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Terametric Friday: Top Stories in Social Media

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Social Media Metrics, Twitter Marketing, Twitter ROI by Kim Cole on August 12th, 2011

Welcome to the Friday, August 12, 2011, edition of “Top Stories in Social Media ROI.” This is Terametric’s series where we keep you updated on the critical evolution of marketing Return on Investment in the Social Media Channel. Our top stories for today feature an eclectic mix of social media marketing tips.

The ROI of Social Media

What’s the return on investment for your social media. It certainly depends upon what you are trying to accomplish with your social media campaign. Are you trying to build community, develop brand recognition or loyalty, drive sales or encourage sharing of your content or ideas? Every approach will require a different strategy…and a different way to gauge response. Read on.

Generate, Segment, Target: Revitalize Your Market Strategy

We’ve heard it all before: The customer is always right. A satisfied customer is a loyal customer. Customer, customer, customer. But, it’s true, the customer is the heart of any business; and in today’s super-competitive business economy few things are as crucial to a company’s bottom line as pleasing its customers. Which is why, according to an article by eMarketer.com, 64% of marketers are planning on using their budgets to improve customer segmentation and targeting

Social Media Marketing Checkup

With budget season around the corner, is your social media marketing on track to achieve its business objectives? Your social media marketing assessment should be done in the context of your overall marketing mid-year checkup. Here’s a five-point social media marketing checklist to assess how you’re doing so far this year. Bear in mind where your firm is on the social media adoption curve as you answer these questions.

Tags: Social Media, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Strategy, Twitter marketing ROI, Twitter ROI
Posted in Social Media Marketing, Social Media Metrics, Twitter Marketing, Twitter ROI | View Comments

Has Twitter Still Got IT?

Posted in Social Media Analytics, Twitter Marketing, Twitter ROI by Kim Cole on July 19th, 2011

With Google + recently added to the social media fray is Twitter going to fall out of favor? I really don’t think so. Have you noticed that Twitter reaches many aspects of our daily lives? Popular TV programs like Survivor and Grey’s Anatomy incorporate live Twitter chats when their shows air. Even the Simpson’s mention Tweeting in several of the more recent episodes. Most of the big retailers have the Twitter Follow button and there are songs that include Twitter in their lyrics. Heck, there’s even a whole song about being on Twitter called (what else?), The Twitter Song by Gabe Bondoc. In fact, Edison Research tells us that 92 % of American’s are familiar with Twitter.

So for now, at least, Twitter has become intertwined in our lives. Twitter had 600K new sign-ups just last week on its 5^th birthday, and with 350 billion tweets a day (Google + only delivers about 1 billion items a day) it’s hard to ignore Twitter.

So what does this mean for businesses today? You need to continue to include Twitter as part of the marketing strategy. I think sometimes Twitter is over looked. But with 20 million active Twitter users, you can have a very powerful voice.

Optimizing your message will strengthen your brand and improve your ROI. I was reading the Social Examiner today and they reported on some new research that shows Twitter brings new leads to your website. In fact, businesses with over 1,000 followers saw 6 times more website traffic than businesses with 25 or fewer followers and 5 times as many leads.

It’s hard to stay active in all the social media channels today, but the evidence shows that Twitter definitely pays dividends. Twitter is one of the major venues in social media and missing the opportunities that Twitter offers could cost you valuable website traffic and leads.

We’d love to hear if you’re using Twitter, and any success stories you can share! If you’re looking for ways to optimize your Twitter marketing, click here for more information.

Thanks for reading!

@KimberlyACole

Tags: Social Media Strategy, twitter, Twitter ROI
Posted in Social Media Analytics, Twitter Marketing, Twitter ROI | View Comments

Terametric Friday: Top Stories in Social Media ROI

Posted in Social Media Marketing, Social Media ROI, Top Stories, Twitter ROI by Kim Cole on June 10th, 2011

Welcome to Friday, June 10, 2011, edition of “Top Stories in Social Media ROI.” This is Terametric’s series where we keep you updated on the critical evolution of marketing Return on Investment in the Social Media Channel. Our top stories for today feature tips for implementing successful social media marketing. We also have a bonus story about ROI, we couldn’t resist!

7 Steps to the Perfect Social Media Plan

via @socialmedia2day

Many business leaders wanting to get social dream about it. They think they need it. The social media magic template. The one that includes the perfect strategy, tactics and themselves as the social hero of their company and social superstar of their market niche

8 Strategies to Ensure Success on Twitter

via moomkin.com

Most of the tactics and strategies of the social networking media remain the same irrespective of the fact that you are trying to get thousands of followers or your aim is to foster and deepen bond within a tightly knit community. Nevertheless, social media marketing remains as the go-to source for many companies as the ultimate marketing mechanism.

Social Media Marketing Checklist

Via @toprank

While putting together a presentation recently, I assembled a simple check list of considerations for a social media marketing effort. We’ve written quite a bit about developing a social media roadmap, strategy and measurement in the past, but there are some important questions to answer when it comes to realizing what’s involved. Companies can test and run tactics in silos but eventually, there will come a time when efforts need to be coordinated

Social Media ROI: Return on Influence

Via @VictorGaxiola

If 2010 was the year that corporations and individuals accepted the fact that social media was not longer a fad, 2011 will be remembered as the year that a return was expected. It’s not surprising that something so popular would be expected to be profitable. How else could you justify the expense in time spent participating.

Tags: Social Media ROI, Social Media Strategy, Twitter marketing ROI, Twitter ROI
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Three Reasons why Social Media Marketing Generates Positive ROI

Posted in Social Media Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Social Media ROI, Twitter ROI by Kim Cole on May 11th, 2011

I was just reading the latest marketing research that definitively demonstrates CMOs are beginning to believe that Social Media Marketing generates positive ROI. But what’s taken them so long to make this change?

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I’m north of 30 and hence, relatively new to social media. I can remember when faxes were the coolest thing and you had to take that curly paper over to the copier to copy the fax onto plain paper or risk the original fax fading away in time. (I also walked to and from school three miles, uphill both ways.) And I’m willing to bet, a lot of C level executives remember those days too, so maybe that’s why they’ve been slow to embrace social media.

Here’s three aspects of social media that should help your organization speed up its implementation & adoption:

Personal Contact –

Everyone likes to feel special. There’s a higher end restaurant that my husband and I frequent and the chef/owner always makes a point to come out into the dining area to speak to the patrons. That brief personal interaction always makes me feel special, and keeps us coming back. Social media does the same thing. When you have a personal interaction with a “live” member of the corporation, it gives you that same feeling of importance, which builds loyalty.

Reputation Management –

People are more likely to do business with people they trust. Building trust with a customer drives loyalty. Social media helps to strengthen relationships by providing transparency and giving a channel for customers to see what others say about your company, and demonstrates how problems are resolved. This is reputation management at its core, and in our increasingly social culture – where anyone can effectively correspond with anyone else – having a positive reputation is huge.

Analytics –

Prior to social media, companies had to actively seek data (telephone/paper surveys etc.) to determine customer satisfaction, and to look for inspiration for R&D of new products and services. But social media provides quick and easy access to this type of feedback, and in many cases, the data is voluntarily given and given without biases. However, this information can and usually does arrive in a very unstructured format, and making sense of it can be a massive challenge. Simply put, companies that can effectively harness analytics to makes sense of this data are given a huge advantage in their ability to respond quicker to changing trends.

All in all, social media provides greater personal contact, reputation management, and the data to back up decisions – so it should be no wonder why CMOs are finally beginning to embrace it as a key component of their overall marketing strategies. For more detailed tips on Twitter marketing, click on this link.

Thanks for looking!

Kim

@KimberlyACole

Tags: Social Media Marketing, Social Media ROI, Social Media Strategy, Twitter marketing ROI
Posted in Social Media Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Social Media ROI, Twitter ROI | View Comments

Invest in Your Future with Social Media

Posted in Enterprise 2.0, Social Media Marketing by Kim Cole on May 4th, 2011

I was just reading an interesting blog from Entrepreneur.com entitled “How Fast-Growing Companies Use Social Media” which was a nice article. One of the things that struck me was the companies having the greatest success with social media are not new to social media. In fact, many of the companies have been invested in social media marketing for three years or more.

A report published by SmartBrief last year reported that the companies having the most success with social media are veterans of three or more years. These veterans have solid, multi-layered strategies, invest more, have more leadership support, measure ROI reliably, and have greater bottom line success compared to companies just getting into social media marketing.

If you’re looking for social media marketing to be a quick fix, you’re going to be disappointed. Building up your social currency with followers and fans will take time. Learning to be part of the conversation instead of direct advertising takes a lot of work and you must stop yourself from falling back on comfortable habits.

And if you’re like me, north of 30, and well let’s just say, I’m not fresh out of college, this whole social media scene can be a little daunting. So you need to take a leap of faith and stretch a little to embrace social media marketing and expect to be at it for a while before you see the big pay-offs. As well as accept it as a business standard going forward.

So if you’re willing to invest in your future, social media should be part of your multi-pronged marketing strategy and try not to be impatient while you build on this investment. We’d love to hear about your journey into the social media marketing scene, so please leave us a comment, or email.

Thanks!

Kim

@KimberlyACole

Email: kimcole@terametric.com

Tags: Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Strategy
Posted in Enterprise 2.0, Social Media Marketing | View Comments

Are You a Deadly Sinner?

Posted in Social Intelligence, Social Media Metrics, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Kim Cole on January 29th, 2011

I’m talking about the deadly sin of Pride of course. Maybe we should remove Pride from the Deadly Sin list when it comes to social media marketing because you can’t be successful without looking in the mirror every now and then.

In fact, a study recently released by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth’s Center for Marketing Research took an in-depth look at the use of social medial in fast-growing corporations. One of the interesting questions they posed was whether or not the participants monitor their company name or brand in social media. The number is up from last year to 70%.

But is just monitoring your company name and brand enough? Probably not. To really understand your reach and influence in social media you should be monitoring a host of metrics. There is a plethora of metrics that measure your performance on Social Media channels and they fall into three general categories: inbound, outbound, and social Intelligence. (Click the links for examples.)

· An Outbound metric measures the marketing activities that you generate or send out within the various social media channels. This constitutes your investment or costs.

· An Inbound metric captures responses resulting from your outbound social media activities and measures your brand/company’s impact in social media or in other words, what is said about your company. This is your return.

· Social Intelligence is a metric that meshes together sentiment, engagement, retention, loyalty, reach and influence to give you an idea what the community is feeling about your brand or company.

If you’re effectively measuring these three areas, you should have a good idea if your social media marketing efforts are helping you reach your company goals. There are many monitoring tools that can help you optimize your efforts as well.

What are your favorite things to monitor about your company or brand? Please share them with us!

Tags: Engagement, inbound metrics, marketing channel, marketing investment, metrics, outbound metrics, Social Intelligence, Social Media Strategy
Posted in Social Intelligence, Social Media Metrics, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

3 reasons why SMBs fail to achieve positive ROI with Twitter Marketing

Posted in Social Media ROI, Twitter ROI by Taariq Lewis on December 27th, 2010

The United States Small Business Association defines a company with gross receipts of up to a maximum, on average, of $7MM dollars as a Small Medium Business (SMB). Therefore, when it comes to social media marketing, SMBs have small very small budgets and should be more sensitive to the impact of negative ROI on their social media marketing efforts. SMBs may view social media channels, such as Twitter, as a cheap or zero-cost way to extend their marketing and public relations functions. However, contrary to being cheap and effective, non-benchmarked and non-optimized, Twitter marketing, can be costly and can result in mostly negative ROI due to lack of sales or marketing contributions to the business.

Under-estimating the required time and resources for Twitter Marketing
MarketingProfs recently released a study that took a look at Social Media Marketing companies that have been using social media for more than three years and they found that these veterans are spending more on social media. Around 21.8% of social media marketing veterans say they devote at least two full-time staffers to social media, compared with 5% of rookies. However, most SMBs cannot afford to place full-time staff on their Social Media and Twitter marketing programs. These firms may have someone tweet a few times or for a few minutes, daily with the hope that someone will see a Tweet or that their brand awareness will grow. That’s a hope-and-pray strategy for most. Without any benchmark as to what is required to increase awareness or drive sales on Twitter, most SMB Twitter accounts, even with large followers fail to deliver positive ROI for their organizations.

Missing or very little Twitter Marketing strategy
Underestimating time and resources contributes to a lack of a clear and solid strategic plan for Twitter campaigns as part of a broader marketing engagement. Most Twitter marketing tools are free or a very low cost, relative to other marketing services and software. As such, it’s very tempting for any company, SMB or otherwise to get setup on Twitter and start tweeting. According to Social Media Guru Matt Singley, “the biggest temptation for any company with social media is that they want to jump right in without setting goals or having a strategy.” SMBs are sufficiently small that they may not have organizational resources to map out complex strategic approaches to their marketing programs. However, it’s still critical to have a Twitter marketing strategy that includes benchmarking, measurement and campaign optimization.

No Twitter Campaign Optimization
Even those SMBs that measure, many may not be optimizing their Twitter marketing campaigns, daily as sentiment, trends, and influence changes online. Firstly, SMBs may be local or regional businesses without large, global data-sets of data to process transactions and customer engagements. As such, these companies may see optimization as novel or out of reach of their organizational capabilities. Also, most free measurement tools provide measurement, but no benchmark in real-time. As a result, these companies fail to initially and continuously benchmark their performance against their target markets. Thus, they fail to optimize their Twitter marketing campaigns in real-time.

Failure to plan a strategy and to acquire a factual estimate of what it takes to be successful on Twitter means that most SMBs will try and dip their toes with a little Twitter marketing and expend ineffective resources to stay in the game. However, most will see only negative ROI from Twitter marketing continue to persist and may give up on Twitter as not effective.

Are you an SMB that wants Positive ROI from your social media and Twitter marketing objectives? Email us and ask about our risk-free trial of Twitter Optimizer for Small and Medium-sized Businesses.

Tags: Influence, marketing measurement, marketing roi, Social Media ROI, Social Media Strategy, Social Media Tools, tweets, twitter, Twitter ROI
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Terametric Friday: Top Stories in Social Media ROI

Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis, Twitter ROI by Taariq Lewis on December 10th, 2010

Welcome to Friday, December 10th, 2010, edition of “Top Stories in Social Media ROI.” This is Terametric’s series where we keep you updated on the critical evolution of marketing Return on Investment in the Social Media Channel. Our top stories for today:

Webinar: How to Measure and Improving your Twitter Marketing ROI
Missed out on the best Twitter marketing webinar for 2010? Listen to three Social Media measurement and analytics thought leaders discuss the challenges of measuring, optimizing and competing in the Twitter marketing channel. Learn what marketers will be doing on Twitter for 2011 and get new tools and resources for your own Twitter marketing campaign.

B2B Social Media Marketing — Does It Work?
Arguably, social media marketing for B2B companies is one of the most difficult campaigns to run. On the surface it seems there are more successful B2C social media examples than B2B, but online seems to be where it’s at if you’re looking to market to those B2B decision makers.

How the Fortune 500 Use Social Media to Grow Sales and Revenue
Given the hundreds of social media tools available, and the thousands of different ways to use them in business, you’d think that getting Fortune 500 companies on board would be a complex and daunting task. But it’s not. The truth is, there are only five different ways the Fortune 500 use social media. Seriously — just five. And once you know what they are, you can figure out which ones would be most useful for your business.

Twitter Proven to Impact Search Engine Rankings
Over the past 3 years most of us involved with marketing have heard of Twitter. At the same time businesses have prioritized their adoption of Twitter differently. Some businesses have made it a core part of their inbound marketing strategy, while others have delayed adoption in favor of other tactics.

Tags: marketing investment, ROI, Social Media Case Studies, Social Media Strategy, tweets, twitter, Twitter ROI
Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis, Twitter ROI | View Comments

Terametric Marketing Predictions for 2011: The continuing importance of data and social media

Posted in Enterprise 2.0, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Kim Cole on December 9th, 2010

As we begin to close the books on this year, we turn to set our goals and budgets for next year. In doing so, you’ll read and hear several predictions regarding the challenges that social media in 2011 will bring us. As you develop your Social Media Marketing goals for next year, here are two critical pieces of insight that build off solid research into social media and data analytics.

Data will be King

Source:http://www.sxc.hu/profile/dimitri_c

There’s no doubt that the amount of business data available is voluminous. In fact, The MIT Sloan Management Review and IBM recently published a report that analyzed a survey given to nearly 3000 executives regarding their company’s business process around data analytics. The study found that top performing companies use analytics 5 times more than lower performing companies. This study looked at data across the entire organization, not just the departments that historically have been measured such as Finance, Operations and Sales/Marketing.

1. But just having data won’t make you successful. To maximize return on investment, or ROI, one must step back from the data and first develop a clear set of goals. Once goals are established, one can then select the parameters one wants to measure and start to benchmark current performance. Clear goals, together with critical benchmarks make the data valuable to the organization and will help marketers to adjust their efforts to achieve all their business and marketing goals.

The MIT study also pointed out that data analytics is so important to the executives from the top performing companies that they believe information and analytics allows them to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Additionally, the top executives will place even more emphasis on analytics from emerging platforms such as social media over the next 2 years.

2. Social Media Marketing will continue to grow. Stunmedia recently summarized a report from IDC in which IDC predicts that social business software will grow by 38% through 2014 and that more than 40% of SMBs will be using social networks by the end of 2011.

Additionally, eMarketer shows that online advertising will continue to increase in 2011. However, maximizing the return on that marketing investment will be also critical.

The successful Social Media Marketer will recognize that in order to convince the executives to spend money on Social Media Marketing they will have to use data to present a strategic campaign, with specific parameters for benchmarks and metrics that will tie back to positive and improving ROI.

So your goals for 2011 will require that we continue to use data to prove the value of social media investment in order to extend a winning competitive lead in the market place.