Social Media metrics – it ain’t what you think

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Raz Chorev

Brand awareness is the new measuring stick of a successful marketing campaign, and that only the first set of eyeballs are the ones you pay for – everything after that is word of mouth. The idea that Social media ROI and metrics are difficult to measure isn’t quite true. Nor should you only be measuring by brand awareness (although this is definitely a measurement gauge for social media).

In fact, social media can offer some of the best metrics for ROI around. All you need to do is set your success guides – what you want to achieve and how long you want to spend achieving it – and then measure your results against that.

Blogger outreach

A key component to many (if not most) social media campaigns, blogger outreach programs can offer some of the best mileage and results of any marketing tool. Measuring your success isn’t too difficult, either:

  • How many bloggers wrote about you?
  • How many comments did these posts receive? (not always applicable – depends on the subject).
  • How many social shares did the post get?
  • How many Re-Tweets did this post get?
  • How many social bookmarks did it receive?
  • What was your traffic pre- and post-outreach?
  • How much product did you have to provide for bloggers versus how many sales did you receive?

Twitter

One of the darlings for any product launch, service or business, Twitter not only offers instant eyeballs but great returns as well. Again, measuring your impact is relatively simple:

  • How many Re-Tweets did you get?
  • How many people Reacted to your tweet? asked questions? commented?
  • How often was your  hashtag used?
  • How many times was your  vanity URL used?
  • How many new (genuine) followers did you get while your promotion was on?
  • If you used something like  Sponsored Tweets, what was the cost versus click-through and conversion?

Facebook

Fast becoming the key destination for many businesses and their products, Facebook offers some great built-in tools as well as demographic options to help gauge a paid advertising campaign:

  • How many new Likes did you make over how many you targeted?
  • How many times was your promotion message liked? (the ad, not the page).
  • How many time your page was shared?
  • If you built a Facebook application, how many times was it installed/shared?
  • Were you successful reaching your target demographic ( Facebook Insights can help you here)?
  • How much did you spend on a Facebook ad and how did click-throughs and new sales/customers compare?

Youtube and video sites

More than just a fun place to see kids hurt themselves on bikes, YouTube is a key tool in any marketing campaign now. Questions to ask:

  • How many video/channel views did you get?
  • How many Likes and Favourites did you receive?
  • How many downloads did you get (on video sites that allow downloads)?
  • How many embeds has your video seen elsewhere on the web?
  • How many subscribers did your channel attract?
  • If your video had a call to action with a vanity URL, how many times did this happen?
  • How many social shares did you get?

Mobile

As marketing evolves, so the different ways to reach an audience combine. Mobile marketing (including iPhone/iPad/BlackBerry apps) is the perfect complement to social marketing and measurement can easily be achieved:

  • Did you use a  push SMS system to drive traffic to a mobile-friendly site? If so, how many views did that account for?
  • Did you use  QR codes, and if so, how many times were they used?
  • How many downloads did your mobile app receive?
  • How many check-ins were used on  Gowalla and  Foursquare?
  • How many Opens and click-throughs did your message get?

These are just some of the immediate ways you can measure how successful your goals were met. There are more still – monitoring tools and more defined analytics are other ways. It all depends how your goals are set and how you define success. Then compare man hours and financial outlay versus return to see how successful you were.

The point is, a lot of marketing can come down to luck and circumstance as much as brilliant strategy. I’ve seen some great campaigns flounder while crap ones succeed – timing and a welcoming audience are key.

However, one thing you can control is measurement. And with social media and mobile marketing, measuring metrics has never been easier.

How about you – how are you measuring your campaigns and defining success?

*Source http://www.dannybrown.me
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Protecting your online reputation

Posted on August 7, 2010 by Raz Chorev
I don’t know if this is co-incidental, but about a week ago one of my clients told me that his son, in the last stage of completing his degree, has a couple of days off (studies) per week, and asked if I can help him find a position with an accounting firm I was recently working with.
A day later, I receive this article, from a sales trainer (Sales Gravy – Jeb Blount) I subscribe to, depicting a similar scenario (hopefully without a similar outcome!).

Colin hung up the phone and just stood there shaking his head. He had pulled strings to get his son, Perry, an interview at one of the most well-respected accounting firms in the country. With an MBA from a top tier business school and his connections, Perry should have been a shoo-in. Then he got the call. Before the offer letter went out, the hiring manager googled his son’s name and found pictures of him doing bong hits at a college party. These were pictures from five years earlier that someone else had posted and tagged. Nevertheless, Colin’s son’s reputation had taken a major hit and the offer was withdrawn - game over.

We live in the Age of Transparency. Anyone, anywhere, anytime can get a snapshot of you with a simple web search. Your managers, peers, prospects, and people you meet are checking you out online. Savvy prospects and customers are doing research on you before meetings. What are they finding when they google you? Your online presence plays a crucial role in building your reputation. If you ignore it, it will be at your own peril. You must control what people find when they search for you on the web.

In the rest of the article, there were some useful ideas, which I’ve discussed before, regarding protection of your online personal brand. To summarize, there are 3 basic steps we all need to take:

I Googled you

1. Awareness – we need to know 2 things:    a. We all may have an online presence, whether we’ve created it, or someone else had.
b. We can “influence” Google’s search results.
2. Activity – we need to be active online, so when people are Googling us, they find what we want them to find.
3. Monitoring – make it a habit to monitor the online world, and make sure our reputation is spotless. After all, the only thing we take with us out of this world, is our reputation.

Awareness

Google your name in quotation

marks. It is important to see what comes up on the first page. The first page of a google search result is precious real-estate. If you don’t like what you see set goals to get more positive links about YOU on page one through blogging, articles, contributions, and social medial profiles.
There is a lot of room for experimentation, so use your talents and skills to communicate in your own unique way. Second, this experimentation has led to collaboration, and smart people are sharing information all the time.

Activity

Make sure you make time every day for “learning”. Look over sites and information to keep up with the developments in social media.

Develop Content. Blogging is a great way to share your knowledge, collaborate with others and be seen as an expert in your field. Some people recommend blogging 3 times a week. Other avenues could be whitepapers, audio recordings, slide presentations and videos.

Build Relationships. Building and maintaining relationships has never been easier. Those of us in sales and marketing have always known the value of relationship building (People Buy YOU), but now everyone needs to make it a priority. Make sure you have complete profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Twitter is a fantastic source of information, and an excellent place to learn. Social media is an excellent way to build relationships, but don’t forget the value of face to face meetings, phone calls, hand written notes, and emails. It’s good to focus on important clients and influencers, but leave room for the “accidental” connections. Social media networking can be serendipitous, you never know which person may lead you to a new connection or client.

Monitoring

Social media alerts (Google or Social Mention) are a great (and FREE!!) way to monitor your name and/or industry. If something important happens in your industry you’ll receive an email, bringing it to your attention. Now that you know about it, you can comment. If someone says something positive, a thank you goes a long way. If there is negative chatter starting up around your name or company, alerts keep you on top of it and you can jump in and take care of things quickly. Addictomatic is a fantastic site for big picture monitoring.

Based on a enewsletter article written by Jeb Blount, and Fauzia Burke

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Who’s managing your reputation?

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Raz Chorev

Time and time again I see people show interest in Social Media, but can’t find the time to invest in it.

Let me state it loud and clear – more than half of the word Network is WORK!

It takes time, and resources. I’m OK with social media VAs and PR people managing companies‘ accounts on Twitter, blogging, uploading YouTube video, and even managing Facebook pages.

What I’m straggling with, are people who outsource their personal networking efforts. It’s not like in the old days (5 years ago, or even in the pre historic era – last century!!), when most people had to be in front of their desktop computer, to do anything online. Now, when smartphones are common place, when most executives have an iphone or a Blackberry, there is really no reason to let your PA or VA (Virtual Assistant) to manage your personal brand, and online reputation.

How busy are you really? Would you send your PA to your brothers’ wedding? Go to a work function on your behalf? A clients evening? Fund Raising event? Manage your son’s soccer team? I hope you’ve answered NO to most of them (I’m joking – ALL of them!!)

Managing your online network is no different. You need to invite people. You need to communicate with your peers. You need to answer questions, and participate in an online discussion. If your PA can do it on your behalf – how strong is your relationship with your network anyway?

I am not managing networks, and numbers. I create, and foster business and personal relationships, with people I care about, and care about me. NO ONE can do it better than me! I would like to believe that my friends, online and offline, are friends because they like me, and what I represent. If someone else was answering my emails, my phone calls, and connecting with other people – would I be able to consider it MY network?

What do you think?

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Posted in Personal Branding, Social media, building relationships, networking | Tagged , , | 23 Comments