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A Guide to Social Media Campaign Success
Many businesses are now clearly big believers in the power of social media. Yet while social media measurement is often easy, attributing value to it is sometimes difficult. That can make it difficult to justify such efforts to senior management.
“Social media is one of those tricky topics that marketing departments know is effective for business growth, but getting this across to other departments – specifically the C-Suite – can be difficult,” says Smart Insights.
Figuring out what kind of value your social media efforts are yielding starts out with defining what you’re trying to do in the execution of those efforts, and then measuring related metrics, says Luke Brynley-Jones. However, he adds, social networks like Instagram and LinkedIn (News - Alert) are not all that forthcoming in sharing their data. So that makes it tough to gather data for metrics such as content reach and engagement to assess goals like raising brand awareness.
Defining a frame of reference to assess if outcomes are positive or negative is a second major challenge, according to Brynley-Jones, founder of Our Social Times and managing director of agency OST Marketing. The good news here, he says, is that benchmarking yourself against competitors, or against your past performance, can help with that.
“The third challenge,” he continues, “is fiendishly difficult.”
That challenge is connecting business goals to outcomes. And he says that entails educating senior managers and directors on the uses and value of social media. And it requires business stakeholders to agree in advance on a measurement framework.
Meanwhile, an IMPACT article by Ramona Sukhraj says in assessing the success or failure of their social media strategies, organizations should ask themselves:
• Are you reaching qualified people?
• Are you engaging with qualified people?
• How many of your social media fans are inquiring about products or services?
• How many of them actually become customers?
Edited by Mandi Nowitz