Social Media Measurment: What To Measure And How

Social media marketing works…it’s just hard to know what part is working best. With literally unlimited opportunities to participate and use social media, you need to know what is effective to dial in your efforts and become more efficient over time. Read more

Harnessing Brand Advocates In Social Media

Prospects involved in online communities can have a multiplier effect on your marketing effort if you can convert them into brand advocates for your business.

In a recent eMarketer post we found a recent survey conducted by Synovate for word-of-mouth ad network PostRelease investigated just how likely Internet users are to talk about Brands and motivate consumers to become advocates. The study confirms that involved Internet users express this brand advocacy in many ways online and offline. This is called “earned media” in professional marketing circles…where brand messages get repeated in traditional media outlets, online in social networks or offline in recommendations and conversations. It’s free and very valuable.

The concept of earned media is important because it is the most powerful form of communication. Studies have shown for years that work of mouth communication is the most powerful form of motivating consumers. This study looks at (and confirms) how online brand advocates influence friends and family around them online and offline.

The most common word-of-mouth activity reported by respondents was helping a friend or family member with a purchase decision, but more than two-fifths also said they had shared advice offline about information they learned on the Web. Significantly fewer Internet users posted their own ratings and reviews online, and only about one-half as many shared links to articles or reviews about products.

As you might expect, participation in social media and word-of-mouth activities was highest among the younger set. Even more interesting, almost half of them gave offline (in-person) advice based on information they saw online. But the numbers are strong across age groups.

eMarketer reports that PostRelease also broke down respondents according to whether or not they participate in online forums, which about one-fifth of those polled did. Forum participants were significantly more likely to take part in all the activities queried. Notably:

• 65% of forum contributors give advice offline based on information found online, compared with 35% of noncontributors.
• 66% of forum contributors post online ratings and reviews, compared with 16.8% of noncontributors.
• 43.6% of forum contributors share links to articles and reviews, versus 12% of noncontributors.
• 20.6% of forum contributors publish a blog, compared with 2.1% of noncontributors.

Users of forums, who are already actively engaged in online social activity, make for “enthusiastic consumers and influential brand advocates,” according to a statement by Justin Choi, president and founder of PostRelease.

What does this mean for your business?

You know those fans you are collecting on Facebook, the followers you are collecting on Twitter and the readers you are engaging with on your blog? Those are people you want to make into passionate brand advocates. They will have a multiplier effect on your top line revenue that will give you the edge in your market. The key is to carefully and deliberately build your fans, followers and readers so that you have a real relationship with them. Nurture them and activate them.

What do you think?

How To Create An Economic Advantage Using Social Media Marketing

As we discuss in Digital Forensics, listening to your customers and observing your competitors can give you a big edge when it comes to business marketing using social media and the distributed web. Done right, your will get to the point where you are learning a ton about how you can improve your product, delivery and messaging.

If your at the point where you have a good pulse on your customers from listening and participating in blog and forum discussions, then it may be time to consider embracing this information and taking action to further your brand objectives. By incorporating some of this rich customer information and  feedback into your marketing campaigns or product design or service offering, you can gain brand advocates and improve your brand/business positioning.

Getting started is simple:

1. Figure out the best way to solicit ideas from customers. Where appropriate, use the blogs you are following and participating in to propose ideas/solutions you would like to test and solicit comments. Another great way to do this is using Yahoo Answers, LinkedIn Answers and other sites like them to ask questions directly and get a read on who is asking questions similar to yours. Don’t be afraid that competitors will be getting this information as well. They key is acting on the information, and the next three steps will put you way ahead of them.

2. Vet feedback. Not all information you get back will be good information or necessarily reflect the underline idea you are testing. Spend time sorting through the feedback and continue to clarify and hone the ideas in the communities you are participating in until you feel comfortable that you have a solid idea.

3. Structure internal communication and process to best incorporate these customer ideas. Ideas without follow through will not get your new customers or market share. You now have the knowledge, the key is working this information into your internal workflow so that you incorporate these new ideas into your business.

4. Communicate the changes and improvements you will be making to your communities. Use the communities that your developed your new product or service ideas with to become brand advocates. They are already pre-sold on what your product strategy is…find ways to empower them to let others know.

Implementing this strategy will create huge economic advantages for your business. By identifying and executing new ideas that will expand your customer base, and have them purchase more products from you more frequently, your business can expand margins because capital investment to implement these ideas is not high (in most cases).

Go try it and tell us what you think.

The Reason Most Companies Will Fail With Social Media: 5 Phase Process To Get it Right

I have to get this off my chest.

Over the past few months we have encountered way too many great organizations implementing new websites and social media marketing programs without any clear objectives, strategy, measurement for success…nothing. Just and email from an executive demanding something get created that resembles social media so they look good in a press release, to the board or the CEO.

It reminds me of when I was running a major web 2.0 widget syndication platform company, and I got a call from the President of the digital division of a major entertainment company demanding that they need to get a Facebook application up asap!  It was when Facebook opened up the platform to third party developers for apps. When I asked why, it was just cuz…

We need to stop the madness or this social media marketing thing is going to hit a wall. Lots of time, money, and more importantly expectations, will be put into programs that will not work. Yes, it’s not that costly to build a Squidoo page, and you can build a Facebook Page in 45 minutes. But trust me, these efforts done in isolation, without being connected to all the other activity your business is doing, and without a strategy that builds on each piece, will not result in any meaningful impact on your business.

Seth Godin wrote about this issue in the context of businesses finding it easier to create events versus employ a process. It’s much easier to create a event (Seth uses the example of a trade show, but you could substitute a Facebook Page instead) because it has a specific focus and it’s temporal. It’s much easier to implement and get people rallied around a trade show booth…or get your 25 year old developer to do a Facebook Page! Social media marketing is a process that takes time, attention and a new kind of professionalism. Done right, it is a process and can be very effective and giving your business a real economic advantage.

Here is an outline of how we think about the process when we engage a client:

• Understand The Client’s Business:
  • What does your sales and product funnel look like?
  • Who is your best prospect, what is the emotional connection and how can we improve engagement?
  • Who are the top competitors and what makes them successful?
  • How can we improve exposure and coverage?
  • How are we empowering the community to interact and expand?
  • How can we increase lifetime value of each member of the community?
  • How can we build a voice and a new stage for your licensees?
  • How do we bridge offline experiences with online presence?
  • How are we extending to the mobile environment?
  • Baseline metrics

• Digital Forensics: Complete Analysis of the Marketplace
  • Reverse engineer digital footprint of target customers, key competitors and existing licensees
  • Uncover the most powerful, high volume keywords and phrases used that we can win
  • Step inside the dialogue going on in the target customers head while searching for related solutions
  • Partnership and linking strategy
  • Evaluate how competitors are implementing keyword/positioning and conversion mechanisms

• Get The “Home Base” Right: Website and Blog Evaluation, Organization and Structure
  • SEO site structure including landing pages and site sculpting
  • Content planning for distributed web, blog and website
  • Blog strategy
  • Take advantage of content pumps and leverage

• Build The Distributed Network: Social Media Content Build-Out And Distribution
  • Blog, Website and landing pages (plug-ins) as needed
  • Build and assemble content assets and other resources
  • Publish and distribute 10-12 SEO rich articles to start
  • Create 10-20 videos in the form of FAQ’s or mini-course. Distribute to over 80 sites using four different keywords
  • Create 4-5 Web 2.0 SEO optimized pages including Squidoo, Hub Pages, Facebook and Twitter (also vertical focused)
  • Establish Internal and External linking strategy
  • Blogging and forum participation strategy
  • Tools, dashboard and workflow
  • Integrate lead follow-up with autoresponders and/or sales people

• Measurement: Monitor key metrics on dashboard
  • Identify what is working and do more of it
  • Identify what is not working and do less of it
  • Work the math model to reduce average cost per lead/customer over time

This is a four plus month process and it actually never ends because you should be continually optimizing. These phases build on each other and are all connected so they have huge impact on your business. Also, this new marketing paradigm is moving so quickly, new concepts are being introduced daily, you should be always integrating new ideas.

Their are many terrific people and firms that can help implement a similar process. But as a businesses owner or manager, you can no longer abdicate the knowledge of what should be done, and how to do it right. Don’t let the “event planners” ruin your opportunity!

Is Social Media Marketing Trading Time For Money?

Lot’s of discussions going on around the Internet and in business meetings about how much time should be spent on social media marketing and how should that time be allocated.  A very active discussion is taking place at Chris Brogans blog where he postulates the framework of two hours a day broken down like this:

• 1/4 Listening in forums, blogs, tweets, competitors sites…
• 1/2 Commenting and communicating on and off your sites
• 1/4 Creating content…everything from blogging to video creation

Regardless of your personal view on how much time and how to allocate it, the point is social media marketing requires time, commitment and engagement. The question is…is this effort worth it?  Will I get more customers, more effectively and make more money? Simple question.

Our experience with our own products, and the clients we have worked with, point to these conclusions:

1. Versus a media mix of just PPC and/or traditional media, we are able to lower our average cost per lead significantly when social media marketing is added to the mix.
2. We become better at what we do because we are more in tune with the marketplace.
3. Our average lifetime value of a customer is always going up because we have a system, and multiple touch points, for activating our customer base when we have new products and services to sell.

Media and marketing is in a state of disruption.  If you have not already downloaded our free book on the subject I really encourage you do do it. The key point, if the results we get are real, the economic advantage a business can derive from implementing a social media marketing program is significant.

We believe that is leverage. Not trading time for money. Getting significantly more value for the time put in is what successful business know how to do.

What do you think about the time for value trade off?

Accidental SEO:The Laws Of Physics

That’s right search engine optimization is like one of the basic laws of physics.  For every action their is an equal and opposite reaction.  Well, in the case of SEO it may not always be equal, but something is going to happen if you just make some basic changes to what you are doing on your website.

A CEO I work with mentioned yesterday that they changed their website last summer.  Nothing special or very strategic, just an update.  They increased their leads (and share of search engine results) over 600%! Not bad for a website re-launch sans consultants or strategy.

Now, we are not suggesting you can just throw a dart against the board and expect these kind of results.  The point is sometimes we get so confused by all the strategy and latest techniques that we don’t do anything. With the right content management system, and a creative staff, most businesses should be in a position to test lots of new things frequently and very inexpensively.  Quick cycles of implement, test, learn rinse and repeat.

Key guideposts for this kind of implementation:

• Have a keyword strategy set that you are confident will get you results (traffic and conversion) if you win.  Nothing is worse that aiming at the wrong goal and finding out after you win.
• Test one thing at a time so you isolate variables and know when something is really working. Also know what you are testing…what is the outcome (leads, sales, downloads) you are looking for?
• Record everything you do.  Make sure you keep a record of every change you make, with date and results.  This will help you continue to build on your quick cycles and not go back and repeat implementations that did not work.

These same rules apply for social media implementation.  SEO and social media are related and together a very powerful combination.

Now go give it a try!

Social Media ROI

eMarketer had a terrific report today about social media ROI.  The fact is more businesses are employing social media marketing every day.  The problem is they are not doing in a strategic or systematic way.  Seems we are in a hurry to implement new things as we hear about them…but often do not even know what we are doing it or how it fits our overall stragic plan.

I remember when I was at Clearspring Technologies, a leading widget syndication company, and a major media partner called me and said he MUST get an app. on Facebook right away.  I asked him why and he could only answer because the just opened up their platform to apps and needed to be there.  Now I understand why a company may want to be a leader and certainly understand the importance of experimenting in this new space. But don’t you think that with a little planning you could think through how you could actually deploy something that supports your other marketing activity and even find ways to measure results?

The key in this new marketing world is making sure you have the right strategy (including targeted keywords and phrases) and then implementing many different programs in the distributed web that support that strategy.  Measurement is the lifeblood of this new marketing word because at the end of they day, the number of opportunities you will have to communicate with prospective customers in endless. You must know what is working and what is a waste of time or social media marketing will be and endless burden on you and your team.

We will do a post shortly about measurement techniques to help the discussion.