There is an astounding amount of press about social media. Some companies – Dell and Comcast, for example – have strengthened their brands by engaging social media head on.
Some others have stumbled – but it’s clear that Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and the many other social networks around the world offer opportunities for businesses to develop new marketing channels and to build communities around their products and/or services.
This post isn’t about leveraging social media. If you need a place to start, you’ll find outstanding advice from very smart people, including from Paula Drum’s post earlier today – 10 Tips for Social Media Marketers.
I wanted to focus on three simple things you can do today to measure the effectiveness of your social media efforts.
1. Define Clear Goals.
It would be a mistake for companies to blindly jump into the social media whirlwind without first defining clear goals. Having one or multiple people spend hours upon hours on Twitter might be fun, but not particularly helpful to your company’s bottom line. While each business is unique – and many will have diverse goals – let me offer one place to start. At crowdSPRING, we look at five goals when evaluating whether to participate on a social network – and the extent of our participation.
1. lead generation
2. building a community
3. building brand awareness with a new audience
4. managing brand perception
5. providing customer service
Once you clearly define your goals, you can begin to better understand whether your social media activities help you to meet those goals.
2. Metrics, Metrics, Metrics. How the heck does one measure ROI?
Once you’ve defined your goals, you’ll want to understand whether the time and money you invest in social media efforts makes sense. Many people have opinions about social media metrics – just ask the millions of “social media experts” on Twitter.
