Do You Know What A Like Is Worth?

In this age of social media everything, companies are scrambling to find ways to measure and quantify their social media activity.

Likes, Followers, Shares and ReTweets have given way to a cottage industry of measurement tools, but, in lieu of traditional ROI, do any of these metrics, like Klout Scores and Peer Indexes, provide a key indicator for success?

I’m of the mind that they don’t. While they measure activity, they don’t translate this information into sales or at the very least learning.

Creating engagement through social channels is important. Here are a few ways to move your friends and followers into a more results oriented relationship:

1. Incent people to opt-in for email communication.  Doing so allows you track how they heard about you, and then you can actively market and test offers.
2. Use microsites and unique URL promotions on social channels to measure interest of your fan base.
3. Use coupon codes (or actual coupons if a CPG company) that are specific to a social channel to track activity to sales.

By knowing if people are coming to your site or store from social channels you can begin to measure the value of a Facebook Fan and the return on your marketing efforts.  This will help you determine if it is worth growing your fan base or followers.

Social media can play an important role in your marketing communications plans, and just like any media, you need to put the tools in place to determine what its worth to your company.

Qwikster – Right Idea Just Poorly Executed?

Netflix knows its future is in video streaming, but its roots exist in DVDs. So how do you nudge consumers to wean themselves off of lower margin DVDs to the higher margin streaming videos?

Introducing Qwikster, a knee-jerk reaction to a disastrous price increase announcement that was met with even greater consumer disdain.  Many people put Qwikster up there with New Coke – but it might have been the right idea – just poorly executed.

Creating a separate business for DVDs will allow Netflix to buffer itself from a business model that (over the long-haul) will most likely decline. In creating this new division, however, they didn’t connect the old Netflix to the new Qwikster, so a consumer had to set up their preferences, waitlists, cues and billing data all over again. It makes you wonder if they were following the online banking model, which makes it so cumbersome to switch banks, that they expected subscribers to begrudgingly switch to streaming Netflix over setting up a new DVD account…)

All Netflix had to do was allow customers to conduct a simple transfer for a limited period of time, and they would have been less likely bothered by the change. Furthermore, providing an incentive to try the new technology (following the lead of the airlines when they introduced online booking) would have helped ease the pain.

So what can you learn from Netflix?

• Think about all the ramifications of significant changes in your business
• If the initial reaction to a major change is negative, take time to let it sink in. Sometimes it just takes time for people to adjust to change.
• Limit the knee-jerk reactions – they never seem to work out as you’d like.

Bravery In Marketing

I do not like the new Tide 2X. No matter how little I use, soap remains in dense fabrics, such as towels, and I can’t get it out. My daughter and I both have noticed that our clothes feel “itchy” with the new Tide. I have used Tide all my life, but I may have to change to something else, since I can no longer get “regular” Tide. Have others noticed this also?

Judy, Salt Lake City, UT

I used this product on a shirt of my husbands that had a new stain on the front. Bottom line stain is still there, I’ve used other products that worked much better than this one did. I would not recommend this product to anyone.

Miata, Waverly, NE

Companies don’t like to hear comments like these, or worse learn such comments are being shared with other people.

But those quotes weren’t pulled from a focus group nor from blogs, they were available on Tide’s home page from actual customers providing feedback regarding Tide’s products.

To take things a step further, Tide provides a slew of product reviews for all of its products so consumers can make an educated decision about the product in which they are interested.

In a time when consumers are asking for transparency (see SC Johnson’s new campaign about their ingredients) and using the social web (ie Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Blogs) to share their thoughts, you have three choices:

1. Ignore it and hope it goes away.  (It won’t)
2. Listen to what people are saying and respond in a defensive manner
3. Embrace it and use it to make your products better and your brand more trusted.

Let me know what companies you think are being brave in their marketing.

New URL

We have migrated this blog to http://MarketSmarter.biz/blog.  Thank you for your interest.

Announcement

Please forgive us for not having an update this week, we are in the process of migrating this blog to our website.  All archived posts will be available once the migration has been completed.

Stay tuned next week when we will be sharing insights from IIR’s Social Media and Community 2.0 conference.

For immediate updates from the conference, please follow us on Twitter and search #c2010.

Why Retention Should Be Your Top Priority in Social Media Marketing

Why Retention Should Be Your Top Priority in Social Media Marketing

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The United States of Facebook

Interesting statistics of Facebook users versus the United States population.

By the Numbers: Facebook vs The United States [INFOGRAPHIC]

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Are You Treating All Your Social Media Channels The Same?

Social media marketing is getting easier every day, especially with great tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck that simultaneously spread your message across all your social channels.

A recent study by ad network Chitika suggests that broadcasting the same message across the various social networks may not be the most effective way to engage your customers.

The study noted that the type of information consumed on four popular social networks – MySpace, Digg, Facebook and Twitter – varied by network.

Twitter users were significantly more interested in news, while MySpace users had a penchant for gaming and entertainment.  Digg users had the greatest interest in news, celebrity & entertainment, and gaming, while Facebook users were interested in news and community.

Just like your audience varies on different social channels, the information they desire is different as well.  So if you are treating all the channels the same way, you may be missing the opportunity to truly connect.

Social media is about creating a forum to communicate with your audience, listening to them, and providing them with information they want to receive. Doing so creates interest, trust and ultimately evangelists.

By engaging your audience with relevant messaging, you can learn what they what they want from your company, what you are doing well and where you can make improvements.

Passive social media gives you the ability to listen to your audience and understand their wants and needs.  Listening can help your company become more efficient, more innovative and more customer-focused.  And when that happens, both your company and your customers win.

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Want to learn how companies like Zappo’s, P&G, Burt’s Bees and others are improving their business through social media?  Attend IIR’s Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies conference.  To learn more visit http://bit.ly/d7mUWG and use code XM2205SMB to save 15%.

Yelp for Business: 4 Steps for Success

While there are some controversies regarding Yelp’s business practices (see class-action suit of businesses against Yelp regarding pressure to buy ads to rescind untrue comments), it is still a very helpful business tool – especially for small businesses.  This article was posted on Mashable.

Yelp for Business: 4 Steps for Success

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Betty White To Host SNL – Thanks to Social Media

Community 2.0.

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IIR’s Social Media & Community 2.0 Strategies conference will address “Cashing in on the Conversation”.  To learn more visit http://bit.ly/d7mUWG and use code XM2205SMB to save 15%.