Developing corporate strategies for forward thinking businesses.
Social Media Services
Marketing Is Changing
Social media is changing the way people find out about new products and services. Social Media Services helps very small to large corporations learn how to interact with their clients in the coming marketing shift .
ROI of Social Media
The world of social media advisers is a small one.
Due to the new aspect of it, and that people are still learning how to correctly market using social media, there are few players in our market segment. There is one large principle all of us agree on: you must use social media in the coming years to effectively market your brand.
There are however many disagreements on items such as how to best use twitter, should you friend everyone on Facebook, how many and what social media sites should you engage in, etc. However, there is one larger item on which most of the other players agree and we disagree, namely that there is no way to track the return on investment of social media in a brand’s marketing at the present time. This specific topic is something that companies are forming to try to capitalize on.
Engaging in social media marketing is an art, not a science.
Individuals that do it well know how to move the conversation from family, kids, and activities to “Do you know anyone that might be interested in our product?” without harming that relationship. The more people you create a relationship with, the more potential customers you have, it’s basic sales 101. But many other individuals argue that with social media, people send links around and so you never really know where clicks and purchases are coming from.
However, there are plenty of tools out there that let the brand manager track where these “viral clicks.”
The first all encompassing tool is Google Analytics. This free service from Google allows any website administrator to track where their clicks are coming from, and what those users are viewing. It even offers a sales 
valuation system for tracking what someone has purchased. This tool alone offers almost all of the required metrics for tracking ROI of social media. If you know that someone visiting your website spends on average $50 a quarter and that $50 yields your brand on average $10 in profit, you know that each buying customer created $40 a year of profit. You can then track the value of each click around your brand’s website. This is technology that has been used for years.
The only other item necessary to help in tracking social media clicks is to use specific “transfer URLs.” For example, a Social Media marketer can create an account at www.BudURL.com . The site offers users a way of translating their clicks from long URLs such as http://marketwithsocialmedia.com/2009/01/04/video-get-ahead-of-the-curve/ into something shorter like: http://budurl.com/5lam
Most of the original idea behind services like BudURL is to make creating links easy in services like Twitter, where you can only use 140 characters. Consider that the above link took up over half of a potential allotted message where the budurl only took 22 characters. However, the real value to ROI trackers is the link tracking system. BudURL offers the ability for a user to see how many clicks that link has received, where the clicks came from (email, Twitter, Facebook, IM, etc.) and in what geographic location the clicker is.
BudURL’s service can be free for the most basic users, but for just $12 a month, a user can received ultra detailed stats that are up to the second. These clicks can then be matched up with the data in Google Analytics to find out exactly what the value of them came out to be, both in the short and long run.
This process is just one way that ROI can be measured using social media. It’s not a 100% perfect solution, and it will never calculate the full value of the non revenue based value, such as goodwill, it creates for your company. There are other methods as well. When we put together a consultation package for a client we utilize suggest the utilization of these systems to track the value, because we are sure that anyone will see the ROI of using social media over ANY other media format even with paid staff in place to do nothing but monitor these sites.
Tags: analytics, ROI, social media
Video – Get Ahead Of The Curve
Communicating With Your Customers
Marketing is a form of communication. Marketing with Social Media is all about changing from a 1-way conversation that are the standard ads you see, to 2-way. Different companies use different methods to speak with their customers. The most important thing is to start building this 2-way conversation in some fashion.
Some use blogging, some mass emails, some even do podcasts. But VERY few use video. Why is this?
As far as we can see, Here are the major reason why people don’t use video:
- People in general don’t like being on camera
Many people don’t like being on video. This can be for many reasons: they aren’t comfortable with the way they look or sound, they feel that people don’t respond to them on video, and other reasons they are confident in themselves. Alternatively, they might not want their name or face associated with an enterprise. - Video takes more planning
Although in general it is true that video takes more planning, once a process is in place, all that’s necessary is a topic. If a company is thinking about creating a video blog, it’s fairly simple to create a video. All that’s necessary is a topic and a quiet place to record. - Post-production takes time
Sure, making a professional commercial requires lots of Post Production or PostPro. (Post production involves editing, adding graphics, music, etc.) But, if it’s a video blog this isn’t necessary. Videos can be simple, with maybe just a single graphic if any. It’s not necessary to have a fancy production. There are some easy low cost and free tools for simply adding graphics etc. In fact one individual we’ve consulted can begin recording and have it posted online in less than 30 minutes. - Desire to have perfection
A video that is not a commercial does not need to be perfect. A few uhhs, and umms, are perfectly acceptable. In fact having a few items that make the video non-perfect make it more down to earth. Remember again, you’re having a conversation. What person speaks perfectly every moment of everyday? Be real. - Equipment purchase expensive
Many laptops now come with built in cameras. If your computer doesn’t have one, webcams can be purchased at just about any electronics store for $50 or less. These are all that’s necessary for these type of communications.
Here are a few free sites for using video in your business:
Tags: blogging, video, video tools, vlog
Google Connect vs. Facebook FriendConnect
Within just about a day of each other, Google and Facebook launched competing products that do just about the same thing. Both products are essentially an authentication and community system for a website. However, although they do the same thing, the user base for each is quite different and important aspect for considering which one to implement on your brand’s website.
What Do They Do?
If you’re like me, you use a lot of the same websites on a daily basis. (When I get to the office I have my favorite Internet Browser Google Chrome set to open the following websites instantly: Corporate Email, Corporate Calendar, Twitter, Facebook, and Pandora Radio.) All but our corporate email and calendar system use different usernames and passwords. This is kind of a pain. Why not have just one login system that works across multiple sites?
Some sites require any password with 6 or more numbers or letters, some require just 4, some require a digit and letters, some require a symbol, digit, and letters. Keeping all these password straight becomes frustrating, and more and more that “forgot your password?” button is getting used. Another issue is security. Even with all the different password requirements I use the same username and password for a slew of various websites so I can remember it. Did you know that it’s possible for the administrators of that website to see your password? A disgruntled employee etc could easily steal your username and password and try the combination on other sites. This makes the idea of individually registering for every website almost repulsive.
One Login Across Multiple Sites
Imagine a day whenyou won’t have to register for each website and remember those countless passwords. (This process has been in development for a while and the OpenID system has a nice implementation of it that’s becoming more widespread. (However, it is our opinion that the good parts of OpenID will probably be merged with Facebook and/or Google’s system.)
Fixing this is the idea behind Google FriendConnect and Facebook Connect. By using your “credentials” for either Google or Facebook’s system, you can have just one username and password for many sites. For example: You’ll notice on the side of this post, we have implemented Facebook Connect. By logging in using the Connect with Facebook button you can leave comments at the bottom of this post and on all of our posts and pages without registering for our site specifically. All you need is a Facebook account. (If you don’t have one you can register without it.)
Although Single Sign On or SSO as it’s known in geekspeak, is one aspect to these two systems, it’s not the best feature for website operators.
Community Building
The community feature is where the real value in the use of these products lie, especially for website administrators. These two systems create almost a basic social media network just for your website.
Visitors to your site can connect with your content by having their Google or Facebook profiles and website tied to their comments and vice-versa. They can also interact with other users of the site and potentially become friends with them. This user interaction can quickly build stickiness to your site as a meeting place for users to interact. (One of the things we consult companies on is how to create a community on their site so users come back on a regular basis.)
What’s The Difference?
So the services both allow you to login using credentials from other sites. They both have a community section. They provide very similar features so what makes them different?
It’s The Users!
Let me begin this by saying I am a Google evangelist. We currently use their corporate communications system called Apps. I check Google News and Reader on at least an hourly basis.
Google’s system offers one nice aspect: you can use your Google, AOL, Yahoo, or OpenID login to interact with their system. However, until their FriendConnect system, there was no real “Community” inside of Google users. There wasn’t a place they met to share photos, leave comments for each other, etc. Google was a place you got information, not really interacted.
Facebook has a community of 140 million users. Each of those users spends on average over 21 minutes a day on the site (and that includes all the inactive users!) There are millions of photos posted each month. Facebook is social media.
Even on the email systems of Google, Yahoo, and AOL where currently the most interaction between users ocurrs, there are rarely photos, birthdates, work information etc. People don’t want to interact with a grey box. This community interaction is what creates the value and extreme time spent on the site of Facebook. This removes much of the stickiness that is created in the Facebook system. People want to see other people not a little gray box since they have no picture or information about them. As a builder of a brand you want that stickiness to spill over to you and that is what Facebook Connect can do for your system.
Unless you are confident that your users are invested in Google, Yahoo, or AOL we highly recommend instituting the Facebook Connect system.
Here is Facebook’s Page on the system
Here is the plugin we use for our WordPress based website (Note it’s originally in Spanish, but very easy to use and implement)
Here is Google’s page on their system
Tags: blog, community, connect, facebook, friendconnect, google, openid
Social Media Services, a division of Alterity Marketing and PR, is a full service online marketing company. The company is primed to help companies from as small as one person to as large as 1000s learn the ins and outs of utilizing social media in marketing. We can assist with blogging, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and more. We also help create and implement marketing budgets that usually result in a reduction of expenditures.
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