Social media has established a prominent presence as form of marketing utilised by companies in countless industries worldwide. There are a variety of essential factors that can prove to greatly increase a company’s brand equity and visibility, or possibly victimise a company’s reputation.
The way in which a social media strategy is implemented and monitored can go a long way in determining its overall effectiveness. Today’s market features a wide array of consumers who have certain expectations of brands, products, and services. Discontented and social media savvy consumers are simply waiting for an opportunity to voice their opinions via Twitter, Facebook, and associated social channels. This makes it even more vital for a company to thoroughly research and consider what methods of social media are most appropriate and beneficial to their needs.
There are a number of steps that can be taken in order to avoid the aforementioned social media disasters that occur frequently in today’s online marketplace. The first involves being realistic and properly understanding the relationship between conversations on social networks and other types of customer interactions. The next step includes utilising a multi-channel strategy for customer sales and service.
While social media is quite effective, interactions taking place at brick and mortar locations, on Freephone lines, and during online customer service chats are also very important in providing a comprehensive view of consumers’ opinions.
The following step focuses on viewing your data and evaluating the technology that is currently in place in order to understand consumer behaviour and the voice of the customer. The final measure that can be taken to avoid social media disaster is to have a designated employee that specialises in the customer experience delivery chain.
A company that does not currently have a strong presence in social media does not have to fear making a huge investment in social media. There are a number of low cost options that can be used to make that initial leap into the realm of social media marketing.
Starting a blog about relevant industry news, trends, or intriguing applications of your product line is an excellent way to embark into the world of social media. Creating a LinkedIn group, Facebook page, Twitter account, a customers-only discussion forum, or a YouTube channel can provide unique opportunities to present and inform users and fans alike of current company highlights and information.
The key to a company’s successful use of social media is all about the results and the ability to properly measure them. There are companies who can help you to track your Return on Investment (ROI). But to begin with you can use a few simple tools to measure your impact.
Google Analytics
This is free and can provide a really powerful baseline for a variety of different factors. You can track incoming links and then the activities of the users they send, which can be helpful.
Omniture
Omniture has a slew of services available for businesses, including components that track Facebook and Twitter metrics.
TweetMeme Analytics
This is useful if you use TweetMeme’s retweet buttons on your sites. It’s a lot like Google Analytics, but focused on TweetMeme.
PostRank Analytics
This suite of tools measures social engagement on other platforms and services. What’s nice about PostRank is that instead of just a raw number, you can actually see the messages and comments from other sites that contribute to your stats. This can be really important for sentiment analysis.
HootSuite
HootSuite is a great Twitter manager but also offers impressive analytics. The nice thing about the click data you get from an app like HootSuite (or bit.ly) is by looking deeper you can more easily see if those clicks translate into transactions or impressions on your other sites.