Hot Potato Topic of the Week:  Social Media ROI

Measurement of social media activity to determine ROI is a hot (and controversial!) topic on the web right now.  You can see some examples of just how controversial it is here, here, here and here.  Hat tip to Chuck Fitzpatric of ImpactWatch blog for those examples and more (and for the sound of dueling banjos that played through my head as I scanned the list of headlines).  

Still, few people will argue that social media doesn’t have clear, distillable value to companies. Social media monitoring, in my opinion, is one of the most easily translatable value-driven elements of corporate social media, especially when viewed as an add-on to existing brand research efforts.

Getting a Clearer Picture of Your Customer

A better understanding of your customer is critical to effective communication with them. Put it in the context of your interpersonal relationships.  How many communications misfires do you have in your personal and professional relationships due to a poor understanding of the other person’s perspective?  

Brand research is an excellent tool for gaining a basic understanding of your customers and prospects from a demographic and psychographic standpoint.  

If you’re using personas in any capacity in developing your marketing communications, social media monitoring can be hugely helpful in creating fully-rounded, three-dimensional personas instead of stereotypes and cardboard-cutouts

By monitoring social media for references to your brand, your products, your industry, and your competitors, you can gain additional insights that can often help flesh out and provide depth and dimension to your understanding of your audience’s attitudes, opinions and vernacular.  

These insights can help your organization speak your customer’s language more like a native, and less like a tacky tourist.  

Particularly for businesses whose customer base is largely made up of passionate enthusiasts in a particular activity or lifestyle group, having greater authenticity in your communications with them is critical to success.

The Plural of Anecdote Isn’t Data, But That Doesn’t Mean We Don’t Like Them!

We’re always anxious to hear stories of ways in which social media monitoring has been applied effectively to improve brand communications.  Got an anecdote you can share?  Drop it in the comments.  Or if you’d like, contact us about doing a case study guest post.  We’d love to have it! 

img "mannequin" courtesy SXC

When you first approach your advertising agency or a consultant about social media services, is your attention focused on activities with direct customer interaction? I know that my clients often overlook monitoring and measurement, unless I direct their attention to them. The irony is that these less-sexy activities often provide the most practical business value, particularly at the outset of an organization’s explorations into the social media space.

Starting a social media program without first spending some time doing monitoring of their customers, brand references and competitors is much like launching a traditional advertising program without doing any market research. An even better analogy is that it’s like jumping into someone else’s conversation without first spending some time listening. You can just imagine the potentially embarrassing outcomes.

Beyond being the best foundation for social media marketing, insights drawn from social media monitoring can also improve your traditional marketing efforts. Understanding your customer—his attitudes, interests, and behavioral drivers—is critical to the success of any business. Using social media monitoring tools and analysis to draw specific and clear insights about your target audience can add value even to your traditional advertising efforts. What are the descriptive, emotional words people use most when they’re talking about your brand? How does that compare with your competitors?

Because the information is pulled from real online conversations, rather than surveys, the qualitative data provided can deliver deep, honest and accurate insights into the minds of your customers.

If you’re a marketing director, make sure that as you’re investigating the benefits of social media for your business, you don’t overlook monitoring services. And if you’re a provider of social media services, don’t forget that any discussion about those services should probably start with a discussion about monitoring.