Hey, MK here! Welcome to another social media marketing Friday. Today we shall talk about metrics. Don’t be afraid, they’re just numbers. OK, sure numbers can be scary, I hated 7th grade math, myself- but how else are you supposed to figure out how your social media marketing program is doing?

You’ve jumped up on the Social Media bandwagon, so now you have to measure your Return on Investment (ROI), otherwise your boss will think you’re just goofing off on Facebook and Twitter instead of actually helping his bottom line.  That begs the question- what are the best metrics to analyze for your brand? Well, I recently came across this nifty article that may just help you out a bit:

http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/177448?utm_source=smt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Interaction is the key metric I use to gage how a brand is doing- based mostly on customer feedback, discussion and comments. It’s important to listen to what your customers and fans are saying and respond to create your own community. That said, I believe in the quality of feedback and interaction you’re getting, not quantity. After all, who cares if you got a ton of interactions from people who really don’t matter to your business? Well, yeah, you’d enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling, but not a lot else.

I also think it’s valuable to know WHERE your fans and customers are coming from- do you have a huge clickthru from Germany? Is all your feedback coming from people in China? You may want to think about that and use that data to cater towards your audience’s geographic location as well.

Please keep in mind that numbers don’t always tell a tale of truth. In other words, do not rely solely on your metrics. You may only have a few followers to begin with on a social network, but what you may not know is one of those followers may want to do business with you or may be an expert in their field and looking to you for advice. Again, quality of interactions count!

Hey, MK here. Welcome to another edition of Social Media Marketing Friday! In this edition, we speak of Harvard’s recent assertion that social media rocks. It gives me a tingle to read things from Harvard. Let’s all go to HARVAAAARD! Brings up memories of watching Saved by the Bell when the guy who owned The Max (Max) pretended he was a Harvard recruiter so Jessie would look better and the people from Stansbury would take a look at her.

But I digress.

I just read an article, backed by Harvard research, regarding Facebook and how effective it is as part of a marketing plan. Heck YES it is!  I like to think that social media brings out the conversation in people in an online discussion. A Facebook fanpage is an excellent place for this….especially with the “discussion” tab and comments in general.

In fact, our own Facebook fanpage work has produced great results for our clients. Two recent wins include new business for our adoption client, and a huge uptick in first-time callers for our psychic client. These results were reached only after a few months of a solid social media campaign that included a Facebook fanpage and some time dedicated to working the fanpage.

That’s really key- you must be willing to devote time and resources to your Facebook marketing. It’s not magic. It takes effort. But the payoff is incredible.

Of course, as stated in the Harvard article, “Social media marketing must be employed judiciously with other types of marketing programs.”  This is a no-brainer. it’s true with all forms of marketing. You must also be prepared to go both online and offline (omg i said offline!!!!) to reach the masses NOT on the Internet or at least those that don’t do the social networking thing. Depending on the client, we at POINC figure out a complete digital marketing package, it’s the only way!

Harvard Says Facebook Rocks