3 Simple Ways to Measure Your Social Media Results

Are you looking for better ways to measure your social media activities?
Do you know if your social media efforts are worthwhile?
Social media measurement is one of the most frustrating challenges business face.
In this article I’ll show you three simple measurement strategies that can fit into one of your future campaigns.

Why Measure?

In order to measure the effectiveness of your social campaigns, it’s critical that you know your objective.
Ask yourself why you are considering including social media in your overall marketing campaign in the first place. How will your efforts impact your revenue and grow your business?
You’ll want to put a measurable outcome in place along with a timeframe in which to achieve the goal.

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Always setup goals so that you can measure social media. Image: iStockPhoto

Now you can determine which social media platform aligns with your objectives.
For example, if you’re trying to reach a female audience and your business lends well to pictures and images, you might want to consider Pinterest.
If you’re a business-to-business brand marketing an upcoming conference, you’ll want to consider LinkedIn.

#1: Quantify Your Social Media Listening

“What you’re doing [on social media] needs to have impact. It needs to actually have revenue. And often times we try to make it fuzzy about that.” – Frank Eliason, Citi’s Director, Global Social Media (@FrankEliason)
Listening is one of the most often overlooked uses of social media, yet it’s probably the most important. If you’re not listening to your customers, you’re missing the point of social media.
But how do you measure listening and how does it impact your revenue?
In this example, we’re going to look at using Twitter to answer that question.

• In Twitter’s search field, enter your business name.
  

  Twitter’s search field.
• You can then select whether you want to view Twitter’s “top” tweets about your business, “all” tweets containing your business name or tweets that contain your business name from only those people you follow.
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  Twitter search.
• As you filter the tweets, look through them and decide whom you’d like to follow. These are likely either potential customers or your current customers.
• Monitor their tweets on a daily basis. Engage with them, answering their questions, adding value and helping them whenever possible.

Twitter’s Advanced Search is powerful too, especially if you’re a local business. You can use it to search specific terms related to your business that people who are near your location are talking about.
Twitter is an amazing tool for providing real-time customer service. You can learn things like:

• Exactly how many people you’re helping
• If you’re growing that number of people
• The issues customers are experiencing with your business
• What’s broken in your business

At the end of the measurement period, prioritize the problems you identify and use that intelligence to implement fixes and improvements within your business. You can measure the direct impact on your business by looking at the additional revenue or cost savings that these new fixes give you.

#2: Create a Rating System for Your Social Engagement

“Put a [tiered point system] in place rather than looking at how many likes you have.” – Scott Monty, Ford’s global head of social media (@scottmonty)
This is a simple yet effective strategy to use when you’re trying to generate awareness and buzz. It’s a smart way to measure the response to your efforts on Facebook, Twitter or any other social channel you’re using.
Here’s how it works.
Say you’re launching a product or service and want to build buzz about it on Facebook. You post an update to your Page about your launch and you get a bunch of likes on it. The next day, you post a different type of update. You get some likes on it, but you also see that people are engaging more with the second update by sharing the post and commenting on it.
Likes show support and comments indicate a deeper interest but shares are most valuable because they move the update beyond your page.
At the beginning of the campaign, translate your objective to a numeric goal. Then, use a tiered point system to weight different types of engagement according to which is most valuable to you.
Here’s an example of a tiered point system for Facebook:

• Likes: 1 point each
• Comments: 5 points each
• Shares: 10 points each

During the campaign, a quick sum of values will help you determine if your efforts on Facebook are moving you closer towards your goal or not.

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Assign a point system to likes, shares and comments.

You can create similar point systems on any of the social channels you use. For example, on Twitter, 5 points for a reply and 10 points for a retweet.

#3: Add Tons of Value, Then Sell and Measure

“Jab, jab, jab, right hook.” – Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee)
This strategy is the concept behind Gary V.’s upcoming book and it’s based on providing great content that adds tons of value for your customers before asking for the sale.

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The Corcoran Group, a NYC real estate firm, adds value via their social media outlets.

For example, say your restaurant is rolling out a new healthy menu. Your goal is to get 300 customers into your restaurant to try the new menu over an upcoming weekend.
Since your food is visually appealing, you develop a Facebook or Instagram strategy. You post pictures of your food, create content around the importance of healthy eating and curate information on your Facebook Page about farmers’ markets in your area.
Offer this valuable content to build trust with people.
Then offer a coupon for your restaurant on your Facebook Page. The number of people who claim and redeem your coupon is a result you can quantify.
Here’s how to measure your efforts when using this strategy:

• Use the tiered point system described in strategy #2 to determine if your content is moving you closer to your goal.
• Use coupons that are specific to your social media campaign, thus making the return on your investment easy to track and measure.
• Create unique landing pages for each of your campaigns where your customers can download or purchase what you are promoting. Since the landing page is used for one specific campaign, this will allow you to clearly see how successful your campaign is.

I hope this article gives you some ideas for how you can simply measure your social campaigns and shows you that you don’t need expensive measurement tools.
What do you think? Can you improve the effectiveness of your social media campaigns with some of the above strategies? What simple strategies are you using to measure your campaigns? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

What Your Favorite Social Network Sites Say About You

Social networking sites (SNS) have permeated our lives so much so that to not have an account is to cut off information flow from oneself. Social network sites are where you get news even quicker than official news sites, and hear about the latest gossip or rumors surrounding your peers.

(Image source: Fotolia)

At the same time, social networking is where you can socialize and network with your friends in this increasingly connected world of ours. It’s no wonder everyone is on one or more of these networking sites. What you chose as your favorite SNS says a lot about your own preferences and needs, and even reveals your personality. It says who we are in ways we wouldn’t have thought of.
Check out the following top SNS and what they say about their loyal fans.

Recommended Reading: Powerful Branding Techniques Through Social Media

Facebook

If you’re on it, you’re well-connected to the rest of your peers. You probably wanted to belong to where everyone is, where the action is, and you side with the majority. You use your social networks to socialize and make friends, be informed with the latest gossip or news, a small group of you may even stalk friends. And you’d be normal.

(Image source: ezatkamel)

There are reports that go to say that people who are not on Facebook are abnormal, even psychopathic. But my guess is that these people are non-conformists for various valid reasons. Facebook is the best tool you can use for socializing and distributing information. When compared to other popular SNS online, some of them seem to not have that socialization element.
If Facebook is your favorite SNS, it may then suggest that you’re someone who is craving for online social ties and thus may use it as a way to combat loneliness or substitute for a lack of an active social life. Either that or you’re just going with the flow.

Recommended Reading: 5 Facebook Privacy Settings You Should Know

Twitter

So where do online users go to if they only want to be informed of the latest news but don’t wish to socialize that much? Twitter is the choice. Long-time Twitter users are found to use the site for cognitive stimulation by uncovering information without much socialization. I
It was also found that people who preferred Twitter scored higher in ‘need for cognition’ over Facebook users. The latter tend to score higher in sociability, neuroticism and extraversion.

(Image source: RianGonzales)

The results seem to suggest that if you favor Twitter, you’re intellectual but care less about fulfilling your social needs online.
After all, Twitter is pretty much all about short, to-the-point updates and the sharing of information, not unlike the status updates of Facebook, but it doesn’t offer Facebook’s multi-content approach involving games, photo storage and place check-ins. People who love using Twitter are those who like having a minimalist online persona and a text-like approach to their social networks.

MySpace

MySpace used to be the top social network site before Facebook came, saw and conquered. Today, MySpace users are an endangered species in the world of SNS (forget about Friendsters, they’re already extinct). Today, if your loyalty to MySpace is still unwavering, it means you are probably trying to advertise your indie band to the remaining users out there.
After all, MySpace was an awesome platform for small-time musicians to showcase their work by uploading their entire discographies onto their profiles and even sell them on the platform.
If you don’t have a band, then you must be some sort of music buff looking for great indie music.
MySpace is the social network site that allows you to discover new music via its suggestion features. Sure, the popularity is dwindling, which means there will be lesser music available. Yet, this is a plus for musicians who distribute their music through MySpace. With lesser competition, their music has a higher chance of getting noticed and heard. Great for music lovers.

LinkedIn

Designed for people in professional occupations, LinkedIn is primarily used for professional networking. People may sign up for LinkedIn for career-related purposes. But if LinkedIn is your favorite social network site, chances are that you’re the no-nonsense type who only uses SNS for professional networking and nothing more.

(Social truck icons – Hongkiat)

Moreover, you are more likely to be male. A study revealed that 63% of LinkedIn users are male, 47% are females, and that LinkedIn is the only social network site with more male users than female users. The differences in the ratio in LinkedIn could be that males are more career-oriented than social-oriented.
Having LinkedIn as your favorite SNS definitely also says something about your lack of reliance on social networks to fulfill your social needs, which might actually be a good thing.

Recommended Reading: 10 Tips To A More Professional LinkedIn Profile

Google+

Google+ is the latest popular networking site on the market. Part of those who favor Google+ are disgruntled Facebook users who grew tired of its flaws, especially its ever-changing privacy policy. No matter how much you restrict access to those whom you can trust, there’s always a way that things can get leaked out.
That is what’s driving Facebook users away, but what’s drawing people to Google+? Again, it might also have something to do with privacy as well. Google+ Circles affords selective sharing with different groups of friends that is very unlike Facebook’s interface.
Also, with Google+ just new into the game and thus less saturated with users, advertisers are not as into it as they are into Facebook. Data mining is less likely on Google+. If this is your favorite SNS, then it just goes to say that online privacy matters a lot to you.

How to use social media to understand and engage your customers

With the role of chief marketing officer evolving, companies can use social media to mobilise customer engagement.

   

 

In the era of the always-on customer, social media is a primary channel for customer engagement. Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) who fail to realise social media's potential for customer interaction and customer retention are being left behind. On Twitter, Facebook and even on Instagram, brands are now being discussed and dissected; companies' stories are being subverted and inverted.
The reality is, you no longer drive company and brand messaging – your customers do.
Consumers and sales prospects are interacting with your company in myriad ways across multiple touch points in this new interactive economy. Today's customers are empowered: they expect companies to give them what they want, how they want it.
In response, progressive CMOs are doing much more than launching a Twitter feed and a LinkedIn group or two to increase reach. And they are doing more than email marketing and simple data capture. These leaders recognise that the role of the CMO is evolving from an emphasis on acquiring new database contacts to building deep intimacy with customers. It's no longer a matter of who you know, but what you know about them. That means CMOs need to be focused on actively listening, engaging and responding to their customers.
Yet most businesses are missing many opportunities to engage customers. We have found that across social networks and traditional selling channels – email, telephone and storefronts – companies miss or mishandle up to 80% of customer engagement opportunities. And a missed opportunity means lost revenue.
The only way for companies to reverse this trend is to become customer-obsessed from the top down. Customers don't care about internal departments, so internal functions must become invisible. Business processes and systems should be flexible and oriented around the customer, not a role or function. Information should flow freely through departments and hierarchies, and employees need to be enabled to use data to build relationships with their customers and solve their problems.
In the era of the always-on customer, social media is a primary channel for customer engagement. Here are a few principles that can set companies on the right road to customer engagement with social.

Engage and empower your workforce

Good social adoption starts with a focus on people, not the technology. It is important to get your employees engaged because customer engagement is a shared responsibility across the enterprise. It is no longer the sole province of sales, marketing or customer service. Every employee must be empowered to recognise a customer engagement opportunity and act on it.
That means investing in people and processes, as well as technology. Finding ambassadors within your company to champion social media, and selecting tools for your business that your employees use at home, can help to promote social behaviours internally. Gamification principles are a growing way to encourage adoption and social-savviness within your organisation. When implemented correctly, with added consultancy and strategy, it acts as an essential element to ensure adoption at all levels by addressing individual's specific drivers and needs.
Companies typically need to invest a ratio of 2:1 in their people and processes over technology. After all, technology doesn't drive relationships. People do. A free flow of information allows the most customer-obsessed companies to understand not only their own customers, but also their customers' customers – creating differentiation and a competitive advantage.

Get personal with your customers

To maximise customer engagement, it is important to nurture your prospects as individuals, with their own stories, rather than anonymous transactions. Social media channels are a key way to interact with customers and build those human relationships. Sadly, though, 58% of consumers who tweet about a bad customer experience won't receive a reply from the company they have an issue with. Missed opportunities like these cost companies revenue in the short term and damage brands for the long term.

Customers are more informed and have more choice than ever before, so if their expectations aren't met, they'll move on quickly. Engaged customers, however, reward consistently strong service by spending more and becoming influential brand advocates on social channels.

Create advocates

When customers are engaged, you are their default buying choice. They're loyal. They become advocates for your company. With social media, engaged customers can – and do – endorse your company to tens of thousands of people instantly.
By taking the time to listen to your customers across social channels, your organisation can become empowered to turn a customer's negative experience into a positive one. O2's recent use of social media for customer engagement is a perfect example of this. A potential public relations disaster became a positive story for digital marketers as the company responded to customer complaints on Twitter in a light-hearted and personal manner, winning their consumers back.
More than 70% of customers will spend more with a company because of a history of good service. That's where the real upside potential is for companies. And it's why customer engagement is set to overtake productivity as the primary driver of profitable growth.
Social media is a key channel for mobilising customer engagement in this interactive economy. Customers are truly engaged when they feel known and that is what the best use of social media can achieve.

Huge Privacy Changes on Social Media Platforms, Google + and Facebook

   Posted on October 14, 2013

Anonymity just got a little bit more difficult for social media users. Facebook and Google+ have rolled out new privacy changes in their terms of service. However, there are still ways to protect your privacy on these social media platforms!

Facebook Privacy Changes:
Facebook will be removing a privacy setting that allowed people to hide their profiles from other users in Facebook’s search field. Facebook reasoning behind this was that the tool was outdated and users could be found in other ways, such as through a mutual friend’s Timeline or News Feed.

Google + Shared Endorsements

What You Can Do:
Facebook encourages users to control their privacy on a post-by-post basis. So the next time you intend to post, you should be checking to see if what you’re putting up is for public view, just for friends, or specific lists of friends.
You can consider turning on Timeline approval. This function shows you what your friends may be posting about your location or whom you’re with. You can ask them to remove your name from those posts. Facebook also has settings that let you review posts and photo tags before they’re posted to your Timeline.
If you’re very serious about privacy and want to dodge that annoying ex, you can always use the Facebook blocking tool.
Google+ Privacy Changes:
Google updated its terms of service Friday to say that beginning Nov. 11 it has the right to sell adult users’  profile names, photos and comments in reviews and advertising, according to the Wall Street Journal. Many Google users may have a Google+ account, even if they don’t use it.
“Shared endorsements” work very much like Facebook ‘Likes.’ If you rate a product on Google Play or give a +1, those actions will be visible to your connections.
For example, if you gave a +1 to your favorite restaurant, your friend might see an advertisement from that business that says you like it. Google is drawing that information from your Google+ account.
What You Can Do:
However, if you dislike being an endorsers for these businesses, there are ways to get out of it. Users can go to that link and opt out of being a part of the shared endorsements. You will run into some of Google’s guilt trips: “your friends will be less likely to benefit from your recommendations.”
For those under 18, minors can see shared endorsements, but their profile won’t be used in them. Google says that these settings only apply to advertisements and not how your profile or photo might be used in other commercial ways.
While these tactics may be a little bit more cumbersome, there are still ways to stay private. What are your thoughts on the new privacy changes for these platforms?

Monitor your social performance

http://go.wf-social.com/Tool_Monitor_Req4_PD.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=paid_social_media&utm_campaign=tool_monitor

Ethic handbook

http://ethics.npr.org/tag/social-media/

Ethics In Social Media

http://youtu.be/DoAQ7RdvUgs