Thought Leadership

Guest post by Jim Sterne: The Importance of Measuring Twitter Marketing ROI

Jim Sterne is an international speaker on electronic marketing and customer interaction. Sterne is the producer of the international eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits www.emetrics.org and is the co-founder and current Chairman of the Web Analytics Association www.WebAnalyticsAssociation.org.

Like the World Wide Web and email before it, social media is here to stay - done deal. What people say about your goods and services carries more weight than what you broadcast about yourself. This brings three new considerations to the marketing table.

First, organizations must monitor and participate in the online social discourse to meet prospects and clients where they live. Ignoring the conversation is not an option.

Next, that monitoring that conversation includes two new, unfamiliar metrics to fold into the mix. Reach and frequency are joined by influence and sentiment as vital statistics about the hearts and minds of the marketplace. Who is talking about you and are they saying nice things or not? Who are the new thought leaders and does your participation improve public opinion or are you making things worse?

Finally, those metrics need to be monitored and acted upon at an astonishing pace. Results from magazine ads, direct mail drops and television campaigns used to take months. But today, response is immediate and public. An angry customer, a disappointed prospect or even a rouge employee can burst onto the scene and into the consciousness of the marketplace within hours. Fast detection and quick response are the order of the day.

Monitoring the conversation is not scalable. While the human mind can interpret what is being said better than any machine ever will, the preponderance and tempo of Twitter activity is simply beyond the means of today's executives and beyond the intellectual capacity of an infinite number of interns.

Therefore, today's tools must provide human subject matter experts the means to observe the discourse, monitor the sentiment and alter to sudden shifts in public attitude. Only then can the power of social media be harnessed to help organizations meet their goals and can they determine how well they are engaging in this brave, new, very public world.

Guest post by Jason Falls: The Importance of Measuring Twitter Marketing ROI

The importance of measuring the value of any specific social network -- Twitter or otherwise -- is important because the world of social media is vast and layered. Yet, companies can't afford the human or fiscal resources to be everywhere and everything to everybody. So you have to know where your audience is, what platforms they are using and focus your time and attentions efficiently.

Knowing what you're getting out of the time you spend on Twitter, whether that's measured in awareness, increased fans, website traffic or (hopefully) website conversions (subscribers, order value, etc.), is critical to your overall marketing success. If you spend the equivalent of $10,000 in man hours and costs to be on Twitter and are getting $100,000 worth of value in conversions out of it, you're an efficient marketer. If you're only getting $5,000 back, but are getting $50,000 from blogging and winning search results, you then know where you should refocus more of your energies.

I've never been a big promoter of delineating the specific value of your "ROI" for one network or another ... you're always going to have intangible benefits ... but understanding that you're getting something out of the time you spend there is critical to making good decisions and being efficient as a marketer.

Guest post by Kyle Lacy: The Importance of Measuring Twitter Marketing ROI

When you first start to look at using Twitter as a communication and marketing platform it is important to verify that the tool is going to be worth your (precious) time. The first thing that should be done before implementing Twitter is to actually search and test the tool before adding it into your overall marketing strategy.

The listening and monitoring phase of social media is extremely important to your social media mix. By using tools like Twitter Search you can decipher whether or not to use this wonderful communication medium.

Three Things to Look for When Monitoring Twitter

1. Current and Potential Clients - When searching on Twitter it is important to figure out whether or not potential clients are using the tool. Search for keywords associated with the different companies you work for (or would like to have as clients).
Example: If you are a small business lawyer it is important to search for terms associated with your industry. An easy way to pinpoint keywords is to look at your search engine optimization strategy. It could be "forming an llc" or "collections" or "small business legal help." It is also important to find out whether or not your current clients are using the tool. If they are... there is a good chance other people are as well.

2. Competitors - This should be self explanatory...Twitter can be a great tool for market and competitive research. If your competitors are using Twitter effectively it is probably a tool you should be using in your marketing and communications strategy. Search the company names of your competitors (as well as the location you are serving).

3. Content about your industry - If content is being shared about your industry it is important that you voice your opinion about certain matters. Example #AgChat is a great example of farmers and agriculture professionals using Twitter to voice their concerns over certain ag matters.

Remember when you are searching on Twitter that it is important to search in a conversational tone...as well as using keywords. Twitter is a conversation based platform and individuals maybe using different words when speaking about your services.

If you run across any of the three forms of content listed above... it is important that you start looking at Twitter as a communication tool for your company.

Guest post by Kevin Palmer: Social Media Marketing is About Efficiency

I know people will bristle when they read the title of this blog post. We are all programmed to say, “It is about the conversation, it is about relationships, it is about listening.” While all three of these are tenants of social media, if they aren’t done efficiently they are not going to be done well. If social media isn’t done well it can put you behind your competition, it won’t get internal support within the company, and worst of all, you could lose customers.

We all have finite amounts of time. Even marketers at the largest company can’t possibly do everything they would want to do within social media. There is always more that you can be doing, but whatever you ARE doing should be executed at the most efficient levels. You should never question if you should be doing something better. In order to execute at an efficient high level you need to have an understanding of your ROI - not just in financial terms but in terms your effort and time.

Understanding every action you take and the impact it has on your marketing efforts is one of the first steps to making you an efficient social media marketer. How many times do you post? Who are you following? Who aren’t you following? Who is retweeting you? Who are you retweeting? These are all time consuming activities on even the most basic level. To improve your performance in these areas requires even more of an investment. Making this time investment blindly though can make for a frustrating experience. The good thing is that all of these are measurable activities. You can see how your sweat equity pays off.

Taking the time to understand what you are doing, establishing a baseline, setting goals, and tracking your actions is the first step towards efficient social media marketing.