Social Media Secrets | Susan Rice Lincoln, MastertTheNewNet.com | iStrategy, Berlin

Presented To: 2010 iStrategy Conference
Location: Berlin, Germany
Susan Rice Lincoln

Susan Rice Lincoln www.masterthenewnet.com
Copyright 2009 by SUSAN RICE-LINCOLN All Rights Reserved
How we will talk today
•  Let’s try to be as ‘social’ as possible
•  We’ll review 7 Secrets of Social Media
•  I will present my thoughts
•  You add yours
•  This is YOUR presentation, not mine
•  We can’t do everything in an hour and 15
minutes...

Social Media is a particular
blend of magic
•  Tactics
•  Strategy
•  Details
•  THE BIG PICTURE
•  Getting the balance right is a big challenge

The Seven Secrets
1. Big Picture
2. Right Thoughts
3. Fall Back
4. Spring Forward
5 Observe
6. Strategize
7. Measure

Social Media Secret Number 1:
Big Picture
• In the last 1460 days the world as we knew it
exploded.

Video – Social Media Revolution

The web’s top sites are full of companies
who are younger than first graders…
Top 10 Global Sites on Alexa:
6. Wikipedia
7. Blogger.com
8. Baidu.com
9. MSN
10. QQ.com
1. Google
2. Facebook
3. YouTube
4. Yahoo
5. Windows Live

If Facebook was a country it would
be bigger than the USA
Source: Facebook(er) Desktop Widget
“Facebook(er) Users Worldwide”
•  Facebook 360 million active users worldwide
•  US population is 307 million

Social Media Sites Already Exceed
Television’s Reach
221.5
200.2
126.2
113.7
86.8
69.2 63.9 58.1 46.4 45.6
0
50
100
150
200
250
Blogger
Facebook
MySpace
Wordpress
WindowsLive
Spaces
YahooGeocities
Flickr
HI5
Orkut
SixApart
Worldwide Audience for Top 10
Social Media Sites, Nov. 2008
•  Total Social Media Audience: 691M, or 69.4% reach
•  Facebook’s audience grew 116% from Nov 07-Nov8
Source: comScore as reported in “Top Social Media Sites of 2008 (Facebook Still Rising),” TechCrunch Dec 31, 2008
MonthlyGlobalUniqueVisitors(inmillions)

And social media is not just
about the young generation…
Source: Accenture, 2009

…or Americans….
Social Media Grows Like Wildfire Worldwide
Internet Users in Select Countries Who Have Created a
Social Network Profile as of 2009
Data provided from eMarketer article: Focusing on Social Networks.

240 million Europeans use Social Media
*Source: Eranium. “Social Networking Map of Europe.” 3 Oct..
2008. Online image. Flickr. 03 Feb. 2010. http://
farm4.static.flickr.com/3276/2960555931_2ab7d5f171.jpg
*

While 92 million Europeans are
on Facebook alone

This is a (consumer-led) revolution…

For a long time, there has been a
growing disconnect between
companies and consumers
76% of customers don’t
believe companies tell the
truth in advertising. Yet, 78%
rate the credibility of word-of
-mouth as 7 or higher on a 10
point scale.
Keller Fay Group 2006
Consumers in the USA and
Europe are 86% less trusting
of companies than they were
five years ago.
Bain & Co. 2006

Fill the gap with Social Media… …
41%
43%
56%
85%
93%
0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%100%
Believe companies should ask them their
opinion on their products and services
Believe companies should use social
networks to solve their problems
Said they feel a stronger connection with
companies that interact with them on social
media
Believe a company should be present AND
interact with consumers via social media
Believe a company should have a presence
in social media
2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study

Right Thoughts
•  Having the right attitude is half the battle

Mind wins over matter..
•  Too many people think
social media tool set
•  Too few people think
social media mind set

1. Think personal, not corporate..

Flickr/cindy47452

Be transparent

Be Nice “It is Ryanair policy not to
waste time and energy in
corresponding with idiot
bloggers and Ryanair can
confirm that it won’t be
happening again,” it told The
Times.
“Lunatic bloggers can have
the blog sphere all to
themselves as our people
are far too busy driving
down the cost of air travel”.

2. Think slow

Social Media is a marathon,
not a sprint
Flickr/MarcosVasconcelosPhotography

Social Media is not immediate
•  You are used to the high velocity of mass
media:
–  Turn on an ad or promotion and see
immediate results
–  The slow and steady of social media may
frustrate

Social Media is not efficient
•  Social media is the opposite of mass
–  Labor intensive
–  Highly involving
–  Non-standardized

Create a community…one
connection at a time

Start with baby steps…
•  Go slow
•  Experiment with little programmes
•  Learn what works and doesn’t work
•  Expect and embrace failures
•  Dare to make mistakes
•  Know that success is around the corner
•  Social media is one interaction and one
contact at a time

3. Think humble

You need to accept
you can’t do everything
•  Social media is a blend of:
–  Excellent Strategy
–  Understanding of how your social media
strategy fits into your overall business plan
–  Superior knowledge of the tools
–  Experience
Do you really think you have all those
qualities in-house?

Carefully decide who is
going to help you..
•  Do you really have the capabilities in-house?
•  Chances are your agency hasn’t figured it out
–  Social media is not in their DNA
–  Still trying to sort out SEM and display
•  Many social media consultant have little
experience
–  Don’t understand strategy
–  Don’t understand companies

4. Think Consumer to Consumer
•  The goal is to facilitate conversations
BETWEEN your consumers rather than
between YOU and YOUR consumer…

You don’t manage the conversation.
Your customer does!

You can’t just say it.
You have to get the
people to say it to
each other, says
James Farley, CMO
Ford.

5. Think positive

10. Learn how to respond when people
say negative things about you
•  Listen
•  Respond
•  Fix things

Negative comments are
a necessary evil
•  Respond
•  Respond quickly
•  Respond politely
•  Transform your enemies into advocates
•  Don’t review your blog’s comments
–  Allow people to say negative things
–  Reviewing comments is poorly received by the
blogosphere
•  It is better you know what people are saying than to ignore it
–  Enter into the dialogue
–  Tell your side of the story

A recent study shows that most
reviews aren’t as negative as feared
of reviewers said they wrote reviews to help
others make better purchasing decisions
said they wrote reviews to help companies
improve their products
wrote reviews to reward the company
wrote reviews that were generally positive
Source: BazaarVoice, a website authored by Marketing Charts

Criticism is not your enemy…your
FEAR of criticism may be..
•  A negative response is a cry for help AND an
acknowledgement they care

6. Think outside the box

New technology can re-define interactions
between brands and consumers
•  Get rid of old thinking
•  Change the advertising paradigm of the 20th
century
•  You need to innovate as much as technology
has
•  Be respectful of digital touch points and
community sensitivities

Let’s look at some out of the box
examples…

Missouri Bank
•  Mobank serves an eclectic customer base of
visionaries and artists
•  Doesn’t use social media to sell
•  Uses social media to build community
philosophy
•  Cool image on Facebook
–  An online neighborhood
–  Customers interact like they do at the
branches

Video - Wear & Compare from Nedap

Jet Blue…

Hyatt’s virtual concierge service…

Or Omni Hotels…

@CoffeeGroundz was one of the first
to start taking orders to go on Twitter

Kogi BBQ transformed the
mundane into a big business…..
•  Mobile Korean BBQ that travels around LA
selling Korean tacos.
•  Now has 45,000 followers on Twitter by
tweeting where the truck is going to roll up
•  Ran a t-shirt competition with fans voting on
their favorite t-shirt design
•  The now-famous taco truck has reached cult
status

1-800-Flowers links rewards
programme to Facebook
•  Uses Gimme Love, an application from Loyalty
Lab
–  Connects customer loyalty programmes to
Facebook applications and widgets
–  Rewards customers for activities they do on
Facebook with the brand
•  For example, members of the 1-800
-Flowers.com loyalty programme are rewarded
when they refer friends to the company.

H&R Block put the fun
back into taxes
•  Engage with taxpayers by setting up a presence in many different
parts of the social web
•  Depending on the audience/platform, made taxes funny,
interesting, informative or personal.
•  MySpace and YouTube
–  Created spoof character Truman Greene who sang parody
songs about his love of taxes
•  Facebook
–  Useful fools for people
–  Tips
–  Education
•  Twitter
–  Experts available 24/7 to answer questions

Aleksandr Orlov and Compare the
Meerkat re-defined car insurance

This car insurance programme
has enjoyed a wild success
•  The official YouTube video
–  80,00 views +
•  Over 320,000 Facebook fans
–  Huge number of comments and likes
–  customized photos
–  Petitions to get cuddly toys
•  Also loved on Twitter

This car insurance company has
enjoyed a wild success
•  In first 3 days of programme, ¾ of monthly
quotes target was achieved
•  Year on year uplift was 45%
•  Success due to
–  Great on and offline synergy
–  Integration of offline direct marketing
campaign with a strong social media
programme

Think out of the box with your
choices of social media tools too
•  Flickr
•  Slideshare
•  Podcasting
•  Yelp
•  Foursquare

7. Think social OUTSIDE your company
and selling INSIDE your company

Find the sweet spot between selling
and social…
•  Social media networks are fragile
•  They don’t like commercial promotion
•  Don’t hawk your products
•  Selling on social media is a turnoff
•  Talk about your products only in the spirit of
conversation
•  Your selling should be about 10% of your content
•  Network through social media
•  Sell elsewhere

Scott Monty, Ford

But think sell (inside your company)

Think sell inside the company...
•  Everyone needs to be a stakeholder
–  Legal
–  HR
–  Sales
–  Logistics
•  Communicate social media objectives
company wide
•  Refresh objectives/strategies on regular basis

Build support any way you can
•  Build support with
–  1 on 1 meetings
–  Larger group sessions
–  Meet/convince key influencers
–  Manage expectations

Show why social media will help
meet business objectives
Business Need Social Media
Feature
Advantage

Social Media Secret 3: Fall Back

Go back to basics

Your blog should be your starting point

Your blog has infinite benefits…
•  Establishes you as a thought leader
•  Increases your credibility
•  Allows you to converse with consumers and
prospects
•  Gives you a very clear idea of what is
important to people in your market
•  Is a key launching pad into social media

Here are 10 possible ways to use a blog
1.  Provide resources/tips related to your industry
2.  Establish yourself as an expert in your field
3.  Report back from an event or conference
4.  Involve your staff and let them share their knowledge
5.  Provide a place for consumers to share information
6.  Give your customers a place to voice their opinion
7.  Share your story
8.  Share your clients’ stories
9.  Talk about your products (the good/the bad/the ugly)
10.  Discuss products/trends affecting your industry

Use your blog posts in multiple ways
•  Link your blog with Facebook
–  Use Facebook’s Notes feature
–  Link to your personal profile page and/or your
business fan page
•  Tweet about your blog.
–  Automatically send out a Tweet when you publish a
new post
–  Send a Tweet with an interesting statistic (from your
blog post) and a link to the post
–  If your blog post answers a controversial question,
ask the question in Twitter with a link to the post

•  Edit your blog post for article directories
–  Upload your article on Ezinearticles.com
–  Publishers of ezines/newsletters/blogs use
content from Ezinearticles.com in their
publications, giving credit to the author with a
link to your website
–  Great way to drive traffic to your website and
establish yourself as a thought leader
–  Depending on the size of your blog, you may be
able to submit several articles from one blog
post.

Use your blog post in multiple ways
•  Submit your blog posts to print publications
–  Newspapers
–  Association newsletters
–  Magazines
•  Record your blog posts
–  Take your best blog posts
–  Record on a digital recorder
–  Or record directly into computer with a microphone
–  Use free software Audacity.
–  Post the recordings on your website
–  Burn them onto CDS/DVDs and give them to
prospects

Use your blog post in multiple ways
•  Create a video
–  Make a video of you reading a blog post
–  Use a Flip Video camera
–  Show your face and let people get to know you
•  Make a slide show
–  Divide your blog post into slides
–  Add audio
–  Post on Slideshare
•  Turn post into a book or Ebook
–  Put several posts together into an instructional booklet
–  Offer the book free off your website
•  Reformat your blog post into a press release
–  Send to local media
–  Publish Online

of your website

Edward Tufte, Information Design Guru

Jakob Nielsen, Web Usability Guru

The majority of websites are STILL
like fancy business cards floating in
cyberspace

There is a big difference between a Web
1.0 site and a Web 2.0 site

Your website is one of the biggeset
social media tools you have
•  Your website should be a place where:
–  Prospects/Customers can join your network
–  Prospects/Customers can talk to each other
–  Prospects/Customers can access interesting content
–  Prospects/Customers can promote your content
–  You place links/buttons to other social media
spaces:
•  Twitter
•  Facebook
•  LinkedIn
•  Yelp

Start thinking about your
website differently
•  Build it not just from YOUR point of view, build it from
your customer ‘s point of view
•  A customer comes to your site to solve HIS problem,
not to find out about what YOU think about YOU.
•  Let other people publish on your website
–  Customers
–  Prospects
–  Partners
–  Other members of the community
•  Dare to incorporate negative and positive views about
your product i.e. use unfiltered customer testimonials

Your website should be a
community resource
•  Be a credible source of opinion and fact
•  Be the Oprah Winfrey for your industry
•  Customers will make your site the first place to
go for information in your industry
•  You can build better products and services
with real-time customer feedback
•  You will be a community resource that helps
meet your customer needs faster
•  You will build trust

Think about social media as a hub
with spokes (not a two-way radio)
•  Use one place as a launching point or hub
–  Your blog
–  Your website

Spring Forward

Step into the future with
video and mobile

By 2012, 40% of all video consumption will
occur outside of the television set.
Learmonth, M.
Flickr/joelfrijhoff

A picture is worth a thousand words
•  Let people see your products
•  Let people see YOU
•  Videos (and photos) are:
–  Easy to create
–  Easy to publish
–  Allow you to explain complex how-to concepts
–  Explain step-by-step directions better than the
written word
–  Show your business is fun
–  Make your company more approachable

There are many ways you can use video
•  Show your products
•  Interview your clients
•  Interview key thought leaders
•  Have someone interview you
•  Do a visual walkthrough of your company or a product
•  Answer FAQs
•  Read out your favorite blog posts
•  Show you or a member of your team giving a public
presentation
•  Video you being interviewed by the media
•  Use video as a form of training for your real or virtual team

Get relaxed with a Flip Camcorder

Think about combining high-level
footage with your Flip footage

Use Tubemogul.com and move
beyond YouTube

Video - Will It Blend?

Mobile is about to stun us all…
With all the capabilities these
phones that are coming out have
like GPS, cameras - we think there
is the potential to actually make this
mobile Web better than the PC
Web. - Google's VP of product
development

The increase in mobile phones is attracting
companies to mobile social media

Facebook is the most favorite social media
network for mobile applications

Mobile applications are
proliferating like rabbits

Volkswagen goes 100% Mobile for
launch of GTI
•  Mobile drives social media usage
•  Social media usage drives mobile

Think about offering your
customers an exceptional
product experience on the go.

Follow Tasti D-Lite’s lead…
•  The first restaurant to incorporate social media
rewards into their loyalty programme
•  Customers accrue extra points (and earn free
frozen treats faster) for Foursquare check-ins
and tweets automatically made when their
TastiRewards cards are swiped.
•  The exchange of goods for check-ins is a way
of treating social media as currency

Follow Tasti D-Lite’s lead…

Its social and its smart…and its
revolutionising the way we think..
•  The company will get accurate accounts on
the quantity of tweets/check-ins with card
swipes
•  It can quantify social media updates with sales
figure
•  It can track change over time and assess the
influence of the TastiRewards tweets and
check-ins as it pertains to the growth of the
programme

Observe
•  Understand your social media world before
you step into it…

You must understand the social
media conversation swirling around
you..
•  About you
•  About your company
•  About competitors
•  About your space
Flickr/Matt Hamm

You need to understand it all…
•  What are your customers/prospects talking about?
•  Where are they talking?
•  Who is talking?
•  What are the issues or problems troubling people?
•  Are there breakthroughs in your field that are
getting people excited?
•  What does your consumer like?
•  What don’t they like?
•  Where are you in all of this conversation?

You also need to know everything
about your competitors
•  Their overall presence
–  Where they are
–  What they are talking about
–  Their tone of voice
–  What kind of activity they are engaging in
•  How their customers and prospects are
speaking to them
•  Their problems
•  Their opportunities
•  How effective they are

As well as identify and track
the key influencers
•  Who are the influencers?
•  What do they think is important?
•  What do they think about you?
•  Are they talking about you?
•  What are the compelling issues?

Start by identifying your
questions
Flickr/MyKPWedding

Key questions?
•  Start with the basics:
–  Where are people talking about me and my
industry?
•  Social Media Networking?
•  Twitter?
•  YouTube?
•  Flickr?
•  Groups?
•  Social Bookmarking

Key questions?
•  Who are they talking about?
–  Companies
–  People
–  Brands
–  No one
•  Who is doing the talking?
–  Age group
–  Sex
–  Location
–  Consumers
–  Prospects
–  Influencers

Key questions?
•  Who are my influencers?
–  Who is talking about my brand?
–  Who is talking about my competitors
–  Who is talking about my industry?
–  What is their social reach? (on Facebook
/Blog/Twitter/LinkedIn/Forums)
–  Who is listening to them?

Key questions?
•  What are the types of subjects discussed?
–  New products?
–  Problems with current products/service?
–  New overall trends?
–  Life?

What are your key questions?
•  What is the tone of the conversation in terms of
you/your company?
–  Satisfied?
–  Complaining?
–  Very interactive?
–  Uninvolved?
•  What is the tone of the conversation in terms of
your competitors?
–  Satisfied?
–  Complaining?
–  Very interactive?
–  Uninvolved?

Key questions?
•  Do you see obvious areas that need to be
changed?
–  Type of conversation
–  Subject of conversation
–  Tone of conversation
–  Overall presence
–  Improvement in target audience

Then decide how you will monitor
•  Free tools
•  Paid services
•  Or a combination of the two?

A good starting point is
Google Alerts
•  Scans the internet for important keywords
•  Keeps you up-to-date on new developments
related to those keywords.
•  Allows you to reduce information overload
while remaining informed
•  Gives you a good idea about where you are
placed in the social media space
•  Delivers all this timely information into your e
-mail box

Technorati will help
you search blogs

Monitter helps you track
conversations on Twitter

Friendfeed.com is a great tool

Who’s talkin.com is another option

And don’t forget BoardTracker

Social Mention is a
free key word tracker
•  Displays key stats like sentiment in a nice
dashboard
•  Does not store data for you
•  An instant snapshot of the last 30 days activity

Here are some paid monitoring tools
•  Radian 6
•  Techrigy SM2
•  Scoutlabs
•  Trackur

Radian6
•  Expensive
•  Multiple dashboards: Conversation Clouds,
Rivers of News, Topic Trends.. Tutorial videos
•  Simple,intuitive, easy to set up
•  Detailed reporting
•  Pricing
–  $500 for up to 10,000 search results/month
–  $1500 for 50,000 search results/month
•  .
.

TechrigySM2
•  Not as intuitive as Radian6
•  Good, solid product
•  Video tutorials
•  $600/month for 20,000 results
•  $4800 for 5000,000 stored results

Scoutlabs
•  Simple to use
–  setting up searches is easy
•  Less complex but just as useful asRadian6 or
SM2 ; a useful stripped down version
•  Easy-to-use overlay feature so you can
compare data trends
•  $99 per month for 5 concurrent searches
•  $749 per month for 125 concurrent searches

Trackur
•  Very basic app which will give you a simple
view
–  Search by influence
–  Apply a simple sentiment rating
–  View simple graphs
•  $18/month for 3 searches updated 2x a day
•  $197/month for 150 searches updated every
30 minutes

Social Media Secret 6:
Strategize
•  Remember that using a social media tool is
NOT a strategy…

What is a strategy?
Flickr/Army.mil

Forget about tools -
Think about purpose
•  You can’t possibly use ALL the tools we have
discussed
•  Figure out what you want to do first
•  The question isn’t what tool should we use
•  The question is what do we want to achieve
•  Imagine someone asking, Ï just got a
screwdriver..what should I fix?”
•  You don’t get a tool and look for a problem.
•  You isolate a problem and then select the
appropriate tool to fix it with

Your strategy comes as a
direct result from your assessment…
•  Through the assessment (Step 4) you have done the
following:
–  Discovered where your supporters/potential supporters
are in the social media space
–  Seen/heard/read what they are discussing
–  Understood their concerns
–  Been inspired by their dreams
•  Now it is time to figure out how to ENGAGE those supporters
–  Plan your objectives
–  Decide on your goals
–  Figure out what you want to achieve
–  Be clear about how you want to measure it

There are four distinct steps in
the creation of your strategy
1.  Create a social SWOTs analysis (on the basis of your
assessment)
–  Social Strengths
–  Social Weaknesses
–  Social Opportunities
–  Social Threats
2.  Choose your strategy (goals/objectives) on the basis of
the social SWOTs
3.  Select the tools you will use to achieve your strategy
4.  Decide how you are going to measure your
programme’s success/failure

1.The SWOTs analysis should be easy…
Strengths Opportunities
Weaknesses Threats

1.The SWOTs analysis should be easy…
Strengths:
Networking
Opportunities
Main
competitor is
silent
Weaknesses :
Not a thought
leader
Threats: The
overall social
conversation
is weak

2. Pick your strategy on basis
of your SWOTs analysis
Here are some examples:
•  Increase brand awareness
•  Build your community
•  Generate leads
•  Manage brand perception
•  Deal with customer service issues
•  Establish yourself as a key thought leader
•  Get to know the influencers in your field
•  Give your social media community a set of special perks (coupons
/discounts/special products)
•  Stimulate excitement and interest in your category
•  Increase traffic to your blog and/or website
•  Talk more intimately with niche audiences

Use your brand promise as a guiding
principle

Understand the value a company
offers a community
•  Go back to the core value your organization
offers
•  This is the heart of your social media strategy
begins
•  Don’t use tools just because they are ‘hot’; this
is putting the cart before the horse.

Social
Bkmarks
Social
Net. Sites
Podcasts
VideosMicroblogs
Blogs
Traffic
Thought
Leadership
Build Community
High
Emotion/
Immediacy
Converse
with
Communities
of Passion
Brand
Awareness
3. Pick the tool that matches your
strategy with the Web Wheel

4. Define exactly how you will
measure success
•  On a piece of paper, write down what you
want to achieve
•  Be specific
–  Increase number of followers on Twitter by 500
–  Increase number of fans on Facebook fan page by
35%
–  Increase contacts in your LinkedIn Network by 350
–  i.e. increase sales by $10,000
–  i.e. increase comments on blog by 20%

Measure Your Movement

Video - Social Media ROI

MyVouchers.co.uk shows us a new way
•  Use Facebook and Twitter to notify followers of
discount voucher codes (for online sales)
•  Search function within Facebook group for
codes and discounts
•  Constant feed of best discounts
–  Offering followers something for nothing,
rather than hard sell
•  Leap in traffic and money spent

The results for
MyVoucherCodes.co.uk?
•  Facebook and Twitter
–  More than £21.4m sales
–  12% total sales in fourth quarter 2009
–  12,000 fans on Facebook and 2,600 Twitter
followers averaging 6 visits/month to site
–  4,070,000 visitors courtesy of Facebook
and Twitter

I’ve seen many people say that having a
presence on social media networks does
little more than improve brand
awareness for companies – but our
experience really proves that social
media really can be a worthwhile form of
marketing, said Managing Director of
MyVoucherCodes.co.uk, Mark Pearson

Gary Vaynercuk
•  Grew his business from 4-50 million
•  Wine TV Library
–  Showed off Gary’s personality and
knowledge
•  Gary experienced the following results:
–  $15000 in Direct Mail=200 new customers
–  $7500 Billboard=300 new customers
–  $0 Twitter = 1,800 new customers.

Companies who engage in social
media are more successful
•  Wetpaint/Altimeter Study found companies
deeply engaged in social media:
–  Have better revenues
–  Enjoy better profits
–  Companies with highest levels of social
media activity grew on average by 18%
–  Companies with least amounts of social
media activity sales declined by -6%

Lenovo achieved big cost savings
•  20% reduction in call center activity as
customers go to community websites for
answers

Burger King Whopper Sacrifice
Facebook programme
•  Asked users to give up 10 of their Facebook
friends in exchange for a free Whopper
•  $50,000 programme
–  32 million media impressions
–  (t $400,000 in press value
equivalent of the
population of 19 states)

The Blendtec Will it Blend video
increased sales 500%

Dell sold $3 million worth of
computers on Twitter

Intuit’s Live Community
•  Introduced Live Community into TurboTax
products 2 years ago
–  Live Community allows customers to ask
each other questions
–  Unit sales increase +30% each year
–  Now integrated Live Community into other
products (Quickbooks, Quicken)
–  .

Barack Obama
•  5 million fans on social media
•  5.4 million clicked on an “I voted for Obama”
Facebook button.
•  3 million online donors contributing $500
million in fundraising
•  92% of donations in increments less than $100

Moonfruit
•  Web host provider got back $15,000 social
media investment
•  Website Traffic soared +300% while
correspondingly sales increased +20%.
•  Huge lift in search engine rankings

How do you measure social
media success?

Social optimisation is the key word
•  You want people to make a noise.
•  You want people to store and share things.
•  You want people to love your website.
•  You want people to visit more frequently
•  You want people to refer your company to their
friends.
•  You want people to buy into your brand.
•  You want people to buy your products.

Decide the ultimate aim of a social
media programme
•  Product awareness (measured in
conversational terms)
•  Real sales (measured by actual sales figures)
•  Something else
•  Need a clear picture in order to track results

The best way to manage measurement
is to separate out social from media
•  Qualitative (Social)
–  Customer satisfaction
–  Loyalty
–  Interaction
–  Feedback
•  Quantitative (Media)
–  Sales revenue
–  New leads
–  Newsletter subscribers
•  Decide what you want to track
•  Measure the metrics that matter to you

Social (Qualitative)
Measurement Examples
•  Example #1: Rackspace IT Hosting campaign to
build loyalty and trust.
•  Idea: Be nice to customers who mention your
company and/or product name on Twitter
Success Metrics:
–  Amount of positive comments sent to
customers per week within a given time
–  Amount of conversations that started from the
comment
•  Goal: N amount of positive conversations about
your company or product per week

•  Example #2: Starbuck’s Campaign to increase
customer satisfaction.
•  Idea: Engage with customers and prospects using
social media and ask what they would like from
you.
•  Success Metrics:
–  Amount of good suggestions
–  Amount of the good suggestions received that
your company actual implements
•  Goal: N amount of suggestions collected per
month and N amount that you actually implement.

•  Example # 3: Copyblogger campaign to increase authority.
•  Idea: Start a blog on a topic that relates to their company and which
positioned them as an expert.
–  Amount of influential blogs linking to them
–  Page rank relative to that of competitors
–  Amount of organic traffic per month
–  Amount of traffic that converts to sales
•  Goals:
–  N page rank by a certain date
–  Nth position in page rank relative to competitors by a certain date
–  N% of organic traffic per month
–  $N per month attributable to referrals from blog

Media (Quantitative) Examples
•  Example #1: Burger King campaign to increase offline
sales
•  Idea: Implement a promotion on a social media platform.
Give participants a printable campaign voucher so you can
track where the offline sales originated.
–  Monthly sales
–  Monthly store traffic
•  Goals:
–  $N monthly sales
–  N% increase in store traffic over the pre-promotion
period

Media (Quantitative) Examples
•  Example #2: Dell Outlet Campaign to increase online sales
•  Idea: Use Twitter to inform prospects about special
promotions. Capitalize on Twitter’s real-time nature for
exclusive limited-customer and/or limited time offers
–  Monthly sales and new customers attributable directly to
Twitter
–  Monthly revenue generated from customers originally from
Twitter (e.g. did the customer go back later and buy more)
•  Goals:
–  $N monthly sales
–  $N monthly sales directly attributable to Twitter

Here is how you can measure
•  Bookmarks
•  Comments
•  Downloads
•  Email subscriptions
•  Fans (become a fan of something / someone)
•  Favourites (add an item to favourites)
•  Feedback (via the site)

•  Followers (follow something / someone)
•  Forward to a friend
•  Groups (create / join / total number of groups /
group activity)
•  Install widget (on a blog page, Facebook, etc)
•  Invite / Refer (a friend)
•  Key page activity (post-activity)
•  Love / Like this (rating)

•  Messaging (onsite)
•  Personalisation (pages, display, theme)
•  Posts
•  Profile (e.g. update avatar, bio, links, email,
customisation, etc)
•  Print page
•  Ratings
•  Registered users (new / total / active /
dormant / churn)

•  Reviews
•  Social media sharing / participation (activity
on key social media sites, e.g. Facebook,
Twitter, Digg, etc)
•  Tagging (user-generated metadata)
•  Testimonials
•  Time spent on key pages
•  Time spent on site (by source / by entry
page)

•  Total contributors (and % active contributors)
•  Uploads (add an item, e.g. articles, links,
images, videos)
•  Views (videos, ads, rich images)
•  Widgets (number of new widgets users /
embedded widgets)
•  Wishlists (save an item to wishlist)

Social Media Secrets | Susan Rice Lincoln, MastertTheNewNet.com | iStrategy, Berlin

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Similar to Social Media Secrets | Susan Rice Lincoln, MastertTheNewNet.com | iStrategy, Berlin

Similar to Social Media Secrets | Susan Rice Lincoln, MastertTheNewNet.com | iStrategy, Berlin (20)

More from iStrategy

More from iStrategy (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Social Media Secrets | Susan Rice Lincoln, MastertTheNewNet.com | iStrategy, Berlin