Social Media Spin

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: 

• Tech­no­rati
• Google Blog Search
• Ice Rocket
• Blog­lines
• Twit­ter Search
• AideRSS

 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.