How to Measure Social Media ROI

Best practices and key takeaways

Sean Brooks, VP of Social Media, TechTargetTwitter: SeanRBrooks

Some key things to understand about social media

• Creating a strategy and setting measurable

success metrics is key

• Don’t try to cover all outlets at once (i.e. YouTube,

Twitter, blogs, forums), find out where your

audience is and start there

• Social media should be part of your overall

marketing strategy, NOT a stand alone initiative

Some key things to understand about social media

• Don’t get your sales team involved in social media

• Empower your employees to get involved and

make it easy for them

• Social media is about listening and engaging

The power of social media

What Twitter has to offer

What Twitter has to offer

• 1 out of 350 website visits in the UK come

from Twitter as the traffic source

• Twitter is the 30th biggest source of traffic in

the UK

*Source Hitwise

What Twitter has to offer

• 20% of tweets mention a product or company

name

• Many companies have multiple accounts

based on product line or person

• Twitter allows you to listen to the

conversation around your product or industry

• Ability to target by location

• Ad opportunities

Qualitative vs. quantitative on Twitter

Qualitative

• Are you currently part of conversations about

your product/industry?

• How are you currently talked about versus your

competitors?

Qualitative vs. quantitative on Twitter

• Then to measure success, you ask whether you

were able to:

• Build better relationships with your key audiences?

• Convert passive contacts into more engaged

contacts

• Continue the conversation on a ongoing basis

Quantitative

• Changes in follower count - Positive or negative?

Trends around when it increased/decreased?

• Number of retweets (people re-posting someone

else's tweet in order to "forward" it to their

followers)

• Backtweet.com

Quantitative

• Changes in website or blog traffic – increased

traffic to sites, increased referrers from social

outlets like Twitter/blogs

• Bit.ly

• Increased Twitter influence, blog mentions

• Number of Twitter lists you appear on

Benefits of creating your own community

• Create a very engaging audience

• Use for product launches or virtual events

• Users create content that help expand your web

footprint

• SEO benefit

• Content can be used in marketing programmes

Benefits of creating your own community

• Gives vendors the opportunity to build brand

sentiment by answering and discussing situations

with users

• Great way of tracking mention in communities

positive or negative

• Market research

• Feedback on new products or services

Benefits of creating your own community on LinkedIn

• DON’T create a LinkedIn group around your brand

• Focus on job title or products – That’s what

people relate to

• Get local – target by country or city

• Bring in news from multiple sources via RSS

Benefits of creating your own community on LinkedIn

• Don’t sell the audience

• Share best practices

• Offer answers to questions

• Engage the group

CONTENT IS KING

Your Active Community

• Blog posts

• Twitter feeds

• Forums

• Live Chats

• Lead gen programmes

• Whitepapers

• Webcasts

3rd Party Communities

• Create thought

leaders and brand

Champions

• Integrate engaging

creative

• Create microsites

within the community

• That bring together

activity from both

communities

• Engaging

opportunities

Ways to drive traffic to the community

Integration thru RSS, XML feeds.Engaging banners showing community activityEngaging opportunities to create content

Driving clicks back to your community for lead capture and content creation

- Continue the conversation

How you can use social media you have created

• Tying in your traditional

media with social media

to drive leads and sales

opportunities

• Align social media

elements with traditional

assets

• Incorporate social media

elements into creative

• Use the power of user

generated content to

increase recognition and

viral reach

How you can use social media you have created

What’s working on our social media site ITKnowledgeExchange.com

Intel Scavenger Hunt

• 241 completed entries in

3 weeks

• Driving traffic back to

Intel Open Port

Community

• Members having fun

looking for answers

Member comment“The scavenger hunt was fun, thanks! I had not heard of this technology, looks very useful indeed. Good opportunity to learn about something new. Great idea!”

Microsoft Live Chats

• Over 100 attendees

• 80 questions each event

• Members love the ability

to speak directly with

technical people from the

vendor community

• Quality content created

• CONTENT IS KING

What have you accomplished?

• Qualitative

• Thought leadership

• Brand awareness

• Positive brand image

• Increased your web footprint

• Conversations

• Trust

What have you accomplished?

• Quantitative

• Increased followers

• Click-throughs to your website/blog

• Prospects via linked in groups/Twitter followers

• Costs of customer support

• Increased content that you control

• Increasing your SEO footprint

• CONTENT IS KING

Key Takeaways

• Twitter

• Empower your employees

• Track retweets

• Track referrers from Twitter (Google Analytics)

• Increase twitter influence # of lists you appear on

• Track keywords via 3rd party apps – use as an

engagement opportunity

• Track increase/decrease around followers based on

campaigns

Key Takeaways

• Find influencer on all social media outlets and

engage them

• Don’t rely too much on your brand - Make it more

personal

• Find where your audience is and focus on those

outlets first

• 2 way conversations are important

• Set up social media guidelines for your company