to your quest and will help bat off awkward questions from the board. As a relatively new concept, success with social media is difficult to measure as it is not about direct sales and success stories are still breaking, but it is not the standard “push strategy” industry norm for most companies. Social media strategies are a great complement to the standard marketing avenues and should be looked at in this light.
SO WHAT IS YOUR GOAL?
To increase your network of contacts to target potential customers?
To find the influencers in a community and get them into meaningful engagement?
To change the perception of your brand?
To be proactive with customer service?
To improve the contact with your customers?
To give a personal touch to the corporate brand?
These are all legitimate goals but unless you have a metrics in place to track your progress, how do you know that you have succeeded? You may feel you have done a good job but how do you explain to your bosses that you are forming long lasting ties with the movers and shakers in the industry and that their investment in your time and resources is worth the expense and deserves an increase in budget?
THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE
In most companies there is a generation gap between the guys at the top (who control the purse-strings) and the marketing guys who are advocating a social media plan. They may allow their prejudices get in the way of solid market fact; so give them what they will understand, present your metrics in a structured way. So start with the obvious and go with the number of Twitter followers; Facebook friends, or likes if you have a corporate page; viewers if you have a YouTube channel. For measuring your blog, use Google Feedburner to see the number of subscribers, views, comments etc. (There are a myriad of tools available online to get detailed statistics for each service such as TweetStats, Facebook Friends Wheel, Google Analytics; it depends on how much detail you want to go into.) Decision makers will see that your efforts have not been in vain as they observe month by month growth, brand awareness and presence. These reports can then be used to validate their investment in the social media initiative. However, (keep this to yourself) you must be cautious on relying on volume of users and fans etc as using this form of metrics alone will not give you any meaningful insight to your business. Target the increase you would expect from these mediums over a 6 month period and report the figures to management.
The use of search facilities on blogs and Twitter can highlight mentions of your brand name which can be used to track the increase or decrease in the number of people talking about your brand or product. You can also use sentiment measuring tools such as Twendz to watch change in satisfaction with your brand or organisation.
20 Constructive Social Media Tools
GO FOR THE KILL
Move on from the concrete statistics and identify from the content recieved through your social media pages areas how social media has increased customer interaction, sentiment, influence, and/or perception. The information received is priceless and you will stand to gain invaluable information on how your market works and the wealth of untapped knowledge that is out there.
It is important to show that there is a conversation out there for your product and that managed correctly, with time and resources, it can gave a massive impact on your companies image, reputation and bottom line. People buy people and not faceless corporations and in social media they really need to feel that this is the case. Humans are social animals, it’s in our nature to converse; this is the start of something big, advise your bosses now before they miss the boat.
Follow @twitterapi
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Twitter Do's and Dont's
DONT
Use twitter before you know how to use it
Tweet too much
Tweet over personal information
Tweet drunk
DO
Be conscise
Credit all your sources
Be polite
Be positive
Don’t say something to somebody you wouldn’t say to their face!
Follow @twitter
Use twitter before you know how to use it
Tweet too much
Tweet over personal information
Tweet drunk
DO
Be conscise
Credit all your sources
Be polite
Be positive
Don’t say something to somebody you wouldn’t say to their face!
Follow @twitter
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Patience and longevity are key to your social media strategy
Regular engagement is essential for sustained channel growth. You must be active in each of your chosen channels and you must be able to measure your success so that you can keep record of what works and what doesn’t. Social media takes time and you need to know where to spend it wisely.
Take time to develop your own insight into your audience. Work out an appropriate strategy to work and build upon. Make sure you do a complete SWOT analysis of each social media tool that you are thinking of using and go for what works for you.
Longevity is the important. Any commitment to these types of activities should be for a period of one year minimum. This will give you time to set up your base of followers and for you to make meaningful monitoring and tracking insights.
A WORD OF WARNING
Stay ahead of the game, the next social media tool is just around the corner and you have to be able to adapt quickly – find recognised experts in your area and keep them close. They are your tomorrow!
Follow @twitter
Take time to develop your own insight into your audience. Work out an appropriate strategy to work and build upon. Make sure you do a complete SWOT analysis of each social media tool that you are thinking of using and go for what works for you.
Longevity is the important. Any commitment to these types of activities should be for a period of one year minimum. This will give you time to set up your base of followers and for you to make meaningful monitoring and tracking insights.
A WORD OF WARNING
Stay ahead of the game, the next social media tool is just around the corner and you have to be able to adapt quickly – find recognised experts in your area and keep them close. They are your tomorrow!
Follow @twitter
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Listen before you leap
Want to get out there and bombard your audience with how great you are and how brilliant your products and services are? Or show off how much you know about a particular subject? hold it - hold it, reverse back and put the megaphone back in the box...you have to listen to the conversation before you jump in.
Analyse what people are saying about you before you comment. What is the trend, positive or negative? What age group are these people? Is it possible to find out? How are your competitors fairing out in the discussion. Plan what you want to say and make sure it is targeted at the right audience.
Different age groups respond to different messages. Younger audiences are naturally more competitive and will respond to online competitions whereas older audiences are looking for afformation that their opinion is important and that it adds to the dialogue.
Whatever your message is, make sure it is interesting and newsworthy, and of sufficient interest to others so that it will be passed on to other audiences through re-tweets etc. Remember, nobody likes a show-off, be friendly with a positive tone and interact with your audience. In order to be part of the conversation you must understand what the conversation is.
Analyse what people are saying about you before you comment. What is the trend, positive or negative? What age group are these people? Is it possible to find out? How are your competitors fairing out in the discussion. Plan what you want to say and make sure it is targeted at the right audience.
Different age groups respond to different messages. Younger audiences are naturally more competitive and will respond to online competitions whereas older audiences are looking for afformation that their opinion is important and that it adds to the dialogue.
Whatever your message is, make sure it is interesting and newsworthy, and of sufficient interest to others so that it will be passed on to other audiences through re-tweets etc. Remember, nobody likes a show-off, be friendly with a positive tone and interact with your audience. In order to be part of the conversation you must understand what the conversation is.
Social media and smartphones - location; location, location
With the report from ABI Research that 1.7 billion smartphones will be in circulation by 2016, location-based applications for social networking sites are set to rocket. What does this mean for your social media plan? Location-based social networking offers an opportunity to advertise and promote your business.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Location-based applications allow users to add their location to their tweets, messages or photos due to "location aware" software. Users can send photos with exact coordinates of where they are, or "check-in" to a business or location which sends alerts to their network of contacts. Mashups allow for your location to be viewable on map applications such as google maps.
SO?
The opportunity starts with making sure that your business is listed in your geolocation area. Facebook Places allows you to claim your business location free of charge. You can manage your place’s address, contact information, business hours, profile picture, admins and other settings. Users can now "check in" to your location, transmitting this message to their network - 'John has checked in at Benetton, La Muette".
WHY WOULD THEY BOTHER?
This is where your markeing nouce comes in! Give them a reason to come to your branch and to check-in! For example, "1/2 price jeans at Benetton this afternoon only" - this is the type of incentive that will give users credibility with their network and they will be more than happy to share their location details with their social network peers. For the business it is a great way of building a rapport with customers. You can organise special deals and save these to your location. The beauty with this form of marketing is the viral nature of the message. Your network becomes stronger as you reach other users who will bring their networks along to yours.
Be visible, searchable and make your location known!
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Location-based applications allow users to add their location to their tweets, messages or photos due to "location aware" software. Users can send photos with exact coordinates of where they are, or "check-in" to a business or location which sends alerts to their network of contacts. Mashups allow for your location to be viewable on map applications such as google maps.
SO?
The opportunity starts with making sure that your business is listed in your geolocation area. Facebook Places allows you to claim your business location free of charge. You can manage your place’s address, contact information, business hours, profile picture, admins and other settings. Users can now "check in" to your location, transmitting this message to their network - 'John has checked in at Benetton, La Muette".
WHY WOULD THEY BOTHER?
This is where your markeing nouce comes in! Give them a reason to come to your branch and to check-in! For example, "1/2 price jeans at Benetton this afternoon only" - this is the type of incentive that will give users credibility with their network and they will be more than happy to share their location details with their social network peers. For the business it is a great way of building a rapport with customers. You can organise special deals and save these to your location. The beauty with this form of marketing is the viral nature of the message. Your network becomes stronger as you reach other users who will bring their networks along to yours.
Be visible, searchable and make your location known!
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