Image by Ludwig Gatzke via Flickr

Do you have social network profiles that you just can’t seem to keep up with? If so, I’ve got a little story to tell you. A recent client of mine, a small corporation, once had an employee who created social network profiles all over the internet. This employee finally moved on to other things after 2 years, but left the CEO with no idea exactly where the company’s social network profiles were registered, or how to manage them.

Here’s how it all started. This corporation is very humanistic and communicative, but since it’s also a startup, funds are tight and they hired interns to take care of the ‘non-critical’ social media marketing. They definitely had a lot on their plate and didn’t really know where to start, so they took the scattergraph approach and created profiles at as many social networks as they could find. I know some of you are already starting to feel the pain…

After a couple of years of this, they were seeing no results and brought me in to work with their team. I started by looking at all of their social network profiles. I used a social media monitoring and analysis tool to find out exactly what was happening with their brand, and the kind of communiques their employee had put on social networks.

What I found is that in almost 2 years, most of their social network profiles were abandoned. There was some spotty engagement in Facebook and a business community, but for the most part, as far as these social networks could tell, the company might as well be out of business for all the interaction it had with the communities it was a member of.

But what’s the real cost to a company of keeping these social profiles active? Or more specifically, what’s the cost of allowing them to go dormant?

In working with this client, we identified 3 specific difficulties abandoned social network profiles caused for this company:

1. Missed Opportunities: This company was proactive in their marketing materials, and included their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles on their business cards. But they didn’t include social media in their communications strategy, and therefore lost business due to their lack of engagement. In a very uncomfortable meeting one day, we read the comments customers left for them in various social networks when they first registered. When these questions went unanswered, there was a quick drop in interest, and as expected, no additional customer communication.
2. Sullied Reputation: As much as the CEO thought the company was doing business the Web 2.0 way, the employee in charge of social media was really unclear about his role. Corporate social media is more about customer service and communication than it is about sharing news articles in Digg and Reddit.  2 years after the initial social network profile creation, we found that this employee thought social media marketing meant that he should spend his time favoriting funny articles in Reddit and Digg than providing solid customer service in social networks and community building through the blog.
3. Expense: This small corporation couldn’t handle their social media management in-house because they weren’t sure if all of the company-branded profiles out there were really theirs or not. They had a lot of cleanup to do and realized that hiring a pro to work with their team was the only way to fix it. As we worked through the mess, we found even more issues that were a bit easier to deal with, but their loss in productivity and money was significant.

In my experience of working with companies ready to develop and implement social media, social media literacy is critical to success. This list defines the ABCs of social media literacy:

• Assessment: Always start with an assessment of your company’s social media readiness before you jump in. An assessment should build on the foundation of your business objectives and company culture. You’ll want to assess your strengths and weaknesses in Leadership, Innovation, Engagement. You’ll need to ascertain the competitive landscape and learn if other companies in your industry are successfully using social media in their corporate communications and marketing.
• Buzz: Do your research. Find out what people are saying about your business or products, and find out what they’re also saying about your competitors. It’s easy to let this project engulf you, so break it down with tools. Some popular ones are Google Alerts, Techrigy, and Radian6.
• Communication: The real value in social media for business lies in how it’s broken down communication barriers between customers and companies. The latest tools and trends, the latest apps, and everything that people are talking about indicates how people’s preferences for how they want to communicate is shifting. It’s your job to stay fairly updated on these things. You’ll notice that a “social media campaign” is not at all similar to a traditional media campaign. You can’t just give it to the agency and forget about it. Don’t stay current, stay ahead.

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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.

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