Quantifying Social Media Impact Step by Step
Tom McClintock
We often tell clients that social media websites are no longer playgrounds for teenagers and college students, but important resources for business networking and promotion. There are solid statistics to support that assertion and draw some conclusions about the value of social media.
All Evidence Points to Continued Dramatic Growth in Social Media Audiences
Social sites’ user totals continue to grow by leaps and bounds:
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Facebook, which serves about 260 billion page views every month, has displaced Google as the most visited site on the Internet [1]
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Facebook users share over 3.5 billion links, news stories, blog posts, and other content pieces every month
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LinkedIn is gaining about 1 million new users each month
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70% of bloggers are talking about companies – not just personal matters – on their blogs
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Wikipedia users have written nearly 1 million new articles in the past six months [2]
Figures like these prove that social media participation has become a core Internet activity. As social media continues to grow, more and more savvy businesses are leveraging it to reach and communicate with prospects, contacts, and clients.
Decision-Makers Can Be Reached Through Social Media
When social media was in its infancy just a few years ago, Facebook and similar social platforms were dominated by students. But this is no longer the case. As the social media phenomenon has matured, users come from all demographics. In fact, middle-aged users (including business decision-makers) are now one of the fastest growing social media segments.
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Usage of social media among IT and business buyers of technology grew 50% over last year: 55% of survey respondents said they used social media as part of the technology buying process in 2009; compared with just 37% in 2008.
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Executives in large organizations use social media more than their counterparts in smaller organizations.
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C-suite executives use social media more than lower-level decision makers. Just 15% of CEOs and directors said they did not use any form of social media; as opposed to 34% of managers and directors and 26% of vice presidents. [3]
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Over 60,000,000 business people and professionals use LinkedIn. [4]
Can Organizations Get Relevant Prospects and Traffic From Social Media?
A social media strategy can draw visitors and prospects to a business website or lead process. In fact, experts estimate that average click-through rates (CTRs) are as high as 6.5% on links posted by businesses on Facebook, a platform that also offers the ability to “Like” and “Unlike” ads, providing greater marketing insight than simple CTRs. [5]
How Can Organizations Use Social Media Effectively?
Using social media is not difficult – with a solid strategy and minimal training, any business can start using social media to help meet business goals. It starts with some simple tips, a weekly habit and a slightly new mindset. While every campaign is different, NSI has found a lot of success with the following 15 steps:
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Before jumping in to the social media space, do some reconnaissance. Use a listening platform like ReputationConnect to track influencers and sentiment.
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Define your organization’s message points.
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Engage neutral (and, depending on campaign goals, negative) sentiment in a respectful, amiable manner one-on-one through a combination of internal, outsourced and downstream (customer or member) resources in a way that satisfies legal liability concerns.
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Conduct outreach to relevant and influential bloggers to generate positive posts.
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Establish metrics and a baseline for the current landscape, organized by message point.
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Post positive sentiment on online properties.
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Repurpose content, especially topic-specific articles, across at least several free social platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Ning, Squidoo, Hubpages, etc.
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Consider a proprietary social platform to build community further.
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Repackage content in multimedia formats. For example, convert an article into a Powerpoint presentation, then narrate the presentation on camera. Use images, video, MP3 files, even morphing, to reach your audiences in every kind of media they use.
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Promote upcoming events such as trade shows and webinars through social platforms.
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“Drip” on prospects to maintain and increase mindshare.
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Build followers using genuinely relevant content.
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Cross-link all online assets as appropriate.
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Organize staff and partner organizations into a social media team that actively increases followers, with the goal of raising sentiment, message point by message point.
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Establish a workflow for your team that enables rapid responses and measures effectiveness according to sentiment improvements as documented by regular listening-platform reports.
Since implementing some of these Best Practices recommendations, one consumer-retail client of NSI has soared from only moderate social presence to surpassing its top competitors in positive mentions. Another client has used social media to drive booth traffic at trade shows to increase qualified sales leads. Still another client has used this methodology to leverage dormant content – once buried deep on its website – to counter untrue press allegations about its industry.
In each case, NSI has kept client expenses down to ensure that all campaigns remain very cost-effective. In fact, while “going the distance” offers the most rewarding returns, many of these steps listed above can be followed independently. Whether you want to increase mindshare, develop relationships, advocate a viewpoint or close a sale, a metrics-based approach to reach the growing number of decision-makers active in social media will definitely point you in the right direction.
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- All Facebook and Google Ad Planner, January 5th, 2010, http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/01/report-measured-in-pageviews-facebook-is-11-times-larger-than-myspace/.
- Hird, Jake “20+ Mind-Blowing Social Media Statistics Revisited” in E-Consultancy.com, January 29, 2010 http://econsultancy.com/blog/5324-20+-mind-blowing- social media-statistics-revisited
- Schwartz, Julie; Espinola, Katie; Nguyen Van Tan, Olivier How Customers Choose Solution Providers, 2009: The Importance of Personalization, Epiphanies, and Social Media, Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), October 26, 2009, http://www.itsma.com/research/how-customers-choose-solutions-2009/.
- LinkedIn, 2010, www.LinkedIn.com .
- Klaassen, Abbey, “Facebook's Click-Through Rates Flourish ... for Wall Posts,” Advertising Age, August, 13, 2009, http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=138442.