As mentioned in a previous post about social and mobile driving big data, social creates a lot of data.  But all data is not created equal and marketers struggle to determine which data sets will yield the best information for the business.  Of course, each business is different and thus, the data that tells a story about each business can also be different.

But, as a marketer with limited resources, it is possible to structure your social efforts in a way that allow you to not only measure the impact of your social initiatives, but to measure the impact of those initiatives on your brand.

Four Social Metrics to Track

A recent post by Dilip Venkatachari suggests four social metrics that he says will help you measure whether you are moving the needle on your brand.  Not coincidentally, inherent in these metrics are ways of engaging socially that are very valuable for any business.  Here are the four:

1 | Conversations 

Social is a social medium so measuring the number and type of conversations involving your brand is a fundamental social metric. Also, remember that social is not a broadcast medium, but a two-way conversation channel.  If you are not having a dialog, you are not going to get the most out of social and the other metrics on this list will indicate that.

2 | Share of Voice

Use this metric to see how your brand compares to competitors across a variety of measures like number of conversations around key topics and whether the tone of conversations is positive or negative with respect to your brand.

3 | Brand Fans

One of the gems of social is being able to identify and connect with your brand’s “super fans”.  Prior to social they were harder to find and engage but an increase in advocates is a clear measure of increasing brand strength.

4 | Product Feedback

Ever field a focus group? Expensive, time consuming, minimal data from a few qualitative questions.  Social lets you crowdsource product feedback in entirely new ways.  Ask complex questions of super fans.  Get instant feedback on feature choices.   When customers know a brand is listening and incorporating feedback, it builds huge brand credibility and loyalty.

Focus to Build Your Brand

These are just four measures of many but they are good ones.  If you are monitoring all of these for your brand, you are ahead of many in focusing on data that will help you move the needle on your brand, and your business.

If you had to add a fifth social metric to measure, what would it be?

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Think about a typical scenario of posting an update which includes a link to a video. This launches a series of replies, re-posts, additional links, web traffic, keyword searches, video views etc.  Each post generates data which can be collected, analyzed, shared and learned from.

Now imagine you posted from your smartphone and your fans are watching and responding via their smartphones.  Add to all the previous data a new set of information about location, device type, and app use.

It doesn’t take long to see that social and mobile alone are creating a large percentage of the big data story.  In fact, the use of social platforms and mobile devices is revolutionizing everything about data – how we use it, how we store and access it, and how we learn from it.

As reported in a Forbes article entitled These Smart, Social Apps Bring Big Data Down to Size, Big Data technology and services is a big market. And, a variety of companies like GoodData, NetBase and ClikTech are offering ways to visualize and understand the plethora of data that our social and mobile connected world create.

What advice do you have for managing social and mobile data?

As anyone in sales or marketing can tell you, information is power when it comes to out-competing the competition.  What your competitors are doing and how they are performing shouldn’t set your strategy, but it should inform your approach to winning in your chosen markets. With these tips from Simply Measured, you can be on your way to gathering and leveraging competitive intel via social in no time.

Four Social Measures that Help You Learn from Competitors

1 | Compare Your Reach to Market Leaders

What is the size of your reach in total and via each social network? How does that compare to your top 5 competitors? (See the example of Facebook reach for retailers).

In addition to just measuring your social media activities, understanding where most of your audience is, and where you diverge from competitors can yield valuable insights. If you have a comparative strength on particular network, how can you leverage that?  If you see competitive momentum on a network where your company is weak, you can explore the tactics your competitor is using to build strength there.  Are those tactics right for you?  Do they give you ideas for other ways you can play to your strengths?

2 |  Compare Share of Voice

For topics that are of importance to your business or brand, it is helpful to gather and analyze share of voice data.  How big is the conversation around the topic? How big a share of that conversation are you garnering, compared with your competitors?  Understanding the distribution of “ownership” of a topic, as well as the tone and content of the discussion, can generate ideas for how to steer the conversation in a positive direction for your goals.

3 |  Compare Audience Engagement 

How much engagement are you getting via social channels? Tracking audience engagement via activities such as comments, @ replies, retweets, likes, posts, pins, hearts, etc. for your company and top competitors can help you understand the impact of your marketing efforts.  (See the example of Twitter engagement for top hotel chains).

Compare types and levels of engagement as well as the percentage of your audience on each social channel that is engaging.  Also look at the type of content that is driving the most engagement.  This can help you understand your company’s sweet spots for topics, social platforms, and brand advocates.

4 | Compare Response Times

Measuring response times for your company and industry leaders can help you gauge your company’s performance relative to competitors and market expectations.  How long does it take you and your competitors to respond to customer service requests, to sales inquiries, to criticism?  (See the example of hotel response times).

Monitoring these stats will help you determine market leader levels and establish a plan for how to achieve them.  It can also point out area for improvement before a crisis occurs. (Having a social media policy in place can be very helpful to ensure quality and responsiveness and avoiding a social media crisis).  And, if you’re doing well, sharing your impressive responsiveness is a way to show your customers how much you care about them.

What competitive information do you gather via social?  How does it help you improve your marketing?

Special image credit and thanks to Wicked Start Blogs

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Consumer Expectations vs. Brand Activities in Social Media

LinkedIn might be your most efficient social channel for lead generation. According to a recent HubSpot study, “LinkedIn generated the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate at 2.74%, almost 3 times higher than both Twitter (0.69%) and Facebook (0.77%).” Given these stats, optimizing your company’s LinkedIn presence might be one of the best (and least expensive) ways to generate leads that close. Here are three LinkedIn features HubSpot recommends you focus on:

3 LinkedIn Features to Leverage

1.  Customize the Products & Services Tab on Your Company Page

Use LinkedIn’s Products and Services tab to feature your company’s products and services, linking to relevant landing pages. You can also create variations of your Product/Service page for specific target profiles built from LinkedIn profile information. Displaying the most relevant offerings to your company page’s viewers can increase likelihood of a click-through to your website.

Tip: Once you add five products or services, tab customizations kick in which allow you to feature specific products. Monitor your results with custom tracking tokens.

2.  Use Status Updates Strategically

Just like Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn Status updates can include text, links and photos that drive awareness, interest and traffic to your website or blog. As with other social sites, monitoring the traffic your status updates yield will help you know what and when to post for best results.

Tip: Post status updates regularly to share industry or company news, product or service updates, or common questions customers ask and that you answer on your site or blog.

3.  Check Your Company Page Statistics Often

LinkedIn provides data on unique visitors and page views by company page tab, as well as visitor demographics and promotion tracking. This data can help you understand who is checking out your company and its products and services to ensure you attracting the right audience.

Tip: Determine goals for growth in views and percent of visitors who meet your desired profile. Then test and adjust your content to meet your goals.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mariosundar/470973290/

What LinkedIn features have you found most effective in promoting your business?

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Filed under: Hub Spot, Social Business, Social Marketing, Social Media, social media marketing, study, Tips Tagged: best practices, leads, LinkedIn, marketing best practices, measurement, social media, social media marketing, social media tips ]]> http://socialrati.com/2012/05/07/3-linkedin-features-to-boost-leads/feed/ 0 linkedin feature socialrati http://socialrati.com/2012/05/01/5-social-measures-worth-tracking/ http://socialrati.com/2012/05/01/5-social-measures-worth-tracking/#comments Tue, 01 May 2012 12:04:23 +0000 socialrati http://socialrati.com/?p=1158 ]]> A Framework for Actionable Insights from Social

The good people at Awareness, Inc. have provided a handy infographic with 5 types of social measures to include in your analytics regimen.  These measures represent a framework for checking the impact of your social efforts and gathering actionable insights to improve your sales and marketing effectiveness.  The infographic features basic and advanced measurement formulas for sales, marketing and customer service, including: 

1.  Brand Awareness
2.  Marketing Program Effectiveness
3.  Lead Generation Effectiveness
4.  Increased Sales/Shorter Sales Cycle
5.  Customer Satisfaction/Reduced Churn

The infographic is a summary of some of the information contained in Awareness’ report: Actionable Social Analytics: From Social Media Metrics to Business Insights.

For more on social analytics, see these additional Socialrati posts: Social ROI: Measure What Matters, How to Sell More: Listen to Social Consumers and 3 Steps to SMMS Success.

Infographic

Image credit: Awareness, Inc. Actionable Social Analytics Report

Do you use these measures? What other metrics are important to your business?

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Social ROI: Measure What Matters

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3 Steps to SMMS Success

Social Media Management Software (SMMS) promises to address the challenges of doing business in a social world but selecting a solution for your business can be a challenge of its own.  This post explores how to prepare your company for using and selecting an SMMS. 

Managing Social Media: More Than Software

With over 30 vendors providing SMMS solutions, it might seem that selecting one is the main task.  However, choosing an SMMS from the available options is not easy and not in itself a panacea to the problems of proliferation.  To maximize success with an SMMS, companies need to be ready to make an intelligent choice among software solutions, have a plan for how to compare vendors and implement a structured roll out the software.

Below are three steps to SMMS success with recommendations and graphics from the Altimeter Group‘s report, A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation that will help with the selection and implementation of an SMMS.

Step 1 | Get Your Company Ready for an SMMS

Your social media efforts should be tied to business goals.  If they are not, an SMMS won’t help your company produce better results from social, it will simply add another tool to a confused set of activities.

• First make sure your social accounts and activity are connected to your businesses’ strategy and goals. This will help you determine your business needs with respect to an SMMS.  For example, are you focused on monitoring your brand or responding to customer concerns? Take a look at the use cases Altimeter identified and see which apply to your business.

• With your goals in mind, conduct an audit to evaluate the health of your social media accounts.  Jettison abandoned or one-time promotional accounts, shut down rogue accounts, and invest in a minimal number of corporate and global accounts that can be managed.
• Establish a social media policy with permissions, processes, roles and responsibilities for using social media accounts. Determine who creates, edits, and posts content and responds to comments.  Also create a library of approved content, a style guide and best practices for sharing via sanctioned social accounts.

Step 2 | Compare Vendors & Select an SMMS

• Having identified your business and user needs, force rank vendors based on your priorities and on usability for your users. Think about what your business needs to monitor, manage and measure and look for an SMMS that mirrors your company’s workflow to make it easier to adopt. SMMS provider Awareness, Inc. has a guide to questions to ask vendors.  Altimeter has also provided an assessment of vendors based on the use cases shown above.

• Use webinars and demos to refine your SMMS list but make sure to test the software before you buy. Consider setting up a dummy account to assess how each user might use the tool and running simulations of daily and worst case scenarios.
• With a better idea of how each SMMS performs, you will likely see some gaps in fully addressing your specific needs.  Anticipate and discuss fees and timing for any customizations and consulting.  Also consider any agency support you might need.  Fees for these services can double or triple the total cost of implementing an SMMS.

Step 3 | Power Up Your SMMS

A successful SMMS launch will require some planning and extra steps.

• Create an education and training program to prepare your company to use the new SMMS.  Don’t underestimate the effort needed here or its importance. Companies surveyed by Altimeter reported a definite learning curve that needs to be planned for.  A best practice is to develop testing and certification programs in addition to basic training.
• Pre- or post-launch, simulate challenging situations with users. Prepare your organization for making a major announcement, handling high traffic volumes, or a brand crisis.  Fire drills and the process work you did earlier will pay off when crises eventually happen.
• Think about how 3rd parties can help you do more faster.  Perhaps you have realized as part of this process that you want to develop several communities.  If you don’t have the resources to do so in house, think about working with an agency or specialist that can help you extend your capabilities and work with your SMMS to integrate and measure activities.
• Use your SMMS’ measurement capabilities to gather insights and provide product or service recommendations and measure the ROI of your social efforts.

What SMMS Challenges Are You Facing? Which SMMS Does Your Company Use and Why?

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How to Sell More: Listen to Social Consumers

Every day, social consumers share – for free! – the kinds of data that companies pay market researchers a lot of money to help them gather.

By monitoring and analyzing the information visitors and customers share via social media, brands can learn how to improve their products, sell more of them and create better customer experiences.

Bazaarvoice has recently done a macro-level analysis of customer input by listening in on 11+ million consumer conversations worldwide. Their new report yields some interesting trend information and gives solid recommendations for retailers looking to leverage social insights. Report excerpts plus an accompanying infographic are provided below.    

What Can You Learn from 11 Million Data Points?

Insights from Bazaarvoice‘s Conversation Index, Volume 3 report analyzes data from 11+ million pieces of content generated by users on its clients’ sites during the past six months. 5 key insights and related recommendations include:

1 | Sharing is Caring

• 12% of consumer product reviews include suggestions.
• Nearly 80% of the suggestions focus on product attributes like color, size or style + product experience improvements.
• Only 14.5% of suggestions point out real flaws

Recommendations

• Escalate product issues for rapid response.
• Develop scalable systems to notify contributors when their feedback has been implemented.
• Mine onsite search terms shoppers use to prioritize site architecture and navigation improvements.
• Identify pivot language – words or phrases that marks a transition in tone or sentiment – in feature or product discussions that tell you a suggestion is coming. The most common pivot words in the Bazaarvoice study were: “however,” “wish,” and “although.”

2 | In-store Shoppers Are Less Happy

• In-store shoppers of all ages are less satisfied with their purchases than online shoppers. (see infographic below)
• Half of consumers who give online feedback bought the product in a store versus online. Yet, only 45% of the in-store buyers received an email asking them to review their purchases, versus 80% of online shoppers.

Recommendations

• Assume that in-store shoppers want to engage with other shoppers and your brand about the things they buy.
• Bring the best of online shopping (easy research, consumer opinions, and product comparisons) into the store. Simply offering free WiFi can help.
• Go further by allowing shoppers to see an augmented reality display when holding their smart phones up to products on your shelves, including related social content or the highest-rated products in each aisle.

3 | Mobile Shoppers are Night Owls

• Half of all mobile browsing and buying takes place after normal business hours. (see infographic below)

Recommendations

• Optimize for iPad and mobile to engage and convert nighttime shoppers
• Be there when your customers want to interact with your brand. Just like physical stores require a staff of knowledgeable people to help customers, online presences must also be staffed 24/7.

4 | Social Shoppers Spend More

• Visits to a brand’s site directly from Facebook make up less than 1% of its total site traffic.
• Visitors from social sites are up to 60% less likely to buy, which may mean they are at earlier stages in the decision process.
• But visitors from social networks who make a purchase, spend more money than shoppers who come via Google.
• Shoppers from Twitter have the highest average order value – $121.33 – of all shoppers who visit directly from Facebook, Twitter, and Google.
• Twitter users spend 18% more than Facebook users, on average.

Recommendations

• Know your platform: Facebook visitors choose engagement over shopping, so don’t focus all your energy on making your Facebook page purely transactional.
• Design social features into your site that make it easy for visitors to log in to site features with their social credentials and post and share content without leaving the site.

5 | Users Can Help You Help Other Users

• If one person has a question about a product, others probably do too. (see infographic below)
• Visitors misspell brand and product names and terms, sometimes finding what they’re looking for within the (also misspelled) contributions of other users.

Recommendations

• Update product descriptions to answer recurring questions.
• Add videos and step-by-step instructions to fill in gaps early in the shopping process, turning shoppers into buyers.
• Resist the urge to correct spelling and other errors in user generated content. The lack of perfection will ring truer to other consumers.

Social Data Is Great For Building Loyalty

Consumers are telling you – right now – what to change. Listen to and act on their feedback to create customers for life.  As Bazaarvoice reminds us, “It’s hard to imagine a better way to earn loyalty than to bake [customer] suggestions into the products you create and sell.”  And, don’t forget to measure your social media efforts so you really understand how social consumers are driving sales and other business objectives.

How does your brand use social data to create happy customers?

Infographic

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So is this social hotspot for Mid-Western crafters just a fad or does the image-focused site have real potential for business?  The answer: Pinterest is open for business. 

What are Businesses Doing on Pinterest?

Small and large businesses alike are finding value in cultivating a community of followers on the site.  As the “Power of Pinterest” Infographic from Internet Marketing shows, companies such as magazine publisher Better Homes & Gardens and grocer Whole Foods have already acquired over 25,000 and 19,000 followers respectively via Pinterest.  They effectively use the visually oriented site to share recipes, entertainment, decorating, and lifestyle information that help them promote their brands and products.

In his recent post on Pinterest, blogger Jason Falls reports that the retail deal site ideeli.com uses the site to better understand its members and the retail landscape.  Ideeli has seen “a 446% increase in web traffic from Pinterest [in the last six months]and sales resulting from those visits have increased five-fold.”

4 Steps to Making Pinterest Work for Your Business

1  Strategize

If you’re in a B2B company, you may be wondering if Pinterest can be appropriate and effective for your business. It certainly can, although a presence on Pinterest may require taking a different approach than the company uses on other social media platforms.  As recommended previously on Socialrati, it’s always a good idea to set a strategy before going public on a new social site to ensure you are investing efforts which will drive business results.  In a recent Ad Age article, Chas Edwards also recommends developing an image strategy. He suggests trying to answer these three questions:

1. How can images increase engagement among my existing audience?
2. How can I convert that engagement into sharing?
3. How does the strategy help me make more money?

2  Get The Picture

Pinterest may not be for everyone but it’s worth testing since it has proven to be an effective referral channel.  If you have physical products, you can start building an image inventory simply by taking and gathering photos of your products from employees and customers. B2B companies, because they often work in services, may shy away from Pinterest thinking their products or services are not sufficiently visual.  A little creativity, however, can solve this problem.

You probably already have a collection of untapped visuals at your disposal.  For example, you may have many of these items which Hubspot recommends can be made into suitable Pinterest images:

• Product images
• Ebook covers
• Data charts
• Photos of your employees
• Pictures of customers (at events, using your products or services)
• Event images
• Infographics

Locate or create these images and start pinning.  Make sure to include a description and the url for a landing page for each image so you can also capture traffic to your site.  Soon you will have followers liking, commenting or repinning your images.  If the content is interesting enough, it could go viral.  Check out the Socialrati Pinterest Infographics pinboard for examples.

Don’t forget to promote your Pinterst content through other channels.  Add a Pin It button to your website so visitors can pin images from your blog or other parts of your site to their boards. Connect your company Twitter account to Pinterest to tweet your new pins.

3  Get Pinning & Repinning

Like all social platforms, Pinterest isn’t designed for broadcasting information.  It is designed to foster discussion and interaction.  Research to date suggests that ‘pushing’ products is not effective but creating excitement and brand attachment through strong and interesting visuals pays dividends beyond the Pinterest site. Show your intent to build community by following other Pinterest members and/or their pinboards, liking and repinning the content of others.  Look for others sharing the same topics and then follow and promote their content.  They will ultimately return the favor and help you reach a wider audience.  You can also humanize your business or your brand by including topics that are important to you and not all about the business.  Maybe you’re a foodie or have a favorite cause or travel destination.

4  Track & Learn

With a presence established, monitor the images that generate the most interest and traffic.  By doing this, you’ll learn how to generate interest and create pull for your business through Pinterest.

What creative ways have you seen Pinterest driving business results?

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Pinterest Infographics Collection

Below are some text highlights and the infographic itself.  Also, check out the related post links below for articles discussing the social media guidelines put out by the Gap and the MLB.

Social Media Training

If you’re employees  are going to be your brand ambassadors in the social sphere, it is important to give them some training and guidelines to ensure your brand is represented well.  It can be helpful to categorize trainees into groups based on their familiarity with social technologies and focus the content of each group’s training accordingly. Mindflash has identified five groups:

1. The Digital Native
   Has grown up using social media  |
   Focus on communicating social media goals and metrics
2. The Savvy Technologist
   Wasn’t raised on social media and the web but are self-taught on the tools  |
   Focus on how to engage audiences on each relevant platform
3. The Reluctant User
   Familiar with social media but not daily users  |
   Focus on advanced features of known social media networks and introducing new ones
4. The Digital Contrarian
   View social media as a waste of time, along with other digital technologies  |
   Focus on explaining the ways social media, done well, can benefit the business
5. The Digital Newbie
   New to digital technologies and social media  |
   Focus on basic education about goals of social media use and how to navigate the most important platforms
   

Social Media Policy Guidelines

Guidelines should include things like:

• Examples of digital behavior that will not be tolerated
• Disclaimers needed when expressing a personal opinion about the company or an issue
• Company info that should never be shared, such as, performance data and internal communications

Infographic

What’s in Your Social Media Policy?

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Do you remember when you were a kid and you wanted a pet? You were focused on how fun it would be to have a new dog or cat, lizard or rodent. Your parents were focused on explaining that a pet requires care and feeding, that it’s an ongoing responsibility, and that you were ready to take on this new relationship. As, it turns out, pet ownership is good training for and a lot like having a social media presence. There is the fun of having a new thing to learn about and engage with but also the responsibility of an ongoing relationship.

Just as when getting a pet, some expectation setting and advance planning for social media account ownership will make the adventure less stressful and a lot more rewarding. Use the checklist below to make sure you are ready for a successful social media experience. 

5-Point Readiness Checklist for Social Media

1 – Aligned to a business objective?

Are you clear about why you are participating in social media or how this particular social account is connected to a core business objective?  “We need a social media presence” is not a business objective.  A business objective is something like “expand awareness, engagement, and use of our widget among luxury brand marketers”. Without a clear connection to your business purpose, you may be building a presence on the wrong site(s), your social sharing will be less targeted and your messages will not resonate. Set your strategy first, then pick your social networks, your tone, and your content (see post on this topic).

2 – Prepared to measure, before launch?

Armed with a solid business objective, you can determine the metrics for successful social media engagement. Are you trying to enhance your brand, drive revenues, innovate products?  Make sure you are measuring actions and results that are relevant to your goals (see post on this topic). This will help you know if you’re being successful, and if you’re not, what to try to improve.

3 – Prepared for the long haul?

Social media engagement is not a one-time or short-lived endeavor.  Unlike a campaign or a burst of outreach activities, social media requires an ongoing and intensive effort to deliver results.  When you create an account, you are making a promise to participate in a relationship with a community. A social presence is not something you can participate in for a month and then walk away from, at least not if you want to avoid damaging your brand and failing to achieve the business results you anticipated.  Set your expectations, and those of your colleagues, that building a presence will be a process and an ongoing effort.

4 – Resourced adequately?

An active social media account requires proper staffing, content and resources to be successful. Content is the lifeblood of social media so a steady stream of new and relevant content will be needed.  Like exercise and food for your pet, you will need a plan for creating, curating, posting and sharing a steady stream of compelling and fresh content (an editorial calendar is key) for each social media account. Content will need to be refreshed at least weekly, and possibly daily, depending on the type of business you’re in and your business goals.  Further, those creating and posting content as well as those responding to comments, must be ready to engage. Missing or extending content deadlines, allowing comments to languish for weeks, or responding negatively will kill your chances for success. Make sure you have a person or team lined up for each account that is trained and available to engage in timely and positive online dialog.

5 – Ready for the unexpected?

Social engagement differs from the push marketing of the past.  Social is not a broadcast medium.  It is a two-way medium that inherently delivers surprises. When you get a puppy you are thinking about how fun it will be to play with that furry ball of energy, not how many hours you will spend cleaning up accidents and replacing shoes and furniture. Similarly, you may think your social media efforts will be days filled with posting daily specials and having people tell you how great they are.  But in reality, when you open a social media account, you also open a door to anyone who wants to communicate with you on that social network.

Customers are now accustomed to accessing companies via social media and they aren’t concerned with your agenda there.  They see you as a representative of the company and if they have a complaint or a question about your products or services, they will communicate it via social media and expect a quick response. Have a plan for what to do with customer inquiries and comments that are unrelated to your specific business objective.  Also be mentally and professionally prepared to address negative comments. Have an action plan for who will draft and review responses on short notice. Being able to respond quickly and professionally will prevent a social media PR disaster.

What’s on your checklist for social media readiness?

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