Measuring Social Media Marketing

From a business perspective, one of the most compelling arguments against investing resources into social media marketing is the lack of quantifiable performance metrics. Especially, since for most small and medium-sized businesses, they just don’t have the time, money and personnel to take advantage of some of the more advanced ways to track social media performance.

Furthermore, social media, as a marketing channel, is quite different than running advertisements, sending out direct mail, or producing radio or TV spots, or for that matter, any traditional type of marketing media.

By it’s very nature, social media is about engaging audiences in communication, not just sending out one-way promotional messages.

Regardless, the most fundamental ways to measure the results of social media efforts are the same for any type marketing.

Marketing Metrics

♦ How much does it cost? Just like with any business investment, the concept of how much it costs is fundamental to its benefits. And just because a significant amount of social media activity can be generated for no cost, or low cost, does not make it cost-effective. There’s labor involved in writing blog posts; creating/uploading videos to YouTube; keeping Facebook and Linkedin pages updated (in addition to making them engaging); and using Twitter. In this regard, a simple approach to controlling the labor cost of social media marketing is to simply limit the time investment to whatever is workable for your business.

♦ Feedback. The first responses you are likely to receive from your social media efforts will not be sales. It will be comments (good and bad) about your products, services and even the value and quality of your social media communications. This needs to be monitored and quantified in terms of how much overall feedback is generated, as well as how much is positive and negative, and even how engaged your audience is. For example, if your audience is communicating very thoughtfully and/or passionately about what you are saying, that’s an indication that your social media efforts are connecting with your audience.

♦ Prospects and customers. This is where the rubber meets the road: but at best, it’s wet and slippery. Does your social media activity actually generate more leads and customers? Unfortunately, this isn’t always clear. Sure, if you put up a special discount on a Facebook page, the resulting business can be attributed to social media. But other than such very specific examples, what about customers who are introduced to your website or business by way of Facebook or Twitter who then become prospects or customers? Although there are some advanced ways to measure this, they are typically beyond the scope of what a small or medium-sized business wants to be concerned about. For the purposes of this article, it’s useful to at least be able to determine if ANY prospects or customers are being generated via social media. Having said that, generating more traffic by way of social media is a contributing factor to more sales, even if such sales do not result with a first visit.

♦ Revenues. Of course the most important point of any marketing is measured at the bottom line of business finances: Have sales gone up? And if so, how much? And even though all the revenues from social media may not be attributed as such, can ANY revenue at all be quantified as resulting from social media?

Social Media Marketing Conclusion

This article is not intended as an argument against utilizing social media to expand business. But it is intended to lay bare that there are costs to using social media – even if only in labor – and that the results are not as readily quantifiable as other marketing media, such as paid advertising.

It’s also important to be aware that social media efforts may not yield immediate results in the same way as paid advertising. In fact, social media efforts should be contemplated and measured over a longer period of time. If your business is going to test the waters of social media by attempting to engage an audience for, let’s say, 30 days, “to see what happens,” the reality is that not much will likely occur and your activity will be apparently for naught.

To utilize social media effectively for marketing purposes, a longer time commitment is necessary to yield workable results.

And if you really want to use social media effectively, thinking in terms of an overall strategic implementation of a variety of social media channels to support your business goals would be an ideal. And in that regard, getting some professional help would be the best way to customize such an approach to maximize the benefits for your specific business.

How Much Time Should Your Business Devote to Social Media?

Social media can be used to generate more traffic and engagement with your prospects and customers. But how much time should you devote to it, from a business perspective?

That’s an especially important question if your social media efforts are not generating any quantifiable revenue. Particularly when there are many other strategies that will, and already are, producing traffic and sales for you.

Hence, the simple answer to the question above would be to focus MORE on income producing activities than social media.

Of course, revenue aside, one important advantage that social media has is that if your customers are talking about you via Twitter, Facebook and other such channels, then your business is missing out on the party by NOT being involved in such conversations.

In other words, minimally, social media is a way to listen to your customers. By listening to customer feedback (even if it’s complaints), they are helping you to succeed, by telling you what they want. Which means your job is simply to give your customers what they are asking for.

What should you be doing instead of social media?

You should be doing the usual marketing actions: Generating leads, converting leads to customers, as well as cross-selling and upselling more products and services to existing customers.

Further, any marketing efforts that can be focused on bolstering those activities, including new product development, would be more worthy of your time than social media.

Although social media engagement can be quite impressive, and even seductive, very few businesses would be able to survive without ensuring that the majority of their time is spent on critical revenue generating functions.

The solution? Balance.

Social Media Marketing Guide

Social Media platforms and channels represent a rapidly evolving landscape. SEOmoz has compiled an update for their Social Media Guide, which lists the most popular social media sites for marketing your business.

After you click on the following link and scroll down to the guide itself, you’ll see two large tabs to explore: “Top 25 Social Media Sites” and a list of “101 Social Media Sites.”

Social Media Marketing Guide

Additionally, to better appreciate all the rankings referenced for marketers, you’ll want to check out this page for a description of some of the ranking criteria:

Linkscape’s Metrics

Social Media Metrics

The metrics for social media marketing may not be inspiring or compelling to any bottom-line focused marketing executive. Especially compared to the measurability of direct response marketing. Nevertheless, social media is a platform that does provide another opportunity to get your business name in front of more people, in relatively inexpensive ways.

Here is a simple list of social media metrics, outlined by Liana Evans at Search Engine Watch, which, although intuitive to any social media marketer, merits review, since it does encompass the primary social media metrics that are common currency in today’s social media ecosystem.

Facebook/MySpace (social networking sites in general):

• Number of fans/friends
• Number of comments per day/week/month
• Number of discussions started by fans

Twitter:

• Number of qualified followers (qualified meaning actually people, not bots)
• Number of retweets

Blogging:

• Number of comments
• Number of subscribers
• Number of links posts get
• Number of retweets

Forums/Message Boards:

• Number of new members
• Number of posts per day
• Number of topics started per week
• Number of active members per month

Videos/Photos:

• Number of views
• Number of comments
• Ratings
• Number of subscribers/friends

Brand Lift/Sentiment:

• More mentions of brands/products/services
• Increase positive sentiment
• Decrease negative sentiment

Click here to read the full article by Liana Evans, What Is Your ‘R’ for ROI in Social Media?

The Future of New Media vs. Old Media

Where is new media headed, in comparison to what old media has accomplished?  Especially in terms of revenue generation? Vin Crosbie at ClickZ posted his perspective, New Media Predictions, Part 1 (link below).

“In almost all cases, new media’s operating revenues, when discounted for inflation, will never equal those that used to be generated by traditional media companies.”

Crosbie writes about the scarcity of old media, meaning the limited places to publish ads in newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, etc., as compared to the seemingly infinite opportunities to publish advertising in the realm of new media – particularly as associated with the Internet. Contemplating a supply and demand equation, more supply equals lower costs.

He further notes:

“In traditional media the media companies were the middlemen between consumers and content or between consumers and advertisers. The Internet tends, more often than not, to eliminate middlemen. Advertisers can now reach consumers directly.”

“The affiliate structure of America’s radio and television industries is about to implode due to broadband new media.”

“We’ll see bloodbaths and major restructuring in the U.S. television industry in the coming decade now that broadband Internet access is making the traditional affiliate business model obsolete.”

Click here to read the full article: New Media Predictions, Part 1.

What Is The Marketing Purpose of Social Media?

Social media can be simply for fun. Connecting up with old friends via Facebook, creating/viewing videos on YouTube, posting/sharing photos on Flickr and taking advantage of any of the many other social media networks can be entertaining, educational, and stimulating. (Conversely, social media time wasting would be a reason to stay away from it all….)

However, from a marketing perspective, there is another purpose that needs to be considered.

Used strategically, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are media channels to drive connections to a more meaningful place of content: your blog and/or your website to read an article, to find out more about a topic, to sign up for a newsletter, or to download some relevant content.

In other words, from a strategic marketing perspective, social media represents additional ways to engage potential customers and clients for the purpose of leveraging your promotional reach, nurturing relationships and providing value.

For a more in depth look at a social media strategy, click Social Media Chocolate Strategy

17 Steps For Social Networking Success (And Chocolate)

Lyndon Antcliff wrote How to win friends and influence people with social media networking and breaks it down into 17 steps, with step #1 revolving around your blog as the hub of your social networking activities.

“Your blog is where you show who you are and that you are a real person. People want to know about the people they do business with, and in a digital world your blog is the best place to show them.”

Although Lyndon and I are certainly in accord re making blogs central to a social media strategy (as I outline in my Social Media Chocolate Strategy), I defer to his step #17 as the most apt: “Be persistent.”