Social Media Explorer

What Happened To Saying Something Nice?

2012-02-05T00:25:05Z

Social media has certainly given the power back to the consumer. But sometimes the consumer doesn’t do nice things with that power. While it could be a matter of perception (the overwhelming sentiment of most brands in online conversational analysis is positive), it certainly seems like the only time we take note of brand mentions online is when someone is whining or bitching about them.

AT&T is one brand that gets unnecessarily beaten about its head and face a lot online. I’ve never quite understood this, perhaps because I’m A) Practical in nature and understand technology messes up sometimes; and B) A fairly happy customer.

Last week, I had two opportunities to experience AT&T. A button on my AT&T U-Verse television remote is not working, so I hopped online to see if I could get a replacement. Within a minute or so of browsing around, I found the live support chat for U-Verse, offered up my problem, answered a series of questions and was told my remote was on its way … no charge.

Separately, I went to my local AT&T store to have my wireless modem replaced since the new operating system with my MacBookPro doesn’t agree with the old one. Michael, the sales associate who greeted me, recommended I upgrade to a MyFi unit which would not only give more than one device access and save me $10 per month on my bill, but it came with a $50 rebate. When I left the store, I got this email:

Personalized, relevant and useful. It even includes the personal contact information for Michael, the actual guy who helped me. I haven’t seen that from many retail stores before. Nice touch.

I’m sure plenty of people have had bad experiences with AT&T, as well as with other brands. But why do we rush to the Twitters of the world when we’re pissed, but aren’t apt to do so when we have a good experience?

My mother used to tell me if you can’t say something nice about someone, you shouldn’t say anything at all. Of course, I seldom heed my mother’s advice, but in this case it might be appropriate.

Certainly, as consumers, we have a right to bitch. But we should also take the opportunity to not.

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. AT&T’s Chris Baccus, Radio Shack’s Adrian Parker, Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, next Friday, February 17 in Dallas, Texas! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

]]>

Get Out of Your Own Way: 5 Excuses Marketers Use to Avoid Social Media ROI

2012-01-30T03:16:29Z

You see it everywhere. Management teams and marketers desperately want to understand how social media is delivering to the bottom line. Marketers are getting tons of pressure from their management teams and are desperate for a way to prove their strategies are working. With so many chomping at the bit to get at true return on investment (ROI), how has it remained so elusive? Has social media become the marketing channel that we know we need to have, but can’t demonstrate why?

What if Social Media ROI was really simple, but we let a bunch of excuses get in our way of measuring it? Unfortunately, I think our judgment has been a little clouded because we’ve seen social media experts give one reason or another as to why we can’t measure social media ROI. To be successful we have to separate our ability to measure ROI from our personal views on whether or not we should measure social media ROI. So let’s take a look at some of the excuses that are being used to convince us that we can’t or shouldn’t measure social media ROI and remove our preconceived notions to determine how we can get the metrics we need.

The Politics of Social Media ROI

Excuse #1: Social Media Lacks a Standard Framework for Measurement

Surveys have shown that marketers believe they lack a standard social media ROI metric. We’ve decided that social media is new and different than every other marketing channel and therefore we have to measure it differently. We are struggling trying to show the ROI of every conversation or think the experts who tout social media measurement have a secret formula. We’ve created way too much work for ourselves here.

All companies already have a standard framework for measuring business success using three core metrics: sales (units), revenue, and cost. We’ve figured out how to correlate almost every other marketing channel into its impact on these three metrics, but are trying to keep social media separate. We don’t need a standard framework for measuring social media; instead we need to show how social media impacts the standard framework for measuring business success: sales, revenue and cost.

Excuse #2: We Don’t Measure the ROI of (insert something)

I’ve seen this argument all over the place. We don’t measure the ROI of email, our phones, even our pants so why should we have to measure the ROI of social media? The argument is that measuring social media ROI is hypocritical because we aren’t measuring the ROI of other types of business tools, platforms, or technologies. While we may not measure the ROI of email or our phones, in actuality, companies are measuring the ROI of other marketing channels like TV/Radio advertising, public relations, online advertising, and search engine optimization (SEO) so why wouldn’t we use similar metrics to measure the ROI of social media?

The truth is we can actually leverage the metrics we use in these marketing channels to demonstrate the value of social media while we are collecting the data points to ultimately calculate an apples-to-apples ROI comparison.

Public Relations	Online Advertising	SEO
Cost Per Impression	Cost Per Impression	Cost Per Inbound Link
Cost Per Mention	Cost Per Click	Cost Per Site Visitor
	Cost Per Lead	Cost Per Lead
	Cost Per Subscriber	Cost Per Subscriber

All of the metrics can be effectively collected and calculated for social media and compared across marketing channels to see where social media is delivering value.

Excuse #3: We need to Redefine ROI for Social Media

There have been some really intriguing posts written about trying to create new metrics for social media like Return on Influence and Return on Engagement that more accurately demonstrate where social media is delivering. I have a huge amount of respect for marketers who are trying to find ways to measure social media in an innovative way. The challenge is when we create “new” metrics we have to spend a lot of time and energy educating our management teams on what these metrics are, how they correlate to existing metrics and ultimately what they mean for the bottom line. Therefore, I recommend that you focus on using metrics that have history in the organization first.

If you are spending your time trying to train an executive on what a “follower,” “fan,” or “retweet” is you could be wasting valuable time that could be focused on conversations about how to scale and grow the results you are seeing from social media. Compare this conversation to other marketing channels. Can you imagine trying to explain the intricacies of trying to increase search engine rankings by unraveling the pieces we think impact the Google algorithm to your management team? You would definitely see a lot of faces that look like a deer in the headlights, right? If you can transform your dialogue with social media to how it impacts the bottom line you will be far more successful in getting new projects and investments approved.

Excuse #4: Tools Don’t Exist to Measure Social Media ROI

There is a lot of confusion between measurement tools and monitoring tools in the social media space. This is further confused as monitoring tools are saying they measure social media ROI in their marketing materials. I’m a huge fan of monitoring tools and use them for clients. However, I haven’t seen one that provides end-to-end measurement. Why? Because social media is only one marketing channel, but its impact has to be measured across other marketing platforms. There are four pieces that need to be connected to measure the full impact of social media: the social media channel, the company’s website, the email platform, and the customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Sound impossible? Instead of looking for the answer in a social media tool, look at the tools you already have. What do you use to measure web analytics, online advertising campaigns, your email campaigns and revenue? Then ask how you can incorporate social media into the data these tools provide. This is my social media measurement recommendation for under $20 a month. It’s not perfect, but it gets you really close and is the best value I can find on the market.

Excuse #5: ROI Doesn’t Demonstrate the True Value of Social Media

Again, there is a difference between the ability to measure social media ROI and deciding whether or not it demonstrates the value of social media. I would agree that the financial metric of ROI may not tell the full story, however it is a metric that management teams live, eat and breathe. While it may not show the whole story, it certainly can tell a compelling one.

Keep in mind that you can’t measure social media ROI unless you can show the impact on revenue. Connecting to the CRM system is the missing link that is required for true ROI calculations. Companies who collect revenue through an e-commerce system will find it easier to get to revenue than other companies, however it isn’t impossible and I’ve done it with as few as 8 development hours. However, while you are finding a way to connect to revenue focus on costs. Social media typically costs much less than other types of marketing efforts and cost metrics will show a positive impact to the bottom line, while you build the connections you need to demonstrate traditional ROI.

What are your thoughts on social media ROI? Do you find yourself getting in your own way to measuring? What other excuses have you seen marketers use to avoid ROI? Please leave a comment and let’s start a healthy debate on social media ROI.

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. (Including me!) AT&T’s Chris Baccus, Radio Shack’s Adrian Parker, Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, next Friday, February 17 in Dallas, Texas! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! Seats are filling fast! Reserve yours today!

Related Content:

]]>

Empowering Your Employees With Social Media

2012-02-05T00:30:56Z

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Emily Eldridge, Senior Vice President of Pure.

It’s tempting to think that employees’ online discussions about your company should be curbed. Most company policies in the modern workplace exist to protect us from lawsuits – and to ostensibly protect employees from themselves. While it’s understandable to want control over our corporate image, this fear dimishes our employees’ ability to communicate. A stronger approach is to empower our staff to be brand advocates.

Advocate for Your Employees

Companies should decide whether their employees are advocates or people to censor. If you help your employees understand what’s confidential and why, they will be able to make wise choices themselves. True opportunity lies in giving them something to talk about, so they don’t feel constricted – just directed.

As a company, if you are at all worried about proprietary information or your reputation, you should have an online reputation management strategy in place. Within that, all mentions of the company and its essential keywords should be tracked and analyzed to ensure that corporate communication is monitored and updated where necessary.

Image via Wikipedia

From the time we are old enough to exercise free will, hearing “don’t” instinctively makes us want to try what’s off-limits. While we mature and learn from others, this instinct never entirely goes away. For an organization’s employees, the brand is part of their identity. This is who they get out of bed to work for every day, and this is who provides compensation in return, keeping food on the table. They’re passionate about that brand. As such, when a company says, “Don’t talk about us,” it is detrimental toward the morale and the feelings of inclusivity within the corporate family. It can also lead to further issues, including making the employee question whether or not the company is honest with its employees or values their participation.

In addition to how the employee feels, think about this scenario. Your employee attends an industry meeting in which a peer says, “Heard about ___, such a shame. What happened there?” If the employee is not included in communications and does not keep track of every mention of the company, he will have no clue what the person is talking about. In minor cases, this can be laughed off. But imagine how much more organized the company would look if every time the company was mentioned in such a setting, the employee would at least be familiar enough to say, “It was unfortunate, but we are making progress with A, B and C.” Knowledge is power.

Worst-Case Scenario

In the worst cases, employees create separate accounts to distance their personal and professional lives. Pretending to be something he isn’t for the sake of your company means that he either shouldn’t be working there (i.e., his personality doesn’t fit your culture), or that he’s a bad person (i.e., he’s a criminal and freely chronicling that online). Each person’s online presence should be a reflection of his life. Sure, you’ll emphasize different subject matter depending on the audience, just as you emphasized your awesome professors to your mom – and your parties to your friends – when you were in college.

If employees set up two accounts, it’s likely that one won’t include real names. That makes it much more difficult for you to track and rectify miscommunications. Maintaining separate accounts is not the answer; awareness and filtering should be all employees really need.

Get Your Employees to Advocate for You

It’s important to define advocacy. You’ll have some employees who will be base-level advocates, which means you’ll provide them with basic guidelines and information on “things to talk about.” They probably won’t mention the company much, if at all, in their day-to-day social media activity, but at least they know what they should talk about.

Then you’ll have what I call “advocates,” those people who want to actively participate in discussing brand-oriented things online. You’ll also have “super advocates,” who will be able to champion specific causes, do research, and really engage, creating community around a topic related to your business objectives. These are the people you will invest heavy strategy in.

If your corporation doesn’t have a current policy, scour the web. Find out which people within the company are already proactively talking. You may be able to identify super advocates this way. You should also recruit people by simply asking, “How do you feel about talking about our company online?” For those who indicate they will rarely talk about the company, put them at the base level. Those who say they’re interested, but would only occasionally post, are advocates. People who are excited and ready to get started should be deemed super advocates.

You have three groups of people; now you’ll engage in segmentation. Everyone should receive something, giving them the option to post about the company and equipping them with the right material. Advocates and super advocates should receive additional information, as well as suggestions on circles in which discussion on the topic would be appropriate.

Give the best brand advocates a subject to speak on over time; this can differ from person to person. Notify them when important corporate announcements are going to be made, and give them instructions on how they can assist in getting the word out. Even better, give them in-house communication responsibilities relevant to the subject they’ve been assigned. This will ensure that they are doing their due diligence on the subject matter, and it ensures that other people within the organization are aware of important information. It’s critical to keep your internal team as informed as your key media contacts or PR agency.

While it’s easy to reject the idea of employees as the face of your organization, it’s also dangerous. The people you entrust with your success in the office are the same people you should entrust with your reputation online. Empower them to talk about you, and they’ll only have good things to say.

Emily Eldridge is Senior Vice President of Pure, a membership-driven resource network for marketing agencies, and co-founder of The Agency Post. As SVP, Emily’s job is to extend member agencies’ capabilities and capacity by bringing together valuable services, products and information to create internal and client-related strategic solutions.

]]>

How Small Businesses Can Go Big With Social Media Marketing

2012-02-04T23:00:25Z

It’s no secret to many of you — it-getters in the sense that you at least read Social Media Explorer and are likely bought in — that social media marketing can have a huge impact on your business. But we still see more case studies from major brands playing in the social channels than we do small businesses. With the fact that 44 percent of small businesses don’t even have a website, much less social media efforts, it’s no surprise that there’s a gap between success cases in small versus medium and large businesses.

Small businesses typically face one critical battle when thinking about social media marketing: Time. They don’t have time to think about marketing, much less social media marketing. Often, a small business owners is also the janitor, the store clerk, the accountant, the donut maker and more. Who has time, or energy, after all that, to write blog posts, Tweet or engage with customers on Facebook?

Fortunately, there are smart people out there like Mike Merrill, who spend a good portion of their time thinking about how small businesses can leverage social media marketing in effective and efficient ways. That’s why he’ll be joining our roster of awesome speakers at Explore Dallas-Fort Worth on February 17. (Yes, that’s ONE WEEK FROM THIS FRIDAY!) I caught up with Mike recently to talk about the plight of the small business and what they can do to get social:

You won’t want to miss the business insights Mike has to give at Explore Dallas-Fort Worth. He’ll be speaking there, along with an all-star lineup that includes AT&T’s Chris Baccus, Radio Shack’s Adrian Parker, Zena Weist of Edelman Digital, Tom Webster from Edison Research, Nichole Kelly of Full Frontal ROI, Tim Hayden from 44 Doors, DJ Waldow from Waldow Social and more. The event will also feature a number of excellent software providers and companies to help you navigate the waters of digital marketing. They’ll bring their knowledge to share as well as their products. This is a must-attend event, so register now!

The full day’s content, breakfast, lunch (by Wolfgang Puck Catering) and a cocktail reception is $400, (the video says the first 100 get in for $250, but those sold out already). HOWEVER! Let’s see if you’re paying attention! Register and use the code “ILOVESME” and you’ll get the early-bird price of $250, no matter what! Can’t beat that! Go reserve your spot!

Event management for Explore Dallas-Fort Worth powered by Eventbrite

Explore is a five-city conference event series from Social Media Explorer and presented by Expion and Raven Internet Marketing Tools. Learn more and sign up for email updates for the city nearest you at socialmediaexplorer.com/product/events.

]]>

Integrating Social Media Across The Organization

2012-01-30T02:29:03Z

Operationalizing social media across the organization is perhaps on of the most challenging aspects of social media for companies and brands. Too many look at social media as a consumer-facing communications channel and forget that departments from HR to research and development and even internal collaboration among divisions can all be helped by social technologies and strategies.

We’re addressing that issue at Explore Dallas-Fort Worth in several discussions, one major one led by Zena Weist, Vice-President of Digital Strategy for Edelman. Her experience at brands like Embarq, Sprint and H&R Block, plus the brands she’s working with in her current role, gives her a unique and experienced look at how to incorporate social across the organization. She’ll share not just advice, but case studies on how to do it.

I caught up with Zena recently to get some good information from her before the event and for those of you who may not be able to attend. I asked her why companies funnel social media into a consumer-side communications channel, how we can get our organizations to move that thinking to internal and cross-silo mechanisms, how marketers can be in front of policy issues and more.

You won’t want to miss the business insights Zena has to give at Explore Dallas-Fort Worth. She’ll be speaking there, along with an all-star lineup that includes AT&T’s Chris Baccus, Radio Shack’s Adrian Parker, Brian Clark from Copyblogger, Tom Webster from Edison Research, Nichole Kelly of Full Frontal ROI, Tim Hayden from 44 Doors, DJ Waldow from Waldow Social and more. The event will also feature a number of excellent software providers and companies to help you navigate the waters of digital marketing. They’ll bring their knowledge to share as well as their products. This is a must-attend event, so register now!

The full day’s content, breakfast, lunch (by Wolfgang Puck Catering) and a cocktail reception is $400, but let’s see if you’re paying attention! Register and use the code “ILOVESME” and you’ll get the early-bird price of $250, no matter what! Can’t be that! Go reserve your spot!

Event management for Explore Dallas-Fort Worth powered by Eventbrite

]]>

How To Hire A Writer For Your Company Blog

2012-01-30T03:07:27Z

By now, many social media managers have realized a hardnosed reality: Most subject matter experts within the corporate walls don’t have time (or the skills) to blog. So you have two choices:

Write/edit their blogs for them (and give up the rest of your life since writing is very time consuming)
Hire a specialist or “real writer” to write for them.

That would be a journalist or professional business writer. (I use these interchangeably, even though there are some solid business writers who were never journalists.)

Hiring a good journalist has huge advantages — this is what they do. Journalists are trained to research, report, and write. They’re skilled in the art of connecting with targeted audiences with compelling, relevant content-and they’re storytellers which separates them from the rest of the corporate pack.

Image via Wikipedia

But the key is you want to hire the right writer, one that will deliver solid, compelling content and is a good fit.

I’ve been on both sides of the fence, in senior editorial positions hiring writers for big tech companies, and more recently, developing content for corporate clients as an agency. My first advice: look before you leap. A weak or ill-fitted writer, or one just learning the corporate ropes, can slow you down. They can even wreak havoc, forcing you to spend extra time managing them and cleaning up their messes.

In most of these cases I’m talking about typical corporate bloggers (vs. senior executives) who just need a writer or editor’s support. They’ll spend the time to share their detailed thoughts with the writer and work closely with them on story angles. The final result should be their “voice” even though it was written/edited by a professional. This isn’t that far from speech writing, but for some reason the social media purists have a problem with ghost writing for corporate bloggers.

So look for the following when you go to hire a writer:

Solid industry experience - They need to have a record of solid achievement. Check their references. What subjects do they write best about (industry expertise)? Did they deliver on time? Were they reliable, accurate? And if there was an issue, did they quickly take care of it? Would their former bosses hire them again?
Good fit - You don’t want a fashion writer writing about high tech. Still, a good writer can quickly adapt as long as they have solid business writing experience. Better to focus on getting a great writer than the perfect specialist, which is nearly impossible in some B2B and niche areas.
Editorial skills - Blogging is a different style of writing than magazine or newspaper writing. Can they write in short bursts? Is it catchy, engaging? Are they good storytellers? How do they develop their stories (through use of personal anecdotes, etc.)? Don’t forget the basics either: They need to be very detailed in checking their facts and very accurate. If a blog blows up, it’s likely going to land in your lap.
Web knowledge - Good writers know the online world and how to connect with key audiences, but some are better versed than others. Query them about how their web knowledge and how they write to connect with their audiences. How do they do their research (Google alerts, Twitter, LinkedIn groups, etc.)? Are they socially active? Do they have a Twitter following, are they active on Facebook, Google+, etc.? None of these are mission critical, but certainly can indicate how much lift you may get from their connectivity.
Communications skills - Journalists are trained to question the status quo, look under rocks, charge ahead in the pursuit of truth, etc. This often goes over like a lead balloon in the corporate world, so look for a well-rounded writer who is comfortable in this environment and knows how to work closely with your key stakeholders and bloggers.
Proactivity - You want a writer who’ll not be just an order taker. They need to proactively come up with story ideas and fresh angles to help you feed the content machine. Before you hire them, ask for some suggested topics: “How would you handle this subject?”
The “right” personality/attitude - This can be tricky. Like any other profession, some writers have better personalities and attitudes to fit the job. They need to be able to “sell” themselves and their ideas, and be versatile. Amazingly, some writers push back on doing multi-revisions and/or resist on being heavily edited (personally, this was beat out of me years ago at Business Week). Set expectations early on with agreements over how many revisions can be expected and what type of blogs the writer will be dealing with. If you have one that’s particularly difficult (i.e., multiple rewrites), put it on the table. In fact, setting clear expectations across the board on deadlines, quality of writing, meetings and so-on is critical.

Personality and values that sync with yours can be as important as editorial skills and experience. Once when I was at Intel, my partner and I hired a writer to help us ghost-write our family computing book for a division of Random House (referred to me by a personal friend). The guy had some decent clips, but turned out to be difficult to manage and would go off for days following different research trails. The result was mountains of barely relevant material we’d have to sort out. Even worse he was stubborn and wouldn’t listen to directions, even arguing with us. We finally let him go.

Another time several years ago we hired a senior writer to work on a four month editorial project for us for an ample fee. He did a good job. But when we came to near the end of the time frame, we’d exhausted the budget but still had several loose ends we needed help on (mainly proofreading materials, double-checking facts, etc.), basically asking him for a favor. He refused to budge, arguing he’d used up his hours, and we were out of money. We scrambled to get it done and meet the deadline. Writers have to make a living, but much of business is about being flexible and bending a little to help the client and get the job done; but this writer wasn’t into trade-offs or building good will. Needless to say, we never used him again.

The point is a good writer needs to have more than strong editorial skills. They need to be able to navigate through the corporate jungle and deal with various personalities. You’ll never find a writer with 100 percent of all of these qualities. If you do, send them my way. A good writer is hard to find, even today.

What about your perspective. Have you hired writers or bloggers for your company? What else would you add? Tell us in the comments.

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

]]>

Understanding the ROI of Social Media

2012-01-29T21:26:04Z

It’s the question that social media evangelists, speakers, consultants and practitioners begrudgingly have to answer. Sometimes, they have to or their jobs are in jeopardy. What is the ROI of social media. While I have my own perspective on that, there are many ideas and opinions on the issue. Part of what we plan to provide with our Explore events this year is a better understanding of the ROI question for all who attend.

Nichole Kelly, who not only writes for us here at SME but is so passionate about return-on-investment she named her company Full Frontal ROI, will be tackling the topic of ROI from a no fluff (read: no bullshit) perspective in Dallas on Feb. 17 at our first Explore event of the year. Kelly has a strong brand-side background and specializes in translating social media analytics and metrics to executive teams and C-level folks so they “get” what we’re doing. Her talk is going to be of great value to all who are in Dallas.

I caught up with Nichole recently to ask some questions about why companies struggle with the ROI issue and what they can do about it.

Be sure to check out Nichole over at her blog and assortment of writers at Full Frontal ROI.

You won’t want to miss the business insights Nichole has to give at Explore Dallas-Fort Worth. She’ll be speaking there, along with an all-star lineup that includes Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, Zena Weist of Edelman Digital, Tom Webster from Edison Research, Chris Baccus from AT&T, Adrian Parker of Radio Shack, DJ Waldow from Waldow Social and more. The event will also feature a number of excellent software providers and companies to help you navigate the waters of digital marketing. They’ll bring their knowledge to share as well as their products. This is a must-attend event, so register now!

The first 100 registrants spots are filling up quickly! Register now and get the full day’s content, breakfast, lunch (by Wolfgang Puck Catering) and a cocktail reception for just $250! After the first 100 seats are gone, the price of the event is $400, so save $150 now and reserve your spot.

Event management for Explore Dallas-Fort Worth powered by Eventbrite

]]>

Getting The Most Out of Great Content in Social Media

2012-01-30T02:49:32Z

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest post from Jordan Viator Slabaugh, Director of Social Media at Spredfast, a social media management solution provider and SME client.

Using social media for business requires companies to embrace social channels to satisfy the needs of their customers, prospects and networks. This can mean many different tactics for various types of companies, but content is always at the heart of this activity.

On the heels of Community Manager Appreciation Day, it’s worth noting that Social Fresh found “community managers, surprisingly, spend more time on content creation than any other task.” In his latest report on managing social media, Jeremiah Owyang lists developing a content strategy as one of the key steps every social media strategist needs to undertake. And Beth Kanter recently wrote about the debate between creating versus curating content, highlighting a checklist from the Content Marketing Institute on creating valuable content.

Developing and executing a content strategy is one of the most time consuming tasks for most strategists. But with proper planning, this crucial area of focus can ensure better and more relevant content for your network while also making sure your company is sharing the most important messages from a company stand-point. One of the sections of the new whitepaper “The 7 Sessions Every Social Strategists Needs to Have”, a practical framework for how to approach and plan for this includes:

Planning out Content Proactively

You don’t sit down to write and send email messages and new webpage content in real time to send to your entire customer base, so why would you do the same for all of your social content. Using a centralized editorial calendar, strategists should be planning out social content before it’s actually being published. It guarantees your social channels won’t go silent due to team members having a busy day in the office, and it helps multiple people have insight into what is being planned and published.

Repurposing Content for Social Media Channels

You share the same or similar content across all your other communication channels. Why would social media be any different? It’s true that social media shouldn’t be used to spam your network by cramming marketing messages down its throat, but these people are also interested in hearing about company news, discounts, product updates and new content available. If you’re not thinking about what content you already have that can also be shared with your social networks, you’re doing extra work and missing opportunities to provide value.

Centralizing Content to Be Accessed Easily

Equipping team members with pre-made or pre-approved content is one major way to help make social activity more fluid and amplification of messages more common.

If you have more than one person active in social media for your company, you know how complex it can be to stay coordinated. Equipping team members with pre-made or pre-approved content is one major way to help make social activity more fluid and amplification of messages more common. Have you considered creating a content library where all team members can find sample Tweets, Facebook status updates, links to new content or responses to common questions?

Build Social Activity into Campaign Plans

Social doesn’t exist in a vacuum (or at least, it shouldn’t). In the same way you assess what content you have in existence to share in social, you should assess how social media is an integral part of every campaign you launch or run. How can you use social media to launch your new product? What social media elements can be integrated to help amplify your latest marketing campaign? Or what content can help satisfy overarching customer care efforts?

Assess and Adjust Course as Needed

Content strategy is an ever-evolving aspect of social media. Your networks grow, your customer base changes and people’s interests vary. Tracking things like what content receives the most impressions, clicks, engagement and shares can help your social media program flourish over time. It also helps make sure you stay as relevant as possible to your network.

Content is one of the key aspects to a successful social media program. If you’re not already thinking of this from a higher level, the time is now. Ann Handley of Marketing Profs said it best “In 2012, businesses will rise about the din of mediocrity and retool their content efforts to create a sustainable, workable model that produces stuff that has merit.”

How are you planning on creating your model?

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Jordan Viator Slabaugh is the Director of Social Media at Spredfast, a social media management system for enterprise companies and agencies. She leads the company’s Marketing and social media strategy, as well as consults with clients on using social media to help achieve social business goals. She tweets at @jordanv and writes about social business best practices and trends on the Spredfast Social Business blog.

]]>

Double Down on Facebook Marketing

2012-01-30T02:39:06Z

I have been thinking about the value of Facebook fans lately, and how they stack up against other types of online and digital marketing payoffs. The problem with getting to an answer to the value of a fan, and what many small business owners face when trying to sort out what square to place their marketing dollars on, is the array of mismatched direction.

Small businesses aren’t very good at increasing their Facebook fan base. So even though they may be following all of the “rules of the Facebook road,” they aren’t seeing much if any return on their effort.

A Bigger Fan Base is Better

Ultralinx posted an article titled The Importance of Having a Fan Base, which included a cool infograph illustrating their point.

With the explosion of Social Media, businesses and brands have found a new way to advertise. Advertising through Social Media has a lot better ROI than most other types of advertising and can help build relationships between businesses and their customers. Building relationships with people fosters loyalty, as a result, loyalty has the potential to increase profit.

According to Ultralinx, the benefits of having a fan base include:

50% of small business owners reported that they gained new customers through social media.
Ning, a social network platform, found that it only takes 20 people to create an online community.
64% of Twitter users say they are more likely to buy from a brand if they already follow it. 51% said the same on Facebook.

So, one would think that investing time and money building such a digital platform is the proper direction. And, as with your checkbook balance, bigger is better right?

Wait, Only 1% of Facebook Fans Engage with Brands

Just as we were convinced to start ramping up our digital assault, we read a contradicting article, this from AdAge, that Not Many Fans Are Engaging; What are we to believe?

For a few years now, brands have been touting frothy Facebook “like” numbers as evidence of their social-media acumen. But how many of those fans are actually bothering to take part in conversation with brands?

Not too many, as it turns out.

Slightly more than 1% of fans of the biggest brands on Facebook are actually engaging with the brands, according to a study from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, an Australia-based marketing think tank that counts Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and other major advertisers as its supporters

Is Facebook for Business Overrated

The point here is that you can find a blog, an article, a video and multiple consultants to support either side of the equation. What is best for your business? It wasn’t long ago that I too was a bit skeptical and thought that Facebook for Business is Overrated. I have changed my mind, but with a qualification, only after you have built a Fan Base large enough to matter. If you aren’t willing to do what it takes to create a space for a “community” to gather around your brand, and grow that to a size large enough to matter then leave your Facebook chips at home. Size really does matter.

We have since placed a disproportionate amount of our marketing resources on that bet and Doubled Down on our Facebook Fan Page for our boutique apartment business. I am glad we did, as it is producing a steady stream of rental leads for us. However, not much of anything happened until we got close to 10,000 Fans. Prior to that, we were mostly talking to ourselves.

That raises another question, What is the Optimal Facebook Fan Base size to see a return?

It has taken some time to build a hearty, Hyper Local Fan Base, and a lot of work, trial and error. Patience was required. And, we didn’t know what the right size was either, until finally we started to experience a sharing of “Likes” and engagement. It has sort of been an obsession around our office for the last 24 months or so, but it looks like it is beginning to create a nice return.

What are your experiences — Especially those of you in small businesses? How many fans did you have before you began to see responses, leads and even sales or conversions? Where was your double down point? Let us know in the comments.

]]>

Benchmarking Your Social Performance

2012-01-30T02:50:28Z

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post from Tristan Handy from Argyle Social, a service SME uses and a company that sponsors our events. But I think you’ll agree, disclosures aside, it’s awesomeness.

You’ve spent all year writing and sharing great content. And from time to time, you check to see how your posts perform. But when you look at that report—whether it’s in bit.ly, Google Analytics, or your social media management tool of choice—how do you interpret it? Is 100 clicks good? Is 1,000 clicks good?

If you don’t frame your performance correctly, your boss won’t recognize your impact. If you want to demonstrate success, you need to go further than simply reporting on the raw traffic you drove.

Fortunately, demonstrating your success can be easy. Just follow these three steps:

Measure the right stuff
Know how you stand up to your peers
Choose outliers to tell a story

Read on as I explore each step in detail.

1. Change your metric—Measure clicks per follower

The core measure of performance in social media marketing is clicks. A count of clicks answers the all-important question, “How many people read the content I shared?” But the number of clicks is an insufficient measure when it comes to evaluating your performance, as it just doesn’t provide enough information on its own. Obviously, getting 100 clicks is pretty impressive if you have 200 followers. It’s less impressive if you have 100,000.

To give your metrics more weight, start measuring clicks per follower (CPF). Just take that click data you already have and divide by the number of fans or followers for that account. If your tweet had 200 clicks and you have 7,000 followers, your CPF is 200/7,000, or 2.86%.

Normalizing by audience size is important for two reasons. First, hopefully your audience will grow over time, and it’s important that your idea of “good performance” scales with your audience size. If your audience has tripled in the past year, a post that got 100 clicks last year is more impressive than a post that got 100 clicks today. Second, it’s important if you want to compare your performance to your peers.

2. Benchmark your performance against your peers

The best way to determine what performance is “good” is to compare yourself against your peers. But this is often easier said than done. Fortunately, I’ve done all the hard work for you.

It turns out that audience size is the single biggest and most reliable factor that affects engagement (CPF). This is reflected in a recent study published by my company, Argyle Social, and seconded by a recent report from EdgeRank Checker.

If you compare the average CPF performance of hundreds of business social media accounts of varying sizes, smaller accounts perform better than large ones. This relationship holds true for both Facebook and Twitter.

(source: Argyle Social)

When you stop and think about it, this makes intuitive sense. At Ma & Pa’s Corner Store, the owner likely has a personal relationship with much of their audience. At a global online retailer, this clearly isn’t true. Closer relationships translate into greater engagement.

Does this mean that you should try to keep your audience size as low as possible? Probably not. If your goal is to maximize engagement, then larger accounts still get more clicks per post, even though followers engage less frequently.

(source: Argyle Social)

So, if your peer group is based on how many followers or fans you currently have, what we need now is a set of performance benchmarks for your peer group. The table below is just that.

(source: Argyle Social)

Let’s run through a quick example so that this makes a little more sense.

You’re a regional B2C retailer with 12,000 Twitter followers. You tweet a link that gets 12 clicks. That’s a CPF of .1%, which puts that tweet right at the 50^th percentile in your peer group. Not great, but not too bad either. Then, you tweet another link that gets 180 clicks. That’s a CPF of 1.5%, which puts you in the 95^th percentile. Awesome!

Running the numbers on your annual performance works the same way. Put together a big spreadsheet with all your posts, all of their clicks, and get an average CPF for the year. (Or use your social media management tool of choice.) Then compare yourself against the benchmarks above.

How do you perform? If you’re at the top of your peer group, great! Go brag about it and demand a raise. If you’re not, that’s OK—use this process to inform your 2012 goals. Create an action plan that will have you ahead of your peer group by this time next year.

3. Select outliers

Now that you’ve diligently measured your CPF and normed it against your peer group, it’s time to select outliers. Rank your posts from 2011 by CPF. What do the top ten have in common? The bottom ten? Pull these out as success stories to celebrate and epic fails to vilify.

This step is particularly important in your year-end review because it helps you tell stories. Numbers are important, but human brains are wired for storytelling. If you can support your industry-benchmarked numbers from step 2 with some really excellent success stories and lessons learned, you’ll make a much bigger impact.

Want some of our success stories? Here are three of the best performing posts in the data set used for this research:

Who’s been more influential in 2011, @PiersMorgan, @TinieTempah or @CharlieSheen? Vote for the Top 49 Men UK Edition now %link%
Everyone #likes to WIN – Win A 25th Anniversary Nintendo Wii Bundle! #Wii #Retweet #Vancouver %link%
Facebook Achieves Majority – NEW Research from Edison and Arbitron: %link%

As you can see, looking at individual outliers is quite powerful. These three posts immediately beg the question, “Should I be posting more surveys, contests, and research?” Use anecdotal evidence like this to frame the larger conversation and to ask questions that should be looked into further.

Dominating your performance review

There you have it—three easy steps for success when it comes time to summarize your performance.

Do you use this process already or have a favorite of your own? Let us know in the comments.

Methodology

The data behind this analysis comes from a sample of customers’ activity on Argyle Social, a social media marketing software provider (and my employer!).

The selected sample included more than 150,000 posts from more than 1,000 Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts between November 2010 and December 2011. Our customers are professional marketers representing a range of company sizes across all major industries.

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. AT&T’s Chris Baccus, Radio Shack’s Adrian Parker, Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, February 17 in Dallas, Texas! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! The first 100 to do so get an incredible discount! Reserve your seat today!

Tristan Handy is Director of Operations for Argyle Social, a social media marketing dashboard that helps businesses create real returns from the social channel. Follow him on Twitter @jthandy.

]]>

The Jedi’s Guide To Content Marketing Success

2012-01-29T21:37:26Z

As you know, Copyblogger‘s Brian Clark will serve as the opening keynote for Explore Dallas-Fort Worth on Feb. 17 in Dallas, Texas. Register now so you don’t miss out on the full day’s content and networking that I’ve started saying is a, “no-frills, learn-your-ass-off digital marketing event.” But his opening keynote will surprise many. It’s a new talk and one that I’m going to be taking a lot of notes from as well.

Brian’s talk is called, “The Star Wars Guide To Online Marketing Success.” I’m sure we’ll all get a kick, as well as some great knowledge from him. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say Brian is a content marketing and internet marketing Jedi.

I caught up with Brian recently to allow us to start learning from him now, and to allow those who may not be able to join us in Dallas to get some scoop. We talked about Copyblogger’s recent redesign (the why, how, and what’s it done), why marketers today struggle with content marketing, how he would approach internet marketing for a company or brand that was not Copyblogger, how content marketing can work for non-sexy products and more.

As you can tell, the Force is with him. Come to Dallas on Feb. 17 and begin your training!

You won’t want to miss the business insights Brian has to give at Explore Dallas-Fort Worth. He’ll be speaking there, along with an all-star lineup that includes AT&T’s Chris Baccus, Radio Shack’s Adrian Parker, Zena Weist of Edelman Digital, Tom Webster from Edison Research, Nichole Kelly of Full Frontal ROI, Tim Hayden from 44 Doors, DJ Waldow from Waldow Social and more. The event will also feature a number of excellent software providers and companies to help you navigate the waters of digital marketing. They’ll bring their knowledge to share as well as their products. This is a must-attend event, so register now!

Event management for Explore Dallas-Fort Worth powered by Eventbrite

]]>

Social Media Explorer

What Happened To Saying Something Nice?

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Related Stories

Get Out of Your Own Way: 5 Excuses Marketers Use to Avoid Social Media ROI

Excuse #1: Social Media Lacks a Standard Framework for Measurement

Excuse #2: We Don’t Measure the ROI of (insert something)

Excuse #3: We need to Redefine ROI for Social Media

Excuse #4: Tools Don’t Exist to Measure Social Media ROI

Excuse #5: ROI Doesn’t Demonstrate the True Value of Social Media

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Related Stories

Empowering Your Employees With Social Media

Advocate for Your Employees

Worst-Case Scenario

Get Your Employees to Advocate for You

Related Stories

How Small Businesses Can Go Big With Social Media Marketing

Related Stories

Integrating Social Media Across The Organization

Related Stories

How To Hire A Writer For Your Company Blog

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Related Stories

Understanding the ROI of Social Media

Related Stories

Getting The Most Out of Great Content in Social Media

Planning out Content Proactively

Repurposing Content for Social Media Channels

Centralizing Content to Be Accessed Easily

Equipping team members with pre-made or pre-approved content is one major way to help make social activity more fluid and amplification of messages more common.

Build Social Activity into Campaign Plans

Assess and Adjust Course as Needed

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Related Stories

Double Down on Facebook Marketing

Related Stories

Benchmarking Your Social Performance

1. Change your metric—Measure clicks per follower

2. Benchmark your performance against your peers

3. Select outliers

Dominating your performance review

Methodology

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Related Stories

The Jedi’s Guide To Content Marketing Success

Related Stories