Dear friends and family of 3 Elements,

The past year and a half has been a fantastic journey and a learning experience as I opened and ran my social media company, 3 Elements, LLC. Through this time I have built relationships with some of the most amazing businesses and have had the privilege in helping them market their companies online.

As of September 30th, 2010, 3 Elements will no longer be in business. I have decided to take a position with an innovative and emerging company called SnapRetail where I will be the Director of Social Media.

I am extremely excited about this opportunity and am thankful that 3 Elements was able to help me find this position. If you haven’t heard of them, please visit their website at http://snapretail.com. They have created a fantastic platform to help retailers market to their databases more efficiently through email campaigns and social media; mainstreaming the retailers’ marketing efforts and saving them time.

Words cannot explain what I have been through with 3 Elements and there are definitely bitter sweet feelings about closing, however, I am excited about this opportunity. I had an amazing time getting to know everyone I worked with; learning from them and growing both professionally and personally. I am so thankful for 3 Elements and am excited to start the next chapter in my life with SnapRetail, where I will be relocating to Pittsburgh.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask. You will still be able to connect with me on Twitter and Facebook, and of course by email and phone (all my contact info will stay the same and/or will be forwarded).

If you ever need help pushing content, a promotion, announcing new products, etc., please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I’d be more than happy to send info out to my personal networks. Be sure to stay in touch and I encourage everyone to also follow SnapRetail as we will be producing content about social media and email marketing that will be helpful to you and your business.

Thank you for being a part of this journey with me and 3 Elements. I look forward to keeping in touch with you and wish you all the best.

As always, to the future!

Crystal Vilkaitis

HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI: Part 4 (If you missed it, check out HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

Let’s face it, most business owners starting to utilize and leverage social media want to know what the return on investment is with social media.  Honestly, social media lacks easily and clearly measurable characteristics of other investments, but it IS very much possible to see and track the monetized return from engaging in social media.  Every person using and utilizing social media should always remember, however, that social media is most importantly about building relationships; companies that don’t understand this simple fact will likely not feel the full and complete benefits of Social Media.  So how does one actually visualize the effectiveness and ROI of social media campaigns?

Tip #5: Understand Page Rank

As your site draws in increasing traffic, it will apply more effectively to organic search engine algorithms.  Committing to specific keywords with your tweets, posts, and other public communications will help naturally raise your website and social media presence in the rankings, so paying attention to this is a solid step toward managing your ROI for social media.

Other less understood ways to get your website to grow is through interacting with other websites in your niche.  Commenting on blogs almost always provides you with an opportunity to link back to your website; blogging and commenting on blogs is a necessity for strong social media presences.  Commenting on other blogs is also a great way to identify yourself to a targeted group of people as a clear and intelligent voice on topics in your field.

HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI: Part 4 (If you missed it, check out HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

Let’s face it, most business owners starting to utilize and leverage social media want to know what the return on investment is with social media.  Honestly, social media lacks easily and clearly measurable characteristics of other investments, but it IS very much possible to see and track the monetized return from engaging in social media.

Tip #4: Use 3rd Party Tools

Honestly, there are WAY too many different tools for measuring one’s impact (which works hand-in-hand with ROI).  Since there are so many to choose from, I’ll just focus on two very important resources that business owners like you should be investigating.

oneforty.com

For most businesses, a trip to www.oneforty.com might feel intimidating at first due to the hundreds of applications (apps), tools, and resources that it has to offer.  Fear not!  This particular selection of digital treats offers user ratings and sponsored recommendations.  Most of the way down the initial web page you will see a large squared section title, “What’s Essential;” this should be your next stop on the journey of social media enlightenment.  There are 10 ‘essential’ types of resources, but ‘Analytics’ is the destination that you’re looking for; this will bring you to the top six analytical tools for your twitter account.  Read the reviews and choose what best suits your specific fancy.

Alexa

It seems like so few people actually use www.alexa.com to monitor their websites, but there’s no time to start like the present.  Alexa can install a toolbar to your web browser if you want it to; this toolbar will keep you posted as you browse the World Wide Web as to the ‘rank’ of the page that you are looking at.  Ideally, people should want this number to decrease in pursuit of the #1 position (google).  How this affects your social media ROI is by monitoring the “linking” websites that drive traffic to your website.  The higher that social media sites rate in the listing of referring sites, the better the social media campaign.  Ideally, if most of a site’s traffic is coming from social media, then success has been attained.

HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI: Part 3 (If you missed it, check out HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI Part 1 and Part 2)

Let’s face it, most business owners starting to utilize and leverage social media want to know what the return on investment is with social media.  Honestly, social media lacks easily and clearly measurable characteristics of other investments, but it IS very much possible to see and track the monetized return from engaging in social media.

Tip # 3: Use Special Promotions

If you want to know just how many people really care about your products and services, try doing some free promotional giveaways!  If you sell products online try offering a discount, free shipping, or a bonus product to customers that interact with you digitally.  During the checkout process, use a promotional code like “twitter” which provides the FREE addition to the order (or discount); this will provide information about how many people that you interact with actually want/use your products.  What could make this process even better would be to restart the process using different social mediums to track your value on each of them.

In his book, Crush It, Gary Vaynerchuk provides a wonderful case study about his marketing efforts.  He put up a billboard, purchased a TV spot, and tweeted about free shipping on purchases of wine from his company.  You’ll have to read the book to see how monumentally more successful his social media efforts were compared to more traditional means of marketing.  The best part of the whole case study is the amount that he spent compared to the return on each of them – needless to say, social media is FREE so the ROI on something that didn’t cost a penny is pretty colossal.

HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI: Part 2 (If you missed it, check out HOW TO Measure Your Social Media ROI Part 1)

Let’s face it, most business owners starting to utilize and leverage social media want to know what the return on investment is with social media.  Honestly, social media lacks easily and clearly measurable characteristics of other investments, but it IS very much possible to see and track the monetized return from engaging in social media.

Tip #2: Keep Track of Your Interactions

As each year brings new and innovative applications and 3rd party tools that can interact with our online personas; measuring results is easier than it ever has been before and social media is no different.  There are several tools to measure the influence, clout, and impact of different social media platforms, but a simple spreadsheet managed by a person (rather than an automated system) goes a long way.  Keep track of every single message, @response, interaction, blog comment, and more.

Maintaining good records of how many people are interacting with your social media accounts provides manageable information that clearly shows growth.  This process also helps to clearly indicate who interacts the most – providing extra attention and gratitude to these people embodies what social media is truly about: developing and cultivating relationships.  A well developed online relationship founded in digital interactions has proven time and time again to be a successful practice in business.  Remember, social media doesn’t start overnight, but with some patience, practice and hustle you will see just how effective this investment can be.

3 Elements provides solutions for your social media needs.  Contact us to discuss how we can bring your business into the conversation.

Let’s face it, most business owners starting to utilize and leverage social media want to know what the return on investment is with social media.  Honestly, social media lacks easily and clearly measurable characteristics of other investments, but it IS very much possible to see and track the monetized return from engaging in social media.  Every person using and utilizing social media should always remember, however, that social media is most importantly about building relationships; companies that don’t understand this simple fact will likely not feel the full and complete benefits of Social Media.  So how does one actually visualize the effectiveness and ROI of social media campaigns?

Tip #1: Use Your Analytics

Today, just barely over half of American businesses even have a website.  Your website is your home base where all of your products, services, and information need to be readily available for your potential customer and clients to find.  Websites are the business cards of the 21st century.  Most hosting companies offer their own analytics tools, but Google Analytics works with just about that you have access to editing.  After inserting a specific HTML code in to the pages of your site, Google Analytics will start providing useful information that can help identify the effectiveness of any campaign.  Most importantly, using any analytics should identify what is driving traffic to your website.  Social media campaigns should include self-promotional information that entices fans, followers, friends, and connections to investigate the company’s website.  As long as a company and the website have remarkable content, products, and services then the money will come.  If social media services become the top referring websites, then the ROI will be clear and evident.

The fastest way to see if your social media accounts are driving traffic to your website is by logging into your Google Analytics account and clicking on Traffic Sources in the left sidebar. From there, click Referring Sites and scroll below the graph to see which sites are driving traffic to your website.

Stay tuned for more.  Tomorrow’s tip: Keep track of your interactions!