Yes, it’s that time again. It’s time for the 2010 United States Census. It’s time for the visits, the forms, and the lying honesty. Although it may seem like a worthless survey, a census is a great way to gauge the status of the nation. The final census results provide a close estimate on the number of citizens living in the nation, average family financial information, and national budget allocation needs.

Believe it or not, a social media census can be just as useful and insightful. It can give you a big picture view of how your social media presence is progressing, something that we all forget about from time to time. If you’re willing to stop, step back, and take a look at the big picture, you’re well on your way to a successful social media campaign.

What is a Social Media Census?

The concept is simple. A social media census is an inventory of your social media campaign or efforts. Everything and anything is covered – blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, LinkedIn, and so on.

Why is a Social Media Census Important?

A social media census can reveal important planning, implementation, and ROI information about your social media campaign. By asking yourself a series of questions, you’re able to get a firm grasp on all aspects of your approach to social media, including what you’re doing right and what you may need to change.

How Do I Complete My Social Media Census?

Unfortunately, there are no set questions or documents to answer in order to complete your social media census. It’s something that you need to make up on your own. However, I’ve included quite a long list of sample questions that will get you headed in the right direction.

The purpose of the social media census is to truly gauge the progress of your social media campaign. Consider it to be another way of looking at metrics or ROI. Your social media census should clue you in on your social media style, what you’re offering to your customers, the time you dedicate to your social media campaign, and many more areas.

Each week, NFL players and coaches watch game film of their team and their next opponent. They are looking for weaknesses, strengths, and communication styles on both sides of the ball. The hope is that the information they gain from game film will help them play better against that specific opponent. Your social media census is your game film. Use it to make your social media campaign a success.

Sample Census Questions

Blogs
What blog categories have the most posts? The least?
What are some key terms and phrases I seem to repeat as I’m writing?
How often am I producing content?
How can my readers interact with me and other visitors?
What area do I focus on the most with my blog – creating content, developing community, or planning?
How long does it take me to write a blog post?
How many times do I revise my blog entries before posting?
What content produces the most responses from readers?

Social Networking
How often do I post on Twitter or Facebook?
How many followers or friends have I engaged with in the past week? Two weeks? Month?
What posts seem to strike the most conversations among my followers and friends?
What posts do I respond to the most?
What time of day do I normally post updates or tweets? What about my friends and followers?
What common interests exist among me and my friends and followers?
How do I post or tweet – web, mobile, application, etc.?
How often do I schedule posts or tweets? Am I thinking ahead or playing catch-up?

Social Media Census Action Items and Quick Points

Perform a census on one aspect of your social media campaign today. Be honest and embrace the results.

Continue analyzing as the week progresses. Document your findings and conclusions.

Partner with a friend or colleague for accountability. They can serve as a listening ear and creative mind.

A social media census should be done once or twice a year, not once a decade. Yes, they’re that important.

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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 net_efekt

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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A Folk Media insider John Lucchetti alerted us today about the new Twitter Business accounts. Apparently, Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone is talking up the idea of having paid business accounts featuring advanced tools like analytics and tracking.

Stone said, “This takes advantage of some of the commercial use of Twitter we’ve seen from businesses like airlines and big box stores… we want to present to them a layer of features that allows them to become better at Twitter, show them some of the analytics.”

“Twitter will still be free for everybody and we’ll still tell them to go crazy with it,” said Stone in an interview. “But we’ve identified a selection of things that businesses say are helping to make them more profit.”

If Twitter moves to empower businesses by offering paid accounts with metrics, I think we will see a huge growth and surge in business users.

My advice is for your business to begin using Twitter now while it is still in it’s massive growth phase. Plus, It is an easy way for your company to get onto the screens of the millions of mobile devices around the world.

As a business owner – would you pay for more features on Twitter?

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.

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

With all the buzz around Twitter and social media, I amazed to see some business people and non-profit organizations still asking “should we blog?” For most businesses, that’s like asking “do we need a telephone?” I will be the first one to say that blogging is not for every business. Your organization may not benefit from using online tools like blogs, Twitter, or social media. But your interest in reading this article  indicates your desire or need for a blog in your business or non-profit.

If you haven’t set up a blog for your company – the time is now. But what do you do if you have to sell the idea to your boss or executive team? Here are a few ideas on how to make this selling process easier. Consider the following “evidence” to use in your pitch.

But wait. Before you get to your pitch – your first goal is to set up a test blog where you can show some results. I know a few marketing pros who actually set up a free blog (using Blogger or Wordpress.com) without their boss knowing. They made the blog industry focused rather than company specific and were then able to collect data in order to make a compelling case for an official company blog.

Metrics

Metrics are key to showing your boss the value of blogging and social media. There are many tools that you can use to track visitors to your website – Twitter click through rates – and online mentions. I would recommend using Google Analytics to track your visitor stats. Use Tweetbeep.com to track when you are being mentioned on Twitter. For tracking actual Twitter link clicks, Hootsuite is the online app we are currently using at Folk Media.

Feedback

Imagine having a superpower that let’s you listen when people talk about you behind your back. It is possible. Sites like Twitter Search and Google Alerts allow you to do just that. It is easy to work up searches that show your boss the platforms people are using to talk about your organization or business.

Highlight some key organizations who are blogging

What happens if no one is talking about your business? Show your boss the competition. Search for competitors and industry leaders to show how these companies and people are getting and using feedback online. There is nothing like good old competition that will motivate bosses at any level.

Engagement

Don’t forget – social media is more about engagement than numbers. You may launch your official company blog and end up with low click through rates.  But the people who are visiting may tend to be targeted and more valuable. Plus when your audience is engaged, they end up becoming long-term readers and customers. It is important to explain this to your executives. Success in online social media takes time and investment.

Your biggest role as “social media champion” for your business is to educate those around you. They may not understand the power and value of social media like you do. You need to give them statistics, examples, case studies, and proof that social media is not a waste of time. In fact, in the current economic climate, social media may end up saving many businesses who can’t afford to advertise like they once did. Who knows – maybe you’ll be the hero who took some risk and saved your company. That’s worth a raise and promotion – right?

What do you think? Anything to add that I’ve left out? Comment below or follow us on Twitter.
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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 iStockPhoto

Subscribe to the Folk Media Insider eNewsletter. It’s a free monthly newsletter packed with tips, tools, strategies and resources to take your business to the next level online.

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

Subscribe to the Folk Media Insider eNewsletter. It’s a free monthly newsletter packed with tips, tools, strategies and resources to take your business to the next level online.