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 3^rd 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.

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

If you are a part of the Twitterverse then you have surely seen #FollowFriday or #FF used before, perhaps you’ve even seen it… every Friday? #Followfriday has become the most popular social convention tool used on Twitter but if you don’t know what it is or how to use it, you might feel a little out of the loop.

If you have a great #followfriday feel free to leave a comment, we’d love to pass it along to our networks!

2nd Episode of Happy Minutes…Cause Who Really Can Be Happy For an Hour? 3 Ways to Find People to Follow on Twitter brought to you by ME and Beth Buczynski.

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

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

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?

Sequel to Twouble with Twitter. Funny how Celebrities use Twitter. Great Video- Enjoy!