We’ve selected five insightful blog posts to discuss this week, many of which focus on measuring social media ROI. Several of the articles’ authors assert that measurement is crucial for social media marketing success. At the same time, though, they acknowledge the difficulty B2B marketers face when trying to convince their companies to invest in social media because they’re unable to demonstrate ROI. Additionally, a few of the authors make the claim that marketers should work to ensure alignment of keywords, ad copy and their landing page, as well as integrate link building into their marketing strategy.
We focused on this topic this week as we prepare for our free, public webinar tomorrow, Tuesday, June 15 at 11am (PST): From Buzz to Bucks: A Framework for Measuring Social Media ROI.
The Four Pillars of Social Media Marketing
ClickZ | Liana Evans | 5-26-10
In this blog post, the author offers a four-tiered approach to incorporating social media into your marketing strategy, including research, strategy, engagement and measurement. In the research stage, marketers should work to identify their target audience. While this process can be a time consuming one, it saves you time and effort in the long run. As for strategy, it’s essential that businesses formulate a social media marketing plan that prioritizes goals, sets up metrics and establishes a plan for engaging with their audience. Entering into the social media space isn’t worth your time, unless you’re consistently engaging with your audience by listening, giving value to your followers and offering advice. As for measurement, metrics vary from business to business. You need to decide which metrics are the most significant when analyzing your social media data.
- Many business leaders aren’t yet convinced of the profitability of social media marketing.
- If you want to make a convincing argument for social media, it’s important to focus on research, strategy, engagement and measurement.
B2B Not A Strong Social Media Marketer
MediaPost | Jack Loechner | 6-9-10
According to the study discussed in this article, the data suggest B2C are finding more success in their social media marketing strategies than B2B companies. One of the primary obstacles that B2B marketers encounter is a lack of support from executives because many marketers are unable to demonstrate the ROI of their social media efforts. Additional factors that complicate marketers’ pursuit of social media initiatives are a lack of personnel, an unwillingness to evolve beyond traditional marketing, general lack of knowledge on the subject and the belief among many companies that social media is an ineffective marketing strategy.
- B2B companies aren’t engaged enough in social media.
- Marketers have difficulty convincing their higher-ups to participate in social media because they can’t prove ROI.
Facebook Launches New Analytics for “Like” Data
Mashable | Jennifer Van Grove | 6-7-10
This blog post examines Facebook’s newly released Insights dashboard, which offers page owners and publishers increased visibility when it comes to measuring users’ actions in the form of “likes,” shares and reshares. The new measurement tool incorporates data from on and off of Facebook and acts as a useful service for application developers looking to gather specifics on referral traffic and user response to specific posts. The article’s author suggests that Facebook’s aiming to prove the worth of their new Instant Personalization features with their dashboard release.
- Like so many others in the social media space, Facebook has acknowledged the significance of applying metrics to your social media marketing efforts.
- The Insights Dashboard goes hand-in-hand with Facebook’s recently added social sharing options, and appears to be an attempt to further promote and sell developers and publishers on the significance of Instant Personalization.
B2B Search Marketing Success Is A 2-Part Equation
Search Engine Land | Dale Hursh | 6-2-10
This article discusses how B2B marketers tend to concentrate much of their efforts on SEO strategy and PPC campaigns, but not enough on the user experience once they’ve arrived at the marketer’s company website. Post-click metrics are equally important, says Hursh. It’s not all about traffic; just because you’re bringing in visitors, doesn’t mean they’re converting to leads. If your primary focus is driving traffic, you may miss out on prospective customers because you’ve neglected your site’s content. Also, know what your customers are looking for and make sure you’re delivering value to your audience. Align your keywords, ad copy and landing page.
- Businesses need to focus on delivering value to their audience after the click, as well as before the click.
- Ensure alignment between keywords, ad copy and your landing page. Also, align your content and your call to action.
Twitter is Killing the Blogosphere, and More Insights from Internet Marketing Whiz Neil Patel
Xconomy | Gregory T. Huang | 6-3-10
In this article, the author summarizes key takeaways from a tutorial presented by SEO guru, Neil Patel. In his presentation, Patel asserts that it’s essential to rank in the top three results on Google’s SERPs, rather than just the first page, and that the key isn’t necessarily using the most highly sought after keywords, it’s about choosing “descriptive keywords with few competitors.” He also makes the claim that URL shorteners, like Bit.ly and TinyURL, are getting the credit instead of the actual website links they’re referencing, thus making it more difficult to rank highly on search engines. He lists link building as one of the most important steps you can take to rank high on Google, and says the best way to raise your ranking is to have credible, related sites link to your site. Patel also suggests reaching out to owners of related websites by offering thoughtful responses to their content, and then asking them to link back to your own site in a professional, diplomatic way.
- Link building is one of the key tools to ranking high on Google.
- While Patel claims Twitter and URL shorteners are “killing the blogosphere” by misdirecting where credit is due, bit.ly actually offers an option that can help marketers with their keyword marketing efforts. The URL shortener service has released a feature that allows users to customize their shortened URL links and insert target keywords.
Is Your Company Focusing on the Right Metrics?
We hope this blog post has provided some useful tips on how to effectively measure your social media ROI, as well as offered other helpful marketing strategies. Interested in getting this summary each week, or learning more about Optify? Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or subscribe to our RSS feed. We have one main takeway from these articles that we’d like to share with you, as well as hear your thoughts on:
Too often, it seems that social media is part of the path of converting visitors to leads, but businesses tend to focus on the source of leads just before conversion, rather than all of the other sources leading up to that transition. With businesses focusing on just a segment of the metrics that were essential to helping them reach conversion rather than the whole, it’s no wonder social media marketing appears ineffectual at times. What are your thoughts?
Also, don’t forget our free webinar tomorrow (Tuesday), From Buzz to Bucks: A New Framework for Measuring Social Media ROI. The discussion starts at 11am (PST). Registration is still open; sign up today to secure your spot!
