News - Page 12 of 15 - SLAM Strategy

How much bang for your buck? Calculating your social media ROI

We all know how huge social media is– businesses big and small are jumping on board and making the most of what social media networks have to offer. Gaining likes and followers is fantastic, but how do you know if social media is turning fans into customers?

These days, you would have to have a very good reason not to be using social media as part of your marketing strategy. According to the latest Yellow Social Media report, 65% of Aussies are using social media, and 95% of those users are on Facebook, yet only 30% of small businesses are using social media. That’s a lot of missed opportunities! Learn more about why you should be using social media in the video at the top of the page.

The Yellow Social Media report also reveals that only 51% of large businesses are measuring their social media ROI. It is notoriously tricky to measure the ROI of social media because insights aren’t always available and the definition of “conversion” often needs to be altered. That said, even businesses with a small budget, can use a number of tactics to work out if their social media activity is working in their favour by using free tools and analytics provided by Facebook and Google Analytics and subscription based apps.

In measuring your conversions, ROI and overall success with social media, it is important to match metrics to the goals you wanted to reach by using social media. A return on investment could mean increased brand awareness, as well as revenue generation, so look at how many clicks, video plays, photo views, comments, shares, etc. your content is receiving. This will let you know if your brand awareness is increasing and where you might need to make changes.

Consider tracking anecdotes and correlation as a measurement for ROI. Anecdotal evidence could include asking your customers how did found you, or what drove them to make a purchase? You could measure by correlation if you seen an increase in sales at the same time as an increase in social media activity. If you’ve recently run a competition or have had particularly engaging or viral content, this could be linked to increased sales activity.

Google Analytics can help you track how many customers are visiting your website from your social media networks. Look at their activity on your site – depending on your goals, a download or subscription could be counted as a conversion.

Measuring the amount of traffic you need to drive to your website or store via social media can also be calculated. Start by calculating your Customer Lifetime Value, that is, the amount of revenue a customer will generate for a company during the customer’s engagement with a brand.

Say your CLV is $2000 and you allocate 10% of the CLV ($200) to use social media to acquire new customers. Now let’s say you’ve outsourced your social media to a consultant, who will cost you $1000. Divide the cost of the consultant by your social media spend and you will find that you need to acquire more than 5 new customers to achieve a positive ROI.

There are every evolving ways to calculate your social media ROI and this is just the beginning. Calculating how much bang social media is generating for your buck comes down to matching metrics to your company goals, looking at insights and developing measurements which best suit your products and services.

New Top Level Domain Names Could Render Facebook Pointless

The social media giant “Facebook” has for the first time in history lost users to other social media channels according to Ryan Holmes – CEO of HootSuite.

This article reflects what I have seen coming for many years. Why should it be any different to any other empire? All good things must come to an end.

With the creation of new branded top level domains due to begin the approval process in the last quarter of 2013, Facebook is set to be attacked by brands looking to communicate better with their customers using social media. Ferrari, Tiffany, NFL, ANZ and about 900 other brands can carry a pretty big stick.

Soon customers of these trademarks could be offered a personalised domain name to coincide with their new personalised branded web presence.

This transformation means that brands will be able to provide social media platforms with which to communicate (without restriction, without Facebook) to their customer base. While I don’t believe that this will be the end of Facebook, it is clear that Facebook is already being pressured by existing social media competitors. So imagine what it will look like when these powerful global companies start to flex their social muscle by taking it to a whole NEW TOP LEVEL of competitor.

These brands took the leap of faith and invested up to around $500,000 just for the privilege to run their own slice of the Internet. Therefore they are not going to be wasting this opportunity to create added value to their brand where their competitors can’t without a fight. There is just too much invested, to much at stake, too many heads that might roll, too much on the line for something that is little more than a naming convention.

However what that naming convention means is what counts. Global brands are looking for profit increases of as little as 1% in order to generate millions of dollars of new revenue. These new gTLDs provide that incubator for brands to be able to make that become a reality.

It is this drive that will make these new branded top level domain names successful and why Facebook needs to be very, VERY watchful. Many of these brands are wealthy and highly powerful and together they can make a big impact on Facebook’s social customer base. There is only so much time you can dedicate to being social on the Internet. So while brands currently HAVE to drive traffic to Facebook in order to do business, soon they won’t and that could be devastating. I certainly wouldn’t have shares in Facebook at the moment.

Perhaps Facebook not applying for their own gTLD will be their undoing. More likely (and something I would be prepared to put a wager on) Facebook will apply in the second round (if there is one) and suddenly the kid who was the “cool kid”, will now be the “new kid” on the block.

Here is the article from Ryan Holmes – CEO of HootSuite
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130709145114-2967511-global-social-media-networks-set-to-overtake-facebook

The Social Media Principles

Keeping up to date with all latest news and inner workings of social media is a part of my job that I really enjoy. I love learning new things and discovering how and why people interact with social media content, what works and what practices will get the best results.

I was reading about Jonah Berger’s new book Contagious: Why Things Catch On, which highlights six principles that make people share content, ideas or talk about products. Understanding why people share things is very important to social media marketers and businesses so they can make the most of their social media efforts and avoid wasting time. These ideas come back to a necessity that we have pointed out in previous blog posts, which is, use the right bait for the right fish. That is, know your audience and use the right message to reach that audience.

Keeping Berger’s six identified principles in mind when creating content or campaigns for social media will certainly help in the success of those endeavors. Obviously, most things you post will not become a viral success like Psy’s Gangnam Style, but can still be shared and interacted with by many.

Watch our latest video to learn more about these six principles and how you can apply them.

Why you NEED to understand Edge Rank

As Facebook is the ‘go-to’ social network for many businesses, it is important to understand how the site works so that you can get the most out of it.

Understanding EdgeRank

Facebook’s News Feed is organised by an algorithm that determines which stories will show up in your newsfeed. To ensure the newsfeed is not completely overwhelming for users (imagine seeing every one of your friends’ activities in your newsfeed!) Facebook uses the algorithm to determine which stories will be of most interest to you and cuts out what it perceives to be junk.

Why should I care?

Because your fans won’t see your updates if they aren’t engaging and interesting! Facebook ranks stories by their score, which is determined in three parts:

Weight
Affinity
Time Decay

A story (or, edge) is given Weight with comments, shares and likes. Generally comments and shares are worth more than likes. Certain content, such as photos and videos can hold more weight and thus be more visible in the newsfeed, but it depends on the type of interaction the story receives. A text post with lots of comments and likes will rank higher than a video with no comments. The lesson here is to try and make each post engaging so it can show up in your fans’ newsfeeds and spread virally to the fan’s friends’ newsfeeds.

Affinity is a one-way relationship between users which rates how ‘connected’ you are. If you post on a friend’s wall and have lots of mutual friends, etc. Facebook will assume you want to see more of that person’s posts. As it’s a one-way score, that person won’t necessarily see all your posts unless they frequently interact with you also. It is important to note that affinity scores can wane due to inactivity, so keep your fans coming back to your page!

Time Decay is pretty self-explanatory. As a story gets older, it’s score drops because it’s less relevant than something posted two minutes ago. EdgeRank is a running score and your post in competing against all the other updates for that moment in time.

As you can see, it is important to understand how Facebook’s News Feed works to make the most of your social media activity and avoid wasting time. As this can be tricky to grasp or keep up with Facebook’s constant changes, please give us a call if you need any help. You have the option to outsource your social media management or receive consultation to get you on the right track.

The dotbrand Revolution – Interview with Nick Morris and Shaun Le Cornu

The New Top Level Domain names are almost here and this video interview with Nick Morris and my self Shaun Le Cornu goes into detail about how these new domains will affect all business. It is well worth anyone with a trademark who are interested in understanding what is coming to watch this video so that they can start to ask the questions about how their brands are going to deal with these new domain names and how they are going to integrate this change into their business and capitalise on it.

SLAM Strategy is an Internet Strategy company focused on not only helping businesses to navigate this new change but we are also the leading advisor in Adelaide South Australia on new top level domains.

Using our collaborative connections and combined skills some of the industries best new top level domain strategists, SLAM Strategy is a leader in this field. Focused on producing ROI results for our clients we help those businesses who ahve already purchased new top level domains to market and advertise their New TLD’s both on and offline to the right target market ensuring that their TLD is seen by the right people resulting in increased registrations of their domain.

Watch this video