Visibility

Developing a successful social media program requires goals, strategies and measurement.

It floors me that I still see social media experts advising clients to “just get out there and start engaging”.

That party line has long outlived its usefulness. Social media has come of age and is no longer new to users, and with adoption rates nearing saturation you’ll be hard pressed to find an audience that isn’t active on at least one social media platform. Yet the majority of advice and strategies has failed to catch up. Here’s how it happened.

In the early days of social media businesses ignored the marketing potential because they couldn’t see a way to make it work for them. Those who tried either met with huge success or were ripped to shreds for imposing on the social media space with their “sell, sell, sell” attitude and failing to “get it”.  Perhaps worse were the businesses that simply failed to gain any traction in the space resulting in a dismissal of social media as a viable marketing platform.

The social media guru was born to help businesses understand social media, and how it was important to engage not advertise.

Don’t get me wrong, that was important, for a while. It helped businesses see the potential of social media and how it might work for them. More successes and failures ensued.

Today we see businesses rocking social media as part of an integrated marketing strategy, yet too many businesses still follow outdated advice resulting in resource dumps into platforms and campaigns and then hoping for the best. Number of followers and rates of engagement measure the “success”, while ROI is all but dismissed.

If your social media program roughly follows this order you’re leaving your investment in social media to chance:

1. Get out there and engage.
2. Measure followers, fans and engagement.

A more rigorous and effective approach starts in a different place and ends with measurement data you can build from.

Goals First

You can’t develop a strategy without clarifying what you’re trying to accomplish.

Marketing strategies earn money or save money. Your social media goals should fall into one of the two categories. For example:

Reduce cost through social media with:

    Customer service
    Targeted social advertising
    Market research

Increase profit through social media by:

    Increasing new sales (visibility and conversion).
    Increasing repeat sales (stickiness and loyalty).
    Increasing overall brand equity (brand loyalty, awareness, association, and perception of quality)


More than one goal is acceptable and encouraged. Certain goals will naturally overlap. For example, you might want to save money by moving most of your customer service to Facebook or Twitter where you can monitor and respond, which aligns nicely with increasing repeat sales by cementing client/customer loyalty, and both support building brand equity.


Now it’s Time for Strategy

Goals inform your strategy such as what content will be delivered by which platform. Returning to the example, if your goal is to save money and increase reach for customer service by moving or adding social media, your strategy building might look like this:

Stage 1 – Identify what to measure

    Determine how much you spend on customer service and what methods you use. How much time per customer do you spend? How many customers do you reach? Calculate an average cost of customer service per customer.
    Estimate time needed to set up, monitor and respond on chosen platform(s). Is this less time than you spend now per customer? If yes, go for it. If no, go back to step 1 and consider new goals. At the same time remember your other goals. Perhaps average customer spend might increase, but when weighed against increasing customer reach, loyalty, and overall brand equity the increased investment is worth it.

Stage 2 - Assessing competition and opportunities.

    Identify 5-10 closely matched competitors in your industry. Are they in social media? What are they using it for? Does it appear successful? Are they engaging and are their followers engaging back? What is their model?
    Are there any gaps in the competition? Something they’re missing? Some way you could do it better?

Stage 3 – Identify potential platforms
 
Make a list of potential social media platforms by comparing goals to platform capabilities and audience demographics.

    Based on your target audience, what platforms are they most likely to be on?
    List platforms that best allow you to implement your strategy (you’ll likely refine this list after stage 3). For example, which platforms would be best for customer service? Ask questions like: Do you want your customer service communications to be on your Facebook wall? Or would you rather use Twitter where you can monitor mentions and respond in near real time?


Stage 3 – Brainstorming for content

Keeping in mind your overall brand mission/culture, begin the brainstorming process. Brainstorm with key people in your company to create a list of ideas. Once you have 10 or more assess them for value.

    Does the idea integrate well with overall brand culture and strategy?
    Does the idea offer value to customers/followers? Value can be access, response, savings, information, or entertainment.
    Can the idea be implemented on the platform where the majority of your customers are?
    Do you have the resources to commit?
    Does the idea match your goals?

Maybe one of the ideas is to create a humorous video series addressing frequently asked questions. Sounds great, but scrutinize it with the above questions. Will it have the reach and the desired outcomes?

Metrics

Once you have goals and strategy clarified you’ll need metrics by which to monitor how well your program is doing. There are plenty of soft measures many businesses use to monitor such as number of followers, number of comments, traffic to the site and so on, but you need to focus on measuring things that tell you how well you’re meeting your goals. 

Metrics are the toughest part of social media, but don’t let that sway you from ensuring that your metrics are robust and ultimately measure tangible results based on your goals.  Use multiple tools and create a timeline of major activity.

Here are some tips on measuring your results.

Going back to our example, if you want to provide customer service, increase customer loyalty, and increase repeat sales, your measurement package would include:

    A timeline to track all major social media changes. Date you joined Twitter, markers over time to show the number of customer service interactions, for example, 2/28 fielded and answered 27 customer service issues through Twitter. (Remember to also keep track of other platforms such as email and phone calls to compare) 
    Overall analytics package to track traffic to site and sources.
    Sales vs. repeat sales (e-commerce tracking can be set up with Google Analytics)
    Positive vs. negative mentions online.
    Track investment and resource hours, including your traditional methods.

And yes, you should also track the “soft” measures such as followers and engagement, just don’t fool yourself into thinking high numbers in these areas alone are a marker of success. Instead use this data to correlate with financial gains such as reduced dollars per customer on customer service and increased sales/repeat sales.

For each data set you need a baseline for comparison, so set all this up before you implement.

To measure results for your three goals, overlay the data in various combinations until a picture emerges that reveals results. For example, you could look at your timeline against positive vs. negative mentions online. To determine how well this is affecting repeat sales, combine data from the timeline with softer measures like growth of followers against sales/repeat sales. To determine if you are saving money, compare your baseline resource spend for your traditional methods against average resource spend per customer through social media. 

No one data set will tell you all you need to know, and your measurement package needs to be customized to your goals. Comparing and contrasting data until you get the information you can use is the best way to build your measurement package. Use the results to refine your social media program and then go back in and measure.

To recap:

Step 1: Define your goals
Step 2: Let your goals inform strategy including platform(s) and content.
Step 3: Measure, analyze, adjust.
Step 4: Rinse and repeat until your ROI is in the black.

Don’t be Afraid of Failure

While getting smart about strategy, always remember that failure is the best lesson. If you’ve already amassed a following in social media but have so far failed to realize new sales from that following, get back in there and rework your strategy until it works for you.