How To Make Your Social Media Strategy Accountable

How To Make Your Social Media Strategy Accountable

Another great article from Search Engine Land which clearly shows that using social media tools is not enough in today's very competitive environment. Having a social media strategy with clear goals / objectives and detailed reporting is crucial to know what you're getting out of your marketing and where to improve.

Social media optimisation - helpful tools

Since I've been working on a social media strategy recently (I'll post more details soon), I thought I'd share some tools which I think could be useful to anybody managing their own SMO.

The first one is a social boomarking tool called Social Marker (http://www.socialmarker.com/). While some people may not think of social bookmarks sites as part of a social media strategy, they are a great way to syndicate your content using your own tags, especially when combined with buttons on your site.
The best feature of Social Marker is that it allows you to bookmark your content on all of the main social bookmarks sites at the click of a button (including delicious, reddit, digg, stumble upon...). Initial set up may take a while as you need to register individually on each of the sites, but once this is done, everything will be very straightforward.
When used with free social buttons (www.addthis.com), your social bookmarking efforts will never be the same again!

The next tool is a video upload service that allows you to upload your rich media on a wide range of video sites at the click of a button. The principle is the same as social marker with a slightly long initial setup (need to register on sites such as youtube, dailymotion...) and simplicity afterwards. Tube Mogul (http://www.tubemogul.com/) also gives you in depth analysis for each of your videos, allowing you to understand users behaviour across the sites.

Because social media can be extremely time consuming, it is becoming essential for any internet marketeer to automate a lot of the tasks. This can be a simple link between a blog/rss feed and twitter (http://twitterfeed.com/) but it can also mean developing apps that will automatically distribute new content from a website to sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogs, Twitter....I'm sure a few tools are readily available online, but bespoke solutions can be ideal if you have the web development resources.

Ok, so now you have the right tools to start implementing your strategy, but how do you measure it? While it is hard to find any free integrated social media effectiveness reporting tools, a few tips can help you measure basics fairly easily.
If you use google analytics, you can create a new segment to compare social media results with other marketing channels (paid, organic..) Instructions here. Being a bit of a Google Analytics fan myself, I can only highly recommend Brian Clifton's blog, Measuring Success.

Ploked.com also gives some really good info on which metrics you should use when measuring social media activities.

While I'm sure most of you enjoy spending time using social media, I think it is very important for any business to make the most out of this wonderful internet marketing channel by planning its growth and carefully measuring results.
Enjoy your weekend!

Social Media - what's the verdict?

Ah social media....everybody's talking about it, every company knows it needs to be in the social media sphere, but how do you approach it to make the most of it from a marketing point of view?
Well this is one the issues I'm facing right now thanks to budget cuts and limited resources!
Even though I've been working in online marketing for 7 years now, social media is still something I have to learn about as it changes every day, and the need for SMO (social media optimisation) is becoming critical to improve search engine rankings and customer interaction.
So where to start?

• I guess the first thing you need to do is be organised and have clear objectives.
• Tracking / reporting: decide on how you're going to measure you social media effectiveness and manage your online reputation (ORM - online reputation management)
• Start with the basics: get involved in relevant blogs and forums for your business as they could be a good source of leads and will allow customers to interact with you
• Create a Twitter (www.twitter.com) account only if you have resources to dedicate to it. The whole point of social marketing is responsiveness, so if you don't have the resources, don't do it. Microblogging is great but time consuming
  
• Target social networking sites if you have resources: Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace. Make sure you choose the right ones based on your target audience
  
• Create content/articles for syndication and link baiting - make sure that what you offer/talk about is interesting and link worthy. utlimately, you want to establish yourself as an authority in your field
• Social bookmarking: target social bookmarking sites like digg, delicious, stumble upon to broadcast your content/news/posts as widely as possible. an RSS feed can help here.
• If you have budget, widgets can also be helpful, without forgetting viral marketing campaigns
  
• Above all, keep control of what is happening and integrate your social media strategy within your overall online marketing strategy to get results
  

I know i'm probably missing a lot of things here, but this is just a start and I'll keep posting as I go along. Thankfully, my colleague Rochelle (www.rochelledancel.com) will be at hand to help me so hopefully I'll be able to come back with a good recipe for a perfect social media strategy!

Choosing a search marketing agency - a quick checklist

Since I'm currently trying to choose a search marketing agency for my company to help with our SEO/SMO strategy, I though it may be useful to give a quick reminder of what you should expect from a good agency before hiring one:

• A comprehensive content and technical audit to identify potential problems
• A level of support and consultancy adapted to your needs: since many agencies charge quite a significant amount per hour, it is worth having clear requirements before signing a contract
• An integrated strategy: all elements of the strategy should be working together
• Beware of companies offering top rankings, no self respecting agency would ever promise number 1 SE rankings for specific keywords
• Good reporting: since you're likely to spend large parts of your marketing of your budget on SEO/SMO and PPC, make sure you're provided with the right reporting tools as you'll need to measure ROI going forward
• Check for references, see who the agency is currently working with
• Remember, you may not need all of the bells and whistles on offer, so make sure you get the basics right (onsite optimisation / link building) before signing for complicated and expensive social media activities
• Always negotiate rates and never let an agency treat you like a small customer, no matter what your budget is
• Don't be afraid to ask questions if you're not sure about some of the terms mentioned
  
• Whichever agency you choose, responsiveness is key, so a good account manager needs to be available for you when you need

These are just some pointers to get you started and I'll go more into details of strategies in a future post.
If you want to know more, feel free to ask!
see you next, have a good weekend