Measuring Social Media & The Human Element
I came across this quote today from a presenter at the Inbound Marketing Summit as shared by @dlynton: “in social media promotion, a human element is involved that makes ROI unpredictable and harder to measure #ims09″
Much like Search Engine Optimization back in it’s infancy, Social Media is difficult (but not impossible) to measure, still “theory” and has to be tested and experimented with. And, like SEO, you’ll have “gurus & experts” coming out to sell you on those new buzzwords and then run off with your money.
Tomorrow, we will be having our first “Hack Day”. It will be a lot like our Idea Marathon we had earlier in the year where we spent the entire day brainstorming new ideas, processes and service improvements to benefit our clients. My team, which consists of Jillian, Jackie and Melissa, is focusing on measuring the success of Social Media Campaigns.
This is what Gene tells us: that we must remember that the Client is ultimately the boss. We as the company and individuals must perform our duties to keep our boss(es) from making mistakes and keep them looking good.
So is Social Media a viable tool for online marketing? Of course it is. Just look at the success of Zappos or even our local friends at Coffee Groundz; who saw almost a 30-50% increase in business thanks to social media and his been featured in many publications; most recently the Wall Street Journal.
We will be posting our presentations later this week and next week along with video and pictures of the day’s event.
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On October 7, 2009 @ 11:07 am Daniel Lynton
said
Sal,
Thanks for the mention! While researching the best ways to measure results of social media, you may want to look at radian6. You may already be familiar with them, but their software does an incredible job at monitoring a brand’s presence across the entire social web – and help the brand react. They have agency accounts so you can manage all your clients and create users for them to analyze/respond. I just saw a demo here at ims09 and it’s pretty slick.
Now I’m listening to a panel of PR execs who all seem to agree that video is the most effective way to humanize a company and create compelling content. PR is becoming more about engaging customers. Big brands no longer want to pay for eyeballs, but true engagement. Indeed, the challenge is to constantly provide as much value to the client as possible, and always adapt to new changes in the marketing landscape.
On October 7, 2009 @ 7:03 pm Sal Baldovinos
said
Daniel,
Thanks for the feedback. We’ll definitely be looking into your suggestions. Looking forward to more live tweets from IMS09!
On December 1, 2009 @ 1:18 pm Social Media For Business: Use The Right Tools Not All of Them | Lab Notes said
[...] of the important things to remember about social media is the human element. Set your goals and keep monitoring them as the human element will ultimately find the rate of [...]