Tag Archive for: social media ROI

Five New Year’s Resolutions for Promoting Your Brand

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Yellow Hibiscus, Red Center 7_IGP0786 s.c Is updating your brand part of your 2014 New Year’s resolutions? Here are five ways to boost your brand recognition this year.

 1. Improve Social Media Engagement.  Google’s new algorithm not surprisingly puts the focus on Google +1’s. AccordingWishpond’s James Scherer (@JDScherer) writing for SmartBrief’s social media blog “While links are still incredibly important, equally important (and in the +1’s case, more important) are social endorsements such as Facebook likes and shares, LinkedIn shares, tweets and Pinterest pins.”   Building in ways for your donors, your followers, or your customers to engage with you and create those ever important endorsements is essential. Consider special discounts for conferences and events, or unique content for Twitter or Facebook followers to make the new SMO work for your brand.

2. Bring Your Executive Team on Board in Social Media. Gone are the days when your intern writes your blogs and Facebook posts. Customers and donors expect to follow the CEO’s twitter feed and get an insider perspective. Let the Thought Leaders in your institution–your C-Suite team and your Board leaders–build your brand by engaging in social channels. Sure, you can help them out with suggested themes, samples , and optimal timing around key events and product roll-outs. But their insider perspective and authentic voice is essential. A polished, corporate example is Bill Marriott’s On the Move blog. A slightly more irreverant blog is DuetsBlog, which belongs to a law firm. Ford’s chief digital communicator, Scott Monty, has a twitter feed worth emulating (@ScottMonty). But the examples you can offer are as endless as the kinds of personalities in your leadership circle.

3. Ask Movers and Shakers to Tweet About You. The tweet is the modern equivalent of getting an autograph, but more useful for your brand. When one of my nonprofit clients gave a facility tour to Justin Bieber (and encouraged him to tweet about it, which he did), they got 10,000 new followers in a matter of hours. Find out if any key personalities(or well-connected board members) are already known to your institution and encourage that they will Tweet, post on Facebook or blog about you.  And yes, specifically ask them to do it!

4. Make Your Video Content Multi-Platform Friendly. Right now, H.264 is still the go-to codec, but H.265 is on the way. And yet many organizations are still shooting standard def or stuck in the land of Flash.  If you want your content to be mobile- and web-friendly, make it a priority to upgrade your acquisition and output specs. For new content, shoot in High Def, at 1080p (29.97 frame rate, or 24fps which looks nicer in many cases and saves you some file space) for maximum flexibility and image quality. This larger acquisition size takes up more space, but storage is cheap. Whereas having your fabulous web fundraising video look horrible and pixelated at your annual conference could be an expensive mistake.

5. Multi-cast Your Content. Now it’s easy to share branded videos not just through Facebook, iTunes and YouTube, but also through Podcast Alley, MeFeedia, and more.  You can even reach the television-viewing audience by doing a direct-to-TiVO distribution. This allows you to bring more eyeballs to your content, and syndicate your branded content across multiple delivery platforms.

Merry Branding and a Happy New Year!

Amy is a frequent speaker, workshop leader, and an author on Lynda.com .

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Social Media: What’s the ROI?

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Social media has been around for awhile now.  Everyone’s had a chance to wade in.  And the question of return on investment continues to rankle. But there have been a few positive developments.

Counting the number of hits is out. Understanding who the hits come from is in. And putting some kind of value on social media interactions is useful. Both David Berkowitz at agency 360i and the folks at Razorfish have tried to quantify this data and look at what it takes to create influence and affect decision-making.  A lot of this is just a new technology take on the psychology of human cognitive behavior published by Albert Bandura in the 1960’s and 70’s and still a guidepost for those of us who work in fields where we need to understand how people react to internal and external influences.

So what can we measure?

That’s the wrong question. We need to first think of how we measure. The key is understanding no one buys your services or donates to your cause after just one interaction–whether that’s through social media or traditional media.   It’s cumulative.  So an ROI equation might put a value on these different elements: one personal interest PLUS multiple personal connections/referrals PLUS multiple social media interactions PLUS traditional media/email/direct mail influences PLUS internal influences (I want a car that looks like that; I think the world needs clean water) PLUS a triggering event (click here to get info on this car; click here to donate to clean water) = one Transaction That Can Be Measured.  You need to be pro-active on every front.  More and more, the fronts intersect through customer-driven social media.

Who can we look to for best practices?

One group that is ahead of the pack on social media ROI is nonprofits. They’ve been early adopters, partly because of the low cost of entry and partly I think because a large percentage of their staff are young and grew up with this technology.  Also, nonprofits have always had to get creative about raising dollars and being effective on mission.  NTEN, Blackbaud and Common Knowledge just put out their 3rd Annual Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report and it’s loaded with some interesting data in this sector.  The survey of 11, 196 nonprofit professionals asked about both professional social networks (i.e. Facebook, Linked In, YouTube, etc.) and “in-house” social networks being built through their own websites.

If a key ROI metric is engagement, then nonprofits can check off the community-building box. 89% of nonprofits have a presence on Facebook, with the average community size up 161% since the prior year’s report (6,376 members), and YouTube up 504% to 2,702.  And those in the super-charged fundraising category (see below) have communities of almost 100,000 members.

Peer-to-peer sites like CrowdRise, FirstGiving, Razoo and Causes are also getting traction as places to build engagement.

If a key ROI of nonprofits is money raised, then social networks are evolving in this regard.  The survey identified 27 “master fundraiser” organization who raised at least $100,000 on Facebook over the last year.  While more than half of these were large organizations with $51M to more than $250M budgets, almost a third were small organizations with $1-5M budgets.

Environmental, animal welfare and international groups lead the pack in terms of largest communities, most tweets, etc. as measures of engagement. This is not surprising. I frequently use advocacy organizations as examples of best practices in my social media workshops because they have been in the vanguard for years (including when direct mail was just getting its start as the “new” way to advocate for causes.)

What’s new in social media with real impact?

According to the Benchmark Report I noted above, one of the interesting developments in the nonprofit sphere is the use of “in-house” social networks — i.e. those who register users through the organization’s website. The ROI equation is flipped on its head as the benefit is to the user: by registering, he or she gets the benefit of curricula, best practices information, advocacy or health content.  The benefit to the organization is clearly a more engaged user community connected directly to the mission of the organization.

For-profit organizations could take a page from the nonprofit sector by looking at what makes social engagement effective: a fulfilling user experience, a community with purpose, and tools that build customer loyalty–whether that’s to a brand of car or a way of changing the world for the better.

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The Good the Bad and the Ugly: Social Media Successes and Nightmares

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By now you have probably heard some of the more infamous stories of the brave new woRed Wheel s.c.rld of social media. From Jeff Jarvis’s famous “Dell Sucks” blog post in 2005 to the Motrin-Mommy-Blogger fiasco of late 2008.  But what results—good and bad—can inform your own personal or corporate social media strategy? Here are some I thought worth a look.

The Good

Have you checked out Bill Marriott’s Blog “Marriott on the Move”?  http://www.blogs.marriott.com/ Of course his most recent postings have been about the Jakarta suicide bombings that took place at a Marriott hotel there. Communicating with customers in times of crisis is a crucial part of communicating your brand identity—in this case, that Marriott management is caring and on top of the situation as much as can be expected. Bill  also reads the blog aloud in an audio file beneath each post, which makes for a much more personal experience of the story. According to Kathleen Matthews, former news anchor-turned-Marriott marketing executive, $3 million in reservations have come in through his blog. How’s that for an ROI?

Charity: Water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects.  On 12 February 2009, 200+ international cities hosted a Twestival (Twitter + festival) to bring Twitter communities together to raise money for charity: water. The Twestival raised $250,000+ and brought worldwide public awareness to the global water crisis. They also provided a live feed of a well drilling project in Ethiopia paid for by the funds, so donors felt instantly connected to an outcome of their donations. Charity: Water also cleverly provides “Tweet the Facts” resource so folks on Twitter can easily publish content relevant to the charity (“Women in Africa spend 15-17 hrs/week collecting water”).  Charities have been among the first to realize the power of social media, so why not retrace their steps and raise awareness for charities and causes you support?

Zappos, the internet shoe emporium just purchased by Amazon, has 436 employees on Twitter.  (Full disclosure: I love shoes.) In a recent interview for the Progressive Women’s Leadership Blog in a post called “All atwitter,” CEO Tony Hsieh said “For Twitter, we don’t really view it as a marketing channel so much as a way to connect on a more personal level — whether it’s with our employees or our existing customers.” Zappos has always stood out for its unique company culture, with a high level of customer service and a personalized, informal style. The company offers Twitter classes for employees to learn how to Tweet, but it does not have any restrictive requirements. Again, CEO Hsieh told interviewer Stephen Spencer “We’re not really looking at short-term ROI in terms of sales,” Hsieh says. “We’re looking to form lifelong relationships with our customers, and we think Twitter helps us do this.”  The company has also used Twitter as a recruiting tool, because it helps prospective employees see what it’s like to work there.

The Bad

The Washington Post today carried a story (“Online — and in the Loop — With D.C. Police “ washingtonpost.com http://bit.ly/y8rlP ) about how police are using email listserves to connect to community, inform the public about crimes, and help solve them.  The U.S. Park Police are blogging at http://uspppressroom.blogspot.com/ . Meanwhile, on the west coast, Los Angeles police Lt. Rick Banks is quoted saying his unit is looking at Twitter as a new opportunity.  What does it all mean? Federal and state agencies are embracing social media as a tool for connecting with the communities they serve.  Some of these postings function more as press release outlets than places for real conversations to emerge (see http://www.usda.gov/blog/usda/ ).  At least it’s a start for more transparency and faster communication in government.

The Ugly

As great as social media is, there is a dark side. Consider this story from the Better Business Bureau about major job scams on Twitter.  The BBB wants job hunters to be aware of the following red flags when searching for a work-at-home job online:

  • The “job” is actually a money-making scheme and doesn’t provide actual employment.
  • The work-at-home scheme claims that you can make lots of money with little effort and no experience.
  • You have to pay money up front in order to be considered for the job or receive more information.
  • The exact same tweet touting the program is posted by many different Twitterers. The links in such tweets could lead you to scam sites or install malware onto your computer.

These are just a few tales to help you consider the good, the bad and the ugly ways that social media is changing our communications landscape.  Do you have a social media success story or nightmare? Please share!

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