Facing Social Media ROI

Are you struggling to find ways to justify social media marketing? Do you dread having to find a way to respond to business leadership as they demand to see a direct correlation between all this Twitter/Facebook hocus pocus and an actual return on investment? Do you wish that they could just see the inherent value that you know is there--the power of building human relationships with your prospects, the strength in cultivating an audience around your brand, the ability to demonstrate your company's thought leadership to the world? Why don't the bean counters appreciate the wonder and opportunity that social media represents for what it is, and leave it at that? The allure alone shows enough potential in social media to justify entire rooms full of practitioners forging ahead on the frontline of the socialsphere, right?

Wrong. In fact, those bean counting business leaders have it absolutely right. That they are concentrating on the bottom line is not an indication that they don't "get" social media. On the contrary, many absolutely see the potential and the need to advance into the space. But they are also rightly looking to hold social media accountable as a sound business practice. You shouldn't need much convincing that if you want to successfully implement social media for a company, you had better get yourself firmly on the side of those business leaders who pay the bills.

Even if you do manage to razzle-dazzle them with what they perceive as smoke and mirrors enough to let you get started, you are only digging a hole for yourself when the unavoidable happens. No matter if it's a big or small company, eventually the entire social media effort is going to have to be equated as a line item on someone's P&L (Profit and Loss) sheet. You had better take steps to make sure social media is seen as a legitimate cost center. Your ability to see social media through the eyes of your boss will actually help you tremendously.

It becomes your challenge to walk the line between the difficult to measure human components of social media and the financial realities of business. On one side you have the intangible wins that slowly grow over time as you cultivate your web presence. These are the true core building blocks of social media which come from "doing it right." On the other side you have the reality that you are actually doing this entire thing for gains that help your company grow. And in business, growth is going to end up as a trend line on a spreadsheet. Get comfortable with that. It's okay.

So now the question is "How?" How can we force the square peg of social media into the very round hole of business ROI? There are countless paths to doing this, but let's look at one that is staring us in the face. Let's appreciate social media for something it undeniably is--a critical Search Engine Optimization element.

With universal search now an implicit component in all the major engines, their ability to serve up a broad result set of authoritative content is greatly enhanced. Now the strides you take into the multimedia dimension of content creation (most all of which is social media driven) can increase traffic to your web presence all the more.

You probably already track the traffic coming to your site and evaluate the results of that traffic whether by cost per lead or some other conversion metric. This gives you an immediate benchmark over which social media can be layered. At the very least, without having to fashion some entirely new measurement dashboard, you can start tracking social media's impact on generating quality traffic to your site. A strong twitter account could easily increase targeted deep-linked traffic into a site by a significant percentage. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Other content types and platforms can also influence the volume of traffic you already measure. And where traffic is being tied to ROI (how can it not be?), it gives you a legitimate starting point for evaluating social media's impact on your cost of conversion.

A twelve month goal to see if social media can increase web traffic while potentially driving down the cost per conversion is a legitimate reality. In your business leader's eyes, this probably fits into a known metric and takes a bit of the mystery out of social media too.

There are numerous ways to tie social media into the established measuring sticks at play in any company. SEO is just one of them. The fact is this: there is every reason to see social media marketing from a business perspective. It doesn't change the fact that doing "good" social media marketing still requires authenticity, human dialogue, and genuine interaction. Doing those well represents a whole slew of challenges in and of themselves. The bigger challenge is in knowing how to serve both sides of the measuring stick while never letting the ball drop on either side.

Trouble Ahead With Real-Time Search

Google announced the roll out of real-time search results into its algorithm yesterday, solidifying what most anyone should understand by now—real-time content is a commodity and is here to stay. Now that Google has joined the ranks of search engines succumbing to the obvious shift in user intent, the debate is over and we can get down to planning just how we will monetize this new facet of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). How to SEO for it? How to advertise within it? And how to potentially turn everyone off on these results for good.

I'm afraid that with real-time results finally making it into the "big leagues," traditional search marketing may steamroll over this authentic user-generated content only to devalue it completely out of authenticity. Authentic user-generated content has turned the search engine world on its ear. Now the engines are combating this by layering these elements into their results. This may be a dangerous day for all parties concerned, and I feel the potential to kick the user experience in the shins is as strong as the excitement surrounding a significantly stellar transformation of the search space.

But rather than brooding over the cloudy visions within the crystal ball of search monetization and the potential to crush authenticity, something far more immediate seems to be ringing a warning bell in my ears—the complete disconnect between getting authoritative, trustworthy results from a search engine along side the newest, freshest stream of conscious flowing out of the gigantic mouth of social media.

While I am all for real-time search results and their ability to keep me up to date on current events and trends, there seems little means for a search engine to evaluate the good, bad, or indifferent when deciding which particular blip of micro-blog to serve me on its page one results. And I have little interest in simply seeing the most recent real-time "anything" being said on anything I might search. There isn't any metric available to adequately evaluate the "authority" of a micro-blogging twitter user. Don't be fooled. It isn't the number of followers. It isn't the balance of followers to follow-ees. And it isn't even the ratio of user lists you show up on. Real-time search results are pretty much just that—the latest spew out of the cloud of "current" content. I'm less interested in the "most current" stream and more in the "most valuable" current stream. Finding that subset takes some significant self-filtering in the search space.

Searchers segment themselves nicely between those doing research, those doing commercial buyer activities, and those looking for the latest news. Unfortunately, when I search "Britney Spears" it isn't really clear to the engine which of those three searchers I am. Is the solution to serve me everything? I see myself needing some massive lever I can flip before doing a search that states my intent to the engine before I hit search. That way I don't have to suffer through those pockets of content for which I have no interest.

Yes, it's cool that engines are now going to give me a slice of photos, videos, tweets, products, web pages, and blog posts whenever I go surfing, but is an all-in-one solution SERP really the best SERP I could ask for? I doubt it. I don't discount that this is a major upgrade. Ranking web pages alone is far from a complete user experience picture. The engines' evolution provides confirmation that there is value in diversifying the results page. But might it be becoming too homogenized at the same time?

Might real-time search be truly valuable only when I can have it show me results from my circle of trusted content sources? As it stands, while exposure to the very most recent chatter about worldly subjects is useful, I'm not sure it is nearly filtered enough for my page one results on a search engine, at least not all the time. User generated content is too susceptible to being over run with unqualified rambling. It's already impossible to sift through my own twitter network stream. Imagine when search results are showing the entire world's stream on page one all the time. Ugh.

2010 is going to be a very interesting year in Search Marketing to be sure.

The ABBs of Social Media - Always Be Branding

One of the oldest acronyms in the sales industry is ABC (Always Be Closing). It's an easy mantra-like reminder that everything you do in a sales relationship comes down to closing the deal. For businesses (and individuals too) in the social media space there is a similar acronym to be followed: ABB (Always Be Branding). It's a softer version than the sales-minded mantra, but no less critical. If you forget this one, you could be risking more than losing a single deal.

Two things the Internet doesn't do: sleep or forget. If you and your company are to successfully develop a web presence, these are two factors you must contend with regularly. As you develop content, know that what you create is always going to be out there, and will forever make up the foundation of your online reputation. So it is important to always consider what you do, what you say and how you say it. Social media is continually shining something of a spotlight on your professional appearance, like the paparazzi lurking behind every parked car and tree waiting to snap a picture. Your social network is always watching.

While authenticity is a key to creating an effective social media voice, there is no denying that what you're doing every day is branding, plain and simple. Through your authenticity you are promoting yourself and your company. However, the social media "sell" is a different beast than that of the traditional sales environment. After all, your win in social media comes from being regarded as a valuable content asset—being someone that others appreciate for the added value you give.

The thing to remember is that this is happening whether you're thinking of it or not. So you'll need to take some precautionary measures to prevent missteps. The best way to accomplish this is by first establishing a content strategy. Having a plan will help you stay on course, and it need not take an inordinate amount of effort to create.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1—Adhere to a short list of goals. As you create any outbound content, make sure it is serving the grand vision of your efforts. This could be to build product awareness, to demonstrate expertise, to improve customer service relations, or any other key driver to your efforts. Before you hit the "publish" button make sure the content is serving your objectives in some way. This ought not get in the way of your producing a conversational rapport with your audience, but rather, ensure that this direct chit-chat doesn't veer off course.

2—Plan for the future. Without getting bogged down so much that it prevents creativity, take a bit of time to structure your efforts from day to day, or week to week. Based on your goals you should be able to decide on the subject matter of your next half dozen blog posts. You can also let your goals drive your decisions to participate in certain forums or groups.

3—Limit the cooks in the kitchen. As best you can, try to control your content outlets to as few people as possible. Make sure these people fully grasp the overarching strategy. It is understandably different from organization to organization, but it will be most effective if the strategists are the actual content producers. In the cases where efforts are mounted on a larger scale, it will become critical to produce comprehensive guidelines that communicate the strategy to the team that is producing content and sets measures and check points to ensure that content stays focused.

Through it all, keep the ABB mantra running in your head. It will safeguard both your reputation and the authenticity with which you build it.