There are a lot of obvious elements you need to include to make a blog reader-friendly: quality, compelling content, good navigation, a contact page, an about page, focus and clarity about the subject of the blog… and there’s a lot of not-so-obvious or overlooked things that can really help make a blog stand out if they’re implemented.

While I do have my own list of do’s and don’ts included, I decided to get input from other smart, savvy bloggers. I posted a request on LinkedIn Answers and received many great do’s and don’ts. I’ve grouped the tips into five categories: Planning, Content, Design, Marketing and Engagement.

#1: Planning Your Business Blog

Do: Know your “Big Why” – Why are you in business? What is your purpose and ultimate goal for serving others? Clarity about your purpose, your goals, your ideal client and how you transform people’s lives will help guide all the content on your business blog.

Do: Know what you mean when you say successful. Are you trying to get more sales? Develop relationships? Inform current customers? Having a specific goal for your blog will shape the rest of your strategy. From Cordelia Blake

Do: Keyword research before starting a blog. First, compile a list of keywords (and, more importantly, keyword phrases) you think your business should rank for. Then, go to Google Keyword tool and type in those phrases to find out how many actual searches are done per month. You would be surprised how different Google’s list may turn out from your own. Use the list Google suggests as your starting point. From Boris Mahovac

Use the Google Keyword Tool to find keywords that have a large number of searches.

Do: Define your target audience and develop a content strategy that they will find interesting, entertaining or informative. Don’t focus too closely on product. As a Twitter friend once said, “If you make dog food, don’t talk about dog food, talk about dogs.” From Heidi Cool

Do: Give it time. It takes a while to build real relationships. From Christopher Gronlund

Don’t: Hide the author of the blog. Make sure you have a real-live person behind the blog. Add his or her photo, name and role in the company. It’s OK to outsource to get help, but for the most authentic connection, have a real employee available to guide, answer questions and provide a true look inside the organization. Even if you only have a few people in your company, this is vitally important. From Phil Gerbyshak

#2: Your Blog Content

Do: Be real.

Don’t: Be stuffy, dull and pompous or use bizspeak jargon. A blog isn’t a lecture hall or a billboard (i.e., one-way or solely self-promotional communication), but is ideally a place for people who are hungry for good information to find you and start to see you as a reliable and trustworthy resource. From Caitlin Kelly

Do: Find an optimal posting schedule that works for you. The more you post on your blog, the more traffic you’ll attract. But more than frequency, focus on posting quality content consistently and constantly.

Do: Establish an editorial calendar that helps you plan for future articles and topics. Set reasonable deadlines. If you know you can’t publish daily, don’t establish that as your goal.

Don’t: Publish junk just to keep up with your calendar. It’s better to miss a post than to post gibberish. (Heidi Cool)

Do: Keep the Four E’s in mind when writing your blog posts: Educate, Entertain, Engage and Enrich. Mix it up to ensure your message is delivered in the way that your ideal reader wants to consume it.

Do: Create Scannable Content. People have different reading patterns on the web than they do on the printed page. They tend to scan down web pages rather than read every word. So give them what they want! Break up your content with shorter paragraphs, headings and bullets. Add images. Incorporate video. From Chris Cree

Do: Create compelling, keyword-rich titles that address your audience’s needs. From Rich Brooks

Do: Use a variety of post types. Some posts can be a quick paragraph, while others are a deep dive into an important issue. Posts can be based around a video, or based around text content. If you mix things up you’ll keep the blog interesting, expand your list of post ideas and fight the tendency for blogger burnout. From Kyle Deming

Don’t: Get too self-promotional. At least 80% of your content should focus on helping your audience. (Rich Brooks)

#3: Blog Design

Do: Blog on your own domain, period. It should also be under “yourdomain.com/blog” subdirectory rather than “blog.yourdomain.com”. This lends some of the search engine goodwill earned by your blog to your root domain. From Scott Allen. (Just about everyone made this recommendation.)

Do: Customize your templates and menus to make it easy for readers to explore page articles. Make good use of categories and tags. (Heidi Cool)

Do: Give your blog readers the tools to amplify your message to their own communities. Have retweet/tweet buttons, Facebook Like button, Digg, StumbleUpon and other relevant social sharing buttons on your blog posts. This falls under marketing and engagement as well. When designing your blog, make sure you include plugins and widgets that can support spreading your content far and wide.

Don’t: Hide author, contact, and subscription information. Make sure you have pages that are easy to find in the navigation so your reader can find out more about you and your company and can contact you with questions and feedback.

Make it easy for your audience to connect with you.

Do build an opt-in mailing list and autoresponder. Don’t rely solely on an RSS feed for your readers to get your blog updates. Most people do know what an RSS feed is; they do know how to opt in to get email. I see this mistake on 90% of the blogs I review. Check out Feedblitz, Feedburner and AWeber for email delivery of your blog content.

#4: Marketing Your Blog

Do: Build time into your schedule to market your blog. You’ve got to put some effort into steering people to your blog posts so that they actually find the great content you’re creating. (Chris Cree)

Do: Automate syndication of your blog posts to your social profiles. Make sure your posts are showing up on your Facebook page, Twitter stream and LinkedIn profile, at minimum.

Do: Find the right balance of keywords. Keywords are important for improving the ranking of your blog in search engines and for increasing visibility and readership. However, more is not always better. You want your blog post to read like a conversation you’re having with a person face to face. From Emily Madsen

Do: Repurpose your blog content in multiple formats and syndicate it on other content-sharing sites. Recreate your content in audio and video formats in order to leverage your time and extend your reach on the web.

#5: Engaging Your Audience

Do: Make time to respond to all of the comments you receive. A primary purpose for business blogging is to build a strong relationship with your audience. When you reply to their comments, your readers will appreciate your personal interest and this will build credibility and trust in your expertise. From Sydni Craig-Hart

Do: Spend as much time engaging as you do creating content. Some of that can be on your own blog replying to comments, but a substantial portion of it MUST be on other blogs in your industry. Competitors are a touchy situation—you really have to take it on a case-by-case basis. But for vendors, clients, industry associations, industry thought leaders/authors/speakers, you should definitely identify all of them and be engaging on a regular basis. (Scott Allen)

Don’t: Disable or heavily censor blog comments. Commenting is one of the best ways to engage and you may get called out if you filter out all negative comments. Use negative comments as an opportunity to respond graciously. (Kyle Deming)

Do: Have a clear plan in place for handling criticism and negative comments. Take the high road and respond to these comments carefully and politely. (Heidi Cool)

Don’t: Take for granted you know what your audience needs. Survey and ask them what three things they struggle with in their business. This one exercise could have you supplied with relevant blog posts for weeks. But also, you’ll be providing great information to your readers to keep them coming back for more. From Terri Brooks

Create simple surveys with SurveyMonkey.com.

Do: Be as authentic as you possibly can. People know when they’re being fed a party line or propaganda. We know when we’re being marketed at or PRed at. Be as real as the circumstances allow. From Erica Friedman

What would you add? Do you have some business blogging do’s and don’ts that are not covered here? Leave your comments and ideas in the box below.

The other day I drove past a local convenience store that makes most of its profit from beer, Slush Puppies and beef jerky (not that there’s anything wrong with that). A big sign out front asked passers-by to Like them on Facebook.

“It’s official,” I thought. “Now every business in America has a Facebook page.”

Unfortunately, few businesses actually have a strategy for their Facebook page, or for the rest of their social media activity. They tweet, blog and set up a Facebook business page out of fear of being left behind, rather than as a way to engage their audience.

If your social media engagement is reactive rather than proactive, it’s time to step back, take a deep breath and develop a content strategy that will engage your community.

A content strategy doesn’t end with good signage.

What Is a Content Strategy?

Last year while doing some research into what certification organizations were doing in social media, I interviewed Susan Cato, Senior Director of Web and New Media Strategies at CompTIA, who said,

“You can’t have a social media strategy without a content strategy.”

I thought this was brilliant. She clarified far more effectively and in fewer words what I had been saying. But what does it mean to have a content strategy?

There are three important elements to developing an effective content strategy.

• You need to know what your customers, audience or community want to talk about and be willing to engage in those conversations.
• You need to know where your audience wants to have these conversations; in other words, where they “hang out” online.
• You need to measure the results of your conversations to see which ones catch fire.

Let’s start with what your customers want to talk about.

Knowing Your Audience’s Pain Points

Developing a content strategy often starts with a keyword analysis. Now, you may think of a keyword analysis as a tool for blog posts or blogs for SEO, and you’re right. However, it will also help you uncover the language that your audience or community is using while on the social web.

For example, if you’re a plastic surgeon and you’re putting out some great content about “rhinoplasty” but everyone’s talking about “nose jobs” you’re not reaching anyone. Likewise, if the conversation is about “curb appeal” and you’re talking about “landscaping,” the conversation may pass you by.

A keyword analysis begins with a list of words or phrases that you believe your audience is using to find products or services like yours. There are a number of software tools that you can use to determine how often your phrases and related phrases appear in searches, which provides insight into which you should use in your content strategy.

Some popular keyword analysis tools include:

• Keyword Discovery or WordTracker: two popular paid tools
• Google AdWords: a free tool that uses Google AdWords data to determine what phrases are popular.

Red leather jackets were probably more popular when "Beverly Hills Cop" came out.

A keyword analysis will only start you on the path to a content strategy. Once you’ve identified some of your key phrases, you need to get to work on where your community wants to have these conversations.

Knowing Where Your Audience Hangs Out

Once you have a general sense of what’s important to your audience, you need to determine where to have these conversations. Most businesses, non-profits and individuals would best be served by focusing on one or two platforms… going deep rather than going broad to start.

Where your audience is can depend on their age and gender, as well as your offerings. There are plenty of statistics that break down social media sites by demographics. Flowtown has a great infographic on social media demographics on their site.

LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for B2B (business to business) companies. Facebook does well for B2C (business to consumer) offerings. Blogs and online video-sharing sites like YouTube can work for any audience, but may be blocked by corporate firewalls.

You can also use “listening tools” to see if the conversations are already taking place across social media. There are a number of free and paid tools for listening for specific terms in social media.

• Google Alerts: This free tool will send you daily emails of news, blog posts, tweets and more around any keyword you’re following.
• TweetDeck: With this popular Twitter app you can set up a column to follow the conversation around a specific topic.

You can follow conversations around your key terms by creating a search column in TweetDeck.

• Radian6 and Sprout Social: These are two examples of paid social media monitoring services for companies that need more robust tools.

Here are some ways in which you can begin to implement your content strategy through different social media tools:

Blogs: Blogging is a powerful method for engaging your audience; it has both SEO and social media benefits. Blogging around your keywords is an essential piece of a content strategy.

One of my favorite new tools for developing blog content is the Keyword Questions tool at WordTracker Labs. Enter a key word or phrase and it will return related questions people have asked at partner search engines.

People have questions; now you can blog the answers.

By typing in “BBQ,” you see questions like “how to make BBQ ribs in the slow cooker” and “how to BBQ corn on the cob.” In other words, you have the topics and titles for your next two blog posts.

Note: this technique works equally well for YouTube and SlideShare.

LinkedIn: Try searching through the Answers section in LinkedIn to answer questions around your keywords. For example, an accountant might search for “profitability” or “capital tax issues.”

An HR consultant can answer questions on “employee retention” to establish credibility with her audience.

Facebook: Ask questions on your Facebook business page that build on your content strategy. Of course, this will work better once you’ve built a following on Facebook. Be sure to check out 10 Ways to Grow Your Facebook Page Following and 4 Proven Steps to Facebook Page Success for more on that.

Mint does a great job of asking questions that engage their target audience and start a conversation.

Twitter: Check out Twitter’s search function or the Advanced Twitter Search if you need to filter your phrase to a geographical location or by attitude.

Are you running a Mexican restaurant near Portland, Maine? This is your search.

Measuring the Results

A keyword analysis and some social media demographics will get you started, but you need to measure the impact of your conversations to see if you’re making headway. I recommend—at least at the beginning—to keep this as simple as possible. Some suggestions:

• Track how many comments and Likes your Facebook post gets.
• Track monthly how many followers, retweets and mentions you or your brand gets.
• Measure how many comments your blog posts get and how much traffic they receive.
• Measure social media referral traffic to your website; in other words, how much traffic is sent from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn?

In Google Analytics, check your “referrers” to see which sites are sending you the most traffic.

A note for small businesses: many of the articles you read on social media metrics focus on how often people are talking about your brand on the social web. If you run a specialty grocery store in Bangor, Maine, chances are you’re not going to be trending on Twitter anytime soon. Instead, pay attention to your influence locally, or your depth of engagement with your audience.

Content Strategy Takeaways

Some final thoughts on developing a social media content strategy:

• Listen. Having a content strategy isn’t always about talking. It’s about listening and understanding.
• Be patient. Putting up one tweet with a keyword in it doesn’t make a content strategy. A content strategy is about building trust with your audience, your community or your customers. That takes time.
• Be flexible. A keyword analysis and social media demographics will only take you so far. You’ll need to evolve your content strategy over time, based on what’s going on in your industry, with your audience and in the world around you.

Your Turn!

What strategies or tactics have you used to engage your customers or community with social media? What’s worked and what hasn’t? What platforms have you used that weren’t mentioned above? Leave your comments and suggestions in the box below.

Until they invited customers to post product reviews on their website. Only then did they discover the problem was the bottle – it was too tall to fit in refrigerator doors! They redesigned the bottle and their sales immediately increased.

That’s user-generated content directly leading to an increase in sales. That’s the power of social media marketing.

Are you still sitting on the sidelines when it comes to social media marketing because you know you can’t control the conversations about your company, your products and your services? And because you have no idea how to respond to negative comments?

“Give up control and drop the ego!” says Liana Evans in her book, Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media. Compared to traditional marketing, “social media is a totally different ballgame. The people in these social media communities talk about you whenever they want, however they want, and to whomever they want. The conversation goes on with or without you!”

So wouldn’t it be better to actively participate in these conversations? “Consumer-generated content is having wide-ranging effects on both the perception of a company and whether a purchase is eventually made,” writes Evans. “Can your company afford not to participate in the conversation?”

She uses comic books as an example of the difference between traditional Internet advertising and social media marketing. Comic book collectors all over the world began communicating with each other online in the 1990s. They used online bulletin board systems (BBS) and CompuServe and AOL forums.

But when comic book publishers jumped into online advertising, they just created banner ads and other flashy promotional ads. Even if they placed these ads in forums, forum members just ignored them.

Why didn’t the comic book publishers just ask an employee to join the forums and start responding to other members’ messages? “This would have garnered a lot more engagement and interest than a banner advertisement ever could have,” writes Evans.

This Is Not Your Father’s Marketing

And that’s the difference between traditional marketing and social media marketing. In traditional marketing, you throw out a message where it will be seen by millions of people who couldn’t care less.

In social media marketing, you find the people who are already talking about your message and join the conversation. It’s really that simple and that complicated.

It’s complicated because you have to know your audience so well that you know exactly what social media platforms they use regularly. Is it Facebook? Twitter? YouTube? Digg?

Why create a Facebook fan page if your audience never uses Facebook? Why open a Twitter account if they never use Twitter?

As Evans repeatedly emphasizes in her book, understanding your audience is the first step in creating a social media marketing strategy. Here are the rest of the steps:

#2: Define your goals.

#3: Choose your metrics.

#4: Open accounts on the platforms your audience uses.

#5: Listen to what your audience is saying on those platforms.

#6: Respond to their concerns.

#7: Provide content that they value.

#8: Measure the results.

#9: Repeat steps 1 through 8.

Yes, I said “repeat steps 1 through 8.” Because just as real-life communities change, social media communities also change. “If you had included Twitter in your marketing plan in early 2007,” writes Evans, “you would have been very disappointed by its results.”

Follow Your Audience Wherever They Go

Suppose one of the top “influencers” in one online community leaves and joins another community? And what if your audience follows that person? You’d better be prepared to join a brand new platform.

So you must constantly monitor your audience’s participation in various social media communities and learn how to use new platforms.

Yes, it’s a lot of work, but as Zappos and Southwest Airlines have discovered, creating and managing customer relationships using social media can be very profitable. Even Dell overcame its “Dell Hell” reputation using social media.

And Evans strongly recommends that you do all this work in-house. Don’t outsource anything, including blogging and tweeting. “Social media sites can propel a person’s experience with your company across the globe within seconds. Not being active in these social media sites can be detrimental to your company, whether that customer’s experience was good or bad,” she writes.

She even includes tips on how to select a company that develops social media marketing campaigns for its clients.  Ask all prospective consultants the following questions:

• Will you create our website entirely in Flash? (Flash isn’t search-engine friendly.)
• Do you focus on one or two strategies to the exclusion of all others?
• Do you define success as the number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers?
• Do you recommend following a “laundry list” of tactics because everyone else is using them?

If their answer to all those questions is “Yes,” keep looking.

This book will NOT tell you how to create a Facebook fan page, customize your Twitter background or upload a video to YouTube. It doesn’t tell you how to measure anything, how to use Google Analytics or how to SEO your website.

Instead, Evans takes you by the hand and leads you through the entire process of creating and managing a social media marketing campaign. No tech stuff, just solid, practical advice from a professional who “has been active full-time in search marketing and social media since 1999,” according to her bio on the back cover.

The book has 45 chapters, all of which are fewer than 10 pages long. And every chapter has several informative subheadings, so you can quickly zero in on the information you need when you need to know it. Or you can read the entire book from front to back.

If you already know a lot about social media marketing, this book isn’t for you. It’s for those of you who are still standing by the social media pool, wondering if you should jump in.

Come on in, the water’s fine!

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 4-star rating.

You’ll also learn why social media can do more for businesses today and what businesses need to look for in geo-location tools. There are more opportunities today for businesses to engage with their customers and Brian gives you insights into how to convert this engagement into sales.

Be sure to read the takeaways below and leave your comments after you’ve watched the video.

Here are a few of the things you’ll discover:

• What the consequences are of not engaging in social media
• The meaning of “Digital Darwinism”
• What geo-location means for the different players
• Why local businesses have new tools to use on the web
• How culture is changing as people interact more on their social graph
• When it’s possible to convert engagement into sales

What’s next for Brian?  He’s focusing on privacy and taking the public role in advocating how we can control privacy on social media.  Connect with Brian on his website, on Twitter and check out his book Engage!.

What do you see in the future of social media engagement?  Please share your comments below.

A great blog post respects the needs of three distinct entities. It educates and informs your audience (your subscribers and visitors), optimizes for the search engines and sufficiently energizes you so that you do a good job creating it.

Every blog post should address the following five components to ensure it hits the mark for your audience, the search engines and you.

#1: Has an Engaging Title

The title is arguably the most important element of any post. Engaging titles that spark curiosity are more likely to be clicked. When this is combined with strategic keywords that affirm the topic of the post, you have a winner.

Tim Ferris recently wrote a post on the art and science of headlines to increase the click-through rate. The idea is simply to generate curiosity, such as Why Are You Single? Perhaps It’s the Choice Effect. You’re wondering what the Choice Effect is all about, aren’t you?

Many of us don’t have Tim’s fan base, so we need to develop a catchy title that also includes keywords that will get indexed by Google. Brian Clark with Copyblogger does an excellent job of this. One of his generally accepted SEO copywriting tips is to place these keywords near the front of the title.

You should occasionally test your titles to determine what resonates most with your audience. I’ve personally found that titles that respond to a specific need, such as How Often Should I Blog?, will result in higher traffic with my targeted readers than those that are deep and thought-provoking.

#2: Offers Easy to Consume Content

When you organize your content so that it’s easily consumed, you tap into a secret of blogging. The more readily your content is assimilated in the minds of your readers, the more favorably it’s received—and remembered.

Here are some ways to accomplish this.

• Blog for Your Audience: As you develop your blogging style, always consider the needs of your audience. My audience is the same as that of Social Media Examiner—business professionals and marketers. They expect me to get to the point quickly and avoid technical jargon.
• Learn to Write in AP Style: If you scan any news source, you’ll notice the paragraphs are short—only a few sentences. This is one of the hallmarks of Associated Press (AP) style of writing, which many journalists consider to be the standard. These guidelines will give your posts a professional appearance and make them easier to consume.
• Use Subheadings: This helps both you and the reader. I tend to write my first draft quickly for flow and readability. Then I go back and organize with subheadings, while also reorganizing and eliminating entire paragraphs so that my readers don’t have to.
• Create Lists: Lists are the ultimate organizing tool, which is why they’re frequently retweeted—thereby attracting valuable links back to your blog.
• Use Italics and Bold Text for Emphasis: If someone reads your blog post word for word, it’s usually after skimming it first. Help readers do both by emphasizing key points with italics, bold text and, with care, all caps.

#3: Mixes Content Types

Delivering great content requires a mix of qualities that keeps your readers coming back for more. The key isn’t always the quality of the message, but how it’s delivered. Improve how you do this by employing these 5 practices.

• Offer Your Opinions: If you’re an expert in your field, then your opinion is relevant. Who do you respect more, the waiter who says everything on the menu is excellent, or the one who looks you in the eye and recommends her favorites (or suggests avoiding some dishes)?
• Use Multimedia: Make it a point to use images, screenshots and video to communicate your message with more punch.

These contextual forms of communication enhance your message while also breaking up the text to improve the appearance of your post.

• Link to Your Research: Data has greater credibility when it comes from a reputable source, such as the Pew Research Center. A link to that source raises your credibility by showing you’ve done your homework.

Data from respected sources such as the Pew Research Center will validate your perspective.

• Provide Practical Examples: Examples of situations where you’ve had direct experience are powerful, although it’s important to provide details such as names and places to validate that credibility. Just be sure you get the proper permissions first.
• Take Out the Trash: Make the effort to edit out anything that doesn’t support your title or enhance your post. Include details to create a mental picture, but leave out anything else that detracts from your story.

#4: Is Search Engine Optimized

Learning search engine optimization (SEO) is a necessary aspect of blogging if you expect to build a sustainable reader base. While SEO can get complicated, you can be very effective by simply tuning into your audience and writing for them. Trust your gut and write for people and SEO will take care of itself.

These are the key elements of SEO that deserve your attention.

• Excerpts: The excerpt of your post is the brief description included with the return of search results. A well-chosen description encourages click-throughs. If you don’t build an excerpt, the first couple of sentences of your post will be used as a default. Get in the habit of summarizing your post in the first couple of sentences.
• Keywords: Learn the common words and phrases being used by your audience. For example, do they use the term entrepreneur or small business? It’s a distinction that has to be made so that you can be found when they’re searching for your expertise.
• Links: The SEO pros universally agree that inbound links to your blog are vital for achieving a high ranking. How do you get these links? The most reliable way is to write amazing content that people want to link to.

One tip is to link to the keywords (known as anchor text) in your post that are aligned with the words you expect to be used by someone searching for your expertise. The classic mistake is linking to click here instead of more relevant keywords such as small business marketing, or whatever relates to your expertise.

Additionally, you naturally want to link back to your previous posts to encourage your readers to hang around longer. This increases the likelihood they’ll respond to a call to action, such as subscribing to your blog or newsletter.

• Tags: Tags are handled differently in every blogging platform. Just be sure to use tags that are relevant to the post you’re creating, as well as the audience you’re blogging for. Darren Rowse of Problogger suggests no more than a dozen tags for each post to avoid undermining their effectiveness through dilution.
• Categories: Categories obviously help your blog visitors go deeper into the subject matter or topic that interests them most. Google also indexes your categories for the same reason, so choose your categories carefully. You’ll note the categories here at Social Media Examiner were intentionally limited to just eight to be relevant now and in the future.

#5: Encourages Interaction and Action

While blogging is indeed a platform for broadcasting, the ultimate objective is to encourage engagement and interaction, namely in the form of comments. Just as an engaged audience gives a speaker feedback on his live presentation, the comments to your blog will do the same.

You can and should learn from every single visitor to your blog by responding and seeking to better understand his/her point of view. The reason for this is that every commenter represents the perspective of many others. The more you learn, the easier it is to focus your efforts on what’s most relevant to your audience.

Why else do you want comments? Because comments are social proof that your blog is a happening place. And this encourages more traffic and subscribers to your blog.

To encourage more comments, you may not only have to remind your audience to do so, but show them as well. Write a post on commenting and use your blog as an example.

Show your readers exactly how to comment, and even go a step further to describe how to share your post by retweeting or using the Facebook Like button.

As you begin to engage your audience, you’ll want to move them closer to helping you accomplish your blogging objectives. For example, you may ultimately want to sell your ebooks. A preliminary step toward that is to encourage more subscribers to your list. Then when the time is right you can reach out to your list to provide higher-value content that monetizes your blogging efforts.

There is no such thing as a perfect blog post. However, if you follow these recommendations, you’ll be sure to enhance your blog for you and your audience, as well as the search engines that work on everyone’s behalf.

What do you think? What else makes for a great blog post? Leave your comments in the box below.

“None of [the team working on this project] felt artificial intelligence was going to come to their aid any day soon,” says Jim Sterne in his book, Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment.

That should give you some idea of the state of social media analytical tools, particularly for analyzing market sentiment. With a few exceptions, they are practically nonexistent.

So why did Sterne write a book about measuring something with nonexistent tools? I finally found the answer to that question on page 156: “I try to avoid getting deep into specific tools in my books. They change so fast that enumerating specific systems or services ends up more confusing than not over time.”

So if you want a book that actually contains detailed instructions for using social media analytical tools, you’ll have to keep waiting. This is NOT that book.

Sterne’s book tells you WHAT to measure and what NOT to measure. And he gives very general advice on how to do it without going into too many technical details.

He gets off to a good start by quoting J. C. Penney: “Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I’ll give you a stock clerk.”

So don’t even start a social media marketing campaign until you set some goals. What do you want the campaign to do? What results do you want to see? Which key performance indicators (KPIs) will you measure?

To make it very simple, Sterne proposes the Big Three Business Goals:

• Raise revenue
• Lower costs
• Increase customer satisfaction

That’s it! You really don’t have to worry about anything else.

“If the work you do does not result in an improvement to one or more of these Big Three Goals, then you are wasting your time, wasting money, spinning your wheels, alienating customers, and not helping the organization. You can always think of something to earn more, spend less, and make customers happier.”

Social media can absolutely help you lower the cost of doing business. You can use Facebook and Twitter to survey your customers. Who needs focus groups, questionnaires, and expensive market research reports?

Your team can search the Twitter archives for any mention of your company or products, respond to the comments they find, and build a global, first-class customer service department.

Sterne’s book contains many case studies of companies doing just that. The book’s organization follows the traditional sales cycle:

1. Get your market’s attention.
2. Earn their respect.
3. Get them to like you.
4. Get them to interact with you.
5. Convince them to buy from you.

He devotes a chapter to each one of those steps.

And he brings up some very interesting points. It’s easy enough to count how many followers, fans, and subscribers you have. But do they really read all of your tweets, Facebook updates, and blog posts? How do you know?

Sterne would ask, “Does it really matter?” It doesn’t matter how many fans, followers, and subscribers you have. It doesn’t matter how many people comment on your corporate blog. It doesn’t matter how many people buzz up your news release.

Only one thing matters: did they take action? Did they click your banner ad, visit your website, or pick up the phone and call your company?

If not, you are obviously not engaging them. And if you’re not engaging them, they probably will never buy your product or service.

In Sterne’s words: “While social media becomes more and more important from the standpoint of getting the word out, the impact of that word is still going to be measured by the number of people it drives to your web site, your store, and your wallet.”

Sterne does give many resources and websites, presumably of companies that are developing social media analytical tools. Companies like Omniture, Tealium, and FMS Advanced Systems Group. He calls the FMS tool “nascent,” meaning it may not be ready for prime time just yet.

But it’s up to you to go to the websites, take a look at their analytical tools, and see if they will give you the data you need.

In the chapter on Getting Buy-In, Sterne seems to imply that you should just ask your technical people to develop their own tools!

And did you know that there are apparently robots that can scrape, follow, friend, tweet, and retweet? “When it’s time to tote up how many people had an opportunity to see your message,” Sterne advises, “make sure you’re only counting people.”

But of course, he never tells you how to do that. Are there any analytical tools that can distinguish between a robot and a person? If there are, Sterne doesn’t mention them.

So in the absence of good social media analytical tools, you might just stick with your web analytical tools. Do you get more activity on your website when you blog or tweet? Do your sales increase when people buzz up your blog post on Delicious, Reddit, or Digg?

Try to correlate your social media campaign with metrics available now. And remember, it doesn’t count unless it results in a sale, a savings, or a satisfied customer.

Check out 4 Ways to Measure Social Media and Its Impact on Your Brand.

Social Media Examiner gives this book a 3.5 star rating.

Is anyone out there using social media analytical tools, “nascent” or otherwise? If so, we’d love to hear about your experience. Leave your comment in the box below.

So why is a $58 billion company spending time listening to off-color tweets?

Because “foul-mouthed tweens” just might be the first tip-off of a major service outage. Before any calls or emails come in, the support team can catch a tweet and get technical folks on the task.

This article reveals how the Xbox team relies on Twitter to reduce support costs.

“When people are passionate and they use that kind of language, a lot of times there’s legitimately something wrong with our service,” says McKenzie Eakin, program manager, Xbox LIVE Service Delivery (also known as @XboxSupport Elite Tweet Fleet Sky Captain).

“Our ability to identify and fix emerging issues is so much faster with our ears to the street.”

Less than a year after starting Twitter support, the Xbox Support Elite Tweet Fleet has become a major leg of the Xbox support foundation, pulling in the highest customer satisfaction rates across various support channels.

They must be doing something right; the team recently landed the Guinness World Record for Most Responsive Brand on Twitter.

McKenzie Eakin, Sky Captain of the Xbox Elite Tweet Fleet , proudly displays the team's Guinness World Record certificate for Most Responsive Brand on Twitter.

Customer Satisfaction ‘Through the Roof’

In 2009, Microsoft already supported users of its popular videogame console with multiple support channels: phone, email, online self-service and forums. With so many support options, why add more?

Eakin recognized the less formal, personal nature of Twitter as a complement to the team’s service suite. Plus, many of the more avid Xbox users also frequent Twitter.

Eakin explained that the type of engagement happening on Twitter would rarely reach a call center.

The team quietly launched a Twitter pilot last fall, beginning simply by monitoring mentions of Xbox support issues with basic Twitter searching. In response, the team replied to those users offering to help – something that took users by surprise.

“We swoop in, seemingly out of nowhere, and say, ‘No, we can help,’” Eakin says. “They’re like, ‘Whoa, proactive customer service out of nowhere. This is so cool.’ It’s a really magical experience and I think that in particular drives our through-the-roof customer satisfaction.”

Just as Twitter search enables the team to find issues fast, Twitter also serves as the speediest way to alert users about service issues – before they become calls. Followers who see such a notice will likely retweet it.

“In the event of a major service outage or incident, we can then broadcast out. We can stub that spike that we would otherwise see,” she said.

Following each customer interaction with a Tweetpoll satisfaction survey, Eakin’s team found the evidence it needed to grow the Twitter support operation.

“When we started seeing that people were coming back with customer satisfaction rates and issue resolution rates through the roof, which are our two key customer support metrics, it gave the green light to go ahead and move it onboard and make this a big-time shindig.”

Growing Followers With Tweepstakes

Here's what Xbox put into their newsletter to get folks over to Twitter support.

When Microsoft launched Xbox customer service more officially on Twitter, it added its Twitter handle – @XboxSupport – to the Microsoft support pages. The team also started a weekly Tweepstakes to grow visibility and the base of followers.

Each week, the team posts an Xbox-related question. Users simply answer with a tweet before the stated deadline to possibly win prizes like games, peripherals and posters. To be eligible to win, they must be followers within two weeks after the prize period, helping boost followers of @XboxSupport.

Now with nearly 30,000 followers, the group has continued the Tweepstakes to maintain loyalty within its follower base. Additionally, the Fleet posts articles and news six to eight times a day to keep users involved with the brand.

In the Mind of a 14-Year-Old

The Elite Tweet Fleet monitors Xbox mentions on Twitter and proactively responds 91 hours a week.

Currently, the Elite Tweet Fleet consists of 10 support reps, all dedicated only to Twitter support. They respond an impressive 91 hours a week, including nights and weekends when users are most likely to be gaming.

When a user posts a question to the @XboxSupport address, all reps reply publicly in the single Twitter stream, adding up to about 5000 outbound tweets per week.

“We keep almost all tweets public. We want our dirty laundry out there because we don’t want to have dirty laundry,” Eakin says. “That’s a very key accountability piece. People also know that the Tweet Fleet is absolutely required to respond to every @ unless it’s from a bot or particularly vulgar.”

Each Fleet member tags replies with their initials and a caret, as in ^MB (Eakin’s tag).

For billing-related issues or anything more complex, the team refers the issue to another support group or responds off the public Twitter feed.

The Fleet proactively monitors the Twitterverse for relevant terms related to Xbox support issues, like “flashing red lights,” “can’t connect,” or “Xbox LIVE broke.” Unlike traditional support, where the vendor defines the support categories (“press 1 for hardware, press 2 for software…”), the Tweet Fleet must anticipate what users will say.

“It’s interesting to build queries for those sorts of things,” Eakin says. “Whether I’m a 39-year-old woman or a 14-year-old on my couch after school, how do I express myself when something happens? What am I going to say?”

The fact that sometimes a Tweet Fleet search term includes a profanity is just part of knowing the Xbox audience well.

Combating the Troll Tweeter

Recently, someone popped up on Twitter pretending to be Xbox support. The troll gets around Twitter impersonator rules by clearly labeling itself as a parody account.

Yet the troll tweets some x-rated content and harasses the Fleet, and worse, Xbox customers. In response, the team educates the customer base as best as it can.

“We block them and when we see them talk to one of our customers, we’ll let our customers know we chose to block those folks,” Eakin said.

Proactively Preventing Live Calls

With tools like Radian6 and TweetRiver, the fleet monitors all occurrences of search terms and collects the data to demonstrate the value of the service to Microsoft. Weekly Tweetpolls collect essential customer satisfaction data.

To date, customer satisfaction rates come in significantly higher than with other channels, when you compare apples to apples on issue types. Eakin attributes that to the Twitter format of delivering live service from a person without requiring a phone call.

Notably, the Tweet Fleet helps find and troubleshoot issues before they become live calls, the most expensive mode of service.

“Given the number of calls we do prevent, we have run about net neutral from a return on investment perspective. But if you get to choose how to allocate your support dollars, figuring out your mix, for those that you can handle support on Twitter, you want to handle on Twitter,” she said.

Twitter provides a unique personal connection that Eakin believes many consumers today crave.

“Twitter is a very personalized communications form,” she adds. “The level of attention we feel we deliver and we feel like our customers get is huge.”

What do you think?  Are you using Twitter for content support?  Why or why not?  Respond in the comment box below.

This is the most common question I get from clients.  The truth is it takes time to build a new fan base from scratch.

From the day you set up a Facebook page, it does require an ongoing commitment to brand, monitor, and network with people who find interest in your product. Besides quality service, it’s important to build close-knit relationships with visitors.

How do you get people to like your Facebook page?  Here are 10 tips…

#1: Be Prepared With Quality Wall Posts and Consistent Engagement

If you want to be liked, be likeable first.  A disorganized Facebook page can turn off customers instantly. When reviewing a Facebook page, quality content and active engagements are great first impressions.

Several other factors people look for before joining a page include the brand itself, consistent posting of fresh information, and active engagement from both fans and admin.

#2: Reward Your Loyal Supporters

You may have just started your Facebook page, but your business is well-established. Encourage your loyal customers to join your Facebook page as supporters, reward them with customizable badges/tabs (to be placed on their profiles for visibility) and special deals for consistent support.

A shout-out from a happy customer is a lot more attractive than a marketing slogan, creating irresistible appeal for that ‘Like’ button.

#3: Leverage Your Existing Social Networks

If you’ve built a strong Twitter network for your business, utilize it to promote your Facebook page. Some people prefer not to overlap similar social contacts on both accounts, but why diminish your chance to be noticed? Your followers can broadcast your message on both of their social platforms by reaching out to a greater audience about your business.

A brilliant example of this is how Mari Smith rewarded her Twitter followers while attracting people to visit her fan page:

Did I mention that a few indirect promotions on your Facebook personal profile could work wonders too?

#4: Integrate Facebook Social Plugins to Your Website

It’s essential to have a main hub correlating all your social media activities. Your company’s website is the only place that gives you full control over content and brand management.

Integrate Facebook social plugins to encourage connections such as Facebook’s Likebox, Like button, and Comment stream.

As Facebook visitors increase, your page is more likely to show up on supporters’ news feeds and those of their friends, prompting people to find out more about your business page.

#5: Remind Your Fans to Like and Share

Facebook has some easy ready-made sharing buttons with which people can promote your tabs and pages to their friends.  Place a shout-out or reminder to ‘Like’ your status updates and instruct fans to click that little ‘Share’ button right next to your message so their friends will be alerted about the update.

#6: Utilize Forum Signatures and Membership Sites

If you’re an active participant in a forum or membership site, placing a signature with your fan page link is a plus. No-one will care about your information unless you stand out from the crowd.

Be an active helper in a LinkedIn Group or a frequent poster of special tips and tricks. As long as your participation in the niche community is appreciated, there’s a higher chance for other members to check you out.

Here’s an example of my signature at Chris Garrett’s Authority Blogger Forum.

#7: Take the Initiative: Request Help From Friends

It’s difficult to start a fan page with no engagement whatsoever. Why not initiate messages to your friends and buddies who are supportive of your business? Ask them to help out in some discussions, reward them with publicity or return the favor. It’s easier to ask a friend than a stranger if you’re worried about spamming people.

Make sure the question is interesting enough to get them talking. If you use your personal account and fan page strategically, you’ll discover a huge advantage of getting new friends to be your fans while they’re getting to know you better.

#8: Use Tagging and Acknowledgments

A great networking tool, status-tagging, can even drive in new connections.  Tag an author or a popular Facebook page to draw attention, but only if you have good reason to do so.

For example, selflessly promote a niche-post and how it benefits people who like your page. Be authentic, and the page admin (hopefully the fans as well) will appreciate you for it.

#9: Participate Outside Your Page

Use the Facebook Directory and Facebook Search to locate other Facebook pages in your niche and look for public discussions based on search terms related to your business.

Provide value to the popular pages; build credibility and relationships with the admin and members.  Get to know them better before asking them to look at your page. They just may reward you publicly.

#10: Collaborate With Other Page Admins for a Social Event

You can collaborate with other page admins to create a special event that may benefit both your fans and bring in new connections. I find this to be very successful.  There should be a mutual understanding and proper planning to make it work for everyone’s professional goals.

For example, Social Media Success Summit 2010 was a successful live online conference with 24 social media experts who shared how to use social media to attract quality customers and grow your business.

There are many ways you can increase your Facebook fan base.  Remember, showcase the quality of your service and why it matters to be a part of your page community.

Cut through the noise and let your message be heard. Intelligently apply Facebook Applications to enhance your Facebook page while learning from these superstars to empower your social media presence. Quality networking starts with effort and time, but the return will be worthwhile!

What have you done to be “liked”? What rewards have you used?  What have you done to increase visitors to your Facebook fan page?  Let us know in the box below.

An interesting thing happened the other day that grabbed my attention.  Three different clients emailed me with a link to a recent article.  All three wrote some version of “Check out this case study. Can you make this happen for my Facebook page too?”

The title of the article was enough to hook anyone: Facebook Case Study: From 517 to 33,000 fans in two weeks (plus media coverage).

After reading the impressive case study and looking at countless other Facebook page success stories, I instantly noticed a common thread throughout these pages.

The Formula for Facebook Page Success

There’s a true winning formula to creating a successful, thriving and engaging Facebook page.

And here’s the good news: If you apply this formula, you grow your fan base, increase conversations with your fans and capture the interest of people who want to spend money on your products and services. Who wouldn’t want that?

The strategy behind a Facebook page does not need to be complicated—but it does need to be carefully thought out in advance. When it comes to growing Facebook pages, that’s where business owners and marketers get stuck—they overcomplicate things.  Let’s dissect the formula to see how it works.

#1: Create a Compelling Vision

The Facebook page of the case study I mentioned above belongs to the California State Parks Foundation.  It’s an outstanding example of a compelling vision.

In an attempt to save 210 state parks from closing, the foundation hired Adams Hussey & Associates to help create the “Friend Get a Friend” campaign.  The campaign was created to promote awareness and discussion around the looming closures and to also encourage people to take action to save their local state parks.

This Facebook page for the California State Parks Foundation achieved amazing media expose.

After reading the case study, one of my clients, who owns a successful medical spa, pointed out (in frustration, I might add), “Yeah, but their mission is noble.  It appeals to environmentalists and loyal supporters. They have a huge advantage.”

This is WRONG thinking at its best.  When you believe in what you’re doing, you can easily cultivate the passion and excitement for your mission.  The popular retail store Target and the popular sundae spot Dairy Queen have extremely successful pages with loyal followers.

The Dairy Queen page has more than a million fans

And here’s what’s important to realize:  Their mission is not necessarily going to change the world—but the people behind the brand are passionate and committed to creating an experience and making their customers happy—and that kind of passion is contagious. (Take note—you can create the same kind of excitement with your brand too!)

Brenna Holmes of Adams Hussey & Associates manages the California State Parks Foundation’s social media campaign. She works with both for-profit and nonprofit organizations.

Holmes sees real opportunity to spread the vision and message in both spheres of businesses.  “As long as people are driven and passionate about their issue,” said Holmes, “and commit to sticking it out with daily work and a real strategy, I believe pretty much any campaign can be successful.”

When you’re starting out with your page, your vision is only as strong as the individual or team behind it.  It’s up to you to spread the word.  The good news is that once you have a solid fan base, your fans will help spread your message and virally attract new followers. It’s up to you to “sell” your vision to get others to pay attention. One great way to accomplish this is to spend time online where it counts and make sure you’re connecting with the people who are most interested in your brand.  I call this “positioning your vision.”

A word about positioning your vision

If you spend any time in the online marketing arena, you’ve heard plenty about knowing your ideal client.  This is crucial when building a Facebook campaign.  Don’t waste your time in spaces where your message could fall flat.

Segmentation and niche marketing is ideal for your page’s success and you want to be laser-focused on whom you target.  Cast a wide net and you’re likely to come up short in the end.

(One great way to attract your ideal client is with Facebook ads.  For more info on what these ads could do for your business, check out Mari Smith’s recent Facebook article here.

#2: Smart Branding

Some of the most successful pages look like mini-websites inside of Facebook.  Branding is key to making your page serve as a mini-hub for all your customers and prospects who are likely spending a lot of their time on the social networking site already.

Meeting your customers where they are in the moment is crucial when searching for a captive audience in the social media space.

Smart branding allows you to create a bridge from Facebook to your websites—but the key is not to push your potential clients outside of Facebook before they are ready.

The more clicks you require your prospect to make, the less likely you’ll get them to where you want them to go.  Therefore, by using the Static FBML Facebook app, you can create many of the same features you have on your website.

Using this app, you can create a portal to sell your products and services, sign people up for your newsletter, and highlight your expertise directly from your Facebook page.

To better understand this, let’s look at a great example of a company that has mastered the concept of the “mini-hub” inside Facebook.  Chick-fil-A, a popular fast-food chain in the U.S., has a thriving page with over 1.5 million fans.

Not only do they offer coupons regularly, they also display their menu and their “coming soon” specials inside their page.  Here are a few screen shots of their well-branded mini-hub:

This screenshot shows the tab that new viewers see when they first visit the page. Chick-fil-A does a great job of enticing new customers by displaying attractive photos of the items on their menu.

In this screenshot, Chick-fil-A puts their menu directly on their page. By doing this, all of their fans currently on Facebook do not need to go any further to check out the menu options. Chick-fil-A makes it easy by putting everything their customers’ need right on the page.

Another great example of a well-branded page is the National Hockey League page.  With almost a half a million fans, this page is thriving. One post can generate over 1,000 comments.  Check out the welcome tab—it’s branding at its best.  Potential fans landing on this tab are sure to click the “like” button to be a part of this community.

In this image, check out how NHL displays the many different opportunities for their fans. This welcome tab does a great job of grabbing attention and creating excitement for the sport.

#3: Strategic Inbound Marketing

Business owners often overlook this piece of the formula.  It’s a no-brainer that we need to use marketing tactics to drive traffic to our websites, but when it comes to Facebook pages, many overlook the importance of using similar strategies to help grow their page. The “build it and they will come” concept is definitely not meant for Facebook pages!

Inbound marketing strategies, including the use of keywords, opt-in opportunities, video, blogging, and cross-promoting on your other social networks are all key factors to “getting found” by the people most interested in your products and services.

One great example of a Facebook page that also utilizes inbound marketing strategies is the Social Media Examiner page.

I was fortunate to work with the founder, Mike Stelzner, to create the page a few months ago.  And since then I’ve been blown away by the momentum of the page (it already has over 8,000 fans).

I recently asked Mike the secret to his page’s success. “We started with a plan from day one,” he said. “Part of that plan was to create a button on our site’s sidebar that simply said, ‘Join us on Facebook.’

“Another thing we did was to make sure our daily email blasts to our readers encouraged them to join our fan page; thus every day more than 26,000 readers are reminded about our fan page.

“Our fan base grew very quickly and has garnered about 100 new fans each day.”

The most important thing to remember is that inbound marketing is powered by content.

Just as you would on your website and blog, you must continually publish great content on your Facebook page.  How do you do this?  One way is to pull your blog posts onto your page via the “Networked Blog” app on Facebook.  Another way is to post a link directly to your wall and add some commentary about your recent blog posts to encourage your fans to comment.

Every day when we post a new article on the Social Media Examiner website, we also post it on our Facebook page.  When we do so, we often encourage comments directly to our page by asking a question when we post.

Here’s an example:

In this example, notice how we encourage comments on our wall by asking a question (about fans!) when we post a link to a new article.

#4: Real-Time Engagement

The last piece of the formula is engagement.  In a nutshell, engagement is about taking action. A well-executed engagement strategy takes time and effort.  More than anything, engagement is really about showing up daily and taking a genuine interest in the likes, interests and opinions of your fans.

The rule for engagement is to make it about your fans and not about you. (Remember that people love to talk about themselves—so craft your posts and questions around them, and you’re sure to see some great conversations begin to surface on your page.)

One Facebook page that does an outstanding job of connecting with fans is Teavana.  With over 32,000 fans, the page attracts tea-lovers worldwide.  Their secret to engagement is making their posts about their fans.  Here’s one great example of a post that received 68 comments:

This image shows how simple it can be to get your fans talking. What fun and interesting questions can you ask your fans that will get them to post their thoughts and opinions?

Also, a great engagement tool Teavana uses is their monthly “What’s in your cup?” game where they ask their fans to post photos of what’s in their cup at that moment—this type of game encourages photo sharing which can virally increase visibility of their page.

Another example of a page that has mastered the art of engagement is the NHL page.  As mentioned before, they not only have impeccably branded their page, but they’ve also mastered the art of engagement.

The page uses video in most of their posts.  Why?  Because they know their fans will respond well to short video clips and their content is sports clips, so what better way to get their fans engaged than to show them clips of the game they love most?  (This is also a great example of knowing your fans’ wants and interests!)

The NHL page actually takes it a step further and uses their video to create polls and surveys.  One example is a short clip of a recent game where there was much debate over the call of a goal.  The caption for the video read “Goal or no goal? Watch the NHL Situation Room, make the call.”

This one post, because it added a touch of controversy, generated more than 1,000 comments.  When you see successes like this, think about your audience.  How can you use video to encourage interaction and idea-sharing?

NHL excited fanatic opinions when they asked their fans if a goal in a recent game was a fair call. Take a look at how many comments it generated!

The NHL Page also used a really cool tool called TweetMixx.  This tool allows you to tailor the content categories, tags, users and groups to your specific audience and will deliver the top-rated content as chosen by you and people who share interest in your niche.

This is a great engagement tool because it allows your audience to get instant access to the content they’re most interested in, plus it adds a real-time component.

The interactive TweetMixx application keeps the conversation going strong on the NHL page.

This formula is meant as a guide to help you with your overall social media strategy.

Closing thoughts: There’s a lot of noise on the web about the dos and don’ts of social media marketing and it tends to be overwhelming.  This formula is meant to simplify your process.  If you add a bunch of extra components to the formula, you’re less likely to see the results you want (or worse yet, you’re likely to get overwhelmed and not take action!). In short, ignore the chatter and stick to the plan.

Now it’s your turn!  Do you have a Facebook page success story? Share it below and let us know what components of the formula work best for you. Do you find any of the components of the formula challenging? Share here and you’re sure to find advice from the other members of our community.

The good news is social media has finally made it to the grand stage of “accountability.” A place where there are lots of people who want to measure it. The bad news is there isn’t a single clear-cut answer.

However, with a few simple steps, you can build a measurement strategy that accomplishes your goals.

Defining Terms

To start, let’s agree that brand awareness is a measure of how recognizable your brand is to your target audience. For those looking to get ahead of the curve on social media measurement, the first step is to align your social media metrics with metrics your company is already comfortable with.

Also, let’s agree that the measurements for social media aren’t all that different from how you’ve been measuring traditional media. To put brand awareness measurement into the context of the sales funnel, the key areas to evaluate fall into three categories:  social media exposure, influence and engagement.

With that understanding, let’s look at how you can level the playing field between your traditional media metrics and your social media metrics.

#1:  Measuring Social Media Exposure

How many people could you have reached with your message?

In social media, this measurement is about as reliable as a print magazine’s circulation, but knowing your potential audience does have value because it represents your potential sales lead pool.

Unfortunately, as of the writing of this post, some of these metrics have to be accounted for manually, so you’ll have to balance the level of effort to track the metrics versus the value you’ll receive from them to determine their importance to your overall strategy.

A good example of where there can be unreliability in social measurement is when isolating unique users for each of your metrics. You want to avoid counting the same person twice in the list below, but realistically it’s difficult to do.

These measurements highlight the number of people you’ve attracted to your brand through social media. To mitigate the potential for duplication of users, track growth rate as a percentage of the aggregate totals. This is where you will find the real diamonds.

• Twitter: Look at your number of followers and the number of followers for those who retweeted your message to determine the monthly potential reach. You should track these separately and then compare the month-over-month growth rate of each of these metrics so you can determine where you’re seeing the most growth. A great free tool to use for Twitter measurement is TweetReach.
• Facebook: Track the total number of fans for your brand page. In addition, review the number of friends from those who became fans during a specified period of time or during a promotion and those who commented on or liked your posts to identify the potential monthly Facebook reach.  Facebook Insights provides value here.
• YouTube: Measure the number of views for videos tied to a promotion or specific period of time, such as monthly, and the total number of subscribers.
• Blog: Measure the number of visitors who viewed the posts tied to the promotion or a specific period of time.
• Email: Take a look at how many people are on the distribution list and how many actually received the email.

Exposure is the top of the brand awareness funnel and represents your potential sales lead pool.

#2:  Measuring Engagement

How many people actually did something with your message?

This is one of the most important measurements because it shows how many people actually cared enough about what you had to say to result in some kind of action.

Fortunately engagement is fairly easy to measure with simple tools such as Radian 6, Biz360 and TweetEffect. These metrics highlight who you want to target to retain on social media channels.

For a starting list of key performance indicators for engagement, this post by Chris Lake is a great start.

• Twitter: Quantify the number of times your links were clicked, your message was retweeted, and your hashtag was used and then look at how many people were responsible for the activity. You can also track @replies and direct messages if you can link them to campaign activity.
• Facebook: Determine the number of times your links were clicked and your messages were liked or commented on. Then break this down by how many people created this activity. You can also track wall posts and private messages if you can link them to activity that is directly tied to a specific social media campaign.
• YouTube: Assess the number of comments on your video, the number of times it was rated, the number of times it was shared and the number of new subscribers.
• Blog: Evaluate the number of comments, the number of subscribers generated and finally the number of times the posts were shared and “where” they were shared (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.). Measure how many third-party blogs you commented on and the resulting referral traffic to your site.
• Email: Calculate how many people opened, clicked and shared your email. Include where the items were shared, similar to the point above. Also, keep track of the number of new subscriptions generated.

#3: Measuring Influence

This category gets into a bit of a soft space for measurement. Influence is a subjective metric that relies on your company’s perspective for definition. Basically, you want to look at whether the engagement metrics listed above are positive, neutral or negative in sentiment. In other words, did your campaign influence positive vibes toward the brand or did it create bad mojo?

You can also use automated tools like Twitalyzer, Social Mention, Radian 6 or ScoutLabs to make it a little easier, but ALWAYS do a manual check to validate any sentiment results. Influence is generally displayed as a percentage of positive, neutral and negative sentiment, which is then applied in relation to the engagement metrics and to the metrics for reach where applicable.

A great application for influence is to look at the influence by those who engaged with your brand in the above categories. Do you have a nice mix of big players with large audiences engaging with your brand, as well as the average Joe with a modest following?

If not, your influence pendulum may be about to tip over, because it’s important that you spend time engaging with both influential users and your average user. Note: many of the automated tools that track sentiment and influence are not free. And many times, you will need a combination of tools to measure all of the different social media channels.

#4:  The Lead Generation Funnel

After you’ve measured through the influence portion of the funnel, you’re now creeping into where too many companies are starting their measurement efforts: the lead generation funnel. This is where the brand awareness portion of the funnel ends and the traditional ROI-driven action begins.

Exposure, influence and engagement represent brand awareness in the measurement funnel.

Understanding your reach, engagement and influence through these primary social channels will allow you to define your presence and impact, which can then be applied as a model to other social networks.

Now that you’ve tracked all of this information, how do you make it meaningful? Excel is a great tool to help organize your data. Build yourself a standard dashboard in Excel that highlights the key metrics that matter to the organization. Create a tab for a high-level overview of multiple campaigns, and a tab for each campaign for the time period you’re reporting on. Ultimately, you should put the information into the same format that you’ve used to report on traditional brand awareness campaigns, with social media as just another vehicle in the overall marketing mix.

If you’re looking for tools to use for tracking, this post by Mani Karthik at Daily Bloggr gives a nice view of options.

To really understand the importance of measurement, here’s a great post on social media measurement from Social Media Examiner: Is Social Media Marketing Measurable? The Big Debate.

What about you? Are you measuring?  How are you measuring?  What metrics would you add? Leave a comment below and let’s talk.