If you’re just getting started with social media, it can be very frustrating if you’re not getting a lot of interaction. You may feel like you’re putting a lot of effort into creating great content and no one is responding. Unfortunately there isn’t a magic wand that can make you instantly Internet popular, but here are some tips for improving your interaction and getting on the right path.

1. Be Consistent – No one is going to read your blog or follow you on Twitter if you post a bunch one week and then disappear for several weeks. If social media is important to your online strategy, then add it to your daily to-do list just like anything else.
2. Create a Content Calendar – If you have a hard time figuring out what to write when you do have time, take some time to figure out what topics you want to cover and then brainstorm some post ideas.  Take your list and divide it out onto your calendar.  It’ll be much easier to post consistently if you don’t have to take time to figure out what to post as well.
3. Read & Respond – While you’re drinking your morning coffee or during lunch, take time to read what others in your industry are writing. Respond to their posts by commenting, sharing or creating a post with your own thoughts (this can be a great source of post ideas).
4. Share, Share & Share some More – When you’re reading other blogs, if you find something your target audience would be interested in, share it! Post it to Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, etc. You’re not only providing great content to build up your own audience, you’ll start to get noticed by those whose content you’re sharing.
5. Chat it Up! – No one is going to talk to you if you don’t ever talk to anyone else.  It’s the classic wall flower scenario.  You’re sitting along the wall of the gym watching everyone else have fun dancing and wish you could join.  Well, don’t wait! Start trying to chat with people in your industry.
6. Distribute Your Content - It’s awesome when your readers submit your work to social networks, but that requires that you actually have readers.  Until you’ve grown your audience, distribute your content out through your various social networks and share it anywhere it makes sense.  Just be aware of any community-specific guidelines.  Some sites may frown upon submitting your own content.
7. Connect online and off – One of the best ways to connect with people online is to meet with people offline.  When you go to conferences or networking events, collect social media profiles along with business cards.  Followup online by sending them a message.
8. Ask for Help – When you do have a few people connected to you, ask them directly to comment on or share your latest post.  Most of the time people are willing to help you out if you just ask.

Those are just a few ideas for increasing your social media interactions. Ask other people in your industry what works for them and do a little experimentation.

What’s worked to increase interaction for you?

(photo by Vincent Teuwen)

A while back I purchased a Kindle from Woot.com, the online store and community which offers a deal on just one item per day (which was recently acquired by Amazon). To inspire me to purchase from them again, they sent me a hilarious email (see below) with a link to a deal on a Kindle cover with a book light. Far from your normal followup marketing email, Woot.com’s email was well written and funny enough that I read it all the way through (plus it got forwarded and blogged). As I’ve said before, a bit of humor can be good for business (also shown by Sharpie) and can inspire, not only repeat business, but customer loyalty and evangelism.

From email titled, “Re-Kindle the passion with Woot”

Hey there,

Woot here. How ya doin’? How’s that Kindle you picked up treatin’ you? Nice, right? Well, not that you asked, but we’re doin’ pretty well too. Big things going on, lots of moving and shaking, y’know. Busy busy busy, that’s us. Yep.

Okay, look; we’re sorry about that “not that you asked” part. That’s not how we wanted to start this. It’s just that, well, things aren’t really the same between us. Don’t look at us like that. We know you feel it too. The distance. The walls we’ve both put up. What happened? We used to spend hours at night just talking. We would look into your eyes and you would look upon our daily deals and things just CLICKED.

This is coming out all wrong. Sorry, sorry. Look, just forget we said anything. No, really. It’s our issue and it’s wrong to pin it on you. In fact, to make up for this, come on by right now and we’ll give you a great deal on a Franklin Kindle Cover with Book Light. It’s the least we can do.

We’re sorry we lashed out like that. You make an effort to just ask us how our day was more often and we’ll make an effort to be more understanding that you work hard all day and you don’t always need us starved for attention when you come home at the end of the day.

Love,

Woot

Will I purchase the Kindle cover from them? Probably not since I’ve already purchased a cover (maybe if it had been closer to the original purchase). But the email did put them Top of Mind again, which can be a challenge in these days of email spamming.

How do you use humor or fun in your business?

Badges. Points. Achievements. As shown by Mafia Wars, Farmville, and Foursquare, just to name a few, gaming can be both fun and addicting. Long before our current social networks, gamers spent hours racking up achievements in virtual worlds. Games on social networks have increased time spent and interactions within networks, but what impact is gaming having on these social networks?

Replacing other forms of Entertainment?

Gaming online used to be the domain of Gamers. These days just about everyone places some sort of online game, even if it’s just Farmville on Facebook. People are increasingly spending more time online and more of that time is in some sort of game:

Social gaming, as a category, has grown incredibly quickly, becoming one of the dominant drivers of usage on Facebook, and an increasingly core component of people’s entertainment. This growth represents a real threat to other forms of entertainment… -Why the Social Gaming Biz is Just Heating Up – Mashable

Gaming Increases Engagement

Do you play Foursquare? Or Farmville? Or some other online game? Why? Probably because you enjoy achieving something — getting more points or a badge or whatever. Just like contests are popular because people like to win. Online games are popular because people enjoy the escape of mindless stockpiling of points.

Even Google is Getting in the Game

Google just added another gaming site to it’s portfolio:

As we know through the acquisitions of Slide and Jambool, and investment in social gaming giant Zynga, Google is getting serious about the launch of Google Games. While we still don’t know the details of the platform, SocialDeck’s mobile technology seems to be a part of the plan. – Google’s Social Buying Spree Continues With Mobile Gaming Developer SocialDeck – TechCrunch

Will Gaming Increase Socializing?

Just because there’s more gaming going on, doesn’t mean people are being more social. Many (like me) find the game spam on Facebook to be annoying (even though I play other online games). Does playing games online increase or decrease socialization?

What do you think?

Special thanks to Andy Kraft for the post idea. You can find Andy on Twitter @roadblock.

(photo by Mykl Roventine)

One challenge with social media is keeping track of all the conversations and times that your name or company name is mentioned. SocialSeek provides real-time results for news, topics, brands or keywords in a specific location or anywhere from either a desktop or mobile application. Search by keyword and location, or just one or the other. Save searches and view updated results automatically every 30 minutes. SocialSeek makes it easy to keep track of what’s being said about your company and brand.

Birds-eye View

SocialSeek provides a great overview of mentions of your brand or keywords in blogs, Twitter, video, images, and events, either based on a location or in general. The desktop application automatically refreshes the search every 30 minutes so you can regular updates. Plus see what’s going on overall, or just in blogs, Twitter, video, images, events or add your own feeds.  You can also filter the results to look for specific people or keywords.

Trends & Charts

Also available are trends and charts on the social search, where you can see activity for your search results over the past 2 weeks (broken out by type), as well as Twitter trends and keyword cloud. While these are a nice addition, they’re not as indepth or useful as charts provided by other tools. It looks like you’re supposed to be able to compare two keywords within the charts, but I couldn’t get that to work — that could be handy for competitive analysis.

An overview of the overall activity of the search for the least few days:

Twitter Trends for the search:

Twitter cloud:

Overall: A Free & Useful Social Media Monitoring Tool

I’ve been using the SocialSeek desktop application on my Mac for the past couple of days.  When it does an update every 30 mins, it’ll send a notification to Growl if there are any updates (which brings up a window with a short update on whatever screen I’m working on). I’ve been able to easily keep track of mentions for sazbean without having to check on other tools, which has been very handy.  The charts are nice, but not as useful as provided by other tools. SocialSeek will save searches so you can easily switch between them, but it only reports on one search a time, which means it’s not as useful if you’re monitoring multiple brands or keywords. But, it’s free, so it’s definitely another useful tool for getting a snapshot of what’s going on for your brand in social media.

Have you used SocialSeek? What do you think?

Everyone gets caught up in how many fans, followers, visitors, commenters, etc. they have for their brand.  What do these numbers actually mean? Are businesses getting caught up in a numbers game instead of understanding what their customers need and want?  Some thoughts from Brian Solis & Chris Beck.

What do you think?

Ahh, social media.  The golden ticket to increased profits and a life time of wealth. All you have to do is setup a Twitter and Facebook profile and start sending updates and magically people will start following and responding to you.

If you believe this, you’ve been lead down the wrong path. While social media may cost less than other marketing methods, it still requires planning, time and patience. If you just jump in without knowing what you’re doing and what you’re trying to accomplish, you may not get the results you expected, leading you to believe it’s all a huge waste of time.

Step Back from Social Media

I probably sound like a broken record, but before you start with any social media, you really need to understand what you’re trying to accomplish.  That means understanding your business: who your customers are, what benefits you provide to them, and what your business goal or objective is.  Once you understand your business — what you’re trying to accomplish and who you’re trying to reach — it’ll be much easier to figure out what tactics and tools to reach those objectives.

Find the Right Tools

Everyone jumps on the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn bandwagon. Sure, those are probably the most popular social networks, but that doesn’t mean they’re the right ones for your business and who you’re trying to connect with.  You need to do a bit of research to find out where your customers are currently hanging out online.  It may be industry blogs or discussion boards or there may be a specific social network that’s a better fit.  Find your customers online first to decide what types of social media or online tactics will work best to connect with them.

Provide the Right Message & Information

If you want people to respond to you, you need to be providing useful information and the right message.  Learn what types of questions your audience has and work on providing answers. Follow industry trends and provide useful news and tips. Have conversations and share other people’s work. Be a giver. Social media will never work for you if you just use it as another marketing channel.

Share & Distribute

Don’t be obnoxious, but it’s ok to cross-distribute your content to several places online.  If you blog, post a link to your other social networks as well.  Look for social networks where you can share your content to help your message get out to a larger audience.  Remember to look for places that target the people you want to reach.

Be Patient

Social media can be frustrating if you start using it and don’t get any response. Unfortunately, the reality is that you have to work at being found.  You have to have conversations with people and you have to be consistent in your posting schedule. If you blog only once in awhile, you’re never going to get enough traction for people to discover you.

Ask for Help

If you’re not getting anywhere with your social media endeavors, try talking to people who have had some luck using social media in your industry.  Ask them what worked for them and where they’ve found success.  Also, ask them how long it took them to really get any traction. You may be surprised to find similar circumstances and some tactics you hadn’t thought of.

How have you made social media work for you?

(photo by fdecomite)

You may be doing a great job with social media for your company — creating great content, having conversations and really engaging with your customers.  But, if your customer service doesn’t align with the expectations set by your social media interactions, your success will only be short term.  Eventually customers will experience your customer service and if it doesn’t align with expectations built by social media, all your hard work will be for naught.

Augie Ray, from Forrester, recently had the following experience at the mall:

• Retailer One:  I spent 15 minutes trying to find someone to offer assistance.  The only employees to be found were behind checkout counters with long lines. I left frustrated.
• Retailer Two: I walked into a fitting room to try on shirts and found it looking like Hell’s storage room (or an average teen’s bedroom) with deep piles of clothes. I left disgusted.
• Retailer Three:  I entered Nordstrom and found a store that was clean and staffed.  I got attention and helpful assistance from an employee.  And I spent $250.

Do You Want To Succeed at Social Media or Social Media Marketing? – Forrester Blog

Apparently Retailer One and Two have spent a great deal of time and resources on social media, but not much on their customer service.  The expectations they’ve set with social media don’t match the actual customer experience in their stores, and according to Augie, their sales have suffered because of it:

I don’t think it is any coincidence that since the recession began in December 2007, Nordstrom’s stock (JWN) is down just 10 percent while the stock of the other two retailers is down between 30 and 50 percent.  And while Nordstrom has fewer Facebook fans than the other two retailers, it has more fans-per-location based on it 193 stores.

If you haven’t had a chance to shop at Nordstrom, give it a try sometime.  Even if you don’t buy anything, their customer service really is what every company should strive for. Nordstrom has a social media presence, but its their exceptional customer service that drives their continued success.

What do you think?

(photo by Conor Ogle)

Engaging customers is all the rage with businesses big or small. Companies are adding communities, comments and reviews to their websites to encourage feedback and conversations. This is all good.  However, if you ask for feedback from your customers, be ready to respond when they give it. Not responding is worse than never asking in the first place.

Requesting Feedback

While customers may already be talking about you online (via Twitter, Facebook, etc.), you can also request feedback just by asking or by implementing systems which allow customers to provide their opinions.  Systems such as comments, reviews and forums are fairly easy to implement for business websites and can be especially useful for eCommerce sites.

Expect the Negative

Unless you specifically ask people with positive experiences to leave their feedback, you may receive mostly negative comments.  People who have a negative experience are more likely to feel compelled to complain or leave their opinions than people who are satisfied (they’re usually hoping for some sort of resolution). If you’re asking for feedback or provide ways for people to leave it, be prepared for the negative and ask for the positive.

Be Ready to Respond

When you ask for feedback or provide ways for people to leave it, you need to be prepared to respond when it happens — for either positive or negative feedback.  Nothing is worse than a company that requests feedback and then doesn’t respond when it’s given.  This means someone needs to be responsible for monitoring feedback and responding to people.

What’s your experience been when you’ve given feedback? Do you have any examples of good response by a company?  How about bad?

(photo by Anna Majkowska)

Just like Metrics and KPIs, Conversion is another measurement term which is often mis-used (thanks to Jim Suchara for the suggestion). A conversion happens when someone completes an action you want them to take — purchases from you, signs up for a newsletter, registers for a webinar, etc.  So, just like KPIs (key performance indicators) measuring conversions requires first understanding exactly what it is you want people to do — what are your business goals and objectives?

Defining Conversions Starts with Your Business

I feel like a broken record, but again, when defining conversions, you need to start with your business.  What is your business goal and what are your objectives?  What is your digital strategy?  What actions do you want people to complete online which help you achieve your goal?

A Service Company Conversion Example

Let’s say you’re a service company with a website, a Twitter profile and a Facebook page.  Your goal (specific, attainable, time delimited) is to increase sales by 10% over the next 6 months.  After looking at your target audience and the benefits your services offer customers, you’ve decided that you have two actions which will help you accomplish your goal (increasing sales by 10%) — registering for a free webinar and requesting a quote — which will give you sales leads.  These are your calls to actions and they’re also the actions you’ll be measuring for conversions.  When a person registers for your webinar, you have one conversion.  Likewise, when a person requests a quote, you have a conversion.

Measuring Conversions

In our example above we have two different conversions – registering for a webinar and requesting a quote.  To measure these conversions, there probably is a form people fill out on your website and then an email is sent to you with the information from the form.  Every time you get an email is one conversion.

Analytics programs like Google Analytics can also be setup to measure conversions by telling them what page on your website is reached when a specific action is completed — usually a thank you page of some type.  Google then can give you some very valuable information about your conversion rates (how many people came to the landing page/form vs. actually converted), as well as where people may be getting lost in the process (checkout Funnel visualizations in Google Anlaytics Goals).

Improving Conversions

How to increase conversions is the topic for entire books (or at least another post or two) and really depends on your particular business, industry and online strategy.  However, if you have identified your business goal, your calls to action and your landing pages, you’ve made measuring conversions much easier.  Once you have data about your conversions and what’s happening on your landing pages, you can start to experiment with ways to improve your conversions — maybe your target audience isn’t quite right or maybe your messaging doesn’t convey the benefits to the customer.

What do you think? How do you define a conversion?

(photo by jaygooby)

Social networking (using the social web) is about connecting with people — asking questions, having conversations — basically the same things you would do if you were talking in-person.  Yet many companies still treat social media like traditional media — as a way to distribute marketing and advertising messages.  While social media does provide a cost-effective way to reach a targeted audience for marketing, the real opportunity is in making personal and human connections with that audience.  Here are some of the most commonly repeated mistakes I see when it comes to social networking and using the social web:

Being Too Self-Promotional

Only using social networks to send out advertising and marketing messages. On the social web you  need to send out content that your audience wants or else they’ll just ignore you (which is very easy).

Being Too Selfish

Only sending out links and content on your own sites. If you want people to respect you online, share content and links from others in your network.  Give more than you receive.  Follow the 80/20 or 90/10 rule — 80 or 90% of your content and tweets and shares should be either links and content from other sites or content that is helpful or informative to your audience.

Being Too Automated

Only sending out content automatically, auto-following and auto-DMing new followers.  Take the time to look at each new follower and decide whether or not you want to follow them back.  Quality is better than quantity.  If you want to send a message to new followers, do it individually.  Take the time to respond to people personally and thank them when they share your content.

Being Too Inconsistent

If you blog every day for a week one week and then come back a month later, people are going to forget to check your site.  The same goes with Twitter and Facebook and other social networks.  Taking a day off here or there is fine, just try to be consistent in how often you post.

Being Too Overwhelming

Sometimes too much information is overwhelming.  Look for clues from your audience about how much content is right — or better yet, just ask them.

Being Too Personal

While most people err on the side of being too impersonal, some people share things online that they wouldn’t tell a person standing next to them.  Think about what you share and whether you want that information to be public information forever.

Getting it Right

The right mix of content and engagement varies from company to company.  Try social media out.  Get some feedback.  Take a look at what works and what doesn’t and make adjustments.  Keep trying new things and learn about what works with your specific audience.

What do you think? How else do people commonly social network the wrong way?

(photo by Kaiban)

If you’re in the Detroit area, you may have heard some mentions about the 140conf coming here in October.  Dave Murray explains a bit more about what it is in this video.  And you can get additional information, as it becomes available, on the Detroit 140conf website.

While the Old Spice ad campaign, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” was amusing to watch, marketers were interested in whether it could lead to increased sales.  According to The Nielson Co. and SymphonyIRI Group, the answer is yes, as reported by BrandWeek:

Over the past three months, sales jumped 55 percent and in the past month, they rose 107 percent, also per Nielsen. Recent sales figures from SymphonyIRI  also show a lift for Old Spice Body Wash products. - Old Spice Campaign Smells Like a Sales Success – Brand Week

As the Old Spice Man responded directly to people via a series of videos, we took a look at the basic measurements available.  Let’s take an updated look now that we have sales information.

Mentions on Twitter spiked around the time of the response videos, but have increased over the past week as news of the sales reports has spread.

Searches for “old spice” on Google also spiked around the time of the response videos, but have remained higher than before them.

P&G Rep Micheal Norton weighed in on the results:

“Since the ‘Smell Like A Man, Man’ campaign broke in February, Old Spice has month-over-month strengthened its market position,” said Norton in an e-mail. He  added that Old Spice  is now the No. 1 brand of body wash and anti-perspirant/deodorant in both sales and volume with growth in the high single/double digits.

According to BrandWeek, the response videos have been viewed more than 40 million times and total brand views on the web are more than 110 million.

It will be interesting to see if Old Spice continues to converse with customers via videos and social media or if this was just a limited-time campaign.  If it is a limited-time campaign, time will tell if Old Spice can keep it’s sales lift or if it falls after people lose interest.

What do you think?

Yesterday, Ford revealed their new Explorer model exclusively on their Facebook page, and then followed up with live events in North America.  The reveal on Facebook was followed by other events, including an online chat with CEO Alan Mulally, among others.  How has the use of social media impacted the Explorer launch?  Obviously, it’s a bit too early to tell in terms of sales, but let’s take a look at some initial measures…

Mentions of “explorer” on Twitter skyrocketed yesterday (some due to Ford’s own actions), but have quieted back down to normal levels for today so far.

Searches on Google for “ford explorer 2011″ have increased over the past week or so as Ford has ramped up marketing efforts. Unfortunately, data for the past 4 days isn’t yet available.

The video created exclusively for the Facebook reveal only has 32,437 views so far, and certainly hasn’t taken off virally. Some of the comments suggest that people wanted to see more of the car and less about the story and the team. The Explorer is only on screen for the last 20s or so of a 3:48 video.

The video of the reveal in NYC with Mike Rowe and Alan Mulally may only have 3,391 views, but it’s #80 in the top favorited video today in Autos & Vehicles on YouTube.

The video tour of the Ford Explorer has 9,975 views.

I wonder if Ford wouldn’t have done better to have a Mike Rowe reveal on Facebook or a video that people would have been more interested in sharing. The reveal video on Facebook may have gotten 30k views mostly because that was the only way people could see the new vehicle at that point. There hasn’t been much take-up in terms of virally sharing any of the videos — at least so far. Whether social media has been a part of a successful product launch for Ford Explorer will have to wait until the sales numbers come in.

What do you think?

Twitter has recently started selling ads in the form of Promoted Tweets & Promoted Trends (both still in beta). While there are only a handful of advertisers (for example, Starbucks and Disney) currently using these ads, marketers are pondering the value of them. Twitter obviously has value as a tool to have conversations with a broad audience. Is it valuable as an advertising channel?

ClickZ, a website providing news and advice for digital marketers, recently put together some thoughts from marketers (including myself), in their story, Marketers Ponder the Worth of Twitter’s Ads:

“I hope Twitter is doing research because I am definitely curious,” said Ian Shafer, CEO of social media agency Deep Focus. “I am sure right now there is a big early adapter discount going on with that program because no one knows [exactly] what it does.”

Results from the beta testing advertisers will be of interest not only to them and Twitter but to digital marketers in general.  Do these ads drive results?  Are they reaching the intended audience?

“My personal opinion is that these ads will work in the short term because some marketers will buy them,” the India-based Evans [Dave Evans from 2020Social] wrote in an e-mail to ClickZ. “The idea of ‘appearing in Twitter…’ will be appealing, just as ‘appearing in the Super Bowl…’ is appealing. At the same time, other brands will recognize that consumers are increasingly ignoring these ads, so the actual utility is questionable.”

Consumers are increasingly ignoring ads across many mediums — at least ads that don’t go the extra mile to make some sort of personal connection.  Recent Old Spice commercials are an example of ads which have managed to gain attention and response.

What’s my take?

Sarah Worsham, CEO of Sazbean Consulting, suggested that Disney’s direct marketing-style approach was probably a smart way to optimize ad spend on Twitter. “Verticals where a consumer can purchase or give you a direct response online would be best for these types of ads – meaning a consumer can buy directly from your website or can download a coupon or [allow marketers] some other way to collect leads and measure conversion.”

I see the Promoted Tweets in search results as being more valuable in terms of actual conversions because a person has shown some sort of intent — in the form of performing a search.  Marketers are excited about Promoted Trends because trends are very popular with users, but that doesn’t mean that ads there will be.  Either way, ads need to not only connect to viewers but also lead to a specific landing page with a specific call to action to get conversions.  Whether that’s possible or not remains to be seen.

What do you think?

An important part of any strategy is measurement — so you know what’s working and what’s not and where to improve. Using Twitter to have conversations and provide useful information to your intended audience can be a valuable part of your online strategy.  But how do you know what your audience likes or dislikes?  Taking a look at your Twitter stats using HootSuite can give you some good insight to improve your tweets.

Daily Clicks

The daily clicks report gives you an idea of the total clicks your tweets got per day.  The default is the last 7 days, but you can easily change it to any date range you’d like.  Taking a look at the daily information will give you an idea of what days your tweets may be more popular than others with your audience.  The longer the date range, the more you can see whether certain days are better than others for announcing important promotions or information. This report will also help you identify if a specific day got more response than others, which can help you track down a specific tweet or event.

Clicks By Region & Top Referrers

Now you can see what parts of the world give you the most clicks.  You may be surprised to see an audience you hadn’t expected, which can lead to a nice expansion into an international market.

Top Referrers will show  you what sites sent your links the most traffic.  This can be especially useful if you use HootSuite to send a message to multiple social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) to see where your messages are the most effective.

Most Popular Tweets

Now we get into the really valuable information — what specific tweets got the most clicks from your audience.  By taking a look at this information, you can get an idea of what topics and subjects really resonate with your audience.  You can also vary your phrasing to see if certain word patterns are more effective than others.

Individual Message Stats

HootSuite also gives you information on individual messages, which gives you an opportunity to dive a little deeper into popular (or unpopular) messages to see what makes them tick.  You can see not only how many clicks a message got, but also by day, to give you an idea of how people are reading your stream.  Do they only look at tweets immediately or do they go back through what you’ve said?

How about you?

Do you use any statistics to help improve your Tweets?  What do you use and how?

(photo by merec0)

Old Spice has turned their “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” ad campaign into a viral sensation by having the “Old Spice guy” respond to people’s comments and tweets via videos which were posted on YouTube (click on the response videos on the right) — my favorite is below.  The move has gotten quite a response, but only time and sales will tell whether it was successful for the brand’s bottom line.  Sales can a bit of time to react, but there are some measurable effects that can give insight into how the ads are doing now.

Mentions & Brand Awareness
People are definitely more interested in the Old Spice brand in the past week or so. As shown by the graph below, mentions of “old spice” have spiked in the past week with barely a blip before in the past 30 days.

Searches for “old spice” (and related terms) have also gone up in the past week — starting probably with the upload of the new commercial, and then increasing as people became aware of the video responses, which have been shared vigorously via Twitter, Facebook, email, etc.

Takeoff
How the campaign went viral can be seen a bit by looking at the statistics available with each individual video on YouTube.  For example, on the first video response posted:

Here are the associated stats:

You can see how the video’s popularity increased & what sites it was embedded on (and how many views it got). Interestingly enough, the video was most popular with men, their buying audience.

Interactions
While its a bit more difficult for an outsider to see this information, the number of interactions with the brand can be measured via the number of tweets, comments, posts, shares, etc. from a combination of sources.  Old Spice can also see how many people have subscribed and viewed their content (in total) since the start of the video responses — this info is available to anyone, but you’d have to do a bit of spreadsheeting to get it all and Old Spice would presumably have access to previous numbers to know how these increased.

Back to the Sale
As brilliant as these commercials and viral videos have been, it all comes down to whether or not they helped increase sales.  While it’s difficult to pinpoint directly whether there was an effect, Old Spice should see a lift in sales after the videos and the weeks to come, which is most likely attributable to this campaign — you’d have to take a look at all the numbers to make a more educated conclusion.

Thoughts?

For whatever reason, there’s this perception that social media is not measurable – that you just do it because good things will happen.  ”What’s the ROI of your phone?” is one thing I’ve heard in comparison to measuring social media.  But, if you know what you are trying to accomplish ahead of time, there’s always something that’s measurable (even with a phone).

Start at the Business Level

That’s the key issue with measurement — know what you’re trying to accomplish.  If you don’t know why you’re doing something or what you’re hoping to get out of it, it doesn’t matter how many numbers you have, you’ll never get anything out of them.  Instead, if you have a goal in mind, then it’s much easier to backtrack to see where you have data and how it can be used to give you insight into what’s going on.

What is the ROI of your phone?

Back to the phone example.  As long as you have a specific end goal in mind, let’s say increasing sales by 10% this month and you’ve identified how the phone is going to help you with that — for example, calling your list of contacts with a special offer — there are clear measurements to tell you how well the phone is working.  In this situation, you know how many people you’ve called, who you’ve called, how long you’re on the phone with each, and whether or not your call lead to a sale.  By knowing what you were trying to accomplish, you can find measurements to tell you how well that tool & your tactics with that tool worked.

How Social Media is Mesurable

The same goes for social media.  If you just get on Twitter and Facebook and blog because you think you should, measurements aren’t going to tell you much.  They will tell you some things — how many people retweet you, how many followers you have, how many pageviews you have, etc.  But, if you don’t have a specific business goal in mind, it’s difficult to connect the dots between tweeting and your goal.

Take a Step Back

Trying out various social media is a great way to see what they’re about and give you idea for how you can use them.  But, using social media is definitely measurable — as long as you take a step back and figure out what you’re trying to accomplish.  Then you’ll be able to look for what data can give you information about how well you’re accomplishing your goal.

What do you think?

(photo by MonkeyMyshkin)

As a digital strategist, it’s important to not only understand how to use social media for business, but also to understand pain points when business people go to use it for the first time.  Just watching and helping a client struggle with learning how to use social media offers a lot of great insights.

Getting Started

The greatest hurdle is just understanding what exactly social media is and how it can be used for a specific business.  Most of the examples of social media success are of large companies with agencies and marketing departments.  Most are also consumer goods and many small and medium businesses either provide services or are B2B.

Monitoring

Since most of the power of social media for any business is in engaging customers and potential customers, knowing how to monitor for appropriate topics and keywords is vital.  Also knowing when and how to respond when there is a conversation going on.  If someone is having a problem, you don’t just want to swoop in with a product promotion.

Conversations

Social media is not like traditional marketing or advertising.  It’s not just about figuring out your promotion and message and finding the right audience.  With social media, your audience can talk directly back to you and to each other.  Many new Twitter users are amazed when they get the first response to something they tweet.

Knowing how and when to startup conversations using social media is a little like attending your first party as a teen.  At first you’re just a wall flower, not knowing anyone and not knowing how to get a conversation started.

Amplification

I’m working with my client to get started with blogging.  He recently posted his first post and I had setup Google Reader for him to monitor things like his name and brand name and important keywords.  Several minutes after he posted his post appeared in his Google reader feed.  He was amazed.  The fact that his post was almost instantly picked up by Google and showing up in the Google blog feed really brought home the power of the social web.

Just Try It

The second hardest part of social media is just getting started.  Fortunately (or unfortunately) the best way to learn about social media is just to try it.  Then ask for some feedback from some more knowledgeable folks.  Ask for pointers on how to improve.  Do some reading.  As long as you keep trying and keep working at improving, you’re on the right path.

What do you think?

(photo by Hamed Saber)

Social media isn’t some wonderful magic tool that will suddenly increase your sales and make you popular.  It takes a lot of work and time.  Social media provides a relatively inexpensive (in terms of $) way to reach a wider audience than was possible previously.  In order for social media to work, it requires a commitment to regularly spending time engaging with your customers and potential customers.

Time vs. Money

Social media, or the social web, does allow just about anyone to connect and have conversations on a scale that has never before been possible.  Social media is relatively cheap in terms of money investment.  But the tradeoff is that it requires time.  In order to get the most out of social media, you need to regularly listen and engage with your customers.  You need to monitor what’s being said about your brand and in your industry and you need to respond.  If you want people to read your blog, you need to regularly (daily) post content and it takes quite awhile (at least a year) to really gain any traction.

Patience

Even with regularly committing time to social media, it takes awhile for people to begin to respond and engage with you.  You may be tweeting and blogging and responding to people, but not getting any response.  Be patient.  It takes awhile for people to get to know you — even longer online than offline.  Eventually you’ll find that there are people who regularly share what you’ve posted or comment or respond.  Followup with these people (your influencers) — thank them, follow and monitor what they’re doing so you can help share their posts.

Engagement

If all you’re doing is posting sales or promotions or your latest blog post, no one cares.  Engagement means listening and having conversations as well.  Listen to what others in your industry are saying.  Add your own thoughts and comments.  Be personable and interesting, just as you would at an in-person networking event.

Magic for the Taking

While social media may not provide a magical wand to instantly increase your sales, it does have the magic to connect you with a far wider audience at a cheaper dollar cost than any other media.  There’s magic for the taking if you’re willing to study and learn — after all, no wizard becomes all powerful over night either.

Thoughts?

(photo by aleca 99)

Measuring, monitoring and tracking your website and social media presences can give you quite a bit of good information.  Some information and data requires the use of special tools or techniques, but here are some of what online measurement can tell you:

1. Who (what websites) is linking to your blog posts or website.
2. How much traffic your website or blog is attracting (pageviews, visits, visitors).
3. How much traffic search engines are sending to you.
4. What keywords are being used to find your content from search engines.
5. How much traffic is coming from other websites & blogs.
6. How much traffic is coming from Twitter or Facebook or other social networks.
7. How many people click on the links you send out via Twitter or Facebook or other social networks (requires URL shortener).
8. How often people amplify your messages & posts (via sharing, retweeting, reblogging, etc.)
9. What content or posts are the most popular.
10. How many conversions (sales or leads) you’re getting from your marketing efforts.
11. Where people are getting lost in your checkout process.
12. Which social networks are sending your landing pages the most traffic.
13. Which calls to action are working and from which places.
14. How long people are spending on your site and on specific pages (on average).
15. What percentage of people who visit your site only view one page.
16. Who is saying things about your brand or products or services.
17. Who is amplifying and advocating your brand and messaging (influencers).
18. How people are navigating around your site.

There are many more things that online measurement can tell you.  These are just some of them.

What does online measurement tell you?

(photo by Bludgeoner86)