Page 12 - MetalForming January 2012

The Business of Metalforming By Michael Bleau
A Social Media Strategy, Part 3: Monitor and Measure
This month we continue our discussion on implement- ing a social media marketing (SMM) strategy with a dis- cussion of how to monitor and measure performance to ensure that you’re meeting your strategic goals. Next month we’ll look at implementation.
When you begin to set targets, remember that most social media approaches are tuned to a business-to-con- sumer (B2C) audience, very different than your business-to- business (B2B) focus. With B2B you’re communicating with individuals who make decisions within a business setting, far different than dealing with consumers. Aside from this crit- ical difference, the steps taken to create an SMM strategy are similar in nature and follow a fundamental marketing process.
Vehicle Selection
When considering metrics, keep in mind the vehicle being used to reach your
speak directly to specific portions of your audience—content aimed at executives, field managers, maintenance profes- sionals, etc. Otherwise, you may end up with a single feed that so broadly covers a mix of topics that you struggle to main- tain a quality engagement with any of your target audi- ences, and an equally difficult time measuring return on investment.
A good resource offering advice on to how best to meas- ure and maximize a SMM’s return on investment is Social- Times.com. A few of the metrics it recommends:
• Visitors and sources of traffic
• Network size (followers, fans, members)
• Quantity of commentary about brand or product Additional advanced metrics, which focus on quality of
insight gained, include:
Social media leads. Track web traffic from all social media
sources, and chart the top few sources over time. If members of your social media networks are sending referrals, consid- er measuring this data as well.
Membership increase and active network size. This is the portion of your company’s social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube) that actively engages with your social media content (feeds, pages, channels, etc.) Is your collection of members, followers and fans growing, and is there quali- ty interaction with your content?
Activity ratio. Compare the ratio of active members to total members, and chart this over time. Initiate a campaign to increase interaction and measure the resulting data. Activ- ity can be measured in a variety of ways, including use of social applications.
Conversions. You want social network members to con- vert into subscriptions, sales, Facebook application use, etc.—actions that can directly or indirectly be monetized. Measure and chart these conversions over time.
Brand mentions in social media. Measure and track brand mentions—positive and negative—and their quantities. Loyalty. Track the interaction among your social mem- bers—how often do they share content and links, or mention
your brands, for example?
Case Study: Warranty Exposure
To explore how manufacturers can apply a well-devel- oped SMM, let’s take a look at warranty exposure, and assume that you can reduce exposure by educating cus- tomers about the proper use of your product. We’ll need a metric that compares warranty costs (per customer) to your social posts.
First, we form a baseline by tracking warranty costs for, say,
customers. While Face-
book and LinkedIn both
are wildly popular social
media sites, they are
extremely different, with
Facebook focused mostly
on casual social relation-
ships between individuals
and LinkedIn focused on business relationships. Thus, each site offers completely different options for advertising and business promotion; companies must consider how these dif- ferences will affect decisions about the metrics used to determine the effectiveness of an SMM strategy.
Shoot for quality not quantity when tracking the number of fans (Facebook), followers (Twitter), group members (LinkedIn) and subscribers (YouTube). Having a large fol- lowing does not necessarily define success. Work to attract tar- geted followers by aligning your SMM strategy toward spe- cific, stated business outcomes. Develop and host feeds that
Michael Bleau has served manufacturing and con- sumer-related industries since 1986. Prior to forming Industry Scope, a strategic b2b and b2c sales and marketing consultancy, in 2002, he held executive positions for several automation and press manufac- turers. Michael regularly consults with manufacturing companies on strategic planning, sales and market- ing, brand and product development, PR and sales- channel development.
Industry Scope
tel. 810/397-1429 mbleau@industry-scope.com www.industry-scope.com
Shoot for quality not quantity when tracking social media sites.
10 MetalForming/January 2012
www.metalformingmagazine.com