Let’s say you’ve gotten the approval to get your company involved in social media marketing and are ready to launch a campaign. How do you define whether your campaign will be a success or not?
This is an important question, because a large number of companies have jumped into social media campaigns without any clear business and communication strategy. Before the financial meltdown of the last few weeks, some companies had the resources to experiment with social media without worrying about financial accountability. But now, most businesses are forced into having solid success metrics for social media.
In fact, the lack of good metrics is cited as the biggest barrier to marketers’ adoption of social media. Particularly in this shaky financial climate, measuring impact is one of the definitive measures of a marketing strategy’s value. If you want to skip the experimentation, particularly in view of our current global financial crisis, I’ve assembled a list of 5 tips to help you measure success in your social media campaigns.
Success Tip #1: Identify your communications target and listen to them
The first step to measuring success in social media marketing is proper scope. There are new social networks popping up each week. It’s a waste of resources to join every new social network only to find you have no time to manage them. Find out where your most active customers & influencers spend time online – then listen and take notes.
Blogosphere Listening Tools:
Success Tip #2: Become involved in conversations
The second measurement of success is consistently utilizing social media to engage customers. Sure, in the identify/listen stage, you might have heard some things about your company that weren’t very complimentary. That’s ok. Your job now is to engage these customers and find a way to help. Be willing to acknowledge mistakes when they happen. Customers are surprisingly forgiving of honesty by a company.
If you’re one of the lucky companies who have only enthusiastic and happy customers, recognize their need to interact with your brand. Be open to engage with them on their turf. They’ll reward your brand with greater enthusiasm – which is a message that spreads through social networks like wildfire, and solidifies your brand.
How involved is your brand in communicating with customers and influencers? How often do you blog, Tweet, Flickr, comment, Podcast, upload videos, etc? This is an important success metric to track. Over time, you can connect this active conversation with social networks to increased sales.
Success Tip #3: Reduce Costs
As a social media marketing consultant, time after time I’ve seen companies get more excited about the great social media tools out there than in finding ways to connect with customers to reduce costs. But reducing costs is one of the prime success metrics social media can provide for you. How do you start?
Start down the path of reducing costs by empowering your customers:
- Create an open community where customers can support each other and reduce your internal customer service costs.
- Learn from your customers – some of your most innovative ideas can come from listening to your customers.
- Reduce your advertising costs. Tell your story to customers and encourage them to share it with others. Be compelling and open or it won’t work.
- Focus on long-term metrics. Successful campaigns often extend for a year or more where the pay-offs are more clearly shown.
Success Tip #4: Measure Your Website Analytics
My opinion is that social media is the next generation of search engine optimization. So I always encourage companies to think in those terms, and consider these analytics:
- Search engine ranking
- Social bookmarking activity
- Video/podcast views/listens
- Inbound links
- Technorati rankings
- Blog trackbacks
- RSS subscriptions
- Blog comments on your blog
- Active commenting on complimentary blogs
- Visitors (first-time and repeat)
- Visitor paths
- Referrers
Website analytics tools are more sophisticated and helpful the more clearly you’ve defined your objectives. Some of the most popular are: HubSpot Tools, Google Analytics, Omniture, WebTrends and Core Metrics.
Success Tip #5: Convert Conversations Into Leads
As you’ve heard often, customers are talking about your brand online whether you like it or not. Your risk of inaction is to ignore the conversation. Your return on investment will come when you engage these customers. Your conversations must provide value and be personable.
For instance, on Twitter both Starbucks and Whole Foods share customer comments, local specials, and ask customers what their favorite items are. It’s casual and open, yet subtly appeals to the attractiveness of the brand. Check out some of the brands on Twitter, and implement some of their conversation techniques. Use tracking codes whenever possible.
Measuring social media marketing performance is vital for your long-term success. For your next social media campaign, try implementing these 5 success metrics into your strategy. You’ll have more focus and a better handle on the time and resources your put into social media. Best of all, you’ll strengthen your brand and help incite greater customer loyalty and sales.
