Reporting on Social Media Marketing involves defining a unique set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that help to measure the level of activity and effectiveness of your brand within the social realm.  Social analytics can measure the impact of social media on your business.  This means collecting intelligence from aggregating and analyzing online conversations and social activity generated by your brand.  By using this data, your company will be able to improve and report on brand awareness and reputation, marketing and sales effectiveness, and customer satisfaction and advocacy. The benchmarks to focus on will be those that combine specific engagement metrics that result in lead generation. This reporting will help define the effectiveness of social media as it relates to marketing, sales, and customer service performance.   We have created the reference charts below with basic formulas for analyzing the metrics for the KPIs listed based on an Infographic created by  Awareness Inc.

These insights will help your company adapt to the social environment it participates in and to improve on the relationship people have with your marketing, sales, and customer service initiatives.   Social analytics can be a combination of real-time analysis for campaigns, or historical trend analysis of engagement and growth metrics.  By evaluating your company’s social analytics, you can report on the return on investment from participating in social media marketing successfully.

What are other KPIs that your company uses as a measurement for social media success?   Share your ideas or questions via the comments box below. We look forward to hearing from you.

Influencing a community on a social network can be especially effective when promoting with a contest.  Engaged users will participate, promote, and provide content simply by entering to win whatever prize you are offering.  Strategy behind running a successful contest in social media includes selecting a prize the will resonate with your audience and excite them to commit to the actions that promote your brand.   Before choosing what type of contest to have, and which channel may garner the best results, do some basic research into what current contests appeal to your demographic that are affective.  Review the contests highlighted below and the outlined framework that makes them successful promotions.

Facebook Contest #1: White Cloud – Beyond the Green Sweepstakes

• Best Practice: Promoted Visually on Timeline, Tab, and App includes sharing

• Prize is a Car, and a product coupon

• CTA: “Like” Page to be able to Enter, Enter Zip for Coupon, Enter Sweepstakes App that includes address fields.

Facebook Contest #2: Del Monte – Crown the Cook Contest

• Best Practice: Promoted Visually on Timeline, Tab, and App includes sharing.

• Prizes:  Trip to San Francisco,  Professional Cookware, Chance to Win Cook-Off

• CTA:  Like the Page, Enter a Recipe, View Fan Recipes, Share contest or recipe to get a $1.00 off Coupon.

Pinterest Contest #1: AsukaBook USA Pin-spiration Contest

• Best Practice: Drives traffic from Facebook, to Pinterest, to Email submission form.

• Prize:  3 Photo Albums

• CTA:  Like Facebook Page, Follow Pinterest profile, Pin 5 images from website, Pin 1 product image, submit entry via email.

Pinterest Contest #2 Dreaming of a PINK Summer Pinterest Challenge

• Best Practice: Landing Page on website for Contest, includes Facebook sharing, contest details and email submission form.

• Prizes: $500 Shopping Spree and Tote, featured pin board, and 8 $50 Pink Gift Cards for finalists.

• CTA’s:  Create a Pinterest board with brand name/contest name in it, Pin 3 products, Pin summer images associated with PINK, submit email and board link, pin it examples.

Each social media contest above is tailored to a target audience and is hosted where that audience is most likely to participate, promote, and engage with the brand.  By providing the right prize incentive, they have leveraged the most from the value a contest can provide when influencing a community.   If your company needs to grow a social media presence, we are here to help with strategy and implementation best practices.  Shoot us your ideas in the comments below, or email us for answers to your questions.

Unexpected design changes to Google+ pages and profiles emerged this week without warning to page owners.  If you are not familiar with Google+ Pages, we included a diagram in a newsletter article,” What’s the “Plus” about on Google” earlier this year.   The original page design was reformatted to include new navigation tools, a panoramic cover image, Explore page, and additional insights that drop down from posts.  When Facebook announced the conversion to Timeline for Businesses, there was a one-month publish/preview option that gave companies time to design, and strategize how to use the new format before it went live.  With Google+ apparently page enhancements and changes will simply be introduced when already implemented. Here is a review of what to expect when you log into your Google+ Business Page account.

Page design includes a Cover image, Explore page, and new navigation tools. Originally, there were five scrapbook images those images can now be replaced with a panoramic cover image that spans behind the larger profile thumbnail at the top of the page.  The navigation to the stream, photos, circles, etc. has moved to a left hand ribbon - that is drag and drop customizable - and includes a new landing page labeled “Explore”.

On the Explore page you’ll find trending topics, recent posts, who to follow, and a “What’s hot on Google+” slider.  Personalize the amount information from “What’s hot” shared on your home page with this tool.

Search results have a new look that promotes business pages. Google+ search results used to reveal posts with relevant keywords, then required sorting to view people/page results. A new results page format includes people/page results on the right side, and sorting options at the top.

User profiles get a new Hangouts page. Although this feature is not present within business page profiles, it is important to note the change in the user experience.  With the new landing page for hangouts, users can see hang outs on air – hang outs that are recorded – or join hangouts in process.

If you are interested in learning more about the benefits of creating a Google+ Business Page for your company, or require a social media marketing audit to assess your performance within Google+, please contact us or call us: 800.787.0497 for help.

If you’ve explored Google+, whether from your personal account or the one you are using for your business, you’ve probably noticed the “What’s hot” button in the left-hand navigation. What is “What’s hot?” It’s another Google algorithm at work – selecting the most popular posts from across Google+ and compiling them into one place.

Currently, the “What’s hot” algorithm doesn’t take any personalization into account when displaying results. Although many of the posts may not be relevant to you, there are still the benefits of discovering new, interesting things and seeing what types of content are drawing everyone’s attention around the net.

That second point is important. The marketing benefits of getting your content featured as “hot” are great. You gain the potential of having your content seen, shared, and interacted with by the entire social network – even people who don’t have you in a circle. Being featured can definitely be considered a viral success. So, to appear in the feed, you must cater to user interests.

Google does not divulge what specific factors can push a piece of content into the “What’s hot” feed. However, a little observation and common sense indicate the piece has to have the makings of popularity. Nearly every single piece of hot content has an accompanying image and several comments. They also have lots of +1’s, as well as shares (although, these amounts may be skewed by appearing in the “What’s hot” feed – which will dramatically increase +1’s and shares just from sheer visibility).

By creating image based content that engages your users and invites a rapport with them, you increase your chances of appearing in the “What’s hot” feed. Monitor popular trends, and give your spin on it. As with all things SEO, quality content that considers the end user will win the day.

The concept behind marketing with video makes sense for social media for many reasons.  People are attracted to a visual medium, and video can provide stimulus for both the eyes and the ears.  There is a power behind providing your message in video if it’s done well, and engages the audience.   Basic concepts of creating videos aren’t so different from traditional marketing campaigns where a good story is the core concept behind the messaging.  Once the video is produced, uploading to YouTube and providing keyword rich titles, descriptions, meta tags to enhance the video’s exposure is also a key to marketing success.

In The Q4 2011 Video Marketing Survey and Video Trends Report by Web Video Marketing Council (WVMC) and Flimp Media shows that video marketing continues to trend upward as a strong marketing vehicle.

The latest survey results from the Web Video Marketing Council show that:

• 81% of marketing professionals say that they have used video in their online marketing efforts.

• 67% of marketing professionals have posted online video to their websites and 61% to social media sites.

• 52% of respondents have used video email marketing and of those that have used it, 88% report that integrating video with email marketing has made a positive impact.

Social Media is the second largest used application for distributing marketing videos:

As the majority of the social channels support video sharing, it is clear why marketers continue to find value in participating in these platforms.   The added SEO value from optimizing videos to rank in organic search results also presents another viable reason to invest in this format.  As online marketing and social media marketing strategies develop, expect video to be the most sought after medium for communicating messaging to consumers.