This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

From the Position² Blog This Week: Twitter Mistakes Businesses Should Avoid What are the common twitter mistakes businesses should avoid? How can brands use twitter as a powerful marketing tool? Do Fortune 500 companies use twitter as a business development tool? Is your twitter profile complete? How can brands monitor their twitter account? Read rest of the article to get answers to these questions.

Coming Soon: Google+ Lays the Groundwork for Business Profiles. Survey Report: B2B Researchers Prefer LinkedIn Over Facebook. Social Media Principles: 6 Ways to Become Likeable With Social Media. Friend or Foe?: Social Media Attribution Zuckerberg: The Other One – Talks About Social Media Web Analytics: Challenges in Automated Traffic Reporting. Locals Only: Harnessing The Power Of Online Customer Reviews For Local Business Growth. Google Real-time: What’s Happening On Your Site Right Now? Google Zeitgeist: Larry Page on Search, Google+, Motorola & More. Search Engine War: Blekko Takes on Google – With Help From Russia.

Video of the Week Going to where your customers are [interview] Brian Solis joined Katie Lance from Inman for a discussion about social media, real estate and good old fashioned common sense marketing.

Enhance Your Digital Presence – Sign up for our Digital Marketing Services Do More. Do Better. We’re here! With end-to-end capabilities in digital marketing and a team that is committed to delivering 100% all the time – you can safely rely on the Position² team to take care of your digital marketing support requirements. Position² has processes and systems in place to efficiently deliver high quality assets. Click here to know more!

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The Challenges of Tweeting

The innumerable social media guide books out there typically advice brands on everything they need to know in order to survive and succeed in the digital space. Although they are usually very comprehensive and cover the basics, we strongly believe that every networking channel is unique and has its specific list of do’s and don’ts that need to be followed. Online marketers focusing mainly on YouTube for instance, will have a completely different set of guidelines from marketers that primarily use Twitter or Facebook. Social media is a double edged sword; while the benefits are many, online marketing has not been without its challenges. In the case of Twitter, it is a great platform for: a) customer service b) posting regular updates about a brand or a particular product c) bringing brands closer to their audience and d) companies looking to extend their reach and gain visibility. According to the “The Fortune 500 and Social Media” yearly report from the Center for Marketing Research:

• American Fortune 500 Companies dramatically increased their participation in Twitter to 60% in 2010, compared with 35% in 2009.
• Three in five companies had active Twitter accounts.
• The industries that were most strongly represented among the Fortune 500 Twitter accounts included retail; food, drug and CPG; and insurance.

The above numbers appear promising and show that companies are already using Twitter to bolster their brand. However, online marketers still hesitate to use the microblogging tool to its maximum potential or give up after the initial enthusiasm wanes out. This lack of confidence could stem from running into common Twitter-hurdles and making mistakes that can be easily avoided.

Unclear Objectives

Rushing into Twitter, without having clearly defined objectives, comes first in our list of the ‘Most Common Twitter Mistakes to Avoid’. As an online marketer, knowing what you want from Twitter not just saves time, but also functions as a safety net for your brand. Making a list of what you expect to achieve for your brand via Twitter can help avoid:

• Irrelevant Tweets: Twitter’s 140 character limit is all the more reason why companies should use this tool wisely. Tweeting about something that has nothing to do with your brand increases the risk of losing followers and invites unnecessary backlash. This is what happened in the case of Habitat, a trendy furniture store in the UK. The company’s need for visibility did get them attention, although of the wrong kind. When the @HabitatUK account started to use #hashtags such as #iPhone, #mms, #Apple, which had absolutely nothing to do with furniture, decorating, or shopping, the company was accused of posting irrelevant content. The Twitter community was disappointed with Habitat’s incorrect use of hashtags to tweet information that was completely unrelated to the company.
• Missing Out on Your Audience: Unclear goals mean you don’t know who to follow. Simply tweeting without having a specific audience in mind not only wastes time but also translates into unproductive use of the microblogging site. Brands that jump in without thinking about who to follow either end up following the wrong audience or have trouble going further.
• Getting Left Behind: One of the biggest reasons why many brands get abroad the social media bandwagon is because they want to stay ahead of the competition or avoid getting left behind. This is true especially in the case of Twitter. However, ambiguity regarding your goals or the ‘tweet first, decide later’ approach simply increases the possibility of getting left behind. How? When you don’t know what to tweet, you won’t know how to proceed!

A Half-Baked Profile Page

Why is it important to have a well-thought-out Twitter profile? One of the first things that potential followers will check out is your brand’s Twitter profile page. Half-hearted attempts at designing a profile page gives out the message that you were either in a hurry to start tweeting or simply didn’t consider it important enough to invest time on. Setting up a detailed profile on Twitter is simple, takes very little time and effort and gives people some sort of context on what your brand does. Having trouble getting started? Here are a few pointers that should help:

• Upload that Picture: The default Twitter egg for a profile picture will hardly come across as ‘egg-citing’ to your followers. Recent research from Dan Zarrella, author and Hubspot’s “social media and viral marketing scientist,” shows that Twitter accounts with profile images attract more followers. We think this is especially true in the case of brands that are new to Twitter and are in the process of building their follower count and want to gain visibility. This, however, does not mean uploading an irrelevant image or having a cartoon character representing your brand. The ‘avatar’ photo should represent your brand. Our suggestion? Going with the company logo is good choice.
• Custom Twitter Background: Having a custom Twitter background will help your brand stand out from the crowd. While some brands’ background is generic and says nothing about their business, the others try to include too much, making it appear chaotic. The @Ford account is the great example of how a company can achieve the perfect balance between too much and too little background content.
• Filling Out the Bio: In addition to uploading a relevant profile picture and having a well-laid out background, it is important to take time off to fill in the ‘bio’ field. A brief description of the company’s area of expertise, along with some contact details will give potential followers the required information about the brand. Also, don’t forget to include a link to the company’s website.

Hibernating vs. Hyperactivity

Many companies start off with great enthusiasm and run out of steam somewhere along the way. The abrupt silence could result in reducing a brand’s follower count and may lead to frustrated customers probably wondering about the sudden inactivity. The other extreme is when marketers shower followers with an overload of tweets. For an online marketer, striking the right balance between hibernation vs. being overactive on Twitter is all about:

• Timing: Space out your tweets in a digestible format for your followers. Tweeting at regular intervals gives brands larger reach and makes them look professional. Other benefits include less ‘noise’, reduced probability of losing followers and giving people enough time to read and assimilate information.
• Avoiding Spam: Sometimes attempts to expand reach and promote a product or service can go out of control and turn users off. Sending direct messages (DM) when not required, simply retweeting others in your industry, sending @ messages to someone you don’t know or trying to sell something to the wrong audience are examples of how you can spam innocent social media users. Japanese Coffee Company, UCC, tried to rush into Twitter by randomly broadcasting their messages to unsuspecting social media users during the launch phase of their “Good Coffee Smile” campaign. The company’s unwise use of an automated program that sent an @ reply to everyone who tweeted keywords like “coffee” or “contest” was not well received. Additionally, the company overloaded users with a preset advertisement tweet related to their contest, which invariably resulted in Twitter users complaining that they were being spammed by UCC. Our advice? Take your time, figure out what you wish to convey and who you wish to target in advance, and use the DM, @ and retweet commands judiciously.
• Engaging: Too much sales talk and too little engagement can cost precious followers. Marketers need to understand that, in order to connect with customers, it is important to actually engage with them first. While it is tempting to give a Twitter monologue without engaging in a dialogue, being your own brand ambassador all the time will encourage your users to label you as ‘boring’ and move on. Keep in mind, Twitter is all about give and take; you need to show your followers you are interested in them just as much as they are in you.

Are You Monitoring your Twitter Account?

Your Twitter marketing strategy has checked all the right boxes. You have the goals in place, boast a solid Twitter profile, engage with your customers, and even know your target audience and when and what you should be tweeting to them. You have it all covered right? Well almost. Twitter, being one of the most active social media channels in the networking space, needs to be monitored closely. Companies using Twitter as an integral part of their marketing plan need to invest in social media monitoring tools such as Brand Monitor because:

• Twitter is Where Most of the Conversation Takes Place: The real-time nature of Twitter makes its all the more necessary for companies to monitor the influence of their brand and measure the impact of their messages. Also, most people who want to talk about a brand or a campaign take to Twitter because it’s the ideal platform to start a trending topic (by creating #hashtags). Twitter is where most of the conversations take place; if you aren’t there watching, then you could be missing out on valuable information about your business.
• This Reduces Spam: As your brand’s presence on Twitter continues to grow, the possibility of unintentionally spamming users increases. Listening to your customers, finding out what type of content they appreciate etc will prevent you from spamming their Twitter accounts with irrelevant content.
• It Helps Decide if Twitter is Where you Should be: When it comes to deciding between the various networking channels out there, marketers are often spoilt for choice and are not sure what works best for their brand. We suggest analyzing the conversations, and finding out what networking platform has the maximum volumes pertaining to your brand. If Twitter is not where you should be, then this is possibly why your efforts at microblogging are not yielding the desired results.

Conclusion

A recent study by eMarketer shows that, on an average, 30.6% of Twitter users follow between one and five brands. With the growing number of Twitter users, we only expect this number to increase in the next few years. For social media marketers that mainly use Twitter, the future looks promising. While it is great that the microblogging site is being perceived as a serious online marketing tool, the ride on the Twitter bandwagon can sometimes get bumpy. Also, in the rush to tweet, brands sometimes tend to overlook the basics and are faced with roadblocks that could have otherwise been avoided.

Our research shows the most common Twitter mistakes can sometimes cost companies followers, besides affecting the brand image. It is natural for even the most social-media savvy brands to slip-up once in a while. Take a deep breath… Twitter can be one of the best things that happened to your brand or business. We believe that there is nothing a little careful planning and monitoring cannot overcome. This, along with optimum engagement, scheduling of tweets, and having a well-thought out Twitter profile page will ensure that your ride is smooth and you don’t press the panic button too often.

Twitter is powerful marketing tool that allows brands to connect, share, develop relationships and enhance their sphere of influence. A few hurdles along the way shouldn’t deter marketers from using Twitter to its maximum potential.

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Getting Started With a Solid Framework

Creating a successful social media campaign is like constructing a skyscraper. You need a strong foundation, quality materials and a reliable crew to ensure your structure doesn’t collapse. However, for many marketer, the idea of ROI and traffic takes priority over the finer details that go into designing a winning campaign. Although returns are a measurable and important aspect of social media marketing, the end result largely depends on the basic framework. Also, people are spending more time on social networks, and that means brands are even more pressurized to capture their attention and convert them into consumers. According to the Trends in Social Advertising survey conducted by Pivot:

• 60% of the respondents anticipate that social advertising will be very valuable to them.
• 54% are satisfied or very satisfied with their social advertising.
• While 37% agree with the statement that social advertising is gaining momentum, 54% strongly agree with the same.
• 38% marketers always have a social advertising competent as part of their campaign(s).
• 85% were currently experimenting with social advertising or planned to do so within the next 12 months.

While the above statistics appear encouraging, there were some respondents (45%) who said they were not as satisfied with their social marketing efforts. There could be several reasons for this. The success of a social media campaign depends on some elements which are very apparent, such as content, videos, pictures etc. However, there are certain less obvious, but equally crucial, components that need to be included while designing online promotional material. These are sometimes overlooked, leading to dissatisfaction among both marketers and consumers. In our opinion, these make up for the building blocks of digital marketing messages.

The Crucial Building Blocks

It is every social media marketer’s dream to create the next Old Spice or Ford campaign. There are some things that the creators of these highly successful promotions did right; setting up a solid foundation before building creative content, and following it up with offline marketing and post-launch activities. Ford’s decision to reveal the redesigned 2011 Explorer via Facebook instead of an auto show was a bold move, which paid off. Although the online launch coincided with the offline unveiling across the US, what worked among other things for the Detroit Company was a) creation of the pre-launch online buzz through teasers b) allowing fans to converse with company executives about the new revamped model, giving them a feeling of being involved and c) uploading a pre-reveal video featuring celebrity spokesperson Mike Row and CEO Alan Mulally. Irrespective of whether a brand is in the same league as P&G or Ford, we believe there are certain elements that function as the building blocks for a holistic digital campaign.

• Resource Management

  One of the biggest attractions for brands incorporating social media into their marketing strategies is the low-investment, high returns benefit. While large businesses need not always worry about the ‘how much’ part, resource management is nevertheless the first rung in the social advertising ladder for enterprises as well as SMBs. Securing budgets was said to be the second most difficult task for online marketers, with 34% reporting this to be a periodic challenge. This makes it all the more necessary to judiciously manage online marketing budgets.

  • Where is the Money Going? Social advertising is a relatively inexpensive proposition, provided you know what the marketing dollars are being used for. As an online marketer, you do not always have to overspend to create a memorable social media campaign. Knowing the purpose of your promotion will help allocate a budget, besides answering the ‘where is the money going’ question. For instance, if acquiring new customers, monitoring the impact of a campaign or growing the business further etc are among the goals, then these are probably the areas where your marketing dollars are being invested. As long as the accounts tally, we say there is no reason to worry.
  • It’s an Investment, not an Expense: Brands that look at digital advertising as an expense rather than an investment are usually not as satisfied with the returns. This incorrect perception can also result in marketers trying to reduce these ‘expenses’, thereby compromising on their online marketing efforts. Changing the outlook and looking at ad spend as money wisely invested will ensure you are happy with the outcome of your social media marketing campaign.
  • Working Backwards: Going in the reverse direction is a good way of drawing up a blue print for a social campaign. This will help understand exactly how much you need to invest, what are the areas that need additional dollars, and what kind of returns you can expect. If achieving ‘X’ number of sales per month is the end result, then you should slowly work backwards, so that you know where to start.

  Speaking of smart resource management, the example that comes to mind is Coca-Cola. Having understood the importance of social advertising, the beverage giant increased focus on Facebook and YouTube promotions, despite cutting its overall ad spend by 6.6% in 2010, according to a Grocer report. Coca-Cola’s budget management can be a yardstick for other consumer brands that are now faced with increasing marketing expenses. Instead of allocating a major part of their advertising budget to traditional marketing, while keeping aside a meager share for social media, perhaps brands should try and achieve an agreeable balance.

• The Pre-Launch Phase

  Now that the budget is planned, it’s time to advance to what we call the pre-launch phase. Creating a checklist of what needs to be done before a promotion goes viral is essential for designing that perfect campaign.

  • Background research: Although most marketers use social media monitoring services to measure the impact of their marketing messages post-launch, we believe it is just as vital to use monitoring tools like Brand Monitor before unveiling a campaign. Doing your homework is essential because a) you know where your target market is hanging out (geographically as well as with respect to social media platforms) b) by listening to conversations about your competitors, you can analyze what you can and cannot include in your advertisements and c) this enables you to determine the demographics you should be focusing on.
  • It’s All About Timing: For a social media campaign to have the desired effect, it needs to make a splash at the right time. A company looking to promote school stationary, for instance, will have better chances at success if they unveiled their ads across various networking channels during the ‘back-to-school’ season. Also, research by Buddy Media shows that user engagement on Facebook is 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays; as for Twitter, according to the company’s Chief Revenue Officer Adam Bain, users are more engaged with tweets on Fridays. In our opinion, a social advert will have the maximum impact provided brands find their sweet spot.
  • Teasers: Unveiling teasers ahead of the actual launch is a good way to create buzz. It not only piques the audiences’ interest, but also gives a fair idea if the promotional material needs to be tweaked further. Motorola’s decision to roll-out a teaser video before the actual launch not just created excitement among consumers, but also generated instant demand for the product following the unveiling of the complete ad.

• Featuring Celebrities a Good Idea?

  The answer to whether you should or shouldn’t feature celebrities in your online ads depends on what you’re selling. Unilever’s Dove brand celebrates natural beauty, therefore features ordinary women with their imperfections. On the other hand, the company’s Lux brand stands for the promise of beauty and glamour and includes famous personalities in its online as well as offline ads. However, if you do have the resources, it wouldn’t harm to rope in someone famous to endorse your brand.

  • It’s a celebrity obsessed culture: A recent study of social media campaigns by Brand Affinity Technologies analyzed 200 Facebook and Twitter endorsements, besides similar Facebook ads that did not feature celebrities. Findings show that for the same spend – endorsed messages delivered enormous performance lifts – over 50% greater on the low end.
  • Roping in the Local Talent: Not all companies have the budget to rope in the big names in sports and entertainment. A small or mid-size organization can consider local celebrities in order to provide the ‘local lift’ to their brand.
  • Lifting up Business: Marketers looking to revive their business should consider including celebrities in their social media promotions. This tried, tested and successful formula is sure to boost a brand’s reputation, besides driving sales. When Fab.com got Demi Moore to endorse them via Twitter, the designed goods company saw its business lift from an unstable start-up to a very profitable business.

  The Flip-side; the power of celebrities to prop up an online campaign is undoubtedly immense. Yet, there is a flip-side to this. A negative tweet or post by a popular figure can risk a brand’s reputation. Nevertheless, the benefits overshadow the risks, prompting both big and small companies to approach iconic personalities to promote their brands.

• Getting Consumers to Contribute

  Sometimes it’s a good idea to give the creative team a break and give consumers a stake in the marketing strategy. Unlike traditional media, where the onus to brainstorm and design a creative campaign solely rested on the marketing team, the interactive nature of social networking can ease this responsibility by considering consumers’ suggestions. Here’s why we think marketers should make use of customer inputs during the creation/designing phase:

  • Reduced Risk of PR crisis: There’s more to brand-customer relationship than just engagement and post-launch conversations. Asking customers for ideas, gauging their response, etc can go a long way in reducing the risk of a PR crisis in later stages. How? As a marketer, your engagement with users during the creation period gives you a glimpse into their mindset, thereby ensuring your promotional material appeals to them. Happy Customers=Reduced Risk of PR crisis.
  • Driving Valuable Traffic: Sometimes designing an online campaign can seem daunting. Such instances call for customer assistance. In 2009, Vitamin Water turned to social networks for soliciting ideas from users regarding the name and packaging for the new flavor. This approach not only grew the company’s Facebook fan base, but also spurred a massive increase in sales after the campaign and the product were launched. The customers couldn’t wait to try ‘Connect’, the new flavor they had helped create.
  • Increase Brand Loyalty: Giving people a sense of ownership will increase their faith in your brand. In addition to obvious benefits like increasing traffic and sales and diminishing the possibility of a social media crisis, allowing customers to participate will increase brand loyalty. Long term benefits include strengthening of brand image as well as better customer retention rates.

Conclusion

Google has predicted that, by 2015, 75% of online ads will have a social component. This, along with an expected investment of nearly $28.5 billion in online ads in 2011, means there is immense potential for social advertising. Unlike a few years back, when brands considered Facebook or Twitter campaigns as fancy add-ons, today’s marketers perceive social media advertising to be a crucial part of their marketing arsenal. Companies now have exclusive social media experts, monitoring tools and separate budgets dedicated to promoting their brands online. In our opinion, successful social advertising requires a well-though out and detailed plan. A strong foundation, which is the result of comprehensive preparation, will help brands find out how their campaigns will fare once they are launched.

When marketers draft their strategies, they place great emphasis on content; and rightly so. Though we agree that content is the backbone of a well-rounded social media campaign, there are certain other factors that are just as important. As discussed above, for an online advert to make a solid impact and get the sales charts soaring, the pre-launch phase and budget planning function as key building blocks. This, along with the right amount of customer involvement and creativity, is the recipe for a winning social media campaign.

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This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

From the Position² Blog This Week: Managing Social Media Burnout For most brands, its a challenge to generate fresh social media content regularly and come up with new ways to keep consumers engaged. Here’s how you can prevent social media fatigue with easy-to-follow suggestions.

Google+ in Asia: Most Users Are From Singapore, India. Social Sales: Retailers Go From Being Social to Selling. Forrester Research: Define Your Social Ecosystem. Why “Second Chance” Tweets Matter: After 3 Hours, Few Care About Socially Shared Links. Reviews+: Google Acquires Zagat To Flesh Out Local Reviews. Products to be Retired: Google Scraps Desktop, Notebook and Others. Online Marketing Tools: 10 Ugly SEO Tools that Actually Rock. Bing Social Search: Twitter Renews Deal With Bing; Google Deal Remains MIA. Google Maps: Closed, Says Google, but Shops’ Signs Say Open. Local Advertising: Images, Coupons Boost Local Search Ad.

Video of the Week Social media is now your resume & your recruitment source. A new study by Career Enlightenment posted on Mashable showed that 89% of companies will use social media networks for recruting and 79% of hiring managers and recruiters will search for their perspective hires online before giving them the thumbs up.

Get 10% off your CONVERGE Fall 2011 tickets! CONVERGE is a premier event this September that promises practical and tactical information from leading companies that are clearly ahead of the curve in professionally managing social, search and mobile marketing. Features keynotes by Randi Zuckerberg and speakers include Tim Collins, Brian Solis, Jory Des Jardins and Rajiv Parikh. All you have to do is enter the discount coupon code “Position2″ while making your ticket purchase to get a 10% discount! Click here to know more about CONVERGE 2011.

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Social Media Fatigue: the Challenge for Brands

With so much going on in social media these days, it is natural for both marketers as well as users to feel overwhelmed by the need to keep up. Social media is dynamic; while many companies are considering Google+, others are juggling between blogs, tweets and posts. It is not just about what social media platforms to use. For most brands, the bigger challenge is keeping content fresh and coming up with new ways to keep consumers engaged. The increasing pressure to be on top of everything and to keep ahead of the competition can sometimes lead to social media fatigue. From the consumer’s point of view, reading the same content on Facebook, blogs and other channels will only give them a reason to check out your competitor’s webpage. Gartner’s recent study on social media fatigue shows that:

• One in four young people is ‘bored’ with social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
• 31% of the respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 said the fun of social media is wearing off.
• The study also indicates that social media exhaustion is something that was most commonly associated with the early adopters. For online marketers, this signals the need to keep branded content fresh and capture people’s attention instantly.

The proliferation of social media platforms can be exhausting for marketers. Yet, many brands believe that the more social media accounts they have, the more web-savvy they are. According to research by the Altimeter group, large corporations averaged a surprising number of social media accounts (178). So much choice and not as much content; what is the best approach? Do you focus or diversify? Do you jump onto every new social media channel that is launched? In our opinion, preventing social media overload is all about finding answers to the too much vs. too little dilemma. Here are some easy-to-follow suggestions:

• Define Precise Goals

  The key to staying fresh and avoiding a burn out is finding out exactly what you wish to achieve from your social media efforts. Defining precise social media marketing goals is the first step towards understanding what works best for your brand.

  • Creating a Social Media Footprint: For brands that are relatively new to social media, gaining visibility and establishing a solid online presence is imperative. If these are your objectives, then we recommend focusing on the big three (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) before considering the other options available. This will prevent your brand from getting lost in the social media blur and keep you from getting exhausted in the initial stages.

  

  • Knowing your Audience: If you have a target audience in mind, then the right approach will be to focus only on those channels where your prospective customers are most likely to be present. For instance, cosmetics brand L’Oreal launched its recent digital campaign on Facebook after research showed that women, who are the biggest consumers of their products, were highly active on the networking site. Posting the same content all over the social space, hoping it reaches your target market can be exhausting and time-consuming.
  • Improving Customer Satisfaction Rates: Our advice to brands looking to improve their customer satisfaction rates is ‘less focus on fancy campaigns and more focus on helping customers.‘ Although a well-thought out, creative campaign is sure to attract new customers, it may not exactly be what existing customers are looking for. Instead of launching one campaign after another, while simultaneously trying to keep up with the flood of queries from customers, it would be wiser to work towards being a customer-centric brand. Offer advice, demonstrate how you can be of service, and show your customers that you care. Satisfied customers mean your brand can now breathe easy, plan ahead and eventually launch those great campaigns. Dell, which lists customer-service as one of its top priorities, has an exclusive team that focuses on helping customers via the @DellCares twitter account.

  Defining precise goals will give you a great sense of direction, helping you plan ahead. The ‘let’s get on board and decide as we go along’ approach sounds tempting; however, like everything new, the novelty of social media can wear off, leaving all those fans and followers wondering about the unexpected dip in activity. Our advice? Fight social media fatigue by getting a S.M.A.R.T (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed) plan.

• The Balancing Act

  As an online marketer, information overload can be overwhelming not only for you, but also for your customers. There is a fine line that divides too much content from too little; this can either convert customers to brand advocates, or will drive them to completely stop following your brand. Although achieving the right balance can be challenging, it is nevertheless, vital for long term success.

  • The Importance of Give & Take: Many companies use social media as a platform to talk about or promote corporate activity. Yes, it’s true that social media is a place for this kind of a thing, but not all the time. Uploading or posting promotional material incessantly will give your audience a case of editorial fatigue, giving them the impression that you are too self-absorbed. Welcome those who respond to your marketing messages, engage with them and listen to what they have to say. Keeping the ’social’ in social media is all about having a balanced brand-customer relationship.
  • To Tweet or not to Tweet: The plethora of networking channels out there can sometimes be confusing for marketers, who do not know if they should tweet, blog or constantly update their Facebook page. The pressure to be present everywhere or be left behind has seen many brands experiment with various channels. After a while, this can be overwhelming and tiresome. Here’s what we think: a) If you tweet more than 25 times a day, then it would be best to blog b) Try Groupon or Livingsocial instead of Twitter if ‘deal-of-the-day’ is your thing c) Not much to say? Then you should just tweet. As quoted by the Global Director of Digital and Social Media for PepsiCo, Bonin Boug, “Do only as much as your resources will allow. If you don’t have the means to have a person on Twitter 24/7, then don’t do it that way….Have [something like] Follow Fridays were you spend two hours talking to the community if that’s all you have to work with. There really are no set rules.“

  

  • Integrate Social Media with Traditional Marketing: For brands that prefer social media in small doses, integrating social media marketing with traditional advertising campaigns is a good way to get the best of both worlds. Many companies believe that a well-balanced mix of social and traditional media can avoid a marketing burnout. One of the companies to have successfully experimented with this approach is P&G. While continuing to advertise on TV, the personal care brand has also managed to create several memorable social media campaigns.

• Running Out of Ideas? Listen to Your Audience

  One of the most common indicators of fatigue creeping into your social media activity is when you don’t know what to do next. Marketers who are highly active on social media are on the constant search for fresh ideas and content in order to keep people interested in their brand. In a world where users are easily turned off by information that is dated and dull, this can be quite a challenge. To stand out in a highly competitive environment, brands need to create content that takes into account the real world environment and the day-to-day events that influence people. This is where social media monitoring tools prove to be highly useful. Here’s why we think media monitoring tools like Brand Monitor should be a ‘must have’ in every digital marketer’s tool kit:

  • It Pays to Listen: Refreshing content regularly is necessary for brands looking to keep people interested in their social media pages. However, delegating this responsibility solely to the marketing or creative department may not always be the best approach. The answer? Listen to your customers for content ideas. Media monitoring will help you sift through the conversations, pick out the most important ones and help sow the seed for some great content.

  

  • Creating a Campaign? Look Out for the Trends: Measuring the impact of an online campaign is one of the most important reasons why brands use social media monitoring tools. How about using the same monitoring tools to help generate ideas for a new campaign? Using these tools will not just save time and effort, but also identify the current trends. Brands can then design marketing messages accordingly and create a unique brand or company angle. According to Harvard Business Review Analytics Services Report, 55% effective users are using social media to monitor trends or look for new product ideas. Here’s what we suggest; monitor the buzz pertaining to trend, topic, or specific keywords before creating a campaign. You are less likely to burn out while learning new things that interest your consumers.
  • Testing the Waters: The best way to check if an idea is likely to work is by asking questions. Post that blog, ask your readers what they think, seek opinions, even opposing point of views. While some audiences jump into conversations willingly, others need to be prodded and asked for ideas and suggestions. This is a smart way to test the waters. Monitoring conversations, analyzing the sentiment associated with the topic of discussion etc, will help you alter your marketing messages and content accordingly, saving time as well as effort.

  The Starbucks formula for social media success is quite simple; monitor the trends and communicate with customers for new ideas. The caffeine-giant, through its social media pages, asks fans for suggestions, encourages discussions and requests for ideas on anything related to the company. Prior to launching a campaign for a new or an existing product, Starbucks picks out the most relevant conversations (mostly by listening to what the influencers are saying) and ideas, making users feel that they have some role in the decision making process of the company. By doing this, the company not only generates new ideas and fresh content at regular intervals, but also keeps social media fatigue at bay.

• Smart Solutions

  You have done your homework, equipped yourself with the required social media tools and have a great brand-customer relationship; yet, your efforts to go ’social’ are running out of steam. What you need are a few simple, yet smart-solutions to make certain you don’t run around in social media circles.

  • Automate Some of Your Posts: For marketers with profiles on multiple networking sites, updating them all the time for routine ‘broadcast’ messages can be a tiresome task. This is true, especially, in case of smaller brands that do not have the necessary resources to refresh their social media content frequently. Automating the posting of some content is a smart way of saving time and energy, at the same time keeping content up-to-date.

  

  • Linking Accounts: Linking key social media accounts saves time for marketers who want to post a common message across profiles without having to log in and out several times. For instance, tying your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts with Twitter, means every time you update something on Twitter it will appear on all three accounts.
  • Appoint a Dedicated Social Media Team: A large number of companies have their marketing or PR staff also overseeing their social media activities. This works fine for small to mid-size companies that have limited resources. However, for brands that consider social media an integral part of their marketing strategy, it is important to have a dedicated social media team to manage posts, tweet on behalf of the company and monitor the buzz surrounding the brand. This will not only reduce fatigue, but will also ensure the core marketing team has the time to focus on their content creation and campaign management tasks.

Conclusion

Marketers have moved beyond seeing social media as a fad and have started to include it as a crucial part of their overall marketing strategy. While this certainly has its benefits, it also means the possibility of getting caught in the social media vortex is high. After the initial excitement to post, blog, tweet or +1 wears off, brands are confronted with the question of ‘what next?’ Also, the fact that social media never stops means companies are increasingly pressurized to keep up. Our research shows that online marketers with an organized approach to social media have been more successful at beating the exhaustion that eventually follows.

Instead of the ‘do-it-yourself’ approach, brands are now looking at customers for inspiration by monitoring for trends and listening to conversations. It is also important to keep in mind that social media fatigue is not something that is restricted to marketers. With so much content and so many platforms to choose from, consumers are also susceptible to a burnout. Though it is not always possible to hold their attention all the time, innovating and diversifying can ensure that people are interested in your webpage. Easy-to-understand, fresh content has proven to be effective in preventing digital fatigue for both brands as well as consumers.

That said, for brands that are plugged in 24/7, instances of fatigue can occur occasionally. Take a deep breath…you don’t need to be a social media maven to avoid an overload; preventing a burnout is all about achieving that perfect balance, knowing what works for you and applying smart solutions.

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Why Travel Brands Need to Book Social Media on their Itineraries

The recent increase in the number of people going online to research and plan their vacations has prompted travel brands to develop a solid digital presence. Although some are still testing the waters, many travel brands have already made social media an integral part of their marketing strategy. Tech-savvy travel agencies are looking to make their websites a one-stop shop for users who want all travel related information in one place. Whether it is last-minute travel tips, destination information or attractive offers, everything is just a click away. According to the 2011 Digital Travel Content and User Experience Survey conducted by Frommer’s Unlimited:

• Almost 2/3rd of travel marketing companies are planning to increase their social media marketing spend in 2011.
• The budgets for general travel content and mobile marketing are likely to increase by 63% and 50% respectively.



• 72% of the 18-24 demographic said that they would share their travel experiences online via Facebook; twitter and travel blogs accounted for 27% and 26% of usage respectively.
• 93% of the respondents said that they would look online for information about their holiday destination ‘before deciding where to go.

The recent spurt in the number of travelers going online to plan trips and research holiday destinations has made social media an attractive avenue for travel brands. Here are some more reasons why the travel business is going social:

• Tech-savvy travel agencies are using social media to communicate with potential customers and keep existing customers updated with the latest offers and information.
• Increasing brand visibility is also a high priority for many travel companies.
• Using social media monitoring tools such as Brand Monitor, brands are a) keeping a tab on travel recommendations by existing customers to their friends b) studying the impact of their online marketing strategy and how well it has been received by customers c) understanding what is important to travelers and anticipating their needs and d) monitoring their brand’s position within all the online channels and networks.
• Many travel companies are using social media for providing valuable content, which will establish their expertise over time, subsequently boosting traffic and revenue.
• Social media can function as a platform for information exchange and on-site referrals; agencies can use this for converting customers to brand advocates.

Position2’s research on social media strategies for travel brands resulted in some interesting findings: as a travel industry professional, there are three crucial points we recommend you keep in mind:

1. Create that Perfect Webpage

Irrespective of what your business objectives are, we believe a well designed web-page is essential to get your audiences’ attention and keep them coming back for more. A webpage with too many marketing messages and too less information may keep away prospective customers or give them a reason to look elsewhere. Keep in mind, content plays an important role in the user’s experience on websites, which impacts conversion rates and loyalty. As a travel brand, your social media webpage should:

• Focus on the Necessary Information First: Finding the limit to “how much information” you can include in your homepage can sometimes be challenging. Visitors to your website or social media page naturally want to know travel-related information and tips; why not include these first and provide links for other details. A travel brand’s home page should ideally include: a) information on what hotels they should stay and airlines they can use b) basic details of the most popular holiday destinations they can visit at that time of the year c) places to check out and things to do on arriving at a destination d) last minute specials and e) valuable tips for first time international travelers. Frommer’s study also shows that 88% of travelers looked for description of the destination and information on special offers on a travel site.
• Be Visually Appealing: The right balance of content and images is very important to keep users captivated. Once you have their attention, then their curiosity about that lovely resort pictured will ensure the requests for bookings follow.
• Feature Social Apps to Connect: Traveling is a social activity and people make travel decisions largely based on recommendations of their family and friends. Social apps such as Tripadvisor’s travel map leverage this and show users the destinations where their Facebook friends have traveled.
• Be User-Friendly: Frommer’s research on consumer experiences on travel websites specified poor navigation and confusing site layout to be among the biggest problems faced by people when looking for information. 58% of the users said that the information they were looking for was hard to find, because a particular site was not easy to navigate. Our suggestion? Keep it simple and user friendly. Your prospective customers are regular people who will simply opt for your competitor’s website when faced with navigation issues.

2. Choose the Right Platform

According to the recent L2 Think Tank, Digital IQ Index for travel report, social media is responsible for driving 78% of the traffic on travel websites. Travel agencies are exploring all the possibilities in the social media space in order to drive traffic and increase sales. Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and blogs are filled with travel tips, destination details and user reviews. Is this a good idea? Yes, if your brand is in the same league as Lonely Planet. The popular travel brand has a Facebook presence, a Twitter account and a blog; this is in addition to its travel specific social networking site. However, we suggest checking out the competition and researching online (find out where your customers spend their time in the social media space) before deciding what social media channels work best for you.

• Facebook: With Facebook having fans all over the globe, it is unsurprising that almost all travel companies include this channel as a ‘must have’ in their social media list. For instance, Tourism Australia has a highly successful Facebook page that functions as a hub for visitors to share their holiday photos, talk about their experiences etc. If your brand is relatively new to the travel and tourism industry, then Facebook is the perfect foundation to build your social media strategy on. Using the Facebook Tabs feature to add information such as reviews, promotions and services is also a good idea.



• Twitter: With Twitter, it’s wise to keep it simple. Your Twitter checklist should include your brand’s logo or relevant images embedded in the background. Travelocity’s Twitter account has a well designed background and also features links that drive traffic to the company’s main website. Twitter also functions as a great social media customer service tool.
• Google+ Anyone? Although Google+’s arrival to the social media party is fashionably late, the new entrant certainly looks promising. While Facebook and Twitter are currently ‘hot favorites’, the launch of Google+ is expected to reshape the travel industry. Here’s a quick tip; integrating the +1 button will enable customers to share the webpages they rate with their friends and family.
• Why Blogs Work: Blogs are an important part of a travel brand’s online marketing arsenal. They not only communicate the brand’s passion for travel to consumers, but also make their travel experiences so much better. Blogs are also great customer engagement tools; by blogging frequently and encouraging users to comment, you are on your way to building a loyal customer base.
• Videos: YouTube is a powerful direct marketing tool for travel brands to broadcast themselves and reach their audiences with their messaging. A creative YouTube video can give your brand that much needed shot in the arm. By sharing videos of holiday destinations posted by happy customers, brands can entice the user’s contacts to think about visiting the destination themselves. For instance, popular travel brand Globus’ website features videos where customers recount their journeys and talk about the best places to visit.

3. Social Media Advertising; the Winning Formula

One of the most innovative recent social media promotions by a travel brand was by Australia’s Queensland Tourism. The ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign encouraged participants to apply for the job of the caretaker of the Great Barrier Reef Islands. The caretaker’s job involved communicating his explorations and experiences to the world through his blog. Here’s what made this campaign a winner from the word go:

• The organizers leveraged consumer generated content to market Queensland tourism.
• The contest directed huge traffic to the brand’s official website; the site registered one million hits in a single day.
• The effort, which was a global hit, immensely benefited the Queensland tourism industry by boosting brand exposure (over $11 million worth of exposure).
• The social networking buzz that ensued saw 336,000 Facebook-referred website visits, and over 3,170 @Queensland Twitter followers.

Creative social media campaigns not just add value to your brand, but also contribute to the ROI factor. We think social media is a rewarding platform for travel brands to advertise because:

• The travel bargain hunters are out there, looking for the best deals and packages. What would be a better way to entice this demographic than with Facebook and YouTube campaigns that promote season specials and offers.
• Of the business benefits involved; advertising in social media creates monetization opportunities and can deliver measurable returns. While the actual investment is considerably less (compared to traditional advertising), the ROI is tangible.
• Hotels these days are using Facebook and Twitter for everything from fulfilling customer service needs to processing bookings. By designing online campaigns, in partnership with the hotels, travel agencies can not only promote their brand and generate revenue, but also direct visitors to the hotels that most suit their requirements.
• For travel brands, one of the biggest advantages of advertising using social media is the ability to tailor campaigns to directly target relevant audiences. For instance, travel brands targeting couples looking for honeymoon packages can design ads that talk to this demographic by referring to their customer data base. Unlike traditional media, where ads meant for a specific audience are viewed by all and dismissed as irrelevant, social media gives your brand the opportunity to connect to the intended audience by personalizing content.

Conclusion

From sharing travel experiences online, to planning vacations based on traveler-generated ratings, there has been a dramatic shift in consumer behavior in the travel and tourism industry in recent times. The increasing use of various social networking channels for travel planning leaves no doubt that social media is an integral part of the travel business. The rapidly changing digital landscape means that more and more tech-savvy travel companies are now going the ‘social’ way. The low investment, high returns benefit of going digital has prompted travel agencies to fill in their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and blogs with travel guidelines, destination details and other valuable information.

While travel brands are harnessing the power of social media to gain that edge over competitors, engage effectively with customers and increase brand awareness, the plethora of networking channels out there can sometimes be confusing. For travel businesses looking to get the most out of their online marketing strategies, identifying the right social media channel is imperative. While Facebook and Twitter are expected to bite big chunks from the travel pie, the new entrant, Google+ shows immense potential; we are curious to see how travel brands take advantage of Google’s new social prodigy. Meanwhile, irrespective of what social media tools an agency uses, we consider blogs and videos to be essential for filling in those gaps.

That said, there are many rewards that make social media a worthwhile investment for the travel industry. For today’s travel brands, social media is a powerful transformational tool.

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Your Customers Now Notice You; What Next?

When asked to define the concept of ‘online customer engagement’ what comes to mind are some very specific set of numerical measures. From a marketer’s perspective, things like site visits, page views, time spent, search keywords etc are terms that are typically associated with engagement; and why not? These terms are highly relevant and will give companies a clear picture of how their brands have been received by customers. However, the actual exercise of first, establishing a relationship with your customers, and then maintaining it, can be challenging. Once this is achieved, then page views and website traffic will automatically follow. According to an eMarketer study, the primary reason why companies use social media is for engagement. It is well known that consumers who are more engaged with a brand tend to make a purchase; which is why marketers categorize engagement as ‘high priority’. Research by our team at Position² shows that, for most brands, getting their customers’ attention is fairly simple. As a marketer, you have managed to get your audience to notice you; now what?

• Breaking Down the walls of Inaccessibility: Setting up a blog or a Facebook page is a great first step; but there is more to engagement than simply allowing visitors to post comments or ‘like’ your page. In order to actually make your brand ‘accessible’ to users, it is important to a) post fresh content frequently b) link your social media page to your brand’s landing page and c) have a social media CRM team constantly interact with and respond to customer queries, making them feel you can be easily reached.
• The Six Engagement Elements that Matter: A recent study highlights the six important needs of consumers who want to reach out to a brand; Feeling Valued, Trust, Consistency, Relevance and Control. These elements should be a starting point for any interaction a brand has with a customer, the study says.
• Respecting Customer Privacy: In a bid to connect and engage with customers, online marketers sometimes tend to overstep the privacy line. This may not go down well with customers who are frequent visitors to your social media page and could lessen the prospect of converting these ‘casual visitors’ to ‘buyers’. However, this could be a ‘catch 22′ situation for brands that need to research about customers before attempting to engage with them. In situations like these, the best possible approach would be a) to ask only for the information required b) use it responsibly to provide value and c) avoid sharing information without customers’ consent.

The search for a brand that satisfies the criteria for ‘perfect customer engagement’ almost always results in the ‘Starbucks‘ name popping up. For Starbucks, the idea of engaging with fans meant more than just having a Twitter, Facebook and YouTube presence. By participating in conversations, launching the Starbucks Card Facebook application and responding to customers on its My Starbucks Idea site, the caffeine-giant has mastered the art of customer engagement.

While the above points give a basic idea of how marketers can extend themselves to their customers, let us look at what brands can do to add value to their relationship(s) with the digital audience.

Converting First Time Visitors to Customers

The elusive first-time visitors are sometimes overlooked by online marketers who are otherwise focusing on existing customers; nothing wrong in that. However, new visitors are a vital part of any business and represent huge growth possibility. Going by their typical pattern of fluttering from page-to-page and not categorizing them under ‘customer material’ would be a missed opportunity. Here’s why we think first time visitors are important:

• Recent studies indicate that, for most e-commerce websites, new visitors account for 65% of all users.
• Every new visitor lost without a conversation is like money walking out of a proverbial door.
• First-time visitors are just ‘one good campaign’ or ‘landing page’ away from turning into loyal customers. Although that first sale is a tough nut to crack, once done, it much easier to sell the second, third, fourth and fifth time.

You have succeeded in driving them to your website and you have managed to get pique their interest. This brings us to the next step, which involves converting these first-timers into potential customers.

• Work on that home page:

  Research shows that only 23% of first-time visitors to your website scroll down the home page; which means most of them miss out on the important details that are located below the field. The solution? Put up the important product or service information on the most visible part of your website. This ensures a higher possibility of increasing revenue.

• Tracking Visitor Traffic:

  Tracking where your visitors are coming from, keeping a tab on the links they clicked etc by using media monitoring tools like Brand Monitor will help you collate that vital demographic data about your first-time visitors. If these new visitors fall under your target demographic, then pursuing them with marketing campaigns and messages is simply the next step.



• Consider adding a Welcome Pop-Up:

  Although many of us may not always like the idea of a welcome pop-up when visiting a website, this has been proven to massively increase the number of subscribers to a blog or website. For instance, Blue Sky Factory’s Chris Penn increased his blog subscribers by a whopping 733% in just two months by adding a welcome pop-up.

• Offer Promotions:

  A tried-and–tested formula for enticing new visitors. This will give the user a reason to get curious about your products and services.

• Use the Grandfather Test:

  If your grandfather is unable to navigate through your brand’s Facebook page or blog, improving usability is a good idea. It is highly possible that a first-time visitor left without exploring further because of navigation issues.

Avoid the ‘Brochures and Billboard’ Approach

With almost every company having a Facebook page or Twitter presence these days, it is easy for your brand to go unnoticed in the social media blur. What further decreases the attention span of potential customers and keeps them from engaging is a networking page or website that resembles a brochure or a billboard.

• Go Easy on the Sales Talk:

  Your content should function as a compelling story line rather than simply look like a product brochure. A lot of websites focus only on selling the product or are flooded with offers to speak to a sales rep. This could keep away potential customers, who are also interested in the company in general and not just in purchasing a product.

• Keep in Mind the Point of Social Media-To Connect:

  The ‘follow us on Twitter’ or ‘fan us on Facebook’ formula is not always the best way to engage with your customers. This is akin to a billboard advertisement and does not have the ‘personal touch’. The point of having a social media page is to engage with customers; and having a networking page that has ‘billboard’ written all over it and may not go down well with visitors.



• Consumers can be Great Brand Ambassadors:

  By recasting consumers as brand ambassadors, you can a) personalize your webpage and make it look ‘real’ b) make consumers feel like they are responsible for the brand’s reputation and c) add meaningful content to you webpage, making it sound less like an impersonal marketing message. Pepsi, for instance, has successfully raised the profile of the brand by allowing their community to become co-authors of the brand narrative.

• Creativity is the Key:

  Perhaps it was Red Bull’s interactive and cool Facebook page that won the company the title of the 5th most engaged social media brand (in 2010, according to Famecourt). The brand’s social media team understood exactly what fans wanted. They customized apps and included unique content. Take for example their welcome tab, where non-fans are creatively encouraged to ‘like’ their page with an attention-grabbing image. Red Bull’s out-of-the-box thinking not just increased their social media customer base, but also created an original and interesting experience while engaging with customers online.

When you Should Stop Talking about Yourself

Producing huge amounts of content, even great content, will not suffice anymore. There has to be some give and take. Instead of simply overloading visitors with product or service related information, sometimes you need to:

• Talk less about yourself and more about your audience:

  It is a good idea to include information on how your customers are using a particular product or service and their experience with your brand. This not only increases the credibility of your brand, but also ensures increased engagement.

• Encourage Dialogue:

  A social media channel that is devoid of dialogue removes the ’social’ aspect from it. Take an interest in the people you want to engage with. Several companies, including P&G, allow customers to participate in social conversations and engagement that would have not been possible had they just talked about themselves.

• Focus on Select Channels:

  Your online engagement strategy needs to be more than skin-deep. True engagement means complete engagement in the social media channels you decide to invest. Instead of simply posting the same information on various channels, without focusing on the engagement aspect, we recommend consistent participation in fewer, selected channels for better brand-customer interaction.

• Keep it Simple:

  While including a certain amount of company related content and information is necessary, it is crucial to keep it simple; this includes the number and nature of questions you ask. A list of 15-25 questions on your social media page is not something a prospective customer will look forward to. What you could do instead, is offer to answer their questions, reply to comments more often, and thank them for sharing your content with their communities.

• Keep Yourself from Diving in:

  It is not always the best approach to react immediately and get involved in conversations. Sometimes it is best to stay silent, listen and keep dialogue to a minimum. This will give your social media team enough time to think carefully before diving into a conversation.

Conclusion

Social media marketers who have understood the importance of online customer engagement know that it pays to engage meaningfully in the digital space; and by pays we just don’t mean increasing sales or market share. The modern marketer’s approach to engagement measures returns in terms of customer lifetime value, which involves cementing old relationships and establishing new ones. A solid customer engagement strategy plays a pivotal role in building brand awareness and generating customer good will, which ultimately translates into profits. While there is no single, concise definition of engagement, until now ‘engagement’ was looked at from the marketer’s angle; however, this is gradually changing, with brands increasingly attempting to look at this from a customer’s perspective. A refreshing change indeed!

We know that engagement always starts with the need to connect, after which it is usually goes silent or fizzles out. The challenge becomes ‘what to do next’. A summary of our earlier discussion brings us to conclude that a well-rounded customer engagement plan is built on the foundation of content, dialogue and community growth. Irrespective of what engagement style a company chooses to follow, there are some ground-rules that need to be observed. A creative, yet simple, social media page that allows fans to feel connected with the brand ensures the start of a genuine brand-customer relationship; after all, relationship building is one of the main purposes of social media.

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Why It Pays To Listen To Online Buzz

One of the hottest debates in social media over the last few years has been centered on the concept of ROI and why measuring ROI on your social media monitoring efforts is so important. While there have been several studies concerning the ROI of social media marketing, with more companies starting social media monitoring on a larger scale, brands are now concerned with the ROI realized from their social media monitoring activities. For instance, the Corporate Manager of Consumer Generated Media at Toyota, Bruce Etrmann, believes that the company’s benefits/returns from social media monitoring include strengthening customer loyalty and improving communication with the marketplace. There are several monitoring tools available today, including Position²’s Brand Monitor, that help brands listen to conversations on social media 24/7 to make sure all relevant mentions are captured. We believe that social media monitoring best yields returns when:

• You know by how much the attendance to your company’s brand page has increased because of a certain social media marketing campaign or change in marketing strategy.
• What was the dollar value of this increase?
• How does this compare to the time and money spent by your brand while designing a campaign/creating a strategy?

Brands engaging in social media monitoring have understood that ROI comes not just by ‘monitoring the conversation‘ but also from ‘joining the conversation‘, which involves identifying and proactively engaging with key influencers. This is just one of the dividends of monitoring online buzz. Here are some more:

• A report by the Aberdeen Group, the ROI on Social Media Monitoring, shows that the best-in-class companies that have made an effort to listen to online conversations are 2.6 times more likely than industry average companies and 93 times more likely than laggards to improve their ability to generate consumer insights that drive new product/service development.



• The report also shows that the best-in-class companies that engage in social media monitoring and analysis activities are 3.3 times more likely than industry average companies to improve their ability to identify and reduce risk to their brand.
• 78% of them have reportedly improved their y-o-y customer retention rates.
• According to Gleansight’s Social Media Monitoring Report, increased customer satisfaction and better marketing effectiveness are among the key benefits of social media monitoring for brands that primarily engage with customers.
• ‘Influencer engagement‘ is one of the most important value drivers of social media monitoring; this helps identify the conversations that the brand should be engaged with, thereby increasing traffic and contributing to the ROI factor.

Metrics for Measurement: The ‘How’ and ‘What’ of Social Media Monitoring

Before getting into a discussion about the metrics of measurement while tracking online conversations and brand mentions, we must first understand that there are two ways to measure social media ROI for your business:

1. Quantitative: Helps measure quantitative data such as traffic, sales or SEO ranking, click-through rates of brands’ product pages.
2. Qualitative: Measures brand or corporate reputation, conversations, brand-customer relationships, enables brands to determine if they need to engage in meaningful dialogue with customers, brands vs. competitors analysis, engaging with and building better relationships with audiences etc.

The ‘quantitative’ aspect of measurement is simple and direct; however, when it comes to the ‘qualitative’ part we know that this can be rather subjective and requires the presence of certain ‘base metrics’. The fact is that no single metric alone is going to be a solid indicator of how engaged your community or customers are; however, there are a few things you can pay attention to, for deeper analysis:

• Comments: Studying the conversation initiated by a particular post can indicate if people are listening and whether they feel compelled to respond. This conversation thread about social media monitoring, for instance, has several posts which show that people are listening and participating.
• Time with Content & Thread Size: When a brand posts something online, the length and the size of the threaded discussion that follows and the time spent pursuing the content not just specifies how interested the users are, but also if the discussions are useful and have an impact.
• Downloads and Subscriptions: Looking at downloads can be a great indicator of engagement around a topic or subject. Similarly, it is obvious when people subscribe to your blog or website, that they are interested in what you have to say.



• Demographics: Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang stated several elements of social data, one of which is demographic data. We categorize this as one of the most important metrics of social media monitoring and measurement, as this helps create context about consumers by gleaning through data such as gender, age, profile pictures and details.
• Referrals/Suggestions and Comments: Customers are talking about certain products, both explicitly through ratings and reviews and implicitly through gestures such as hitting the ‘like’ button on their social network. The sign of a well-engaged community is when they invest their time and intellect in guiding you toward business improvements. Suggestions, product improvement ideas, innovation forums etc indicate a vested interest on behalf of the consumers your brand is trying to reach.



• Sentiment of Posts: For brands tracking their social media activities, analyzing the sentiment of the incoming posts is a crucial part of their monitoring exercise. Online marketers and brands are eager to know if customers come to the product page to vent their frustrations; are the sentiments generally positive? Do they complain about the posts as being too generic, wrong or otherwise deficient? Sentiment monitoring is more of a Psychographic metric; benefits or returns include providing brands with increased opportunities to reach these self-expressing customers and market to them based on their lifestyle. This type of data also helps in message and conversation creation, besides identifying features and products to improve or fix.
• Unique vs. Repeat Visits to the Social Media Page: A ‘casual browser’ is converted to an ‘actual customer’ when he is a repeat visitor who wants to learn more about company, looks for general updates and is eager for information related to the product or service. For a brand that is using this metric to monitor its social media presence, the gains are obvious. A one-time visitor, though, shows that the company has effectively advertised its brand.
• Page Views: Attentively monitoring this aspect of the metric makes it possible to not just determine the overall effectiveness of the brand’s webpage, but also helps gauge the site’s ability to captivate the consumer’s interest on each page.
• Click-through Rate: While this is a quantitative metric, it is nevertheless, crucial for brands and marketers to know how many social media site visitors eventually become visitors to the company’s website.

Irrespective of whether your social media data is qualitative or quantitative, creating an engagement index is a good idea. According to Katie Delayhaye Paine, an Engagement Index which is unique to your company’s goals is one way of monitoring and knowing where the returns from your social media strategy are coming from.

Conclusion

As the need to generate a measurable return on investment grows, for online marketers, the concept of ROI itself is debatable and has seen both marketers and industry experts engage in endless discussions on how to justify their expenditure. Therefore, when it comes to realizing the ROI from social media monitoring, the general consensus is that this is subjective and is perceived differently by different companies. However, no matter what your goals are, one thing above all is obvious; the need to have a clear set of quantitative and qualitative metrics that will help calculate the return on investment from your monitoring strategies. Whether it is demographics, number of repeat visitors or time spent on a particular Facebook page or company blog, most marketers agree that the social media monitoring yields maximum returns when the brand successfully engages with its customers. We believe that customer engagement is the first and integral step to realizing the ROI from brand monitoring; once this is achieved, reduction in customer service costs, improvement in marketing effectiveness, driving actionable insights, generating sales leads, identifying brand advocates , understanding campaign and design impact etc will automatically follow.

Media monitoring is a great ‘health check’ of a brand’s social media activities and the ROI realized from this process will tell you if your digital marketing strategy needs a fix or if you need to listen better and invest more resources to connect with your customers. Instead of focusing on finding only a tool to deliver charts or spreadsheets of data, companies should try looking for a social media monitoring solution that combines technology and human expert analysis to help better interpret social media data and answer business questions.

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This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

From the Position² Blog This Week: The Three Major Demographics for Online Marketers (Part 3): The Importance of Marketing to Women In the third installment of the ‘Three Major Demographics for Online Marketers’ series, the Position² team looks at the importance of marketing to women and how brands can benefit from focusing one of the largest audiences online.

Experts Say: Strong Presence In Social Media Critical For Business Growth. Bookmark: 13 Hot Facebook Marketing Tips From the Top Pros. Update: Twitter Photo Sharing Goes Live For All Users. Twitter Activity: Twitter Comes Alive With Realtime Activity Streams. Social Media For Violence: U.K. Government Considers Blocking Twitter, BlackBerry. Link Building Tip: Discovering Brand Advocates. Google Trouble: If Who You Are Is Important to Google, Google Needs to Get it Right. Report: SEO Stats Galore In Latest MarketingSherpa Benchmark Study. Analytics Tips: Actual Bounce Rate vs. Bounce Rate, and Why the Difference Matters for SEO. Search and Social: Top 14 Infographics for Internet Marketers.

Video of the Week How SAP Uses Communities to Connect With Customers. Mark Yolton, senior vice president of the SAP Community Network shares how SAP’s community of 2 million members from 200 countries is organized around business roles (such as developers, IT professionals and business process experts) to better engage with customers.

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