Posted by: Nicole Johnson, Marketing Coordinator
Most marketers are excited about leveraging social networks to connect with their audiences. Sometimes, in their enthusiasm, they forget to take a step back and ask themselves how they plan to measure the success of their new social media programs.
Your company may have 300 people who “like” your Facebook page or 500 Twitter followers, but what does that mean for your bottom line? Are those fans contributing something measurable to the success of your overall marketing objectives? These are the questions that many marketers aren’t sure how to answer.
A recent study, the 2010 Omniture Online Analytics Benchmark Survey, evaluates ROI on social, mobile and video media, and shows that 55% of respondents cannot effectively measure marketing ROI from their online tactics. The study also found that 86% of respondents consider the ability to track conversions from their online marketing activities as important, but 25% of them are unable to do so.
When you develop a social media strategy, start by setting clearly-defined goals. Once you’ve decided what objectives you’d like your campaign to meet, you can start thinking about how to measure them. Having an effective strategy for evaluating social media marketing programs can give you a competitive edge, so be sure to measure, measure and measure some more.
For information on free tools that can help you measure your social media program, visit Mashable Social Media.
The Online Marketing Summit’s 23-city tour made a stop in Denver this year. 90octane’s Brooke Caesar spoke at the conference and various staff members attended sessions that covered topics such as social media, search, email, demand generation, usability and integrated marketing efforts. Keep reading for some key takeaways from the June 23rd conference.
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Posted by: Erin Wilson, Marketing Coordinator
Although social media is an extremely popular marketing tool for B2C companies, many B2B companies have been hesitant to jump on board. Recently, however, more and more B2B companies are adding social media tactics to their marketing plans. In fact, spending forecasts predict that they will continue to increase their marketing budgets to include social media.
Some B2B companies may still doubt the efficacy of social media, but a recent study featured in eMarketer found that “at least once a week, 33% of active Twitter users share opinions about companies or products, while 32% make recommendations and 30% ask for them.” In other words, companies are being talked about whether or not they have a social media presence. By joining and guiding the conversation, B2B companies can more effectively position their brands and generate leads.
This Wednesday, June 23rd, 90octane will participate in the Denver Online Marketing Summit (OMS). OMS brings together hundreds of marketers for educational sessions on social media and content marketing, email, demand generation, analytics and more. The OMS 2010 23-City Tour offers attendees the opportunity to learn strategies and tactics from leading authors, academics, brand marketers and online pioneers in an environment free from exhibit booths and sales pitches.
90octane will partner with Eloqua, a leading company in the marketing automation and automated demand generation space, to host lead generation workshops. 90octane will guide attendees through individualized, 15-minute labs assessing their lead generation programs and offering recommendations for improvement.
In addition, 90octane Account Manager Brook Caesar has been selected to speak at the event, discussing strategies for social media integration. Caesar’s presentation will cover social media best practices to help businesses foster strong relationships with prospects and customers.
Stay tuned for an upcoming post about key learnings from the event.
Posted by: Erin Wilson, Marketing Coordinator
Social media marketing will be an important player in many companies’ business strategies this year. The key is determining the most efficient and cost-effective way to implement social media tactics into your business plan. Sponsored tweets are quickly becoming one effective way for organizations to use Twitter for their business needs.
Ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets are just a couple of the companies that have created a platform for businesses to connect with Twitter users. These services pay people to tweet about specific products and services. Depending on their influence within Twitter, Twitter users tweeting for sponsors can get paid anywhere from 50 cents to $10,000 per tweet. Power tweeters like socialite Kim Kardashian fall into the higher end of that range. Tweeters are required to disclose that they are endorsing a product/service through symbols like #ad, (ad), etc.
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Posted by: Kristi Jackson, Marketing Coordinator
As Social media continues to grow and become an important factor within the B2B industry, companies are beginning to realize the importance of claiming their space through tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube in order to reach their consumers. However, most companies are not utilizing these tools to their full potential.
Companies often forget the lead generating opportunities that social media tools like Facebook have to offer. One things that B2B companies should keep in mind to increase lead generation on Facebook is to be sure to have links to the company resources that they already have such as email subscriptions, newsletters, white papers, brochures, etc. on their fan page. By placing registration behind these links, companies can start generating leads from their Facebook consumers. Additionally, tracking URL’s can be placed on these links to easily measure leads generated from Facebook.
Because we know that consumers who are coming to a company’s Facebook fan page are typically already interested in the company’s offerings and are looking for more information, it is important to include content that is unique to Facebook and will give these users a reason to continue to come back. One way that this can be done is by providing a special offer to these consumers that they cannot get by going to your corporate website.
Utilizing these ideas for a B2B Facebook page will not only benefit companies by creating another channel for lead generation, but it will also continue to enhance their users experience on Facebook.
Posted by: Susan Smith, Marketing Coordinator
Now that Google and Bing are displaying Twitter tweets in organic search results alongside other social media, tweets should be optimized just as a website would be. There are multiple ways to increase the relevancy of your tweets and have them indexed by the search engines:
- Get more followers, each follower is considered an incoming link
- Get relevant followers, keywords in their bios relate to your relevancy
- Get tagged in lists that relate to your industry
- Have your tweets retweeted
- Tweet relevant, keyword rich content utilizing active lingo and buzzwords
- Choose a username that is short, easy to remember, and relevant to your brand or industry
- Stick to one handle/username for consistent indexing
- Choose an account name that reflects and promotes your brand
- Utilize the 160 characters available for a bio to insert key words and phrases
- Place a call to action on your website to gain Twitter followers
- Embed your Twitter URL in the footer of your website
- Occasionally tweet a link to your website to drive traffic
- Place your most important keywords at the beginning of your tweet as that is what shows up in Google
As Twitter continues to gain popularity and people begin seeking out real time updates, optimizing tweets will become vital to keeping your company at the top of the search results.
Posted by: Kerry Houchin, Project Manager
Last month both Google and Bing announced they had reached deals with Twitter allowing them to display public Tweets as search results. Currently, Bing is showing live Twitter results only in the Bing Twitter search interface and Google will be integrating Tweets into search results over the next few months.
As Tweets and other real-time results, possibly Facebook postings, are rolled into search results, SEO tactics will need to evolve to keep up with search trends. Having a listing on the first page of search results will become increasingly difficult since pieces of the limited page real estate will be taken by Tweets. Also, having a presence in Twitter and other forms of social media will continue to be more and more important.
You may be thinking, “Great, it can’t be that hard to set up a Twitter account.” That won’t cut it. Bing states that they won’t index Tweets for longer than seven days. This means that having a steady stream of updated Twitter content is crucial for maintaining Twitter search listings. Also, in the case where two Tweets have very similar content, the higher search ranking will go to the person with the most Twitter followers, indicating the importance of building a Twitter community.
Real-time search is still in its infancy and tactics will continue to evolve as more real-time search features are rolled out. To stay on top of the latest real-time search news, check out the Bing Search Blog and the Official Google Blog.
Posted by: Meg Archer, Marketing Coordinator
There is so much buzz around social media and how helpful and even necessary it is for companies to have a strong social presence. Here at 90octane we already understand the importance of social media and have created strategies and manage programs for some clients.
One important element of a strong social strategy is the ability to measure the impact social efforts have on ROI. comScore, GroupM and M80 released a report showing the positive impact search and social media have on one another. The data indicates searchers are more likely to remember a brand if they have seen a combination of paid search ads and social media. There is a 19% lift in searches on branded terms among users who saw some form of social media and a paid search ad relating to the brand, compared to users who where only exposed to a search advertisement. Furthermore the researchers found a 13% lift among users exposed to direct branded social media.
Another interesting finding is that users who search for product terms are three times more likely to have been exposed to social media combined with paid search, compared to paid search alone.
These findings show that social media and key performance numbers are friends, good friends.
(Source for Graphs: eMarketer.com )
Posted by: Shannon Anderson, Project Manager
Social media marketing is becoming ever more important in building integrated online marketing campaigns for both BtoB and BtoC companies. Not only are social efforts paying off in terms of site traffic, conversions and sales leads are often generated as a result as well.
While launching a social campaign is highly important, it is equally important to track metrics specific to the campaign’s goals and measure ROI for these efforts. Listed below are common social campaign goals along with some of the measurable metrics for each. Evaluating these metrics can help you determine the overall ROI of the social media campaign.
- Site Traffic - Measure increases in traffic to your website looking at the source of the click.
- Buzz – Track the number of comments, video views, or other user generated responses to determine the amount of buzz surrounding your campaign.
- Leads - Track any newsletter sign-ups, requests for contact, product purchases or other actions that qualify a user as a lead.
- Reputation – Track the number of users leaving positive remarks about your brand and the number of negative remarks you were able to combat through these social platforms.
While you may or may not be able to track a click all the way through a sale, certain assumptions can be made regarding the value of each action. Tracking the success of social media efforts will help you hone in on what type of communication carries weight with your audience and focus your budget and efforts in these places.