I get a lot of questions from people about the relevance of social media in their particular industry. I often hear, “Well, since I work in XYZ field, do you think it’s really necessary?” and “We have a certain niche of customers and I don’t think they’re looking for us on Twitter. What should we do?”

At some point, every business, no matter the niche or industry, should attempt to use social media to reach new customers.

Many people think that social media is some new and improved form of marketing but it really isn’t. The use of social media is just marketing where your customers hang out, just like a radio ad, billboard, or sign. There are no special tactics to use or algorithms to recite; it’s marketing basics using a different medium.

However, I will tell you that social media isn’t right for every business. There are some businesses that aren’t ready to take the dive into Facebook, Twitter, and a blog. How do you know if you are ready to engage with your customers through social media?

Question 1: What is driving you?

The first question to determine if you’re ready to embrace social media is, “What drives you?” This question is simple enough but is deeply powerful, as it is used to shape your entire philosophy on social media use.

If your answer to the question was something to deal with being like everyone else, you need to stop reading this article. Using Facebook and Twitter just because it’s the “cool” thing to do isn’t going to increase your sales or triple your customer awareness.

You need to have a passion for people and for growing yourself in order to focus your talents on using social media. You need to realize that the journey will be tough and unrewarding at times, just like any other marketing system, but in the end you will learn how to grow your business and influence customers. If your car isn’t in the right gear, you won’t move in the right direction, as it is with your drive for social media success.

Question 2: What is your plan?

Once you have determined if your motives are correct, it’s time to envision a plan of action.

Social media IS NOT something you can begin and then forget about; it’s not a static webpage with just informational content. The purpose of social media is to interact with customers and just like any speech or presentation, you need to develop your plan of attack. Without this plan, your run at social media won’t last long.

When you formulate your plan for social media integration, remember to think about all perspectives and viewpoints. How do you want your customers to perceive your company when you join Facebook? Are your competitors on Twitter or blogging? What affect will social media have on your finances and hours worked? There are many questions you need to answer before you click the “Sign Up” button.

Question 3: What are your goals and expectations?

Measurement is key.

I’ll say it one more time for those of you who missed it a few seconds ago–measurement is key.

The way you plan to measure your social media campaign is almost as important as planning your customer interactions. You NEED to measure yourself in order to gauge your progress, successes, and failures.

A good strategy is to measure your company and your key objectives before launching your social media campaign and then re-measure in certain intervals. This will give you a great taste as to what your company was doing before social media and how things are progressing after Facebook, Twitter, and blogging.

Ensure you’re measuring relevant data and not only page views or fans. Dive deep into the conversations you have with customers and determine what you could have done better. What seems to be attracting the most content on your pages? How many new followers are you gaining on a weekly basis?

Not every business should sign up for social media today; some businesses aren’t ready. If you are ready, I would encourage you to begin to explore your options and plan, as it will generate some serious thoughts on how to move forward. Also, if you’d like a free consultation about the landscape might look for your company’s social media presence, please email me (or call 410-701-0322) and I’d be happy to help.

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Eric Alpin is the Associate Editor of Folk Media and works for a telecommunications company in Baltimore, Md. He is a social media enthusiast, blogger, writer, and student with a passion for leadership and self-development strategies and techniques. Find out more about Eric on Twitter.

*Photo by Oberazzi

Maria Ogneva talks about social media measurement and monitoring

Our SXSW correspondent, Nichole Kelly caught up with Maria Ogneva, Social Media Director for Biz360, at South By Southwest Interactive 2010 to ask about social media measurement.

After you watch the video leave a comment below and let us know which category Maria fits in and why…

1) Houdini – all smoke and mirrors

2) Miami Vice – definitely trendsetting

3) CSI – Crime Scene Investigator – so smart with social media measurement that NOTHING gets by.

Leave a comment below.

Amber Naslund talks about social media measurement and monitoring

Our SXSW correspondent, Nichole Kelly caught up with Amber Naslund, Director of Community for Radian6, at South By Southwest Interactive 2010 to ask about social media measurement.

After you watch the video leave a comment below and let us know which category Amber fits in and why…

1) Houdini – all smoke and mirrors

2) Miami Vice – definitely trendsetting

3) CSI – Crime Scene Investigator – so smart with social media measurement that NOTHING gets by.

Leave a comment below.

Written By: Nichole Kelly

The big question: “how Do I measure social media?”

There have been many, many discussions around social media measurement especially over the last year. For some reason, nailing down the best way to measure has evaded us all. Most of the challenge is a result of having metrics that can be compared from one company to the next.

Without that, it is hard to say if what you are doing is good, bad, or ugly. This is exacerbated with a certain level of fear of measuring social because it can be difficult to correlate something like Twitter followers to new business.

This is certainly an understandable fear. Just remember that social media is just a tool in your marketing tool kit. If you measure social media using some of the same measurements you’ve always used, it will start to make sense and be easier to justify your efforts.

There are 5 categories in the social media funnel.

Exposure

This is just like the exposure you’ve been measuring for years. Essentially, you are choosing metrics which measure your reach. How many people are listening to you or talking about your brand? To actually measure this it is a combination of your normal web analytics, your Twitter followers, your Facebook fans, and running a search for your brand mentions. I use Radian 6 for this, but you could also do a Google search and look at growth in the number of returned results but this isn’t as accurate.

Influence

This is prefaced by saying that this category of measurement is a little harder if you don’t have Radian 6. By measuring the number of mentions for industry key words against the number of times your brand is mentioned with those key words you can get a measurement of your share of voice in the industry. You can also get a report on the top influencers from your industry. Finally, sentiment, while still imprecise, gives you a general measurement of whether people say you suck or you rock.

Engagement

This is fairly easily measured by tracking the number of clicks you get on the links you post, the number of times your messages are shared or retweeted, how many direct messages you get, and how many comments you receive.

Action/Convert

Is any of this contributing to the pipeline? Measure the pieces of content that tie to your sales process whether it be a white paper, webinar, lead generation form, pitch or proposal.

Sales

Oh, the elusive white horse. How much money are these efforts generating? If you’ve measured this far, you can measure what translate into dough.

Retain

The step many forget. Don’t forget to follow these customers and look at their repeat business and retention rates.

Remember, social media is like the almighty assist. It can help add more opportunities to convert business, but at the end of the day it is just putting leads in the funnel. Your normal sales process is responsible for converting those leads.

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Nichole is the Director of Social Media for CareOne Debt Relief Services and Vice President of Communications for the Baltimore Chapter of the American Marketing Association. She also blogs about social media and marketing innovation at nicholekelly.com

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Why Is Measurement Important

If it can’t be measured – it doesn’t exist

We are firm believers that anyone who doesn’t measure their results is wasting their time and money. It could be worse. They could be wasting YOUR time and YOUR money. Measurement is critical for success.

Measurement lets others know the progress

Not only can you gauge how well you are doing on Twitter through measurement, it keeps others in the loop as well. By measuring you keep up the moral of your employees and supervisors.

Measurement shows you your future and adjustments

How will you know where to make adjustments if you don’t measure your results?

What A Measurement System Looks Like

Hashtags – tracking links – and searches

Measurement on Twitter is a new discipline. Every day there are new tools being developed to track how messages are read and repurposed. Currently, the best way to measure is to use a combination of hashtags, trackable links and searches.

Automatic tracking

Of course, like most things online, tracking your metrics can be set up automatically. We recommend that before you set things up on autopilot, you at least understand the mechanics behind manually tracking your Twitter posts. The first step is setting up your Twitter posts to actually be trackable.

How To Set Up Your Measurement system

Begin using hashtags

As we learned earlier, hashtags allow us to label our tweets. Multiple tweets with the same label can be searched and grouped. So by adding a hashtag to your twitter posts you can create a listing of each time that post is retweeted or referenced.

Use a service that allows you to tack links

Services that allow you to shorten your URLs and track them are powerful for measuring clickthroughs. We already mentioned Hootsuite as our link tracking application of choice.

Use search.twitter.com

Visit www.search.twitter.com and you will see the most powerful feature of Twitter. From this search bar, you can search millions of conversations in real-time. By searching for a hashtag, username, @mention or other keyword, you can begin to compile a list of followers who have referenced and retweeted your Twitter posts.

By measuring what messages are forwarded & monitoring your clicks on shared links, you can measure how well your Twitter strategy is working.

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Joel Mark Witt is the Publisher of Folk Media and author of 21 Days To Twitter Leadership. He is a producer, author, and speaker who consults with businesses and nonprofits on how to use social media in marketing and communications. Get more from Joel on Twitter.

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Get the book “21 Days To Twitter Leadership” The Step-By-Step Guide On How To Twitter, Get Twitter Followers And Position Yourself As The Leader In Your Industry In Less Than 10 Minutes Per Day.

*Photo By Jek In The Box

What separates someone who claims to be a social media expert and one who actually is a social media expert? Social media marketing metrics.

Metrics are the lifeblood of marketing in our fractured and currently unstable economy. Without a target and measurement system in place – you are dumping your social media dollars into pots of dimly viewable sewage water.

As a business owner or professional – please be wary of those “social media experts” who tell you that the value of social media can’t be measured.

Bull crap.

I am under the conviction – that if it can’t be measured – it doesn’t exist. This year (2009) you are going to see a lot of companies wake up and realize that they have to justify the dollars they are spending in social media. Yes social media seems low cost and “free” at times. But to do it right takes investment – both time and money.

With business investment comes ROI tracking and measurement. Simple business and marketing principles still apply and no amount of social media hype will be able to persuade smart marketing folks in the future to abandon these.

Your business can and should be tracking how your social media efforts are playing out. There are tools available now and more coming in the future that will enable you to track results from your campaigns and online communication strategies.

There are some really smart companies who get this whole measurement thing. Tubemogul in the video space, Google in the  site analytics space, Hootsuite in the Twitter realm, and Facebook does a great job in monitoring activity on business fan pages.

For those of you wanting to start right now – here are some ideas for tracking your social media strategies.

• Set up a monitoring systemSocial media starts with listening. Listen to the current conversation before you begin talking. This is the first step in measuring. Measure what is already there. Using tools like Twitter Search and Google Analytics is a great start. Hootsuite will allow you to shorten your Twitter URLs and then track the number of clicks they get. Facebook allows you to see fan page hits and demographics for your users.

• Decide on messaging & monitor responseWhat is your core business message? Starbucks -  for example – puts out the message that no matter your income level – you can have an exotic $4 latte that will make you feel good. Starbucks sells a little luxury during the normal workday. Your company has a core message also – what is it? Be sure to have your employees know and understand this for when they respond on the social web.

• Tag team the responsesBy having your employees understand your messaging platform – you empower them to help monitor the chatter that is happening online. Responding is key to conversation. If your company doesn’t respond in a timely fashion -  you are missing out on the power of social media. Delegate to other staff members and have them help with blog posts – Twitter posts – and Facebook comments.

• End at the beginningBookend your strategy with a monitoring system. Continue to follow through on conversations. Tweak your messages based on click-throughs and comments.

In the early days of social media, measurement was difficult and viewed by some as unnecessary. Today the viewpoints are changing. If you are a business owner or director of marketing – you know that guesswork doesn’t work. You must have a systematic and measurable process for social media marketing.

In the coming weeks we will revisit this topic and post about specific techniques you can employ to market on the social web. Let us know what questions you have by commenting below or on Twitter.

Joel Mark Witt is a producer, speaker, and new media leader who writes about social media and its impact in the business world. He is also the Founding Director of Folk Media. Send him an eMail: joelmarkwitt (at) folkmedia.org or follow him on Twitter.

* Photo by Darren Hester

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