So let’s get a few things out of the way:

• If you are a large company, you should be doing this already. Your scale alone justifies a minimal social media presence even if it is only a secondary part of your overall marketing.
• If you think social media marketing is critical because it is the newest thing… please stop. You are not helping yourself and you are not helping your company. There are a million and one ways to waste money/time in marketing. If you are not critical of your methods you are doing it wrong.
• Some think social media is so organic that it can’t be quantified. “It is your image after all.” There is no perfect quantification in marketing. That said, yes, parts of social marketing can be quantified and it is critical to do so even if the number is imperfect. Once again, be critical of your methods.
• Some think social media is a flash in the pan and it will disappear. No, it will not. It has changed many times and will change again, but the core elements have not changed and they are not going to change anytime soon either. Although the avenue is the different, the core goals are almost identical to what you are already doing in traditional marketing and across your sales force. You are giving people your elevator speech in a flashy way so they look at it. Social media is simply that paired with basic text tools to make the communication two-way.

So given those points let’s set the stage for who this advice is targeted at: mid to small sized companies. Odds are you are not the “marketing guy”; you just wear the marketing hat along with a few others. You might not be a female in her teens or 20’s who lives on their smart phone, but at a minimum you do have a Facebook page and keep up with old friends, family, and some people from work.

Great! With that out of the way let’s get down the core of the discussion: what are your marketing channels? Have they been shifting over the years? Newspapers are taking a massive hit in readership, iPod/iPhone based play lists are used directly in cars over the radio, if not then satellite radio has at least taken a big share of that market away. As a mid-sized company most TV ads are probably too expensive for you so that only really leaves social media, sponsored events, direct mail, e-mail blasts, and maybe billboards.

Tracking radio, events, and billboards is difficult. With newspapers, you could at least run a coupon. If you are going to track direct mail and e-mail blasts this is also a great method. Most things you did in the past to quantify newspaper ads can be used with e-mail blasts in addition to the click-through and open rates that e-mail blast programs are already tracking for you.

So the core question: How do you quantify social media? Let’s talk about both numbers worth looking at as well as numbers worth ignoring.

Social Media Specific Coupons or Codes

The same techniques used in newspapers can be applied to social media. Social media specific coupons can be used isolate the effect of social media shares at the register. If anything is going to be the gold standard for social media this is it. Make sure that using the coupon is easy. Make it possible to use it from their phone as well as present a paper copy. Using a specific phone number or special e-mail address is also useful. In your POS or CRM system, flagging specific sales as from social media can also be useful.

Likes

Nope, sorry but “likes” have very limited value in business. They are not completely useless but are a third tier piece of information at best. It is a tempting number to care about because it is the tool people know best. That said I have some big problems with it. First off in my own marketing efforts I have seen a very poor correlation between our gold standard (coupons), and shifts in likes. Secondly, you need to remember that “likes” are free, your services and products aren’t. One of the basic principles of economics is price effects people purchasing decisions. Measurements on free items/action rarely match actual business transactions.

Demographic Data

Most of the major social media companies do provide some level of basic demographic information. Know this information and watch it carefully. I assume that you already have a good handle on demographic details from your current customers. Are your social channels the same?

Odds are they are the same but if not then you need to recognize this and adjust your marketing accordingly. One of the interesting things about e-commerce is that people interact very differently with companies online than they do with companies in-store. Watch for opportunities to either expand your customer base or more precisely target subgroups via social media. Remember: you should not use social media for the sake of social media but because it produces results for you.

The other critical thing to remember about social media is that there is a retail sweet spot… surrounded by some semi-fertile space that is itself surrounded by a lot of dead space. The stereotypes do hold true in this case, closing rates on sales via social media are much higher for females, those ages 20 to 35, and on items between $30 to $100 dollars. Each of those elements holds independently of the others but most of the great social media success stories involve clientele that hold all 3 characteristics in common. If your clientele/products are completely outside those 3 characteristics, go ahead and lower your expectations.

Views

What is the value of a “view”? If you have heard any good jokes about “branding” then this is where you can insert them. Views are the same vague beast as branding or visibility. They should have value, but are commonly hit or miss in terms of the effect on sales. While most other forms of advertising are geographically centered by their very nature, in the case of online views this will have to be an issue you have to work on. There is a common view of the internet not as a network of people but as a system of niche communities. I prefer this approach when dealing with digital marketing issues like “views”. Not all views are of the same value. Tracking total views is not very useful information. Tracking targeted views, with the definition of target being clientele that meet a very specific pattern of most likely to buy, is a very useful number.

Shares (including retweets, reblogs, etc.)

Once again, the value of these is defined the same as views. The various forms of shares are great because it is free advertising with no additional effort on your part. However it is often being shared with a completely untargeted group and you will not know the demographic information for that group. 10 high quality shares can outperform a 1,000 low quality shares. With shares 1 ≠ 1 so don’t fall into that trap.

The List of Questions

So if marketing is one of your additional responsibilities here is list of questions you need to be able to answer:

• Who are you trying to reach (demographics)?
• How are you defining success in social media? Social media is primarily a communications tool. I have closed sales via Facebook but more often it is useful for informing people about events or prospecting for more traditional sales avenues.
• How does social media fit into the rest of your marketing efforts? Does that make sense in terms of budget/time when compared to what is happening in other aspect of your marketing? If mail and radio are about sales then why are you measuring your social media in “likes”? Social media can quickly turn into a resource sink so determining the ideal scale of your social media efforts is extremely helpful.
• How are you bridging social media to results? What is the call to action?

Creating and evolving your social media marketing

I have spent a lot of time talking about metrics thus far and there is good reason for that. On a personal social media account you are who you are. For a business, a social media account is a strategic position, not an intrinsic personality. Determine your metrics, develop not one but multiple types of social media approaches, and then implement all of them one at a time. Check the result and adjust. Then adjusts again and again.

You don’t just make a good social marketing campaign, you have to adjust to your audience and their reactions. Be fluid with it. Social media is here to stay but social media platform you use and the rules of that media change and change every year. Your demographics will shift as well. _­