Social Media Marketing

[SocialMediaUncovered]

What is your business doing in social media to help get your message across?

Twitter?
Blogs?
Facebook/Myspace/Bebo/Etc (Mainstream Social Networks)
Qube/ASW/ (Invitation only networks)
Linkedin/Xing/UKBF Business networks
Creation of your own niche social/business network?
Groups/Chat/Profile cross platform promotion?
Specialist Forums?
Vlogs?
Podcasts?
Mobile (SMS/Bluetooth)?
craigslist/gumtree (classified communities)?

Or something else, this is working for you / or not working for you?

Do you want to do more but just don't have the time?
Or not sure where to start? Or know exactly where to start but are'nt sure where your demographic is, and how they are going to receive it?

Lets share our experiences ...

 

[NessieMac]

Just joined Twitter - so will have to see what happens. There are so many to choose from!

 

[fisicx]

Yet to see any evidence that the ROI on social media marketing is greater than traditional methods. I'm sure is a lovely way to tell alll your 'friends' about you but how many of them actually bring in any business?

 

[SocialMediaUncovered]

Yet to see any evidence that the ROI on social media marketing is greater than traditional methods. I'm sure is a lovely way to tell alll your 'friends' about you but how many of them actually bring in any business?

Peter Kim defined ROI for social media very well in a blog post back in September 2008, which included

1. Attention. The amount of traffic to your content for a given period of time. Similar to the standard web metrics of site visits and page/video views.
2. Participation. The extent to which users engage with your content in a channel. Think blog comments, Facebook wall posts, YouTube ratings, or widget interactions.
3. Authority. A la Technorati, the inbound links to your content - like trackbacks and inbound links to a blog post or sites linking to a YouTube video.
4. Influence. The size of the user base subscribed to your content. For blogs, feed or email subscribers; followers on Twitter or Friendfeed; or fans of your Facebook page.

Also, Forrester analyst, Jeremiah Owyangalso offers a whole series of posts related to the measurement issue

Effective social media marketing is not about telling your friends about a product or service. It's about relaying that message to the demographic that is interested in your product or service - and happens to be involved in online social media. Why limit to just your friends when there are literally millions of people out there?

The amounts of sites and profiles that 1 person can manage (along with running their business) has limitations (mostly time vs resources) - so i'm interested to discover the core sites that people use, as well as new sites they've just started using (friendfeed/twitter etc). Especially this demographic on UKBF.

More often than not, new twitter'rs & blog writers (for instance) have 0 friends to start with and find people to follow who they may never know, but if there is an interest in your products and services people will connect.

 

[fisicx]

Your ROI is not my ROI. The definition you gave seems to be more about networking rather than the results in a sales ledger (which is what most people would consider to be more important).

If I'm selling dogfood online how is social media marketing going to sell more tins of doggychunks? If I spend a hour a day twittering, how many of my 'friends' are going to buy a dogchew? I could have spent that hour running PPC and making wodges of money.

Not trying to hijack your thread but my marketing message is 'buy more dogfood'. Are there any stats showing SMM actually improving sales of whatever product?

 

[debbidoo]

Hey Fisicx

Social media marketing could work exceptionally well for someone selling dog food.

Create a fictional dog and give him a personality and a web presence - a blog, a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, for example. Then get him to be the "face" of your company, talking about how he prefers your dog food above all others, etc etc. You'd be surprised how many people would follow something like that. Ceiling Cat (of icanhascheezburger.com fame) has loads of followers on Twitter (I'm one of them) - now I know he's not selling cat food, but if his tweets are interesting enough for that many people to follow, it stands to reason that he could slip in the odd advert or two (and he does actually - he pops in the odd link to icanhascheezburger.com).

I'm using Twitter a lot more recently, and I'm noticing that I'm getting a few more followers and a few more clicks through to my website... nothing spectacular, but it's a start

I think there's very few industries that can't benefit from social media marketing in one form or another

Debs

 

[fisicx]

I'm using Twitter a lot more recently, and I'm noticing that I'm getting a few more followers and a few more clicks through to my website... nothing spectacular, but it's a start

Interesting. This is getting closer to the actual infomation. What percentage of followers on twitter visit the site? How many return? How many get in contact? How many convert?

Is it for example more effective than running a banner ad or blog commenting?

We get loads of stats about how many people you can reach via facebook but unless these people become customers there is no financial ROI.

 

[SocialMediaUncovered]

If I'm selling dogfood online how is social media marketing going to sell more tins of doggychunks? If I spend a hour a day twittering, how many of my 'friends' are going to buy a dogchew? I could have spent that hour running PPC and making wodges of money.

Social media marketing is more about interaction with clients - and where as 'traditional marketing methods' try to 'call for action' or identify a brand in more detail, social media marketing calls for interaction and user engagement into a brand/product or service.

You can spend money on PPC, for 'instant results' but surely the long term goal for any company is to be able to cut costs on its marketing spend.

With social media 'foundations' in place the organic growth of campaigns could achieve more than any instant hit can.

People are’nt using social media to look at adverts. They go there to use the site, keep in touch with friends/family, make business contacts, etc etc - having a business page for your business, showing your product or service is imperative for success within the social media space, but this is only 50% of the work. The continuing promotion, updates, messages, services etc is the key.

Let me give you an example - One company that does this well, (that i'm not working with) and that i’ve noticed on Facebook, is a bespoke tailor in London. They provide a range of high quality tailored suits. They have their customer base (as much of it as possible) within their page, they ask their customers for their facebook id - then add them, and send them updates via facebook for special offers and incentives.

This is much less intrusive than sending out emails, even if you have a pre-qualified list. This way people can see their offers via facebook, see images of the suits, videos of them being made, people wearing them, peoples comments on the suits and lots more information that can be “interacted” with.

One of the best examples of social media marketing working is the Obama campagin.

And for business the 'Elf Yourself – Office Max' christmas campaign was one of the most succesful in terms of increasing sales (here), along with 'Levi's - guys flipping into jeans' (you can view that here)

 

[debbidoo]

Not a huge percentage (I've only just started using Twitter again after a long break) and no conversions so far, but it's early days I don't think people tend to make snap decisions when choosing a marketing services provider - they do a bit of shopping around, see where the buzz is - but I think eventually it can pay off, definitely.

My most effective means of getting new clients have been UKBF and word of mouth recommendations, but those clients may well have seen my blog posts or my Twitter posts and used them in the decision-making process

 

[fisicx]

PPC gets the punters in and if they like what they see will return so it's really only a one time cost.

Let me give you an example - One company that does this well, (that i'm not working with) and that i’ve noticed on Facebook, is a bespoke tailor in London. They provide a range of high quality tailored suits. They have their customer base (as much of it as possible) within their page, they ask their customers for their facebook id - then add them, and send them updates via facebook for special offers and incentives.

Good example but it uses an EXISTING customer base. In other words it's simply another way of communicating. How is this example going to replace PPC?

And for business the 'Elf Yourself – Office Max' christmas campaign was one of the most succesful in terms of increasing sales (here), along with 'Levi's - guys flipping into jeans' (you can view that here)

Is the elf thing social media? Do you have the stats to show that sales increased a direct result of the elf thing? How did the jeans thing work for Levi's?

With social media 'foundations' in place the organic growth of campaigns could achieve more than any instant hit can.

You say 'could' - does this mean it hasn't happened yet? The elf thing seems to be an 'instant hit' rather than social media 'foundations'

If I'm appearing to be a bit contrary, it's just that I've been asking the same question for over a year and no one has even been able to show that the financial gain from SMM is equal to or greater than other forms of marketing.

 

[SocialMediaUncovered]

Good example but it uses an EXISTING customer base. In other words it's simply another way of communicating. How is this example going to replace PPC?

Is the elf thing social media? Do you have the stats to show that sales increased a direct result of the elf thing? How did the jeans thing work for Levi's?

If I'm appearing to be a bit contrary, it's just that I've been asking the same question for over a year and no one has even been able to show that the financial gain from SMM is equal to or greater than other forms of marketing.

Yes, but this shows how a small exsisting client base roles into 1,000's with a snowball effect of friends telling friends about its benefits. The product or service has to be of interest to the user, but an example of how social media marketing can snowball with little effort. The power of recommendation between friends is something you can not put a price on. In this example - If I wrote on my own facebook 'looking to get a new suit' and was then invited to the group I would also want to pass this on to my friends too. It's the human instinct of sharing information.

As far as the elf example - if you have seen how it works, you upload photos and then can send through facebook/myspace etc with your friends all being featured, or email them across to your friends too. Like I said these were the most successful campaigns for 2008 - as far as tracking them and understanding ROI for each campaign it's something that you would need to track with tools like , google analytics, aide rss, and xinu.

Obviously, I'm going to defend social media marketing, as I believe in it so much, and have seen so many examples of increase in traffic, sales, results, brand awareness and more. There is no doubt ppc and traditional marketing have their place, but if you are ready to discount smm you are allowing a potential customer base to slip through your fingers too.

 

[fisicx]

I get it now. The tailor example makes perfect sense and so I can now see the benefits.

Trouble it I really can't be arsed to even set up a facebook profile thingy. I wouldn't know what to write and I don't own a cameras so can't even put any piccies on line. I did try twitter but after the 'got up an cleaned my teeth' and 'had a really nice meal for lunch today' stage I lost interest.

 

[adventurelife]

Nikki Pilkington has posted stats on this over at ecademy in the past mainly about twitter. She is get SEO business via twitter so their must be a ROI

I have limited exposure on social media but I have had a ROI in real £ terms on each one I am on.

 

[debbidoo]

I get it now. The tailor example makes perfect sense and so I can now see the benefits.

Trouble it I really can't be arsed to even set up a facebook profile thingy. I wouldn't know what to write and I don't own a cameras so can't even put any piccies on line. I did try twitter but after the 'got up an cleaned my teeth' and 'had a really nice meal for lunch today' stage I lost interest.

Hey Fisicx

Quick update: today I was contacted by one of my Twitter contacts - an old friend I've not seen for ages, but we've been following each other on Twitter for a while - who emailed me to talk about some future potential copywriting work after seeing me talking on Twitter about a project I'm currently working on.

Just thought it was worth mentioning

I have to admit, I lose my patience with Twitter a lot (hence taking a long break from it). There are a few people on it that don't contribute much other than lots of links to their blog posts or websites, which can be a bit annoying. On the other hand, there are some really interesting people there; a good few people from UKBF post some really interesting tweets (Dan Martin, Andy Yeti, Steve Gibson, Ian at WeCanDo.biz, to name just a few) - I'd say that these far outweigh the dross that gets posted. I'm also following some interesting celebs - Jonathan Ross, Richard Branson, Stephen Fry, for example - and their posts are often really entertaining.

As for knowing what to say... totally with you on that one, as I never really feel like I have anything interesting to say. But apparently that's not entirely the case, otherwise my friend wouldn't be asking me about doing some copywriting for his company, eh?

Worth sticking with, I'd say

 

[adam_uk]

I use twitter and at first, I was using to just share what I was doing.

I started chatting with people, and after a while they referred business and I referred business to them. But that took time for people to get to know me and me getting know them.

The only thing is it can get really messy because sometimes you get people leaving links. I mean lots of links. I don't mind but when it's all the time and from same person, and four times in a row, you have to just not follow them anymore.

I found it best, when I am not just sharing what I am doing, but to create a conversation, ask questions, answering questions.

I'm getting use to it. At first, I just didn't think there was a point to it but I'm slowly seeing the benefits but it does need consistency everyday. Just 10 mins and later in evening 10 mins.

I want to find a way where I can really communicate with people on twitter more. And see how I can update when I got my blog finished.

I like blogs and forums, and videos which I upload on youtube. I get more out of these three.

 

[debbidoo]

Just received this link through Twitter (thanks to Dan Martin, who retweeted the author):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/01/twitter_and_a_classic_picture.html

Thought it might add a little more to this debate

 

[shazypops]

Social media can have different effects for different companies/organisations/people.

For example, there are two main nightclubs in town. They now both have a myspace page, a facebook page and one has a bebo page as they run an under 18 night. These have been excellent as they keep them updated and inform them of events, offers etc coming up. In terms of ROI - heads through doors is just that.

Another example is an organisation I am currently working with called ESG. They are doing the regeneration of Hereford City and feel they need more involvement from the younger people in the area. Therefore we're now using Facebook and Wetpaint as a form of contacting the younger people and trying to get them involved/feel included.

I think it just depends on what you are trying to achieve and the angle you wish to take it.

 

[adam_uk]

Just received this link through Twitter (thanks to Dan Martin, who retweeted the author):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/01/twitter_and_a_classic_picture.html

Thought it might add a little more to this debate

Thanks, for link. I didn't know about this article, had some great info. I forgot how you can use photograph. Now, that's something I can use for future. Gave me some ideas!

 

[linksprocket]

We use linksprocket to promote sites. Write some good link bait content and post to the site to generate back links.

 

[Bruce_Andrews]

Effective social media marketing is not about telling your friends about a product or service. It's about relaying that message to the demographic that is interested in your product or service - and happens to be involved in online social media. Why limit to just your friends when there are literally millions of people out there?

But how do you know where they are?
There are many Social Media sites, how do you know which one has the right demographic?

And there appears to be a steady transition from one to another, yesterday Messenger, today Twitter, tomorrow ?

 

[debbidoo]

But how do you know where they are?
There are many Social Media sites, how do you know which one has the right demographic?

And there appears to be a steady transition from one to another, yesterday Messenger, today Twitter, tomorrow ?

That's where social media consultants come in

Seriously though - listen to your customers. Ask them which of these services they use, and act accordingly. Of course, it would be foolish to assume that because your existing customers use Service X, then the rest of your target demographic will also use it - statistics are handy, but people are individuals after all - but it's a good starting point.

I have an interesting RocSearch report (PDF) on social media in marketing, which they gave me permission to redistribute last summer... if anyone would like a copy, please PM me

 

[justinparks]

If I'm appearing to be a bit contrary, it's just that I've been asking the same question for over a year and no one has even been able to show that the financial gain from SMM is equal to or greater than other forms of marketing.

Isnt SMM still in its infancy, at least in Europe, compared to the States? Hard to crunch the numbers on it until it has matured somewhat and until then they will be speculative at best I reckon as it all depends how it integrates to the consumer mindset.

Things like Twitter are certainly taking off but its true that it remains to be seen at this stage what the final ROI is of utilising these SMM tools to do business will be.

 

[eposdirect]

thanks for sharing knowledge

 

[SocialMediaUncovered]

I thought by adding this article to the thread it may re-open some discussions here - see what your thoughts are..

http://www.yourbusinesschannel.com/...ss_idea_for_2009_social_marketing_online.aspx

 

[self-sale]

I use Twitter. You can follow me if you want- my username is selfsale.
I also have a blog but is underdeveloped.

 

[self-sale]

I've just added my twitter account on my sig!

 

[Birmingham]

stumbleupon has sent thousands of visitors to on of my most "niche" hobby sites... and some of these visitors are linking to it from forums and stuff to pass on the word...

linkedin is good for social networking but not quite so directly beneficial to seo in the way that i still have to do extra work to turn linkedin users into traffic (a percentage of which typically creates inlinks)

played a little with digg before - it's good for something. but i've never really got into other social networking and bookmarking tools.

 

[SocialMediaUncovered]

Heres an article readers of this thread may find interesting -

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/28/social-networking-benefits-validated/

 

[adam_uk]

Obama used social media and man, did the company he hired really used it with serious results.

I followed and checked out the blueprint because the steps are being documented, and even now, on how he is using it.

Below is an interview with the Social Media Team and hope it's help for anyone here.

Barak Ombama Social Media Technology Team Interview

 

[jimmy03]

Twitter and myblogcatalog are working grt for me..........
Social media is best mean to get traffic to your website.
Thanks

 

[johncraig]

I have started using Facebook for social marketing but I faced lots of difficulties as also its time consuming and couldn’t analyze my competitors ROI on Facebook, so i am using socialdon.com, it’s a social media marketing tool used for Facebook but as it changes my progress my time is used less and progress is way better then before.

 

[WebLord]

It works - but as with anything - only if done properly and ongoing!

I used to run an online media company several years back, most of my customers came from Facebook.

I would get approx 10% of the traffic that joined my site via FB would turn into actual paying customers.

This was without paying for ads on FB, just using social networking but with a business approach. The 10% was a better return than I would get elsewhere considering the amount of effort that was needed.

So, yes - I would say using social networks is effective for sales. You do need an idea how to do this though...

 

[johncraig]

Well when we talk what my company doing
Twitter, Blogs, Facebook/Myspace/Bebo/Etc (Mainstream Social Networks)
Linkedin are some feature what we use as my thinking is this it not always about the feature its about how is our working whats the intreset towards our work, even if we work hard on any small social meida site then definatly we will get a great response
well we can also measure our social media traffic by google analytics
SocialDon whish give you all detail about you company everyday traffic and tell you what point we can do good at

 

[5iron2]

I have been trying twitter for 18 months and have still to see the point!!!

 

[saronkorn]

Social Media Marketing usually get much lower CTR than Search network
user behavior are so much different than search advertising

I will use it if the client prefer to rise brand awareness campagne goal