How to Estimate Your Social Media Return on Investment
Are you wondering how to determine the return on your social media activities? If so, look no further.
In my prior Social Media Examiner article about Social Media return on investment (ROI), I discussed the financial definition of social media ROI.
This article goes a step deeper by working through a few examples of estimating the social media ROI.
Why Estimate a Return?
Before we go any further, let’s review why we need the social media return and ROI again.
You use the return and the ROI to compare the efficiency of marketing campaigns; for an in-house team, you can use these numbers to negotiate budgets with your management; for agencies, you can use estimated numbers to land prospective clients and to retain current clients. The numbers are used in conjunction with social and web metrics to analyze and optimize current and future campaigns. 
7 Tips for Selling Executives on Social Media
Are you a marketer who’s trying to juggle social media with the rest of your team’s activities? Do you think social media should be at the top of your priorities, but you’re having a hard time proving it?
Don’t worry. You aren’t alone.
I fought this battle also, and in the end I realized that I needed to drop terms like followers, retweets and status updates from my discussions in executive meetings. It was a tough conclusion, but I realized those metrics didn’t tell executives what they wanted to know.
This article will share 7 tips for getting executive buy-in for social media.
Is Your Business Ready for the Now Revolution?
I recently interviewed Jay Baer, co-author of the brand-new book The Now Revolution and founder of the popular blog ConvinceandConvert.com.
In this interview, we talk about social media marketing, Jay’s experience writing the book and about where this crazy, fast-moving industry is headed.
Mike: Jay, what’s the single most important thing that marketers or business owners need to know to be successful right now?
Jay: It’s a terrific question. One of the things that we talked about a lot in the book is the fact that you have to act quickly as an organization. The example that we use to kick off the book is if you’re at a hotel and you’re having a bad hotel experience—it’s dirty or gross or whatever—historically, you might go down to the front desk, or call the 1-800 number or write a letter.
6 Social Media Success Metrics You Need to Track
People who say social media isn’t measurable aren’t looking very hard.
The truth is there are dozens of viable metrics you can use to gauge the success of your social media efforts. The challenge isn’t measurability; it’s knowing which measures are meaningful.
Here are the 6 undervalued social media success metrics you should be tracking:
#1: Daily Story Feedback
Instead of just counting the number of Facebook “likes” you accrue, which signifies nothing more than digital bumper-stickering, track how often your fans click “like” and comment on the status updates you post.
8 Social Media Metrics You Should Be Measuring
Do you think social media measurement is only about return on investment (ROI)?
Are you struggling to find measurements that are meaningful to your organization? Do you feel like you’re searching for a needle in a haystack of metrics?
Here are 8 useful metrics that you may not be measuring, but should be.
#1: Conversion Rates
Everyone wants to measure the volume of leads generated to get to the bottom-line ROI of social media efforts. But don’t forget about the value of the conversion rate! While the volume may not be there yet, the propensity to convert may be staring you right in the face.
How to Measure Social Media’s Impact on Customer Retention
Do you know if social media is helping you retain your existing customers? In this article I’ll discuss 7 key metrics to measure social media’s impact on keeping customers.
The cost-effectiveness of social media has vaulted it to the top of the list of tools used to improve customer retention. But how do you measure whether social media is affecting your ability to keep customers?
To examine this, let’s look at a case study of a company that has excelled at connecting with customers in social media spaces.
Are You Looking to Track Social Media Metrics?
When Intuit wanted to analyze market sentiment about TurboTax, they used Radian6 to collect approximately 40,000 blog posts about Intuit and its competitors between January 1st and April 15th of 2008.
“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.
7 Steps For a Successful Social Media Strategy
According to the 2010 Social Media Marketing Report , 67% of marketers plan to increase their use of social media channels including blogs, Twitter, and Facebook.
As more companies integrate social media into their marketing and communications plans, emphasis needs to be on creating a social media strategy. Without a strategy, you’ll undoubtedly be sucked into a social media time sink.
So how exactly do you develop this strategy?
It’s easy. Here’s a practical approach to developing a social media strategy for your business.
4 Ways to Measure Social Media and Its Impact on Your Brand
Do you know how social media is helping your business? Want to find out how Twitter, Facebook and other sites are impacting your brand awareness?
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.
The Future of Social Media: Being Everywhere (a Steve Rubel Interview)
In this video I interview Steve Rubel, Senior Vice President at Edelman Digital. Steve advises some of the biggest names in the world, such as Dannon, Hewlett Packard, Pepsi and Microsoft, on social media.
Watch this video to pick up some of the nuggets of social media advice he gives his clients. One valuable tip Steve gives is about “shared mutual gain” and what it means. Steve also explains why he quit blogging.
