Tasha Harrison

This video is amazing! Watch it:

A life on Facebook from Matteo Gracis on Vimeo.

The Role of Social Media and How to Measure It

The key difficulty when trying to define the role of social media in your marketing is working out how to measure its success. It is relatively easy to measure some forms of marketing, such as pay per click advertising and banner advertising. Using Google analytics it is simple to see how many people who clicked on your advert bought something.

However, this is only part of the picture. You can’t measure the people who looked at your site, bookmarked it and then came back later. It is difficult to track the journey that person takes (you can of course install Spyware and scripts onto people’s computers, but that is a serious breach of their privacy).

Social media is a whole new challenge. You could measure it on how many people click through to your website or how many fans and followers you have or even interactions. In fact you’re probably measuring all three. The problem with this kind of measurement is that it doesn’t capture the entire picture of what’s going on. It also assumes that social media is like every other kind of advertising.

Social Media is About Building Lists

Social media is about building lists of loyal subscribers. This means that when you launch a new product or have a promotion you have a list of people ready to participate and help spread the word.

The downside of social media is that it takes time. It is important to never take your fans and followers for granted, to reward them regularly and, most importantly, treat them with respect. Reply to their comments, help them when they ask and don’t bombard them with information that is only about your company or product. Share fun articles, interesting information and informative videos about your industry.

The other important aspect of growing your following is to mention your social media sites on all of your other marketing materials. Don’t think that because someone clicks away from your website to your Facebook Page that you have lost a sale. You may have just gained a valuable follower who doesn’t want to buy at that exact moment, but wants to keep in touch with your company.

The Long Term Approach

Measure the success of your social media over a longer term, over a year or so. Look at how many interactions you are receiving and how many people are responding to your promotions. Also look at your overall online presence. How many links have you now got? How many people are searching for your company name on search engines? And how many times are you being talked about on blogs and in forums?