Category Archive: social media
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7 things to think about before jumping in
In the last post, we discussed how social media is gaining traction and becoming a tool in every marketer’s armor. Here are a few things you should consider before jumping in
- NEED: Social Media must be integrated with your overall marketing strategy. Think about a) Why do you think you need to implement social media? b) How do you see social media helping you to achieve your marketing or business objectives?
- BUY IN: Social Media is not a campaign, it is a long term strategy. The only way to succeed is to engage in the conversation in an ongoing manner. With that, it is critical to have the buy in from the CMO and CFO to keep up with the investments in resources, time and money till you start seeing positive ROI.
- BANDWIDTH & RESOURCES: The strength of Social Media is in the LIE model, i.e. the ability to listen, influence and engage. Do you have the time and people to LIE?
- CULTURE: What is your corporate culture? Is your company bold enough to support social engagements and willing to talk transparently, authentically & honestly to people online?
- COST: The good news is that there are tools available for the LISTEN part of LIE. Marketers can make use of tools like TweetDeck, Radian6, Techrigy, Visible Technologies, BuzzGain, and Crimson Hexagon to name a few to listen to the conversations about their brand, employees, competition and industry. But you need to consider the ROI on the cost of these tools and your resources.
- TOOLS: Once you have established the above 5 factors, you need to see what Social Media tools to use to align with your goals and objectives.
- METRICS: If you cannot measure something, you cannot improve it. Given the increasing importance of Social Media, it is important that marketers agree on a set of metrics aligned with their goals and objectives. Amber Naslund of Radian6 offers some great ideas on the type of metrics we can use for Social Media:
- Exuberance: the monthly count of positive posts, comments and testimonials
- Bucket Volume: comparison of monthly count of complaints and referrals
- Activation: the monthly total of new sources that have shared your positive content
- Conversation: the total monthly share of conversations vs. competition
- Engagement: the amount of repeat commenting and lengths of those comments
- Repetition: average number of times a particular source/user retweeets or comments on your content
- Bonding: the percentage of your followers who comment or retweet your content
What factors are you thinking of when implementing a social media strategy? Please chime in
Has Social Media Reached the Tipping Point?
Consider this: according to Groundswell, in 2009, more than four out of five online Americans are active in either creating, participating in, or reading some form of social content at least once a month.
Social Media Reached a Tipping Point
According to a broad survey of some 1,450 marketers from Equation Research:
* The adoption of social media is well past critical mass–with nearly two thirds of brand marketers (59%) currently implementing social media in their marketing plans
* Facebook, Twitter, online video and blogs are the 4 most popular social media tools. Yet none of these are being used in isolation–on average, there are 5 to 7 other social media tools being either actively used or dabbled with by marketers at the same time
* While traditional media channels account for the largest proportion of marketing spend; Online, Search and Social Media as a group are approximately a third of all current spend. For smaller companies this increased to over 40%
* Looking towards 2010, brand marketers forecast a shift in spend towards digital tactics, feeling the areas most likely to increase will be Social Media (60%), Online Advertising (53%), Search Engine Advertising (49%) and Email Marketing (41%).
While it is easy to get all excited looking at the stats above, I want to offer some cautious optimism here. There is little doubt that social media is here to stay. At the same time, it is important to realize that Social Media comprises less than 3% of the current digital spend.
The biggest barrier to adoption has been the lack of metrics to measure the effectiveness and ROI on Social Media campaigns. Once we figure out the problem of attribution, the growth curve for social media is going to look even more steep.
I offer 2 posts that focus on the ROI challenge
- Monetizing Social Networks: will attribution be the answer?
- Monetizing Social Networks- what will the privacy advocates say?
Do you think social media has become mainstream? I look forward to your thoughts.
Hire Smarter (or NOT) with Social Media
As marketing people, we love social media. And why not? Its comparatively inexpensive, has a broad reach and a variety of platforms available to establish thought leadership, demand generation and customer loyalty.
But one thing that companies need to understand before jumping onto the social media bandwagon is that social media is different from other online or traditional media. Social media is a sacred space. You get it right and you build long lasting customer loyalty. But if you get wrong, it is very hard to undo what you just did.
I recently came across this article on the Harvard blog about Hiring Smarter with Social Media (http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/07/hire_smarter_with_social_media.html). While some of the ideas are good, I was astounded to read the following:
You can strike a balance by asking prospects to friend you for a limited time (24 or 48 hours) on any social network where they’re personally identifiable, so you can see how they present themselves online and make sure there aren’t any examples of bad judgement or online comments that could come back to haunt you (for example, griping about one of your clients).
Oh my god! A company who listens to this advice is not only limiting the pool of potential applicants but also exposing them to lawsuits related to discrimination. The info I share with my “friends” via Facebook or other such sites includes personal information that you would NEVER ask in an interview such as marital status, religious beliefs/affiliations, political views, etc.