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 3^rd 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.

With the growing number of users on Twitter (now at 105 million registered accounts) it’s important to treat your followers the way you would like to be treated…or tweeted J

Here are a few tips to make sure you are being respectful on Twitter:

Never Spam – Many people, especially business owners think Twitter, as well as other free social media platforms, are a place where they can sell their products or services within a week and drive instant traffic to their website. In rare cases this will happen, however if you create a Twitter account and all you do is talk about your product(s) or services, you are spamming your following. Make sure 70% of the content you are tweeting is adding value to your audience. Things like links to industry news, new laws or standards, quotes, tips and advice, and just general networking; talking to other Twitter users. 20% of your posts need to be the sharing piece meaning you are ReTweeting/RTing (reposting) other people’s post and making comments on their posts/blogs. Only 10% of your tweets will be self promotion, so make sure you start following this rule so you aren’t spamming your followers.

Be a Human, Not a Robot – The thing that is beautiful about Twitter, but also overwhelming, is how many applications there are to manage and automate your Twitter account. Even though there are many tools for automation, I strongly urge you to have human participation with your Twitter account, especially if you are using it for business. You have probably seen Twitter accounts that put out several feeds at once linking to blogs or promoting squeeze pages and that can be ok to do, however you must combine your automation with human interaction. Also, I recommend turning off auto Direct Messages (DMs). Since Twitter users have been given the ability to auto-respond to new followers via direct messages, the DM section has become complete spam and I rarely check my DMs due to this issue. I also know of people that will automatically unfollow you if you send them an auto DM. Use DM’s for private conversations, not to sell.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T and Customer Service– Hopefully as a business person, you are already treating your potential clients and peers with respect, but now with advances in technology people get to see a much more insightful look into our lives and businesses. I’ve seen a lot of people on Twitter start fights and arguments and they’re business owners starting arguments under their business accounts! This behavior will put you on the fast track to damaging your credibility and reputation which can take a very long time to rebuild. Think of Twitter as a customer service tool and know that tone is very hard to read via Internet, emails and texting. Be attentive and helpful and if someone is upset with you and challenges you online, think before you type! Make sure you are handling the person with professionalism. There might also be times when it is just not necessary to respond to someone if they are intentionally starting a fight. Remember, people can see what you say and it can be saved to use as proof or to be used against you, tweet wisely.

As you tweet, remember that Twitter is a free brand management and relationship tool, don’t abuse it and always Tweet people how you want to be Tweeted! J

This edition of Happy Minutes includes Mari Smith, name the Pied Piper of Facebook by Fast Company. Mari explains how to research your demographics on Facebook. It’s important to know what your target audience looks like as well as where they are on and off line. Mari gives you a great tip on how to see the number of people that are within your exact target audience on Facebook.com.

First Edition of Happy Minutes…cause who can really be happy for an hour? Check out our Twitter Tip about #ecomonday

An easy way to spread your social media links to the world, include them in your email signatures! And don’t forget to put them on all other marketing materials.

Understanding if you should use your personal Twitter profile for business, or if you should create a new one; all while rescuing her shoes from waves.

What I wanted to say was whether or not a business should use their personal Twitter profile or not is completely dependent on the type business and goals for Twitter. In my opinion, authenticity is key so using your personal profile for you biz is fine. However if you work for a company, you need to know what their social media policies are and have open and clear communication to know what exactly you can and can’t say about the company on your personal account

While the idea of face to face meetings is ideal for any business, the reality of global business and relationships makes that entirely impossible to have with every customer or consumer. Blogs enable people to talk to each other in a direct, informal manner. Bloggers make grammatical errors, often change their train of thought, challenge arguments, make suggestions, basically everything that would typically happen in a conversation- happens in a blog. The blog is the work of a real person, no BS, no fluff, in other words, it is- what it is. This is important and attractive to a lot of people because most people don’t trust big corporate companies because there seems to be no connection and trust, and this is exactly where and how blogs emerged. It is just a typical conversation with the idea that it is all presented on an equal level playing field.

In blogs you can loosely connect to other blogs or websites through the use of hyperlinks. The linking from blog to blog paves the way for it to become a part of the blogsphere. Even if you have 1 visitor or as many as 100,000 daily visitors with hundreds of links, your blog is a part of a huge circulation of findable information. But regardless of the circulation, the most important aspect of the blog s that it is conversational and personal.

So why do businesses have or need to have blogs as a part of their online marketing campaign? Because blogs are just another way for business to build trust, they humanize companies and give prospective customers an idea of the people who are running the business. Going back to the older blog post I wrote about Joel Comm’s 4 step sales process, know me- like me -trust me -pay me, the blogs are the perfect outlet for your potential customers to get to know you a little bit, perhaps enough to want to do business with you.

Blogs are among the most powerful two way internet communication tools thus far. They can help your company tremendously and although about one third of blogs started may be abandoned in one year, the overall growth of blogging is among the fastest of any technology.

So, if you choose to join the ongoing conversation that is taking place a great deal on the internet you should know that your company is good for it and your customers will be better-off. Also, you end up saving so much money on marketing campaigns that are really expensive, don’t work, and straight up just annoy people.

Okay, so you have signed up on numerous social media networking sites to advance your business in the world of online marketing. However, in order to increase traffic, turn visitors into consumers, get more online exposure you have to be proactive and create a valuable networking platform for your target audience to feel apart of.  Here is a potential way of looking at levels of success using Social Media Marketing based on the same grading scale you were used to when you were in grade school.

 If you are only pushing promotion or sales through your social networks you will lack credibility, you are wasting your time and annoying people… try something different because you have recieved a D+

If your only active in advertising your routine tweets- ‘had a turkey sandwich’ you have received a C. You leave your followers wondering what your purpose for using networking tools like Twitter as a part of your business plan actually is. (Where’s the useful content, did you eat it with your sandwich or did you ever have it to begin with?!)

 If you allow your customer base to care and become interested and passionate about your product or service by educating and teaching them through the use of social networking, your integrating it effectively so you recieve a B but you could push one step further (and trust us, you need that A).

A+ If you provide an online community for customers to connect and support each other using integrated social media tools you have passed the test (Congrats). As a business, you want to have customer voices speak about your product or service so you know what works and what doesn’t work. Once you have provided a place for them to do so, you have received an A in integrated Social Media Marketing (yes, you get a star on your chart).

There you have it. It is so important to establish a strategic method for consumers to engage in online conversation because it can be used as the most efficient and effective approach to have your marketing plan support the notion of social media aka future marketing. We suggest that you go ahead and make mistakes (I’m still learning) because there is no cookie cutter recipe for how to use social media, but the fact that have an online presence will benefit you and your company  in the future. Go ahead, get creative, get followers and get active because there are over 300 million people active in online media, is your business involved in this conversation?

Don’t just join the social media conversation because it is the new idea of online presence that is catching like wildfire, you need to create and maintain a business plan for online media that supports the overall marketing strategy otherwise, you are going to fail. It’s not as easy as going to Twitters homepage and creating an account, in fact that is far from the truth of the twitterverse. If your serious about integrating social media into your business plan there are a few things to think about.

To start, it’s important to reflect on if your web strategy supports your marketing strategy. If not you need to realign either/or so they complement each other nicely. Having online presence means your ultimately looking to convert viewers into customers, how are you going to use social media as a tool to do this effectively? Think about SEO, social media, usability, social networking, blogging and (our newest favorite) Adwords which are all components that should all be given the same amount of attention. You have to think big picture, which should be a balance of how your marketing plan and your social media plan mirror each other.

The biggest thing people seem to surpass is that using social media in your business marketing plan will not produce immediate results. We thrive off instant gratification and technology has enabled us to live our daily life around getting quick, fast, results but you must be patient, you must give it the opportunity to produce and measure successful results, however, at the same time you, have to be persistent and consistent (and don’t be a fail whale). Goodluck to all!