This week Erica Jordan posted a blog on measuring the success of a social media campaign and evaluating ROI (check Erica's blog out here). First, Erica asked us to determine the "best practices" of high social media performance, followed by the most effective ways to track that performance.
For starters, I honestly believe you could ask five different people what the best practices of high social media performance are, and get five different, but right answers. In Return on Influence by Mark Schaefer, he discussed some things to keep in mind for powering high social media performance, a few of them being having a controversial brand, having a strategy, relevance, keeping it real, and making it shareable (Schaefer, 2012).
In order to have high social media performance, a brand (whether it's a person or company) must actually be something that is sought out on the web, because in order to engage there must actually be an audience to engage with. Having a strategy is probably one of my personal key points on this topic. High social media performance is a goal-if there is no strategy to reach that goal how will you ever expect to succeed? Relevance can be comparable to the first point I mentioned- having a controversial brand. As Schaefer stated "you have to ensure that the product is pertinent to each individual and her audience" (Schaefer, pg. 150). Keeping it real is important ethically-if you don't you can't expect to have a positive reputation or feedback. And finally, making it shareable. High social media performance can be acquired rather quickly these days, if the content is shareable. You never know how many followers or likes can pop up over night just from a few shares.
As far as tracking high social media performance, I believe the most effective ways are through analytics and feedback. How many followers, likes, @tweets, retweets, shares, and analysis of feedback are all indicators on where social media performance stands. As mentioned in Return on Influence, many brands use Klout scores to gauge their social media performance across several social media platforms all at once. Klout scores are much more advanced than basic analytics. They not only include what I mentioned above, but also the probability that the content will be acted on in the future as well as the overall influence you have on the network. Needless to say, they are a great, effective way to track social media performance.
-SB
Reference:
Schaefer, Mark W. (2012) Return on Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing. San Francisco, CA. McGraw Hill.
Great post Shana!
ReplyDeleteI wrote a novel on my blog, so I will try to keep it brief here. I agree that there are so many answers to best practices. I wrote my own: being active on social media as often as possible, consistency across sites (username for example) and having a voice that speaks to people, which in essence is information that people will want to follow and talk about. I completely agree about strategy being so important. In any venture, being strategic is necessary. But the tricky part about doing social media is that it is ever-changing, so the strategy has to be pliable. So having a strategy that can go along with the ebb and flow of the latest social media craze is extremely important.
I must have missed the part about Klout, I am not sure how I did, but I read up on it after Everett and you mentioned it. It seems like a great resource to take the weight off of the marketing department or social media specialist. The fact that the analytics are more than just on the surface statistics, is invaluable to a business being that there are so many sites to monitor. I have trouble monitoring my 4 personal sites and one of the sites for a nonprofit I write for. If I am blessed enough to get a position as a full time social media guru, I will take a look at clout for bigger organizations that spread their messages across multiple channels.
Dana J
Hi Shana,
ReplyDeleteNice post - I like your opening statement where you said that five different people could be asked the same question and would give 5 different, but still correct, answers. That is the most challenging part of engaging with consumers and then tracking the success - there isn't a clear cut way to do it, nor is there a right way. The industry in general is kind of all over the place because it is still relatively new.
I like that you spoke about using analytics to determine success - that is a good quantitative approach that is going to be quick and cheap - something all companies like! My question for you then is actually the reverse of what I asked Everett, but, how would you then suggest that a brand gather qualitative information about their brand online? And, once you have this qualitative and quantitative information, how can you related that to ROI?
Hi Erica,
DeleteThanks for the reply! I think as far as qualitative information for a brand- monitoring feedback is a good approach. Look at your company’s reviews and reading every comment and rating is a good way to gauge how audiences perceive the brand. It also provides the opportunity to improve brand image and reputation if feedback and comments aren’t very positive-there’s redemption opportunity by reaching out to those consumers.
ROI can be related to this information by simply reflecting it. An increase overtime on social media performance can result in higher market share and/or sales numbers. Same with a decrease in performance. Social media is no longer just an asset to a brands overall marketing and advertising strategy-it’s a major channel that companies rely on to generate sales and then some.
-SB