Are you trying to figure out how social media is impacting your bottom line? Are you already measuring but not seeing the results you had hoped for?

One of the reasons measuring the return on investment (ROI) of social media has sparked so many discussions is because it’s not easy. The main barrier to end-to-end measurement is the lack of a true social customer relationship management (CRM) solution.

While Salesforce and others are working hard to bring a full solution to market, many marketers are simply cobbling together data they receive from web tracking solutions and social monitoring solutions.

Unfortunately, this will only give you pieces of the story. Those with proprietary CRM systems will have the toughest hurdle, which is a challenge I have personally faced.  In the short-term, the only hope is to integrate tracking cookies on your site and work with a development team to integrate with your CRM.

However, you can build an effective measurement strategy if you take a holistic view to social media lead generation. Here are four tips to make sure you are measuring the full impact of social media on your bottom line.

#1: Define Your Inputs for Lead Generation

In order for any type of measurement strategy to be effective, it’s critical to determine which key factors should be included. From a lead generation standpoint, there are two key lead generation inputs.

• Indirect and Direct Response Conversion Points—These may be different based on your business model, but generally speaking, you would want to measure those who filled out your lead forms. These would then be given a lead score that defines the prospects’ interest level. Then you would break these scores into meaningful ranges and measure your social prospects within each range. Specifically look for the number of leads and the growth rate in each range.

• New Business Campaign History—This is likely one of the most undercounted areas where social media plays a large role. Look at all of your new business for the month against the campaign history that has been reported in your cookies. How many times was social media an “assist” at any point in the campaign history leading up to the sale? How many times was social media the direct “conversion point” for the sale? How many times was social media the “originating lead source” for the prospect? Are these numbers growing at a healthy rate? If not, where do you need to adjust your strategy? Define a dollar value for different points in your lead cycle, define the costs for those efforts including the staff time required to execute and see where social media is showing the most impact for ROI.

Add the social media "assist" to your ROI reporting.

#2: Use Lead Scoring to Place Leads Into the Proper Place in the Sales Funnel

When marketers talk about measuring the ROI of social media, many consider it a very cut-and-dried discussion. Either social media is delivering profit to the company or it isn’t.

While I agree with the premise, I also recommend that you take a step back before you make decisions based solely on numbers.

We discussed using lead scoring to define where customers are in the buying cycle. While there are likely very lengthy formulas for lead scoring that companies are using, I’ve found the best approach is the K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid) philosophy. Break your leads into three distinct pools of prospects. Define timeframes for conversion based on your business and the standard buying cycle.

• Slow—These prospects are likely in the pre-research/awareness phase. They find what you say interesting and they want to follow it, but they aren’t looking for a solution right now. You want to stay top of mind with these prospects for when they are ready to buy, but you don’t want to invest a lot of time from your sales force. This is a great opportunity to send these leads your relevant FREE content at some regular interval that isn’t annoying, but enough that you don’t fall off the radar.

• Medium—These prospects are in the research/consideration phase. They are looking at products to be considered as a solution. You want to find the tipping point for these prospects to move them into the next stage in the funnel. It is likely that most of your marketing dollars get spent converting these prospects.

• Fast—These prospects are in the decision-making/buy phase. They want a solution and they have a clear time frame for when they need it. It is likely that most of your sales team spends their time actively working these prospects. Generally, marketing takes a back seat on special marketing offers in order to not “delay” the sale.

Integrating lead scoring into your sales funnel.

This gives you a framework for what you want to measure along the way. For it to be a true measure of ROI, you have to compare the cost of social media efforts against the revenue brought in for each point in the campaign history and the cost associated with converting each range of lead scores.

#3: Understand Where Social Media Efforts End and Sales Efforts Begin

Why are these different points in the buying cycle important to social media measurement? Because social media is just another lead generator. Once the lead comes in, your normal sales process takes over. That process may include marketing efforts and sales team efforts.

However, if you are reaching prospects at the pre-research/awareness phase with social media and you do not have marketing programs or sales processes to support it, you may cut bait on the only marketing effort that is touching this group. A hard-sell approach with slow prospects risks losing their business forever. Before you write off social media as not delivering the ROI you anticipated, make sure to review your sales and marketing efforts.

If you don’t have an awareness program as part of your strategy, it could be the reason you aren’t converting these leads. Evaluate social media for the value it really brings to the table and make sure you don’t overlook some of the areas where social media is already delivering ROI to your company.

#4: Ask Yourself Where You Need to Optimize Your Social Media Lead Generation Efforts

Here are some key questions to ask when evaluating your social media efforts:

• Is there a bottleneck in your lead funnel? Review where leads are getting caught and reevaluate your approach.
• Are you able to convert leads at the same or lower costs than other channels with social media?
• Do you need to stop any activities that are causing leads to fall out of the sales funnel?
• Are you reaching people at points in the buying cycle when other channels can’t?
• Are you placing more people into the sales funnel at a lower cost? At what rate is it growing?
• Have you aligned your sales process with leads that aren’t ready to buy today?

This post is just a starting point for discussions around ROI measurement. There are many variables specific to each company that make it difficult for generalizations to provide a solution.

Related Posts:

• 4 Ways to Measure Social Media and its Impact on Your Brand
• Is Social Media Marketing Measurable? The Big Debate
• How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance

What are your thoughts? How are you measuring? Are you measuring the social “assist” in your organization? Do you have marketing messaging, marketing campaigns and sales processes that cater to the research/awareness phase?

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.

The Prerequisite

Do you work for a large company? Before you develop your strategy, make sure your upper-management team believes in social media and that the first goal is not to sell, sell, sell.  In other words, if your business is jumping into social media because “everyone else is doing it” or because you want to sell product rather than to build relationships, please step away from social media.  Social media is a long-term commitment and not a marketing gimmick.

If you’re having a tough time convincing your team that social media needs to be integrated into your marketing plan, then counter any concerns with these responses to common social media objections.

It’s important for the organization to understand that testing and experimentation are keys to success.  This comes naturally to an organization whose culture embraces being proactive and open.  The reason why all businesses need to have a social media strategy is because it prevents any misunderstandings and emphasizes why social media is relevant to your business’ overall goals.

Now let's develop your social media business strategy, shall we?

Here are seven key points to consider…

#1: Determine Your Goals and Objectives

Determine who owns social media.  Whether it’s marketing, PR, or communications is irrelevant.  In a perfect social media world for businesses, social media instills a collaborative approach and breaks down silos.

What’s important is to understand your social media goals and objectives and how they tie into your overall company goals.

Keep it Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic/Relevant, and Timely (aka be SMART!).

#2: Research, Research, and Research Some More

Rather than jumping into the social media pool with both feet, do the equivalent of the “splash-water-on-self” maneuver so you know what to expect.  Step two of creating an effective social media strategy is research.

• Develop a list of social media sites where you can potentially engage with people.  The list will most likely start off with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a few select blogs and forums.
• Check out each of the social media sites on your list and do additional research to determine relevancy by searching for your brand name, your competitors, and your target keywords.  Listen to what’s out there, identify, and understand your target audience.

#3: Create a Digital Rolodex of Contacts and Content

When social media is done correctly, relationships will build naturally.  Begin making connections by following the conversation.  You can do this by subscribing to blogs in your industry and by making a list of influencers who are relevant to your business.

This becomes handy when it’s time to provide content on your social networks.  Read Emily Proctor’s article in which she provides some excellent pointers on a social media content strategy.

#4: Join the Conversation to Develop Relationships

Now it’s time to start making use of all the research you’ve done.  You can start joining the conversation by posting comments on blogs and forums, answering questions on Yahoo! and LinkedIn, joining groups related to your industry and joining Twitter chats.

Begin developing relationships by following and friending influencers and those in your industry.  Don’t just look for people with thousands of followers; you’ll be surprised by the value that someone with only a couple of hundred followers provides.  Here’s an article on how to network on Twitter.

#5: Strengthen Relationships

It’s easy to hide behind your avatar or profile picture, but face-to-face is incredibly powerful.  I think more people are now realizing how underrated the in-person interaction really is because of how far social media has come, allowing so many people to “hide.”

Attend offline events related to your industry—not only to strengthen your knowledge base but also to network and strengthen relationships with those you might have conversed with via social media but never met in person.  A popular offline event is known as a tweetup.

#6: Measure Results

You have goals and objectives, right?  That means you should be able to measure  your success.

Remember, what you measure will tie into the goals and objectives of your social media strategy.

Let’s take the four commonly used objectives:

• Improve brand presence across social channels—The measurement goal here is an increase in the number of followers on Twitter, number of fans on Facebook, number of comments, number of times your brand is mentioned in blogs and forums and so on.
• Increase positive sentiment about your brand—The goal here is to convert the number of positive mentions while taking note of negative mentions.  Has the ratio of positive to negative comments improved?  With the good comes the bad in social media. Get used to it!
• Develop relationships for future partnership opportunities—This goal is to keep track of those with whom you’ve connected.  For example, if you met a potential speaker for your webinar, include that person into your digital Rolodex.  If a vendor contacts you through your blog, capture that lead and take note.
• Increase traffic to your website—Keep track of visitors to your website who come from each of your social media sites.  If you’re promoting an event using social media, consider using a unique code to track the campaign.

Measuring social media is a never-ending debate.  What metrics do you use to measure social media?  What objective are you measuring those metrics for?

When it comes to measuring social media, it takes a multitude of metrics as well as trending reports to get a sense of what to improve.

#7: Analyze, Adapt, and Improve

Your social media strategy doesn’t end with measurement; it goes beyond that.  You need to analyze your social media campaigns, adapt any new findings into your current processes, and improve your efforts.

Testing and experimentation will perfect your social media efforts.

As you dive deeper into the never-ending pool of social media, you’ll quickly understand what works and what doesn’t.

More specifically, you’ll develop favorite tools to use, realize that there are certain days and times where it doesn’t pay to be active in social media, and come to the conclusion that you still have lots to learn.  It’s a wonderful new world and I hope many of you are as thrilled to be part of it as I am.

Conclusion

Social media strategies will vary for each business and for each industry.  However, one thing is clear: social media needs to have “all hands on deck” in order to be successfully integrated into your company’s goals and objectives.

In general, I view social media as a strategy, not a tactic. I consider the social media platforms like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc., as tactics that tie into the social media strategy.  In other words, outline your social media strategy and support your strategy with tactics.  Without a carefully thought-out plan, you’ll eventually be overwhelmed with social media and even worse, get burnt out by it.  Use this guide as a stepping-stone to your social media success.  Cheers!

What are your thoughts about strategy versus tactics? Do you have any tips from your own experience developing a social media plan?  Please share your thoughts in the comments box below.

Image sources:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/intersectionconsulting/4044928121/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/3290848259/in/photostream/

In this video I interview Greg Piche, Social Media Architect for Clorox. Greg shares insights into how the company’s new social media site Clorox Connects helps Clorox connect with partners and consumers to generate new ideas.

You’ll also hear how the 100-plus year old Clorox rolled out its social media community.

Be sure to read the other takeaways below.

In this video you’ll find out how Clorox:

• Drives social media engagement with a point system
  
• Offers a reward system through visibility on their social media site
• Uses social media to come up with ideas for new products
• Uses their Facebook business page
• Identifies people to partner with

Clorox has not been active in social media for very long and faced a certain number of challenges to get their social media strategy in place.  Greg’s advice is to start small, start low key, pilot the program, get a little funding, show there’s some value and then roll it out enterprise wide.

And his biggest lesson is:  it’s important to recognize the mind share battle to try to get people to come in.

How does the story of Clorox Connects inspire you for your business?  Please leave your comments below.

Could “ethical” bribery be setting your business up for failure?

If your company’s social media interactions revolve around advance announcements of sales, special offers and insider-only promo codes – to the point where receiving these things is the primary motivation for your fans and followers – then you’re essentially bribing customers to stay.

In this case, social media merely provides a pleasant, whitewashed cover for the bribery.

Thus, the very activities you’re hoping will improve your relationship with customers might well be actually hurting your reputation with them, making those customers less likely to pay your full price without balking.

This article will reveal four ways to build customer loyalty without bribery.

The Slippery Slope

How did your efforts get so off-track?

The downward slide started when you confused customer retention tactics with building true customer loyalty.

Here’s Harvard’s resident expert on service excellence, Francis Frei, explaining the difference between the two:

Francis Frei

“When companies pay customers to try out their products and services, it’s part of a customer acquisition program.  When companies pay customers to remain customers, it’s part of a customer retention program.

When companies invest in activities that increase customers’ willingness to pay, they have a customer loyalty program.  When a loyalty program works, it increases the chance that your customers will choose you over a lower-priced competitor.”

In other words:

• Retention programs bribe customers with frequent-flyer miles and “buy 10 get 1 free” cards.  They add economic incentives for current customers to return for their next purchase.  This is hardly a bad thing, but when done too often, it habituates customers to incentives, which promotes economic considerations over brand preference.
• Loyalty programs increase brand participation among high-value customers to forge bonds that trump economic decisions.  This can mean getting their input on strategic decisions, providing insider-only access to certain products and privileges, and more.  After customers have helped design the next-generation widget, they’re emotionally invested in buying and using it.  Even more so if, as a privileged insider, they’re provided with early access to those co-created products, or even exclusive access to special products as a sign of recognition for their efforts and input.

So what does this have to do with social media?

With social media, customers wish to interact with each other at least as much as they do with the business.  So to create a real customer loyalty program – and the premium price differential that goes with it – you have to create a customer community.

What’s that you say?  You already have a community?

What you likely have are thousands of single customers who have given minimal consent and “opt in” to receive communication from you. That’s not a community.  Heck, that style of one-way communication isn’t even a relationship.

Fortunately (and as you might expect), an appropriate social media strategy can transform your email list into an actual community.

Here are the 4 key elements to real communities along with the primary ways social media can foster each of them:

#1: Repeated Interaction

If I go months without seeing or talking or cross-posting or interacting with your company in some way, well, you’re probably a pretty peripheral part of my life.  The same goes for your customers.

But a sincere email traded back and forth once or twice a week for a couple of weeks in a row changes all that.  You’ve gained top-of-mind awareness as a conversational partner.  Your company has gone from an “it” to a “person” (or a “thou” for you Buber fans out there).  You could rightfully consider me part of your community.

And yet email is an extremely clumsy and intrusive platform for this kind of exchange.  Facebook, Twitter, an online forum, a Wiki or even blog comments all represent far superior methods of fostering this kind of day-to-day interaction.

But take note: what you’re looking for is back-and-forth between members, and between your company’s representatives and members.  One-off comments and one-way communication won’t cut it.  For a dramatic illustration of the difference, just compare Copyblogger’s comment section to your own blog’s comments.

#2: Interaction Involving Built-up Meaning

If your forum members or blog commenters or Twitter followers don’t have inside jokes, community-specific allusions, and their own slang, you probably don’t have a real community. It’s a harsh standard, but it’s the truth.

Unfortunately, you can’t create these things for your community.  You can only create an environment that will foster their creation. And the best way to do that is through engaging in projects that matter, which leads us to principle #3…

#3: Actual Consequences of Community Interactions

Something has to be at stake.  For communication to move past chit-chat, social grooming, and opinionated bloviating, there has to be a task or a mission or a conflict.

When people work toward a shared goal – when tomorrow’s discussion builds on today’s and so on – then decisions matter. Prior conversations matter.  And that’s when allusions, references, inside jokes, and slang build up as a natural result.

To continue with the Copyblogger theme, the whole “third tribe” meme that started off with a simple blog post and evolved into a separate community and learning site is a perfect example of this.  Third Tribers know exactly what is meant by that term, and by allusions to James Chartrand’s Underwear.

So to achieve Real Community Elements 2 & 3, you need to come up with a galvanizing goal – a project that people want to be a part of and would be willing to donate their time, efforts, and skills to.  Provide the platform(s) for interaction and the galvanizing goal and you’re off to the races.

Seth Godin routinely does this by providing an impetus and platform for meet-ups,  collaborative projects and ways for his fans to help him support his book launches.

#4: Separation of Outsiders from Insiders

Back during the initial flap following the iPhone’s barely-two-months-from-launch price drop, Seth Godin suggested that Apple offer early adopters the following considerations:

“Free exclusive ringtones, commissioned from Bob Dylan and U2, only available to the people who already had a phone. (This is my favorite because it announces to your friends – every time the phone rings – that you got in early).”

“Free pass to get to the head of the line next time a new hot product comes out.”

“Ability to buy a specially colored iPod or an iPod with limited-edition music that no-one else can buy.”

Rather than dealing with price drops by providing discounts or store credit, Apple could have provided increased recognition and therefore increased loyalty and willingness to pay a premium to maintain that loyalty and recognition.

Yet despite being one of the clearest paths to high profit margins, most companies fail to do these kinds of things at all, let alone do them through the very platforms and technologies most suited to them.  Instead they misuse social media and abuse their brand equity through ill-advised retention strategies.

What Loyalty Programs Does Your Organization Have?

How have you transformed your company’s email list or “group” into a real community?  What galvanizing goals have you used to inspire community involvement and crowdsourcing?  What special recognition do you give to your brand insiders?

Let us know your thoughts and ideas in the box below.

Are your social media marketing campaigns bringing in sales? If you answered “yes,” you’re part of a very small group found a recent study.

Although many marketers see the value and potential of social media marketing, most have yet to translate that into sales, found a new report by R2integrated.

According to the study, 65% of respondents said that their companies have not increased revenue or profited using social media. When asked about their biggest impediment, 36% of the respondents cited “not enough data or analytics to develop ROI” as their #1 challenge.

A few key finding determined what set the winners apart from the losers.

What Did Successful Businesses Do Differently?

R2integrated CEO Matt Goddard says, “The data we’ve compiled suggests that marketers clearly recognize the need for, and see the potential of, social media, but are still trying to develop models that increase real engagement which then leads to profitability—if that’s a goal for implementing a social strategy.

Despite the presence and popularity of social media, many companies remain relatively unfamiliar with its practices, pundits, and principles.”

This chart shows the overall breakout of the implementation challenges the respondents listed

The overall study took a close look at the differences between the marketers who had a solid social media strategy in place versus those without one.

One major finding was that those who responded that their company had profited or increased revenues using social media were almost twice as likely to have a formal social media strategy.

In addition, they were approximately twice as likely to have a dedicated headcount for managing social media.  The chart below shows how those with a strategy are equipped with a team to handle the campaigns.

These stats bring to mind the “chicken or the egg” question. It would be extremely beneficial to know if these organizations put together a strategy and then filled their team to support it or if they put together a team to create the strategy. This data would be very useful to those companies who are still debating how to tackle their social media needs.

This chart shows two groups--those with a social media those without a strategy and if they do or do not have a social media manager.

The data above would seem to be common sense—if you put together a plan and you strategically carry out that plan (educate yourself and do the hard work), you’re likely to see solid results. If this is obvious, however, then why aren’t more marketers creating social media strategies with managers accountable for seeing them through?

The good news is that we just might be seeing a shift. Even though 50% of marketers reported not having a social media strategy, 57% actually do have someone dedicated to managing their social media.  Therefore, we could very well start seeing more businesses outlining their campaigns and putting a strategy together for their social media endeavors.

Another interesting fact from the study was that the perception of social media differed depending on whether the marketer had a social media strategy in place.  Check out the chart below to see how the two different categories perceived social media overall.

This chart illustrates the perception of social media based on the two groups--those with a social media strategy and those without one.

Overall, 37% of respondents thought social media was “useful and helpful, but could live without it.”  A healthy chunk of marketers can live without social media? Who are these marketers? Is this the same bunch that thought the Internet in early to mid-1990s was just a fad?

When it comes to using social media, 53% of the respondents stated they were “still learning” or “behind the curve” compared to the 44% who stated they were “efficient” or “expert” in social media.

And that leads to the much-debated question, Is there such thing as a “social media expert”? Here’s the breakdown of responses:

• 40% of respondents said, “Yes, a couple.”
• 32% said, “Yes, there are lots.”
• 27% answered either “No, not really” or “Hard to tell.”

Now it’s your turn.  Do these stats surprise you at all?  Do you see parallels in your own social media experiences?  And as for the “social media expert” debate, where do you stand? Do they really exist this early in social media’s adoption? Tell us your thoughts below!

An Illinois senator who was virtually unknown in 2004 defeated Hillary Clinton in 2008 to win the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination.

And he used social media to do it.

His YouTube videos got 110 million views, estimated to be 14.5 million hours of viewing. Mass media advertising to reach that many viewers would have cost $47 million.

A famous rapper made a promotional video that gave him even more free publicity.

At the time of the election, he had five million fans on Facebook — over four million more than his opponent. On MySpace, the numbers were approximately 800,000 and 200,000, respectively. On Twitter, he had over 100,000 followers and his opponent had about 5,000.

And he rode that social media train all the way to the White House.

“If not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be president or even the democratic nominee,” said Arianna Huffington.

Specifically, if not for social media, Barack Obama would not have become the 44th president of the United States.

And that is how social media is changing the world as we know it.

Social Media Is Changing the World

Erik Qualman wrote a book on this topic called Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business. Its tagline is “It’s a people-driven economy, stupid!”

And he says that’s a good thing. He believes social media will save billions of hours of productivity, make companies more accountable and efficient, and make products and services better.

It could even make your own life more fulfilling and productive.

Here’s an example:

Sally is in a supermarket checkout line on the Fourth of July weekend. She thinks it will take 10 minutes to reach the cashier. But instead of wasting that time, she uses her mobile phone to check her social media updates:

• She posts a message that the store is out of an ingredient she needs.
• Within minutes, a friend recommends an alternative.
• She learns that her daughter just aced an exam.
• Another friend announces she’s pregnant.
• She notices a Starbucks gift card at the checkout stand and buys it for her daughter.

“This is a simple example of why social media isn’t just for teenagers with too much idle time on their hands,” Qualman says.

It’s Not Just for Kids Anymore

It’s also for the new father who wants to find a good child safety seat. Instead of searching the Internet, he searches his social media sites. Within minutes, he sees that 14 of his friends bought the same child safety seat and they all recommend it highly.

And it’s for the woman planning a trip to South America. Instead of scrolling through 400 reviews by people she doesn’t know on a travel review site, she checks her social media sites. She sees that two of her friends went to Chile and rave about it. It’s within her budget, so she makes a reservation.

“One of the key maxims of this book is that wasting time on Facebook and social media actually makes you more productive,” says Qualman.

That’s why he believes social media will save billions of hours of collective personal productivity. “Social media eliminates millions of people performing the same tasks over and over. This recaptures billions of hours that can be redistributed toward the betterment of society.”

He claims online voting alone would save $6.7 billion in lost productivity during a presidential election because people won’t have to travel back and forth to the polling place.

And companies that monitor social media sites could quickly find out about problems that can easily be fixed. They can ask their followers to recommend product enhancements and even new products.

Who needs expensive focus groups and questionnaires when you have tens of thousands of Twitter followers? “The days of advertising executives sitting behind two-way mirrors munching on stale chips and M&Ms will become a distant memory,” says Qualman.

Socialnomics in Action

Qualman’s book has dozens of examples of Socialnomics in action:

• Two football podcasters saved money by letting their fans do much of the work.
• A comedy skit on Hulu.com drew more viewers than the same skit on TV.
• A human-lion encounter filmed in 1969 went viral on YouTube 40 years later.
• Barack Obama’s “micropayments” from supporters raised almost $700 million.

And many more.

Read about the 83-year-old man and the young mother of three who both say using social media has led to happier, more productive lives.

And the 22-year-old man hired by Apple who had never sent an email in his entire life. He preferred IM, texting, calling using his cell phone and communicating on Facebook.

In fact, as of 2013, Boston College will no longer give incoming freshman an email account.

Qualman doesn’t even think much of the Internet. “Search engine results and the traditional Internet advertising model are antiquated. Social media will push both of these to revolutionize, otherwise they will see a dramatic decrease in market share.”

Yes, you read that right. Erik Qualman thinks Internet advertising is “antiquated.” Internet advertising is the same old interruptive advertising applied to a new medium.

But spam filters and popup blockers do the same thing for Internet advertising as TiVo, mute buttons, and digital video recorders do for TV commercials. Consumers have made it crystal-clear that they do not like traditional interruptive advertising. Will advertisers ever listen?

And if Internet advertising is antiquated, traditional mass media advertising may soon be prehistoric. Qualman says the famous “Dancing Matt” YouTube videos have been watched by more than 33 million people as of April 2009. They were even shown on one of the large video screens in Times Square!

“The best part is the video is still being viewed by millions, which is completely different from a one and done television commercial.”

So once again, Social Media Examiner asks: Are you still sitting on the fence when it comes to social media?

If so, download and read your FREE copy of 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses. “If you’re still unsure about social media marketing,” report author and Social Media Examiner founder Mike Stelzner says, “I hope that these findings will help push you over the edge.”

Or maybe just push you off the fence. You may not be ready to jump off a cliff just yet.

We’ll let Erik Qualman have the last word: “Companies can elect to do business as usual at their own peril. We are at the start of a newer and brighter world for consumers and businesses; this is the world of Socialnomics.”

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

Have any of you read Socialnomics? If so, what do you think? Feel free to comment below.

Nobody can pump up a new product launch quite like Apple. Take a semi-rabid fan base, a celebrity CEO and products that just sparkle, and you have all the makings of something big.

In its first month alone, the iPad had already racked up a million units sold. There’s so much online chatter about it, as of this writing a Google search on the name alone generates 107 million search results. The hype and the sales are soaring.

But what does this mean for social media and the way people use the Internet? Are there just a million new Apple toy owners out there or is this the beginning of a broader, more meaningful shift?

In short, this is a shift, or at least the early indicators of a shift.

Here’s what appears to be happening: the iPad has introduced a new category of media consumption. Whether it’s browsing a Facebook news feed, watching YouTube videos, checking in on TweetDeck, or reading a blog, the iPad is a content consumer’s dream device, and that’s a shift away from what we were using before.

A New Posture for Using the Internet

If you think about the way people have been engaging social media to this point, it’s been either on a computer or a mobile device. You were either leaning forward toward your laptop or desktop computer or hunching over a small mobile device. The iPad introduces another posture: leaning back. This may seem insignificant, but it’s not.

Because online engagement is increasingly integrated into everyday life, the iPad provides a more comfortable, engaging opportunity to do all of the things you want to do anyway. Why would I hunch over an iPhone to view a YouTube video when I can lean back and watch it on a device four times the size? Why would I lean forward to read a long blog post (like this one, for instance) when I could kick back and enjoy it with my feet in the air and a beverage in my hand?

If connectivity to the Internet is equal, the iPad provides a superior experience for consuming media and connecting with friends than a laptop or a mobile device. It’s the very reason people sheepishly admit, “I gotta get one of these” once they try an iPad for the first time. It’s a new experience that they didn’t know they wanted and now they want it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-YAQ1wfNqc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9NP-AeKX40

5 Ways to Incorporate the iPad Into Your Strategy

If we’re seeing the early signs of a new way for people to engage the Internet and consume media, how do we as marketers take advantage of it? Here are five ways to incorporate the iPad into your social media strategy:

#1: Start Fresh With Apps

Although the iPad plays all iPhone apps, don’t assume that just because you developed an iPhone app that iPad users will like it. The iPad is an entirely different experience and you’re missing a chance that comes with a bigger touch surface if you don’t rethink your app strategy when you move to the iPad.  Beyond the sheer surface space difference also consider that the iPhone serves a different function than an iPad and renders some things unnecessary.

For instance, the Facebook app for the iPhone works perfectly on the iPad but you don’t really need it because you can just use the web browser in Facebook for a much richer experience. Developing iPad apps is going to require a good understanding of how people use the iPad. Remember this is “lean back” technology, not “hunch over” technology, so make sure there’s an app for that.

#2: Live in the Background

Later this year Apple will release an upgrade to the iPhone and iPad operating system that will allow multitasking. This means certain apps can keep running in the background while the user continues whatever he or she was doing already. What can your business create to run in the background on the iPad so you’re retaining users’ attention while they do something else? These background services may be sparse early on, so anyone who has something interesting when the new operating system rolls out will have an advantage.

#3: Keep Your Facebook Strategy Focused on Conversation

Facebook is a conversation tool first. If you’re not using it for that you’re probably experiencing some frustration with Facebook. If mobile device usage is any indication , people who use the iPad will be on Facebook more than the average Internet user. Focus on conversation that has value and you’ll win with Facebook both on the iPad and everywhere else.

#4: Don’t Be Scared of Text

Contrary to some commentators, blogs are not dead, especially with the iPad. One of the features of reading blogs or websites on the iPad is that you can zoom in on a section of text with a simple pinch of the fingers. That means even the oldest of eyes will be able to read text online because they can blow the words up as large as necessary. Reading on a large screen just became more portable and personalized. Now you just have to put something out there worth reading.

#5: Double Down on Video

Watching video on the iPad is wonderful. Some of the highest praise for the iPad is coming from people using it to watch video. Online video sites like YouTube and Vimeo are already converting videos to play on the iPad. By putting good video on either of those sites, you’ll be ensuring that your video will be available to this new video consumer base.

The iPad isn’t the only device in this new segment of “lean back” media consumption. Several other companies will roll out similar devices that will only broaden this new category. If your content and conversations aren’t worth leaning back to enjoy, you can count on an entirely new segment of people ignoring you altogether. If, however, you can earn attention by providing valuable content and conversation, there’s a new audience waiting for you.

What’s your experience with the iPad? Do you find you’re consuming more media on it than before? If you don’t have an iPad or other tablet computer, are you planning to get one? Why or why not?  Let us know your thoughts below.

In this video I interview Jay Baer of Convince And Convert. Jay provides social media consulting to leading businesses.

In this video, Jay offers social media tips to help businesses succeed.

You’ll learn why Jay talks of “Noah’s ark” in social media and why Twitter and Facebook are not a social media strategy. He shares a wealth of information. Be sure to see the other takeaways below.

Some key takeaways:

• Twitter is a “tools strategy” not a “social media strategy”
• You need to “be social” and not “do social”
• Build a social media playbook with key players in your company
• Figure out what is being said about you and where
• Creating content is the future (especially video), bypassing traditional media
• Location-based social media will be hot in next 18 months
• Yelp has added checkin’s to their app for authenticity
• Facebook metrics can be better than Google Analytics
• Facebook should be part of your sales funnel
• Email can have a social component

Be sure to check out Jay’s content ladder to help you to create a strong social media content strategy. Want to hear more? Jay does 60 or 70 speaking gigs a year and may be coming near you.

Please share your thoughts and comments below.

Have you heard of Joseph Campbell?

He was the famous mythologist—author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces and many other books—who told us all to “follow your bliss” in his Power of Myth PBS specials with Bill Moyers in the late 1980s.

“That’s all well and good,” you may have thought at the time. “But I have to make a living. How do I make money by following my bliss?”

If you’ve been asking that question for the past 20 years, you’ll be happy to know that someone has finally answered it. Gary Vaynerchuk has written a book to teach us how to make money by following our bliss.

Many of you may know Vaynerchuk as the host of the video blog WineLibraryTV.com. Now he has written a book titled Crush It! Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion.

Here’s a recent episode from Gary’s WineLibrary TV.

“Crush It!” refers to Vaynerchuk’s passion: wine. His family had a liquor store and by the age of 26, he had taken the store from $2 million in revenue in 1994 to $20 million in 2001. Here’s how he did it, building his personal brand along the way:

1. He started in 1997 by creating WineLibrary.com and selling wine online.
2. The rise and popularity of YouTube convinced him to start a video blog called WineLibraryTV.com in 2006.
3. He started talking about business in 2007. How to start one, what to sell, and how to sell it.

He had come to the following conclusion based on his personal experience: the only way to make money and be successful is to monetize your passion.

Or in Joseph Campbell’s words, to make money by following your bliss.

Why is monetizing your passion the only way to make money? Because starting a successful business is long, hard work. That’s exactly why you must monetize your passion and nothing else.

“If you’re living your passion, you’re going to want to be consumed by your work. The passion and love for what you do will enable you to work the hours necessary to succeed,” Vaynerchuk said.

And why is now the time to do it?

Because social media, new advertising venues, and the Internet have made it possible for you to find other people who share your passion and might even pay you for your knowledge. If you can establish yourself as an expert, people who need your expertise will seek you out.

Let’s talk about those new advertising venues. “The difference between promoting your brand via traditional marketing and advertising media and doing it via social networking platforms is like the difference between sending a message by Pony Express and chatting on Instant Messenger,” says Vaynerchuk.

Here’s how he came to that conclusion. He spent $7,500 to advertise on a billboard, send a direct mailing, and produce a radio spot. He got 170 orders from the billboard, 300 from the direct mailing, and 240 from the radio ad.

Then he tweeted the ad for free and got 1,700 orders in 48 hours. That’s more than all three traditional ads put together!

“These social networking sites have changed the game by giving entrepreneurs a reason to ditch the sinking traditional media and advertising platforms in favor of a communication method that opens them up to markets that would have been inaccessible until just a few short years ago.”

Crush It! will give you the techniques you need to establish your expertise using social media. Vaynerchuk calls it “building your personal brand.” Here are the techniques in a nutshell:

1. Identify your passion.
2. Learn as much about it as you can.
3. Start blogging about it.
4. Find other blogs about it and leave comments.
5. Find Facebook pages about your passion, become a friend/fan and contribute.
6. Search Twitter to find other passionate people and talk to them.
7. Repeat steps 2 through 6 over and over and over.

As your knowledge and your passionate community increase, you can reach out to advertisers. And don’t be surprised if some business development people start calling you. Vaynerchuk calls them “biz dev” people.

Suppose you have no product or service to sell? You can still get paid for your expertise. You can write one or more ebooks, speak at conferences, and even sell ad space on your blog.

But Vaynerchuk doesn’t care for Google AdSense. It “makes your page look cheap and cluttered [and] it doesn’t pay that well.” Instead, he recommends banner ads.

Here’s how to find advertisers: browse through magazines about your passion and look at the ads. Who’s advertising? Contact those companies and say, “how about advertising on my blog for a lot less money?” Of course, you have to have a really big community to get their advertising dollars.

“There is lots of money to be made, albeit in dribs and drabs to start, by siphoning off money from already-existing sources,” Vaynerchuk says.

“Siphoning off money from already-existing sources” means dumping traditional advertising venues and marketing techniques that broadcast the same ad to millions of people. Most of whom couldn’t care less about the product being advertised.

Instead, you will offer advertisers a highly targeted market: all of the people who share your passion.

And if the money comes “in dribs and drabs” in the beginning, don’t worry. As you build your expertise and your passionate community, more people will seek you out. Including advertisers.

“If you live your passion and work the social networking tools to the max, opportunities to monetize will present themselves,” Vaynerchuk says. “The passion and love for what you do will enable you to work the hours necessary to succeed.”

So if you’re unhappy in your job, pick up a copy of Crush It! Vaynerchuk wrote it “because it drives me crazy to know that there are still people out there who haven’t figured out that they don’t have to settle.”

And he means “settle” for a job doing anything besides what you really love to do.

But is it really possible to make money following your bliss using Vaynerchuk’s techniques? Why not buy Crush It! or find it in a library and write down all 21 steps in Appendix A.

Then follow his techniques for one year. Do they work? Tell us about your success or failure, and we’ll summarize the results on Social Media Examiner.

Social Media Examiner gives this book 3.5 stars.

Have you read this book? What are your thoughts on Vaynerchuk’s style? Please comment below.

Let’s face it—we’re all looking for shortcuts to help manage our businesses and social media interactions more efficiently and effectively.  One of the best ways to make your social media activities run more smoothly is outsourcing—having someone manage certain tasks for you.

But when it comes right down to it, there are certain things that shouldn’t be outsourced, and there are really good reasons why “you” need to be a part of your social media strategy.

In fact, if you’re thinking of hiring someone to manage your social media accounts and handle your online networking, you may want to think again, because you might end up with exactly the opposite of what you’re after.

This article will look at social media tasks and what should and shouldn’t be outsourced, to see maximum results for your small business.

What Should You Outsource?

The short answer to this question is: You should outsource anything technical that doesn’t require your personality or involvement. Let’s look at some specifics:

Profile Setup:

Your profiles across social media platforms generally include the same standard details.  Your name, a short bio, web address and a standard-size photo. Provide your assistant with a short bio and a picture of you, and he or she can edit your image to the right size for each platform and set up your profiles pretty easily.

Twitter Background and Facebook Programming:

Twitter allows you to set up a background image on your profile (like the @smexaminer one shown here). This background image is valuable real estate for branding and traffic generation.

Facebook allows you to set up custom programming in FBML on fan pages, giving you the opportunity to share more about your business, express your branding, draw more traffic to your website and increase your subscriber list.

This is something you can easily outsource, and if you’ve got a solid team in place, it shouldn’t be too challenging for your designer and web developer to whip up something that expresses your branding, coordinates across your website and all of your social media profiles and captures leads.

Getting Listed:

There are several online Twitter directories where you’ll want to be listed to maximize visibility. On Facebook and LinkedIn, you’ll want to find groups that align with your business interests and the interests of your target market. Your assistant should be able to find these groups and sites, know which ones make sense for you and set up your listings.

Automated Status Updates:

There are some status updates you want automated, and others you don’t. You definitely want your blog updates automatically submitted to social media sites. It just makes good sense to automate your blog RSS feed, so each time you add a post to your blog, it gets fed into your social media accounts.

As long as you’re providing valuable, authentic blog posts (versus salesy junk), broadcasting your blog will be seen as sharing interesting and useful content.

I’ve also had my assistant set up automated status updates and tweets for specific purposes. For example, during a product launch, we’ll schedule two or three automated posts at strategic times throughout the day to direct folks to the product site. We’ll include some other scheduled tweets with relevant, useful information that’s of interest to my followers.

But since this represents “broadcasting” (sending information into the Twittersphere and other social media without actually engaging), these automated tweets do not represent a substantial percentage of my overall tweets or status updates.

Automated Tasks:

Specifically related to Twitter, some third-party applications like TweetAdder allow me to research my target market, locate them on Twitter and automatically follow and unfollow various people.

Even though this is a relatively easy automated process, I don’t really want to let it run on its own, which means that I would normally have to check in now and again and tell the application to start and stop these processes. This is certainly something my assistant can handle.

So What Shouldn’t You Outsource?

There’s no big list here. The bottom line is that social media networking is about the conversation—so don’t outsource that!

The best way to build your social media networking strategy is to connect and engage. And you just can’t do that with by broadcasting an “I want to hire someone to do it all for me” mentality.

As Al Ferretti and Skeeter Hansen (of TwitterWatchdog.com and TweetFormula.com) (and similarly, Jason Falls in this interview) suggest, the benefit of Twitter (and likewise, of social media in general) is in the conversation, and if you simply broadcast without interacting, you’ll blend into the noise and lose followers when they get the feeling that you just don’t care about them.

Your followers and fans aren’t doing business with a computer or a feed, and you don’t want them to get the sense that you’re not really even there.

If you’re looking to economize your time, make your social media activities more efficient and see real results in the form of increased web traffic, brand visibility and lead generation, then automate everything but the part where you interact and engage with people.

It’s actually quite simple—automate the impersonal technical tasks, but spend 10-15 minutes two to three times throughout the day checking your Twitter and Facebook feeds, retweeting, sharing, replying to what people are putting out there and having conversations.

Share your followers and fans with other people and connect your followers to each other. Get involved and engaged, and get to know the people who are following you.  It’s all about the interactive experience, the conversation and engagement.

So when you look at your social media strategy, before you decide to hire someone to manage your social media accounts for you, remember that people do business with people they know, like and trust.

What are your experiences with outsourcing and automating social media? Have you tried having your tweets and status updates outsourced? What was the result?