We put together a few more articles on social media…

When tracking your success of any social media marketing one key element is to set your goals first. For each organization or company there will be separated goals and reasons for engaging within social media. This channel has matured to the point where there are a couple of core success points for engaging. Some items that are important to measure for success are direct sales from social media, prospects and leads, mentions and conversation, and sentiment.

How Do I Measure and Track The Success of My Social Media Marketing Strategy?

What are some of the best social media tools out on the market? What tools should you be using to distribute your messages and communication to your target market?

What social media tools can be used to distribute messages to consumers and clients?

People are already talking about your products or e-commerce website. These conversations used to happen over dinner, at work, or over a cup of coffee. While this is still happening something has replaced the water cooler—social media. It’s also been said that social media is the new Monday. Many people would make sure that they see the just released movie so they can talk about it with co-workers on Monday—now social media plays this role. With one key difference it’s always on and it’s happening instantaneously.

eCommerce Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social Media (image from WebTreats)

Social media channels such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are humming with commentary about companies, products, and services. How to respond to and tap into the “wisdom of crowds” is one of the most fluid and often-discussed issues in the retail and other industries today.

Kids Domain?

This is no longer the kids’ domain, as every generation is participating in the creation and consumption of content over the web. People in their 20s to 40s tend to produce more content, such as blogs and videos, while those in their 40s to 60s spend a proportionally larger amount of their time consuming content produced by others.56 Roughly 67% of global Internet users visit social networks, making them more popular than personal e-mail.57 Worldwide, Facebook membership alone has climbed above 400 million.58

How Much Activity?

All of this activity is producing massive amounts of data. More than 1.5 trillion text messages were reported on carriers’ networks during 009.59 Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.60 Every month, 25 billion pieces of content are uploaded to Facebook.61 And there’s no letup in sight.

The volume of data generated by social media represents a massive opportunity for consumer businesses—as long as they can figure out how to discern useful patterns in the noise and minethis sea of sentiment and ideas. Indeed, never before have businesses had instant visibility into consumer opinions and needs.It used to take weeks, if not months, to gather consumer data through formal channels, meaning the information was outdated long before decisions were made. Today, companies can take their customers’ virtual pulse in real time, one on one.

Any Risk Involved?

However, the risk associated with billions of mobilized and communicative consumers is as outsized as the opportunity. Intellectual property can leak around the globe in seconds, as can news of previously veiled corporate actions. Complaints—for instance, about a supplier allegedly using environmentally destructive practices or showing poor taste in an advertisement—can spawn thousands of commentaries within hours.

Clearly, companies need a well-honed strategy for participating in social media, and that strategy must include a way to measure ROI. Best Buy, Hershey, Sunny Delight, and others are actively working on such strategies while also engaging with their consumers in the here and now. They realize that sitting on the sidelines too long while developing plans could pose a far larger risk than the occasional messaging fumble.

Being Out There

After all, companies have to be “out there” to communicate their point of view. As Hershey CFO Bert Alfonso says, “Many consumers are now using digital media to get their information. You need a way to tell your story. And if you are going to tell your story in a world of blogs and streaming video, you better be able to communicate digitally.”

Furthermore, social media is evolving at breakneck speed. “It’s going to be radically different five years from now than it is today,
which is radically different from what it was five years ago,” says Steve Neil of Diamond Foods. Companies that learn how to reach consumers efficiently and cost-effectively are, at the same time, building entry barriers to competitors.

The experiences of leading consumer firms to date suggest several themes that are useful to executives trying to find the right approach, and the right level of investment, for their own companies.

Download Special Report (PDF)

The internet exists mainly because we are social animals. Social media is just the latest form of groups of people sitting around the campfire.

One such example of this comes from Groupon a group buying service who attributes much of its success and growth to the ability for users to easily share the daily deal with their social circle.

We see this happen often when we login into Facebook. Someone sharing the latest GroupOn or LivingSocial deal and enticing their friends to join them in purchasing. You could argue that GroupOn wouldn’t even have had a chance if it wasn’t for the popularity of social media.

There have been other attempts of similar services in the past but those have not grown as fast or as big. We’ve watched the rise of GroupOn and would argue the main reason for this is the usage of social networks.

When developing a social network what are the key elements you want in place?

People are getting sick of registering and declaring their friends on each and every site. Lost passwords, multiple logins, and entering the same information over and over is one of the reasons why new networks fail to grow to their full potential.

We have include more within our special report titled How To Build Social Media into Your Social Networking Website

Facebook Connect

Facebook Connect is Facebook’s latest addition to its development platform. It enables developers to leverage the power of Facebook’s social context in existing, third-party Web sites. The platform features seamless, one-click authentication, Facebook friend account linking, distribution back into Facebook streams, and the full power of the Facebook REST-like API and FQL. Utilizing Facebook Connect for authentication has proven to dramatically increase site exposure and new user registrations.

OpenID

You may choose to associate information with your OpenID that can be shared with the websites you visit, such as a name or email address. With OpenID, you control how much of that information is shared with the websites you visit.

OpenID is rapidly gaining adoption on the web, with over one billion OpenID enabled user accounts and over 50,000 websites accepting OpenID for logins. Several large organizations either issue or accept OpenIDs, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL, MySpace, Sears, Universal Music Group, France Telecom, Novell, Sun, Telecom Italia, and many more.

ALLOW EASY OF SHARING CONTENT

One key element you want to design within a social network is the ability for content to be shared with other social platforms. A great example of this is a recent change by YouTube. You’ll notice that when you watch a video from YouTube you get these options:

That is just the beginning, to learn more about what elements your custom social network should include visit this page to download our special report on How To Build Social Media into Your Social Networking Website.

This is part 3 of a 4 part series from WebBizIdeas on the core steps you need to take to engage social media.

We also have a great report that you can download with each step and examples of these steps in action. You can find that report here Social Media Engagement.

Engagement – the things you do once you have an audience.

This is actually the step where you get permission to move to the next step. First and foremost you must ensure that you deliver on what you promised in your acquisition strategy. If once someone has started to engage with you and they do not get what they expected they will leave or worse yet tune out. Just as the advent of timeshifted TV has allowed consumers to skip commercials if you don’t deliver value your audience will abandon you as well.

Key Questions for Engagement

• How can I add value to people that follow me or the audience that I gain in the permission marketing space? (email in addition to social is permission based)
• What are the acceptable forms of engagement in this channel?
• What is my engagement schedule?
• Who is responsible for engagement items?
• What are the unique ways I can engagement this channel that will set me or my company apart?
• What does my target market expect from me?
• What are my competitors doing?

Engagement Examples

Engagement can arguably be the most important step. Without proper engagement you simply would not be effective when moving onto the next element—monetization. The people and companies that successfully engage can then prime their audience towards offers, purchasing, and other elements of the sales funnel. Below I’ve included a few great examples of companies that are engaging within social media.

Steel Buildings are Social?

SteelMaster a manufacturer of prefabricated steel buildings engages Facebook in an unusual way. You wouldn’t guess that there would be much affinity to a steel building. First they found that Facebook is a great place to post pictures of customer’s buildings.

These pictures not only engage existing customers—they also tell a story to potential customers what is possible. Since the backbone of Facebook is pictures this plays well in this platform.

They also use Twitter to get exposure and create demand in vertical markets they had little traction in, such as chicken farmers and woodworkers.

Watch a Video Get a Free Night

Rogers Smith Hotel uses twitter to give away free nights of stay (click to see tweet below).

Even Paint Can Engage?

IdeaPaint does a great job with their blog. This is the launching pad of their engagement plan. IdeaPaint turns virtually anything you can paint into a high-performance dry-erase surface—every 3 year olds fantasy.

Their outreach typically starts with a great video post that shows the product in action. Telling a story each time it also gives potential customers what is possible with their unique product.  From there they engage within YouTube, Twitter and Facebook connecting with their core market.

Wait a Refrigerator?

Subzero (maker of appliances and high end refrigerators) whose core customer is a woman age 45 or older focuses on the essential element of adding value to its affluent customers’ busy lives. They do this by sharing seasonal recipes, wine pairings, and cooking tips. They also spotlight hot kitchen designers. Facebook is the third-top-referring site to SubZero.com.

Sub-Zero then engages their audience rewarding their affluent followers with exclusive news, discounts, videos, and pictures. This gave the follower the feeling of being on the inside. One recent question posed by SubZero has garnered over 200 responses or close to a hundred for the simply question what’s for dinner tonight?

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Social Media Principals special report [pdf

This is part 2 of a 4 part series from WebBizIdeas on the core steps you need to take to engage social media. You can download this special report that covers Acquisition Techniques in social media.

Acquisition – The things you do to acquire a fan, follower, subscriber, reader, etc.

It’s important to define what you acquisition strategy per social channel. Your acquisition strategy for Facebook, Your Blog, Twitter, or LinkedIn will each have its own strategy and pull points.

When amassing fans I always say go with quality over quantity. Your social presence should be an extension of your brand’s voice. To build that foundation, establish and invite your core customers.

Begin by communicating to your existing database and announcing your brand’s places of contact (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Etc.) via e-mail. In addition, link to your profiles and pages on your website at every opportunity.

At retail, include the URL on receipts and checkout counter cards. Provide an incentive for your current customers to “follow” your brand, such as exclusive content, discounts or sweepstakes.

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How many friend and friend details can we possibly track? With how many friends – or brands – can we sustain meaningful engagement? Using a loose definition of “friend” including those whose updates or status we follow on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and other social networks or communities, the attention required to manage all those updates has grown in multiple and exponential ways.

So what does this mean for you if you are trying to a build a meaningful relationship with your target market? Here’s a few tips to keep focused on what is important as more people start using social as a channel and more consumers start tuning it out.

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