social media metrics

Thinking About Social Media? 10 Things to Keep Top of Mind

July 14, 2011 by Mitch Arnowitz

As the US summer sets in, we thought it high time to take a time out and do a social media reality check. We execute social media campaigns for a variety of organizations, from events to government and nonprofits to associations. With every campaign, there’s always a mental checklist we keep as we create and implement strategies to ensure our efforts are goal-focused, measurable and successful.

If you’re thinking about implementing social media into your organization’s marketing plan, here are 10 things to keep in mind as you’re developing your strategy.

Social is not just another piece of the marketing pie– Well-intentioned broadcast marketers will have you believe that social networking platforms simply offer an additional channel to distribute your message. Not true! Companies and organizations that use networks to broadcast press releases and (only) talk about themselves will continue to be roadkill.
Everyone’s an expert, no one’s an expert– Social media experts, of the just add water and stir variety, continue to come out of the woodwork. Many can talk the talk but not walk the walk! Knowing how to tweet doesn’t make you an authority. Years of productivity, a solid reputation and quantifiable results does. Peter Shankman summed it up well in a recent post: I Will Never Hire a “Social Media Expert,” and Neither Should You.
Some things never change– Yes, there’s been a paradigm shift away from broadcast communications and towards engagement but the basic rules of communication, PR and marketing practice still apply. Good old fashioned business ethics continue to rule the day! Knowing who you want to impact, the value your organization brings and understanding the other person’s needs before you get in touch continues to be mission critical in all marketing efforts.
Social media is more than Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter– While uber-important, social networks make up only part of the social media ecosystem. Email lists, web forums, user groups, photo and video sharing services, podcasts, social bookmarking sites and niche online communities are all part of the social media mix. It’s important to seek out where your customers are socializing and get involved in conversations on their turf. Here’s a more complete definition.
It’s all about building relationships– All marketing is about building relationships. Social offers tools and platforms to get the job done, but they don’t replace the one-on-one interaction necessary for being successful. And, relationships take time. We live by the adage that it’s never about the technology, but always about the people.
Don’t drink the social media Kool-Aid– There are many things that social media can do, but it will not cure cancer, right the economy or solve the Middle East crisis. We tell clients that there is rarely a silver bullet. However, with hard work and marketing smarts, social media can certainly help you reach your campaign goals.
It’s not one thing you do, it’s everything you do– Our most successful campaigns are those where all program elements work together. Social media, search, email and traditional should all work in tandem. Social should not be standalone, rather it should be baked into all campaign elements.
Build it and they may not come– Some organizations are moving away from a destination website mentality and more towards an outpost-focused, community building strategy. While it’s great to set up your brand’s social media outposts on Facebook or LinkedIn, it’s also important to remember that customers and supporters might be involved in other social media and affinity groups as well.
Social is not only about return on relationship– At Tuvel, we gauge our success by qualitative and quantitative metrics. While awareness, brand recognition and reputation are important, so are metrics that include money raised, increase in attendees or subscribers and widgets sold. Plan to measure your social media efforts in such a way that you can easily track results.
At the end of the day, social media is all about being social!– If you’re a practitioner, it’s also a good thing to be sociable – sharing, listening, learning and laughing! No one wants to socialize with someone who is either a) broadcasting, or b) not socializing at all. Find your social media voice and make it a part of your brand.

Social Media Mythbusters: 5 Myths About Social Media ROI

June 30, 2011 by Kari Rippetoe

I’ve been reading a higher-than-usual number of blog posts and articles about social media ROI – how to measure it, what to measure, what not to measure. I’m not sure if there was some sort of collective epiphany that led to this all of a sudden (or I just have ROI on the brain), but many of these posts have given me some food for thought about the topic – so I decided to write my own post.

As you read through the many articles floating around out there, here are some of the myths I’ve discovered about social media ROI to help give you a little bit of perspective:

ROI can’t be measured for social media marketing. Sorry, but marketers can no longer fall back on this excuse. When social media first started gaining momentum as a potentially viable marketing channel, no one was quite sure yet about how to measure efforts. Because it was a very young medium, there was a gap in terms of knowledge and tools to help us do this. Now that social media has really come into its own as a marketing channel, our collective knowledge about it has grown and more tools have become available to track a variety of metrics, including ROI.
The only return that matters in social media is Return on Engagement (ROE). I remember a couple of years ago when “Return on Engagement” was being touted as the “new ROI” for social media. I like to say that social media is all about being social, and “engagement” is one of those buzz words we as marketers throw around to describe how social our organization, brand, etc. is. While engagement in social media is important, it simply cannot be substituted for ROI. It doesn’t matter how many friends, fans or followers you’ve accumulated, or even how many retweets or wall posts you get. If you can’t track all your hard work back to some sort of conversion – whether that’s a purchase, a sign-up, a donation, or whatever conversion goal you’ve determined – then all of that won’t amount to squat.
Social media ROI is calculated the same way as for any other marketing campaign. I recently read a post on Mashable about how to calculate the ROI of social media, and while it provided a good foundation, it took a basic ROI formula used for more traditional marketing channels and applied it to social media. Using direct mail as an example for comparison, the post would have you believe that you would need to acquire X amount of customers in X amount of time via social media to demonstrate ROI. What it didn’t take into consideration was the time social media actually takes compared to other channels, and that social media is not direct response. What you have to do is take what you know about calculating ROI for your other marketing efforts and apply that in a way that works for your specific social marketing initiatives, knowing that social media is not a quick hit. It requires more direct customer engagement (there’s that buzzword again) and less direct response marketing. Here’s a post that provides an interesting social media take on the traditional ROI formula.
Social media isn’t worth getting into if direct ROI can’t be measured. ROI can be determined in a variety of ways – it just depends on, as I mentioned in #2, what your conversion goals are. You might not be able to track monetary ROI, but you can track other conversions that are just as valuable. Plus, social media can help you uncover a wealth of insights about your customers, your product, your brand, and your organization that can be just as valuable. If you’re able to identify a potential flaw with your product or negative customer service issues through chatter on Twitter, then you can use that information to improve the product or your customer service processes – potentially saving your company grief and/or money in the long run. Don’t you think social media is worth it for that reason, at the very least?
Social media is cheap, so ROI should be high. It may be free to start accounts on any number of social media sites, but the cost in terms of time and resources to manage those outposts the right way is not. Like it or not, social media will take some budget. It may not be as much as a PPC campaign or a print ad, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking that it’s so inexpensive as to automatically yield a high ROI. In fact, according to a recent infographic compiled by Focus.com, the average cost of social media is $210,600 in one year:

What We’re Reading, July 16th

July 16, 2010 by Kari Rippetoe

Happy Friday! It’s been a busy and exciting week here at Tuvel – wrapping up projects, kicking off new campaigns, seeing great results from current ones. It’s always so exciting to see the fruits of our labor! Tuvel was also featured in two articles this week – from Convene Magazine and the Omnipress Blog – which are part of our weekly recommended reading list today (but don’t just read them because we’re featured – they are truly interesting and insightful reads)!