MackCollier.com

by

Social Media is not an ‘all or nothing’ proposition

We’ve all seen the studies and have heard the hype.  Social media is taking over the world and every company will have to have a full-blown social media strategy by 2011 (originally it was 2008, then 2009, then 2010…), or they will be obsolete and left behind.

Give me a break.

Right now CEOs and business owners all across the country, no all across the world, are wringing their hands about social media.  Because they don’t understand it, but are being bombarded with messages that claim they HAVE to understand it in order to succeed in the future.  These are people that like carefully crafted plans with predictable outcomes, yet we are telling them to get moving NOW with a set of tools that are completely new to them.  AND on top of that, we are telling them to use these completely new (to them) tools to do something that they likely aren’t comfortable doing; communicating directly with their customers.

So the end result is that we are scaring these companies into standing still.  They want to wait until they can use social media on terms that they are comfortable with.  Or many are thinking/hoping that social media is ‘all a fad’ and will ‘go away’ if they wait long enough.

To these companies, I apologize.  It’s unfair for us to ask you to dive headlong into social media like this.  We are asking you to run, no to sprint, before you can walk.

Here’s the deal; Yes, social media is a big deal.  Yes, you need to be aware of how/if your customers are using social tools to connect online and share ideas.  No, you probably won’t be out of business in 12 months if you keep ignoring social media.

So instead of worrying about how you can go from 0-60 in under 4 seconds, let’s do something different.  Let’s make a deal: I agree not to push you to jump into social media full speed ahead without any idea/plan other than ‘just do it!”  And you agree to go at your own pace, BUT….to keep moving forward.

That doesn’t mean that we’ll have a blog up and running for your company in a week.  But what that does mean is that you’ll need to start making yourself familiar with social media, and how your customers are using these tools.  Start monitoring social media for company mentions, something as simple as Google Blog Search can help here.  See who is talking about you.  See who is talking about your competitors.  See what they are saying, and notice the tools they are using.

The bottom line is, learn at your own pace.  If it takes you six weeks or six months to start to grasp what social media is about, that’s ok.  If you have a boss that’s skeptical about social media, or know someone that owns a business that’s worried about social media, please share this post with them.

Moving forward is what counts, and it definitely beats being too scared to move.

Pic via Flickr user Bouzafr

by

How your company can save money on social media services

Here are the 8 most popular search terms yesterday for this site:

So it’s pretty obvious that companies are looking for information on how much they should expect to pay for social media services.  If that’s what you are looking for, then you should definitely check out this post on how much you can expect to pay for social media services.

After looking at those search results (and I get similar results almost every day), I decided I needed to write another post about the cost of social media services.  But this time, I wanted to talk about ways that you can LOWER the cost you pay for social media services from consultants and agencies.  While I try to charge a ‘standard’ rate as much as possible, there are a few variables that go into my pricing that I wanted you to consider when attempting to get a price on services for your own business.

1 – Have plenty of company and market research on hand before asking for prices.  If a company approaches me about creating a social media strategy for them, the first thing I am going to do is begin researching them, their company resources, skill sets, etc, as well as their market and who they want to reach via social media, and how their competitors are using social media.  Obviously, if you can have some of this information on hand, it means I will need to spend less time on research, and that means you pay less.

2 – Be able/willing to handle most/all the execution yourself.  This can be a BIG money-saver for you, but comes with the caveat that you need to be in a position where you CAN handle the execution of a social media strategy.  Not every company is, and most need at least some heavy hand-holding at the start.  But the more of the execution and content creation you are willing to perform, the less money it costs you.  Would you rather pay me $150-200 an hour to train your 4 bloggers on how to create content for your blog, or would you rather pay me $150-200 an hour to do the work of 4 bloggers?  Yeah, that choice is obvious.

3 – Connect with me, or have a friend connect us.  I am always getting referrals from friends and people I have met, and I always try to give these companies a discounted rate if I can.  And if we have  a prior relationship, even if it’s just having met at a conference or event I spoke at, I will want to give you a break on pricing if I can.

4 – Have a long-term project. I tend to discount rates if the project exceeds 3 months, simply because that will be a source of income for a longer time-period.  Also, over the life of a longer project, the amount of work required at the end of the project is usually less than the front, so that lowers the cost as well.  BTW this also applies if you hire me to speak at your event.  The hourly rate I will charge for a 1-hour session is probably double the hourly rate I would charge for an all-day training session, for example.

5 – Pick a time when business isn’t as busy.  This one is tricky and usually just comes down to pure luck.  However from my own experience, business is usually a bit lower for me from around October – March.  That’s usually when I have some ‘bandwidth’ available to take on extra clients, and can give the ones I do, a better rate.

6 – Have a cool project.  This is also tricky, but if I really love the ideas you have, I will probably be willing to cut you a deal on price to get the work.  For example, if you are a mid-sized to large B2C company that wants to leverage social media to connect with your brand evangelists, I can almost guarantee that you will get my best rate, and that I’ll make every effort to take on that project, no matter how busy I am 😉

Anyway those are some tips for you, and are from my perspective, if you talk to another agency or consultant, they could have a completely different set of criteria.  But in general, the more work and execution you can handle yourself, the less your costs will be.  Hope this list helps!  Oh and BTW if you are interested in working with me on a social media project for your company, please email me!

by

Planning/Hosting an upcoming Social Media conference? Don’t miss this opportunity…

Luck favors the prepared.

Last week I conducted a workshop on creating engagement and excitement around your social media efforts at the Social Media Optimization Summit in Dallas.  You can read my review of the event here. But the day before the event started, there was a tweetup scheduled in the sports bar at the Sheraton, where #OptSum was going to take place.  Myself and a few others were promoting the event on Twitter in the days leading up to the event, but on the Monday OF the tweetup, activity spiked.  Several tweets told the exact location of where the tweetup would be.

As the time for the tweetup drew near, I realized something.  Here were a buncha people on Twitter, that all have decent ‘followings’, all telling people in Dallas to come to the Sheraton for a tweetup.  If I were handling social media for The Sheraton in Dallas (and yes, the Sheraton in Dallas is on Twitter), then I would probably want to know that several people with anywhere from 5,000-25,000 followers each were promoting my business on Twitter, right?

Additionally, most of the speakers at #OptSum, were staying at the Sheraton.  So The Sheraton in Dallas had several speakers with large social media networks staying there, and had many people with large networks attending the tweetup in the hotel’s sports bar, and apparently did nothing to reach out to these people?  That seems like a pretty big missed opportunity, if you ask me.  BTW, we aren’t talking anything elaborate either, a simple hand-written note waiting in our rooms, or simply attending the tweetup and thanking everyone for coming (and promoting on Twitter), would have been nice.  These would have been very simple ways for The Sheraton to show that they appreciate us promoting their business, and by showing that appreciation, they would have given us the encouragement to CONTINUE to promote The Sheraton.

Jason Falls spoke at the Dallas Social Media Club chapter last Tuesday, and he mentioned a conversation he had with Klout’s CEO during SXSW.  Klout is a service that attempts to ‘measure’ the ‘influence’ of Twitter users, similarly to Twitter-Grader and the like.  Jason said he asked the CEO basically why he should care about Klout.  The CEO told him that they were working on ways to let companies leverage a customer’s Klout score.  For example, if an airline sees that a particular customer in coach has a high Klout score, they could upgrade their flight to first or business class if a seat was available.

I think it’s important to consider such issues as we get into the ‘conference season’.  Over the next couple of months there will be a lot of ‘power’ social media users traveling across the country.  This represents a big opportunity for hotels and tourist attractions in cities where these events will be held to reach out to these people.  A couple of years ago, Cirque Du Soleil’s social media manager Jessica Berlin invited a few hundred bloggers from Blog World Expo to attend one of Cirque’s shows in Las Vegas.  Great example of reaching out to influencers to help promote your product.

What do you think?  If you’re helping to organize an event, even a local one, are you paying attention to the chatter on social sites such as Twitter?  How could the feedback change the way you treat the event’s speakers and attendees?  Should it?

by

The fast food approach to social media

“May I take your order?”

“Yes, I’d like a small Twitter presence, with 200 followers.  And a Facebook Fan Page, but could you upsize that to 5,000 fans?  And I’d like to add a side of 3 updates a day to each, and a daily status report.”

Amazingly, I got an email earlier asking for exactly that.  This person wasn’t interested in a social media strategy, they wanted to know what I would charge them to create a Twitter presence with X number of followers, and a Facebook Fan Page with X number of fans.

This request really scares me for two reasons:

1 – That many companies think that number of fans or followers alone is a metric that indicates a successful social media effort.  And they do, the above request is far from the only one I’ve received.

2 – A shady agency or consultant looking to make a fast buck will be all over this request.

Folks this apparently need to be repeated: The number of fans/followers your social media presences has is meaningless.  If you want to have 500 followers on Twitter, then just start an account and follow 2,000 people (the follower limit for new accounts).  You should eventually get about 500 follow-backs.

But unless those 500 followers either do business with you, or have some level of influence over the people that WILL do business with you, then they are all but worthless to you.

In the opening exchange, what’s the magic word that’s never mentioned?

Strategy.

Getting 5,000 fans on a Facebook fan page is NOT a social media strategy.  Getting 200 followers on Twitter is NOT a social media strategy.  Facebook and Twitter are tactics used to execute a social media strategy, getting on Facebook and Twitter is not a social media strategy.

If you want to know more about creating a social media strategy, I wrote just the post for you, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Creating a Social Media Strategy (But were afraid to ask).  But please, don’t put the cart (tactics) before the horse (strategy).  And please don’t believe that more fans/followers = a more successful social media effort.  30 engaged and excited current/potential customers on your Facebook fan page will trump 300 disinterested followers ANY day of the week.

Pic via Flickr user Tony the Misfit

by

How many filters does your message pass through?

Remember that game where a group of people sit in a circle and one person whispers a rumor to the person next to them?  Then that person whispers it to the next person, and so on until the rumor has worked its way around the circle.  Then the last person tells everyone what the rumor is, so they can see how the story changed from start to finish.

I was thinking about this game when Kevin Smith recently had his very public spat with Southwest Airlines.  I’ve already covered what happened and my thoughts over at The Viral Garden, and don’t want to rehash everything here.  But I think this case is an interesting study in how the number of filters or channels a message goes through can have a serious impact on when a company responds, and how they respond, and perhaps most importantly, WHAT they believe they are responding to.

Case in point, Kevin had the tools available to DIRECTLY communicate with 1.6 million followers on Twitter.  For Southwest, they had to have the flight attendants and pilot, and gate attendants all communicate with their PR dept, and at that point the message MIGHT have gotten in touch with someone that could respond to Kevin via the same tools he was using; social media.  So it’s obvious that Kevin could get HIS message out much quicker than Southwest could.

And to be fair, Southwest is very active in social media.  But even with that, their natural communication infrastructure dictated that their response to Kevin’s message couldn’t come as quickly.  All of the above people, the attendants on the plane and at the gate, the pilot, and perhaps others, all had to be consulted to get their version of the incident with Kevin.  Then when all the information was collected, the PR dept had to issue the appropriate response for Southwest.

So how does a company address this and get timely and accurate responses out via social media tools during a crisis situation?  I think it comes down to a two-part solution:

1 – Reduce the number of channels that a response must pass through

2 – Reduce the amount of friction in each channel

When there is a crisis situation, a timely, accurate and valuable response is essential.  Companies should be aware of social media and how these tools work, if for no other reason than to understand how their customers are utilizing these tools to create and share content.  Now granted, if you’re running a 1-man fruit stand, understanding how your customers could be using social media might not be your top priority.  But if you are a Fortune 50 B2C company that is ignoring how your customers communicate via social media, you have a ticking time bomb on your hands.

So companies (especially larger ones) should invest the time to educate their employees on social media tools, what they can and cannot do, and how their customers are using these tools to communicate with each other, and to create content about their company.  They should also create a social media policy so that employees understand not only how to use social media tools, but what usage is acceptable, and if any is not.  Many of your employees will be using social media anyway, so it’s best to put some guidelines in place to govern their usage on company time.  This will also give employees that aren’t familiar with social media and incentive to become active in using these tools to connect with customers.  IBM has a great social media policy, if you want an example to look at.

Next, companies should create internal tools that allow employees to connect with each other.  Tools like Yammer give employees a quick and easy way to connect with each other, and collaborate on projects.  Companies like Dell and LinkedIn have internal blogs and wikis set up that let their employees connect with each other and share information quickly and easily.  This helps reduce friction in the channels, but can also reduce the number of channels, if it allows a front-line employee to instantly connect with the appropriate person that can respond to a developing crisis situation.

But at the end of the day, the key to addressing a developing crisis situation via social media is to utilize the same tools that your customers are, in the same way.  If there’s a firestorm erupting via blogs, your customers will expect you to respond via those same blogs, not via a carefully-worded press release 4 days later.  If your company can educate its employees about how to use these tools, both external AND internal communication will be greatly improved, as will your ability to deal with future crisis situations.

PS: Thanks to Beth Harte for recommending I write this post.

by

So how much will a social media strategy cost?

One of the most frequent questions I get about social media is the cost. What will launching a blog/Facebook fan page/Twitter presence cost me? What will a social media strategy cost? The answer is never clear-cut and depends on several factors, including:

  • What are your goals for using social media?  This greatly determines the tools necessary to achieve those goals
  • What are your resources?  Can you handle everything in-house, or will you need to outsource some of the work?  All of the work?
  • What is the length of the project?  Obviously, a 6-month project will cost more than a 3-month project.

From my point of view as a consultant, I am looking at how much work is involved, and what type of work, when I give a quote.  One word of caution; If you contact a consultant or firm about doing social media work, they SHOULD ask you several questions before they can give you a price.  If a company contacts me and asks “Ok, what’s it going to cost us to launch a blog?”, then I can’t answer that question without more information.  And here’s a tip; If you ask a consultant/agency how much it will cost to launch a blog/Facebook fan page/Twitter presence for you and they immediately quote you a price, that is a big red flag.  They can’t answer that question until they know what your resources and goals are for using social media.

Now, I know what you are thinking.  “Yeah that’s great Mack, but give me some prices!”  While it’s almost impossible to give any company an accurate quote without talking to them about the above and so much more, I’ll share some ranges with you to give you an idea of what to expect.  And I will caution you that these are my prices, some agencies/consultants will be more, some will be less, and you should consider this a guide only.

Blog:

Launch a blog from the ground-up, outsource all content creation (including customer interaction) – $3,000-$6,000 a month

Launch a blog from the ground-up, outsource all content creation at first, eventually take over – $3,000-$6,000 a month for 3-6 months

Launch a blog from the ground-up, outsource some content creation till you can handle all – $2,500-$5,000 a month for 3-6 months

Restructure an existing blog to improve your efforts – $3,000-$6,000 a month for 3-6 months

Limited coaching to improve your existing blogging efforts – $1,500-$4,000 a month for 3-6 months

Twitter:

Launch a new presence on Twitter and outsource all content creation and customer interaction – $2,000-$5,000 a month

Launch a new presence on Twitter and outsource all content creation at first, gradually taking over – $2,000-$5,000 a month for 3-6 months

Restructure an existing Twitter presence to improve your efforts – $1,500-$4,000 a month for 3-6 months

Limited coaching to improve your existing efforts on Twitter – $1,500-$3,000 a month for 3-6 months

Facebook:

Launch a Facebook Fan Page from the ground-up, outsourcing all content creation and customer interactions – $3,000-$6,000 a month

Launch a Facebook Fan Page from the ground-up, outsourcing most of the content creation at first, gradually taking on more – $3,000-$6,000 a month for 3-6 months

Launch a Facebook Fan Page from the ground-up, outsourcing some content creation at first, till you can handle all – $2,500-$5,000 a month for 3-6 months.

Restructure an existing Facebook Fan Page to improve your existing efforts – $2,000-$4,000 a month for 3-6 months

Limited coaching on improving your Facebook Fan Page – $1,500-$3,000 a month for 3-6 months

Social Media Strategy:

Comprehensive Social Media Strategy, assuming outsourcing of all content creation through all channels (not recommended) – $5,000-$12,000 a month

Comprehensive Social Media Strategy, assuming outsourcing of most content creation at first, with company assuming more responsibility as project proceeds – $4,000-$9,000 a month for 4-12 months

Creation of a Social Media Strategy, with limited coaching and assistance with execution of the strategy – $3,000-$6,000 a month for 3-9 months

Restructuring of existing Social Media Strategy, with limited coaching and assistance with strategy – $2,500-$6,000 a month for 3-9 months

Limited coaching on improving the execution of an existing Social Media Strategy – $2,000-$5,000 a month for 3-6 months

Social Media Strategy Audit – $2,000-$5,000

Thanks to Anita for leaving a comment that reminded me to include this.  This is a service I offer to companies that gives them an audit of their existing social media strategy, as well as that of their competitors and the marketplace, to give them a suggested course of action for social media, moving forward.  This is for companies that aren’t sure how to proceed with social media, and want to know what sort of resources they will need to use social media effectively.  I have been getting several requests for this service over the last couple of months as companies begin setting their budgets for 2010.

Again, these figures should be considered a guide to get you started.  Obviously, the more work you need, the more the cost.  For example, if you have a team of 10 bloggers that I will be coaching, it’s probably going to cost more than if I am working with 2 people.

One final point: In general I don’t advise companies to outsource their social media efforts.  If you need to outsource some/most of your efforts at first till you get up to speed, that’s fine.  But if you hire someone to create and execute a social media strategy for you and outsource EVERYTHING to them, then you’re locked into needing to pay them big money for as long as you use social media.  And what happens if they are hired by a company?  There goes your social media strategy.

I understand that some companies need to outsource.  But in the long-run, your efforts will be more effective, and cheaper, the more you can handle yourself.  I was talking to a company recently about their launching a blog.  We were discussing if the company had the resources to keep and MAINTAIN a blog.  The CEO said he could that he had a great passion for his products, and the people that use them.  I pointed out that the PASSION was the one area that can’t be outsourced.  I can show you how to craft content that will be more valuable to customers and show you how to encourage interaction, but I won’t be able to match the passion or understanding that YOU have for your business.  That can’t be outsourced.

PS: If you’d like to get a custom quote on a social media project that you are considering, please email me!

NOTE: If you found this post via a Google search, this post first appeared in 2010.  The prices and services in this post have been updated for 2011 and you can find those prices here.

by

Three steps to saving your company from a social media firestorm!

Last week I was contacted by a company that found itself in an unfortunate position.  One of the products it produces had been failing, and bloggers were taking to the internet to voice their displeasure.  The end result was that if you Googled the company and its product, the majority of the top results were, you guessed it, from angry bloggers.

So what happens if your company finds itself in a similar situation with customers running with pitchforks in hand to their blogs and Twitter to rake your company over the coals?  What’s your plan of action?  Here’s the advice I gave them for correcting this issue, and how your company can handle a similar crisis in three steps:

1 – Fix the problem.  No amount of social media or ANY other type of on or offline communications will help you until your company FIRST fixes the problem.  If you have a defective product, or shoddy customer service, or whatever, you have to first address the ROOT CAUSE of the customer complaints.  And once you have a solution in place for the problem….

2 – Actively respond to customers via social media.  Find the customers that are blogging and twittering and Facebooking their displeasure over your company, and let them know that first, you hear them and thank them for their feedback.  Second, that you apologize.  Third, that you have a PLAN IN PLACE to fix the problem.  Fourth, that you’re here and listening, and invite further feedback from them, and give them a way to get in touch with you.

Last week when Graco announced a recall to one of its strollers, the company turned to Twitter to interact with customers and get them information about which strollers were and were not affected by the recall.  Timely communication such as this also helps stunt the spread of rumors and misinformation, which only makes the company’s crisis management efforts twice as hard.  Additionally, customers loved how Graco was proactive in reaching out to them, and a potentially negative situation for the company became a positive one.

Customers want to know that you hear them, and what you are going to do to correct the problem.  If you can show them that you are listening, that you are taking their criticism to heart and ACTING on it, then that criticism will slowly turn into positive evangelism for your company.  That means those existing negative Google results for your company and product will begin to turn positive.

3 – Start getting correct information out via social media channels.  But your company still needs to ‘tell its story’.  Many people will be doing research on Google for your product before they buy, so you need to make sure they see the correct information about your product and company.  If you have a blog, this is where you can let customers know what you are doing to address the situation, and how you are correcting the problem.  If you aren’t currently blogging, this is a great excuse for starting one.  Dell’s company blog had barely been in place for a week in 2006 when the ‘exploding laptop’ issue ‘blew up’.  But having the blog in place gave Lionel and the rest of Dell’s blogging team a channel to get relevant and accurate information out about the situation, and what Dell was doing to correct it.

So there’s a simple 3-point plan for avoiding a social media firestorm; Fix the problem, Respond to customers letting them know you have fixed the problem, Get the word out via your OWN social media channels that you have fixed the problem.  But again, the starting point is to fix the problem.  If you think that you ignore the core issue and just use social media to ‘push down’ negative Google results, you are setting yourself up for failure.

The only thing worse than a company that doesn’t respond during a crisis is one that DOES respond, yet still doesn’t fix the problem.

Pic via Flickr user chaosinjune

by

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Creating a Social Media Strategy (But Were Afraid to Ask)

RSSWorldIf your company is using social media, it is VITAL that you have a strategy and plan in place that’s guiding your efforts.  Not only will your efforts be much more successful, but it will save you a ton of time and money since your efforts will be focused.  And it will be much easier to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.

So why don’t more people have a social media strategy in place? In most cases, they simply aren’t sure how to create said strategy.  This post will hopefully help with this ALL too common problem.  So if your company is using social media and ‘winging it’ without a plan, please share this post internally.  If you have friends that are trying to get social media efforts off the ground at their company, please pass this along to them.  We will not see REAL growth from companies using social media until more of them get SOLID plans in place that are guiding their efforts.

Let’s get started on making that happen.  Here is a framework for creating a social media strategy for your business.

First, think about what you are wanting to accomplish with social media.  What are your goals?  Here’s some examples:

  • Build awareness for your company
  • Increase sales
  • Increase customer leads
  • Establish thought leadership
  • Use social media as a customer service platform
  • Provide product support for customers
  • Collect feedback on existing or potential products and services
  • Build a place where customer evangelists can connect

Second, think about who you are wanting to reach.  Is it current customers?  Potential customers?  Industry sources?  Potential clients?  Who is your ‘target market’?  Creating a simple monitoring system will help you determine the answer to this question.  By monitoring online mentions, you can get a good feel for where the online conversation about your company is happening, and how active it is.  Want to jump on Twitter?  What if no one on Twitter is talking about you?  Monitoring will help you determine this.  You can use premium tools such as Radian6 or Techrigy, or if you are a smaller business it’s probably fine to go with free tools such as Google Alerts and Twitter search.

Third, what are your resources?  What’s your budget for social media?  How many employees are available to work on your social media efforts?  Will you have to outsource some of your efforts at the start?  Will you have to outsource all of your efforts at the start?  How much time can you devote to social media?

Answering these questions will greatly determine which tactics (blogs, Twitter, Facebook) are best for helping you achieve your social media strategy.  Let me state this again; Getting on Twitter is NOT a social media strategy.  Twitter is a tactic used to execute a social media strategy.  You first need to answer the three questions above and THEN decide that Twitter is the right (or one of the right) tactics to help you achieve your goal(s) for social media.

So let’s say you’ve answered these three questions.  Your goals are to use social media to build awareness and increase sales.  That means you will primarily be targeting new and potential customers.  Now let’s also factor in the answers from the third question about your resources.

On the surface, a goal of using social media as a way to build awareness for your business and increase sales sounds like a great opportunity for your business to launch a company blog.  But a blog carries with it unique time and social media skillset requirements.  That’s why you also need to factor in your resources.  Do you have enough time and people available  to ensure that the blog will regularly have fresh content available?  Do you also have the people available to spend time connecting with readers and potential customers on and off your blog?  If not, do you have the budget to outsource some or all of these efforts?

That’s why you must consider all three questions at once.  And after you have answered these questions and now have your strategy in place, and have decided on the social media tactics you will use, now you have to figure out how to measure the effectiveness of your strategy.  At this point, don’t blindly assume that more traffic or followers or friends is best.  Make sure that the metrics you measure tie back to your social media goals.  If your end goal for your blog is to sell more widgets, should you measure number of comments per post, or number of referrals from the blog to the widget product page on your website?  Does it really matter that you have 10,000 followers on Twitter, if only 10 of them are potential customers?

Put your metrics on trial.  Make SURE that whatever you measure makes sense in the context of what you are trying to accomplish with social media.  More traffic is great, but what actions are those visitors performing once they arrive at your blog or message board?  If you are adding 100 fans a week to your Facebook page and still can attribute no additional sales from Facebook fans, so what?  (BTW this opens another can of worms, but it could be that your Facebook fans ARE driving sales, but you don’t know that because you aren’t tracking them correctly, or at all)

At the end of the day, you have to have a strategy guiding your social media efforts.  And I know that some CEOs hear the term ‘social media strategy’ and immediately get nervous because they think it means a lot of $$$ and a big commitment.  What it means that you are going to ORGANIZE your social media efforts and make them more efficient.  Just because an intern got you on Twitter and Facebook doesn’t mean you need to be on either site.

Once you get a strategy in place, you’ll save time and money.  You have a strategy driving your other marketing efforts, why should what you are doing with social media be any different?

Thanks to Esther for suggesting this post!

by

You can’t evaluate the effectiveness of your social media plan until you HAVE a plan!


Going back to the results from my social media survey, Question #6 asked “What has been the biggest problem your company has encountered in using social meda?”

The top response to this question was “Not sure how to measure the effectiveness of our efforts”.

That probably isn’t surprising to many of you.  But that ‘sounds’ like an ROI issue, and I don’t think it is.

So I crosstabbed the people that said that “Not sure how to measure the effectiveness of our efforts” was their top concern, and looked at their responses to the other questions.

Then I came to Question #5, which asked “If your company doesn’t have a social media strategy, why not?”  The top response to this question (62.1%) was that their company WAS using social media, but did not have a strategy in place.

But a whopping 68.4% of the people that said that ‘Not sure how to measure the effectiveness of our efforts’ was their top concern about social media ALSO said that they do NOT have a strategy in place to guide their social media efforts.

And this is what I think many companies are running into.  They are jumping on Twitter and Facebook (because those are the two sites they hear the most buzz about), then a month later they ask ‘Ok I’m looking at our Twitter and Facebook pages…what should I be seeing?’

These companies let BUZZ determine how they were using social media, instead of taking the time to craft a STRATEGY to guide their efforts.

And yes, I get that some companies panic when you say that they need a strategy behind their efforts.  The hand-wringing begins, because when you say ‘strategy’, they hear ‘commitment’, and to them, that means money.  But the problem is that if you don’t have a strategy guiding your social media efforts, you are going to LOSE time AND money!

Put yourself in the shoes of the average company that has no idea how to get started with social media.  If they don’t create a PLAN for their actions, they will likely decide to jump on Twitter and/or Facebook.  Because that’s what everyone is talking about.

So once they get on Twitter and Facebook, since they have no strategy in place to guide their efforts, how are they going to determine if their efforts are working?  Odds are, they will think they need to get more followers and more friends/fans.  Right?  Because those are numbers and it’s easy to understand numbers and THINK that as long as the number of followers/friends/fans goes UP, that’s a good thing, right?

Of course since there’s no strategy in place, the company has no idea WHO they should be reaching, or even if the people they want to reach are on Twitter and/or Facebook.  So they struggle to determine how to measure the effectiveness of their efforts.

So think of the social media strategy as being your map.  Sure, you might make it to your destination eventually on your own, but you’re probably going to waste some time and energy (and money) to get there.

Pic via Flickr user WorldIslandInfo.com

by

A Detailed Statistical Analysis of One Blog Post

Analyzing Your Blog's Stats Two areas I stress to companies that want to work with me on their social media efforts is that we aggressively monitor all relevant online chatter about them/their competitors/their industry, and that we aggressively track all relevant statistics from their social media efforts.  I wanted to take a look at an example of the latter with this post.

Yesterday’s post Five Reasons No One Likes You On Twitter ended up being massively popular and drove a record level of traffic here.  But I wanted to walk you through some of the stats from this post, to show you that;

1 – It’s important to track stats associated with your social media efforts

2 – It’s important not to get bogged down in tracking TOO MUCH

Now my general goal for this site is to create content that others can find value in.  I can get more specific and say that I judge this by:

1 – How often the post is shared via links, retweets, etc.

2 – How many comments it receives

3 – How many people contact me, which opens the dialogue for my potentially working with them.

Here’s some stats from this site and the Five Reasons post from yesterday:

Total site visitors – 1,635

Total pageviews Five Reasons post – 3,431

Total retweets – 162

RSS readers increased from 91 to 122 yesterday

Ok, those are broad figures, and all are well above avg, to be sure.  It also suggests that Twitter was a huge reason for the spike in vistors and pageviews.

Next, let’s look at referring sites:

twitter.com – 633 visits

facebook.com – 46 visits

fastwonderblog.com – 12 visits

plurk.com – 8 visits

As we suspected, Twitter was the driving force in the popularity of this post.  But I noticed two things I wasn’t expecting.  First, Facebook sent 46 visitors, even though I didn’t promote the post on Facebook, as I did on Twitter.  This is a good reminder to start doing that, and when I link to this post on Twitter after it goes live, I’ll also send it to Facebook as well.  Second, I noticed that I got some referrals from fastwonderblog.com.  I checked out their site, and sure enough, Dawn had linked to my post, in this post she wrote.  I read her post, liked it, and just tweeted it to my 9K followers.  But if I hadn’t been tracking my referrals, I might not have realized that Dawn had linked to my post (Google Blog Search hadn’t picked up on the link as when I was writing this post).

Finally, I noted a handful of referrals from Plurk. If that number had been higher, as it was with referrals from Facebook, it might suggest that I need to spend more time on Plurk, but for such a low number, it probably doesn’t warrant more time there, yet.  But I should still pay attention, if the number of referrals from Plurk starts increasing, it could be a sign that I need to spend some time there.

It’s vital that you track your blog’s referrals very closely, to not only tell you who is linking to you, but also it gives you a great idea of which social sites are sending you traffic.  This information can help you determine where you should be spending your time, moving forward.

Now for comments. So far, the post has 17 comments in about a day.  That’s excellent by my standards. And the conversation in the comments is very robust, with everyone offering their opinions and how they use Twitter.  A big success here.

Finally, I had one person email me about this post. This sounds disappointing, but I get almost no emails from my posts.  And with this post, I specifically asked people to email me, and added a link to do so.  So getting one email is a sign that maybe I should do this more often, or can at least do some more experimenting with this.  BTW, if you’d rather comment via email, please do so 😉

So in closing, the post is a success by the three standards I wanted, to create a post that would be shared, that would be commented on, and that would prompt emails from readers.  By looking at the stats more closely, I can see how to improve each of these efforts, and get a better idea of how my readers are interacting with my blog.  Don’t underestimate the importance of closely tracking your stats, it might seem passive, but understanding what is happening can really help you maximize your social media efforts, moving forward.

UPDATE: I meant to include this in the post, but the stats about the post itself came from Google Analytics, the stat about the increase in RSS readers was from Feedburner, and the stat on the number of RTs was from Tweetmeme.