Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Proving the value in Social Media

James Fairweather of Coast Digital

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Hello. A little bit about me.

• 5+ Years Digital Agency side.

• Digital Strategy & Online Marketing Consultant

“I help businesses extract the most value from the web.”

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Who is this session for?

•Business owners

•Marketers

•New Business teams

Social Media

Who want to understand

•What to measure

•How to measure it

•How to prove the value in Social Media

•Takeout tips

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

We’re familiar with the channels already.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

“The term Social Media refers to the use of web-

based and mobile technologies to turn

communication into an interactive dialogue.”

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

What has been changing & how fast?

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Where are we with Social now?

• The B2B sector has now embraced social media.

• Businesses are getting customer service and support right.

• Many are struggling moving towards acquisition & lead generation.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

In 2010 there were 65 million Tweets delivered per day. Today, Twitter users are

sending over 340 million Tweets per day.

Currently 18% of the UK population actively use Twitter, which equates to

nearly 11 million people.

The majority of Twitter users are aged between 30 to 49.

66% of all questions asked on Twitter have some commercial intent.

Some facts...

*Twitter.com & Touchagency.com

Marketing you can measureTM

More than 750 million active users , that is equivalent to 1 in every 13 people

on Earth owning a Facebook account.

Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events.

35+ demographic represents more than 30% of the entire user base.

People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

Some facts...

*Facebook.com

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

“In the past year, traffic from social has grown from 3% - 27%”via @timgentry

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Measuring it

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Measuring Success

The challenge lies in the breadth of social;

• Customer service

• Marketing & PR

• Market research

• Business development

• HR & Recruitment

The difficulty is in selecting relevant metrics beyond followers and shares to

represent success in these areas.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Customer Service

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Marketing & PR

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Market Research

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Business Development

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

HR & Recruitment

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Social Media

Some Social Mistakes

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Measuring Success

•Marketers are still unsure how to calculate social media ROI.

•The bigger picture; would you measure the ROI from your telephone line?

•Marketers need to understand the value in what people are doing to justify

resource on social media.

•Biggest mistake is not considering what success and failure look like early

enough. IBM mantra; Fail, fast.

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

What are people measuring?

•Confusion between social media data, metrics (and KPIs) for ROI

•Last touch & direct conversion metrics.

•Vanity metrics.

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Vanity Metrics

•Follows

•Number of „Fans‟

•Likes

•Shares

• Visits

•„Influence‟ scores like Klout

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Vanity Metrics – Some Pitfalls

•Hundreds of distracting social data points to wade through.

•Most of this data is actually nothing but “data puke”. - Avinash Kaushik

•Analysing this data is risky - they can hide the insights needed to understand

what actions to take.

•They can be relevant, however they don‟t always represent reality and mislead

from meaningful measurement.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Vanity Metrics – Some Pitfalls

•Reach, isn‟t really powerful unless you consider ‘influencer identification‟.

•Discover the most influential people in your networks and map them.

•Go on to build relationships online with those people.

•Track the quality of these engagements.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Vanity Metrics – Some Pitfalls

There can be a place for vanity metrics as part of a set of KPI‟s alongside other data.

Look into some of the metrics within those tools, for example;

1. Reach & velocity.

2. # Of Retweets Per Thousand Followers, as measure of efficiency.

3. Messages Per Outbound Message, a measure of two way conversation, not just

broadcast.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Last Touch Analytics

• Last touch attribution doesn‟t allow Social Media activity to be credited with

keeping conversation going and leads „warm‟.

• If the final „visit‟ to the site isn‟t from a social source, last touch model doesn‟t

credit it at all.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

What should you really be doing?

• Map metrics to business objectives

• Some metrics to consider

• Consider impact of social on SEO

• Create effective dashboards

• Use the right tools

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Map Metrics to Business Objectives

•Focus on choosing a few metrics to use as your KPI‟s in the context of your

business.

•These should form the basis of your measurement framework and will map back

to your business and marketing goals.

•These KPI‟s should lead to action!

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Map Metrics to Business Objectives

•Consider the impact of having a great customer service team.

•What is the ROI from not losing a customer?

•Or reducing your volume of call centre complaint calls by 50%.

These are tangible objectives and have associated costs and savings.

ROI calculation needs to account for how much better your customer

service is.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

What should you really be doing?

• Map metrics to business objectives

• Some metrics to consider

• Consider impact of social on SEO

• Create effective dashboards

• Use the right tools

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Some metrics to consider

Volume of conversation and share of voice – what proportions?

Social graphing - tools like Rapleaf can analyse your email database

Sentiment - analyse conversations around how your brand is portrayed.

Paid Value of Traffic – what cost might equivalent paid traffic be?

On site impact on social – do social visitors behave differently on site?

Lost Customer Value - what impact does a lost customer have socially?

Customer Lifetime Value – consider the impact of increased CLV.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Planning a strategy

1. Review and learn what works. Keep testing, React and refine.

2. Use A/B testing where you can to optimise performance.

3. Drop things that don‟t work and invest in a steady stream of new initiatives.

4. Always consider time as a key component. Social data may be instantly

available, but building a brand is a timely process.

5. Establish milestones and re-evaluate regularly.

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

What should you really be doing?

• Map metrics to business objectives

• Some metrics to consider

• Consider impact of social on SEO

• Create effective dashboards

• Use the right tools

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Social and search are amalgamating

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

200 million twitter users.

Over 750 Million active Facebook users.

25 million Google Plus users.

Search engines can‟t afford to ignore this volume of usage.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

People trust 'human' recommendations and endorsement.

If relevance is key to keeping Google's search share, they have to adapt.

53% of people on Twitter recommend companies and/or products in their

Tweets, with 48% of them delivering on their intention to buy the product.

(ROI Research for Performance, June 2010)

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

•Social media has grown so quickly that

Google have to play catch-up to ensure

that they are returning users the most

relevant content.

•It is likely that human endorsement

factors will overtake traditional 'link

based' ranking factors.

•Results are more likely to be based on

real-time 'noise' and activity.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Social as a Ranking Signal

Social Media

“Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a

signal in our organic and news rankings.”

“For +1‟s and other social ranking signals,

we‟ll be starting carefully and learning how

those signals are related to quality.”

“We do look at the social authority

of a user. This can add a little

weight to a listing in regular search

results.”

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Why would social signals be good for search

engines?

Social Media

Why would social signals be good for search engines?

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Freshness

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Freshness is an important property of online

content

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

What are the effects of this cross-over now?

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

What are the effects of this

cross-over now?

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Source: www.branded3.com

Social Media Optimisation

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

•Search engines are open about using likes, tweets and social

endorsements as ranking signals.

•New content gets indexed more quickly.

•If content is relevant in the social space, it can rank much more

effectively.

•More difficult to 'game' - as a result the quality of search results will

improve.

•Google are customising search result to you based on your social

circles.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

What should you really be doing?

• Map metrics to business objectives

• Some metrics to consider

• Consider impact of social on SEO

• Create effective dashboards

• Use the right tools

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Use effective dashboards

1. Establish your analytics suite and form a good work-flow process

2. There are hundreds of tools and dashboards out there. Trial and test to find

the ones that work for you.

3. Establish a good mix of tools & services that can form your measurement

toolbox and automate where you can.

4. Some can integrate with CRM and other internal systems.

Don’t forget: social media monitoring is about a "team" rather than a "tool"

Marketing you can measureTM

Reach

Reduced

Phone

Reliance

Shares KPI

KPI

KPI

Dashboard – ROI Reporting

Metrics KPI’s

An example strategy

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

What should you really be doing?

• Map metrics to business objectives

• Some metrics to consider

• Consider impact of social on SEO

• Create effective dashboards

• Use the right tools

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Tools & Takeouts

•The key to getting Social media „right‟ is more in strategy rather than the

toolset.

•In many ways, social monitoring is about a "team" rather than a "tool“.

•However.... there are good services out there that can speed the

management side of social media up.

•“Only 23% of UK marketers said they were able to update multiple

channels from one dashboard.” (Econsultancy)

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Google Analytics Social Reporting

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Google Analytics Multi Channel Goals

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Tools & Takeouts

Identifying Influential Followers

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Tools & Takeouts – A list for later.

Hootsuite – http://www.hootsuite.com Social Media management dashboard

Tweetdeck – http://www.tweetdeck.com Facebook & Twitter account management

Twitsprout - https://twitsprout.com Twitter & Facebook reporting (although primarily Twitter)

Tweetreach - http://tweetreach.com/ Twitter reach metrics, statistics and analysis

Radian 6 - http://www.radian6.com/ Social media monitoring tools & social media engagement software

Alterian - http://www.alterian.com/ Social Conversation management

Brandwatch - http://www.brandwatch.com/ Social Media monitoring platform

Social Bro - http://www.socialbro.com/ Twitter management dashboard

Buffer (web client) - http://bufferapp.com/ Post scheduling tool

Addictomatic - http://addictomatic.com/ Buzz monitoring tool

Icerocket - http://www.icerocket.com/ Meltwater buzz monitoring

Argyle - http://argylesocial.com Enterprise social marketing platform

Sprout - http://sproutsocial.com/ Social Media management platform

Buto.tv - http://get.buto.tv/ Web Video measurement platform

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Wrapping it up

•Choose careful metrics & map to KPI‟s.

•Measure them meticulously.

•Calculate ROI as you would any other channel.

•Review regularly & learn.

•One size doesn‟t fit all.

•Social should be a platform to support a comprehensive

and interesting content strategy.

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

As a live example; we’ll use

this set of slides and content

as a part of our own

marketing activity.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

• Slides onto SlideShare.

• YouTube webcast.

• Post excerpts onto twitter.

• Publish and share on LinkedIn & through groups.

• Add posts to our blog on site.

• Post tweets up with relevant hashtags #socialmedia #SEO

#SMO and share with our followers.

• Support the publication of upcoming guides and whitepapers.

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

We will be measuring;

1. Inbound links back to our site

2. Additional view, like and share metrics on content

around the event.

3. Increases in traffic volume & engagement to our site.

4. Individuals that we interact with as a result of the

session

5. Return on investment. What return will we make in the

long run?

Social Media

Marketing you can measureTM

@J_Fairweather

Private LinkedIn group for Q&A, http://linkd.in/socialmediaROIgroup

We've also got a free Social Media guide for the business. If you'd like a copy,

connect with us online or leave some details.

james.fairweather@coastdigital.co.uk

linkedin.com/jamesfairweather

twitter.com/j_fairweather

Social Media