The Social Media Marketer

Often living online as much as anywhere else, the social media population continues to grow and seek new ways to interact and communicate.  In our consumer society, messages about products and services are nearly as frequent as those about friends and social events. 

You want to establish a consistently loyal consumer base, which also informs others about the goods you sell.

5 Ways to Determine the Success of Your Social Media Marketing
  
Analyze consumer opinions: Perhaps the single most identifiable characteristic of social media marketing is its interactive quality.  People use Facebook, Twitter and similar alternatives to speak to each other as if they were in the same room.  Their opinions are not confined to social events or friend-related news; consumers exchange impressions about products they've actually used or seen advertised online. 

Since they are vocal about their ideas, its good policy to discover what consumers (current or potential) think of your stuff (products, services).  Do they like the color of a garment, camera, or awning?  Would they prefer another?  Is the artisan gelato you offer a little too salty?  Or maybe, its perfect.  Find out if you're doing it right by asking consumers if your product meets their requirements, and if not, what's wrong.  Checklists, Yes/nos, multiple choice or discussion boxes accompanying online marketing generate opinions, as can monitoring online social media discussions pertinent to what you sell. 

This free source of customer feedback helps improve your offerings by acquiring opinions directly from the source.  Estee-Lauder, Frito-Lay and Walmart all use these methods; so should you.
 
Sales and revenues:  Properly applied social media marketing generates sales, from which your organization derives revenues and profits.  Sales may not be immediately apparent; although some sales activity may result at the outset, conversations about your stuff among social media users can produce leads, those early indicators of interest and purchase among consumers.

It is the relationship your social media marketing can perpetuate with consumers that directs their subsequent purchase behavior and product loyalty.  One way to determine if you're doing it right is to check sales figures, maybe not the day after you launch a campaign but at a designated time.  Sales indicate the appeal of your social media marketing messages and the popularity of your goods.
 
Website traffic:  A primary objective of social media marketing is persuading consumers to visit your Web site.  Engaging appropriate analytic tools will help determine the level of traffic and to what extent it has been generated from social media site referrals.  By calculating the change over time, you can determine if social media marketing has sent more traffic your way and, equally as important, if the remarks social media users make about you are positive. 

Of course, good user-content indicates you're doing it right.  But the occasional negative remarks can be useful, as a departure point for improving your products and the way you market them.

Monitor competitors:  You need to know what your competitors are doing.  And be sure they'll be using the same analytical systems you use to  scrutinize your efforts and progress relative to their own.  These are the simultaneous benefits and drawbacks of social media marketing; everyone has access to everybody else's business.  The advantage is you can learn what customers find appealing AND displeasing about competitors' goods, an inexpensive way to improve what you're offering. 

Comparing good/bad customer remarks for your goods and competitor’s indicates if your social media marketing is providing the results you seek or needs to be modified to reflect realities in the marketplace.
 
Search engine optimization (SEO):  Evaluate access and response to your homepage.  You'll want people to find your page easily and use social media to report affirmatively about what they found.  Tools like Google Analytics assess the impact of your homepage, determining if your optimization decisions truly reflect what's best for the site's visitors, the consumers of your content.  Is your site easy to navigate?  Do meta-tags accurately describe content?  Answering questions like these will establish if your social media marketing is successful, and what needs to be improved.

Social media marketing has replaced print and other media to an exceptional degree; a wide variety of content exists, but not all successfully reaches consumers.  The methods suggested above should help determine if your content is appealing and believable, and to who.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

What was once known as Google Places has recently evolved into a key part of the Google Plus offering.  Google Places provided a directory type of service for businesses to list and allow people to find more detailed information.  With the migration into Google Plus this service is now called Google+ Local and can be an even more rewarding experience for small and medium businesses that need to improve their online presence.

Are you watching the Olympics?  If not, that’s ok.  You can always catch up on social media later, and why not?  Everybody else is.  The 2012 Olympic games in London are predicted to be the largest social media event to date, so you can bet that your buddies knew who won the gold medal in synchronized diving before the athletes even had a chance to dry off.

The arrival of the Twittersphere and Twitterverse was perfectly on time for businesses. It broke down the barriers of traditional advertising and allowed companies to speak directly to their customers, using informal language. Suddenly, all you have to do is send a short message and it’s out there, reaching everyone who might be interested!

It’s not quite that simple, however.  In fact, Twitter is the ultimate in “pull” advertising, in spite of the fact that at first glance it looks like a “push” mechanism. To get the most out of Twitter for business purposes, you need to follow a few golden rules.

Planning Your Strategy