Is social media measurable?
At most of the events I’ve been to lately, measurement continues to be a hot and heavily debated topic. It truly depends on what you are trying to measure. For instance, you can easily measure new numbers of Twitter followers, Facebook likes, LinkedIn connections and YouTube views. When looking at this big picture — ROI — it’s not important how many names we collect, but rather how many we engage and build relationships with, and become our brand ambassadors. That’s what truly matters to the bottom line, and this is harder to measure. However, each week new and robust social measurement technologies make it to the market and we will soon see these technologies closing the measurement gap and better tie in social media investment to ROI.
If a company chooses to outsource its social media marketing and management how does it select the right partner?
When Google AdWords first launched and a plethora of pay-per-click ‘experts’ popped up across the Internet, many companies failed to see the return on investment they had expected. To make the most of your social media marketing dollars it’s important to perform due diligence before investing. You can even use the social platforms discussed above to find the real thought leaders in the space that can help your business move forward. Make certain you ask for references and not only call them but also get online and check out their digital presence. Finally, I have come across many social media providers that do not have the best digital presence; this does not mean they don’t know what they are doing. With the rapid growth in this sector they may just be too busy working for their clients and haven’t had ample time to work on their own social initiatives. That is why it is critical to put more emphasis on the references, versus the company pitching you.
What’s on the horizon?
Great question. When I think of ‘social’ I think of anything that is easy to share with others. There is a new paradigm called flash commerce. Flash commerce or group buying is easily shareable. There are sites such as Groupon, Scoutmob and LivingSocial. Most of these companies today are geared toward retailers, however, on the horizon I think we will see some emerge for the B2B sector. Businesses that see themselves as trendsetters and leverage flash commerce (or group buying) into their overall marketing mix, in my opinion, will have a distinct competitive advantage over their competition.
Andrew Katz is the director of the Digital Presence practice at BlueWave Computing LLC. Reach him at [email protected].
