A tool to measure social media presence – for sector and competitor research
Social Media Metrics have to date mainly focused on the view of their effectiveness from inside the company. At Evonomie we’ve been looking for a while for an external qualitative method to measure companies’ online activities as part of a strategic review.
Internal or in-company quantitative methods are in abundance and focus on activity, surveys and return on investment (ROI). These are certainly valid metrics and there is a comprehensive list in Jim Sterne’s book Social Media Metrics. The real question when conducting research is how can you capture the metrics if you’re outside the company? You don’t have access to their analytics so need to make a judgement on what’s important and whether the information is available.
Benefits of benchmarking competitor use of social media
Reasons we want to measure the social media activity from an external perspective include:
- The review competitors’ activity, their strengths and weaknesses
- To understand where and how the market segment is using social media
- To identify opportunities
- To identify threats
- To review new markets companies may consider moving into
It’s about customers
People who influence me, people like
Brian Solis,
Jay Baer,
Seth Godin and
Doc Searls suggest that social media is best suited to engaging customers, as typically it helps develop some form of emotional connection which makes it more likely customers will form a deeper relationship with a brand. It’s not that social media cannot help with new customer acquisition, far from it, it’s how you go about it.
Have a framework that informs strategic integration
There’s so much advice on social media tools and tactics that it’s sometimes difficult to see the big picture. Our new
RACE framework defines a simplified, strategic approach to digital marketing, including social media within it as a key part of today’s marketing.
An Extra Dimension to RACE – Listen & Participate
RACE is similar in its approach to a
Social CRM framework in that is can be used to provide some much needed structure behind all that tactical effort. Conventional frameworks like RACE are very useful to help keep things simple, but they need an extra dimension that allows them to incorporate social CRM… each
… » Read our full article
You will be aware that Facebook is one of the largest potential sources of Internet traffic and engagement; it’s more popular than Google in some countries! You’ve probably also heard that if the number of Facebook users were equivalent to a country it would be the 3rdlargest country in the world after India and China with 400 million users.
So if you’re not looking at Facebook to engage your audience and promote your products and services, you are missing a big opportunity.
You will know you can setup a Facebook Page for your company. But did you know you can advertise on Facebook, using Facebook Ads on a pay per click (CPC) or impressions (CPM) model?
This is a similar option to Google Adwords but the main difference is you can micro-target your audience with the a number of features for which I will share tips below.
What are Facebook Ads?
Facebook Ads can be seen in the right side column on Facebook pages where they have an allocated space. In that space, up to three ads may show at one time on any given page. These right-hand spaces might … » Read our full article
Question: What are the basics of using Facebook effectively to promote an integrated campaign?
Smart Insights Answer: Ultimately you’re looking to foster an ongoing relationship with someone, somewhere if you’re using social media. Facebook Fan Pages can be both ‘home base’ for a brand (the place that will help you foster the ongoing connection with your audience online), and/or it can be one social media ‘outpost’ (a channel where you are ultimately driving traffic from and through). I am assuming more an outpost since that’s most common.
What are your objectives?
Set your objectives clearly – WHY are you wanting to leverage Facebook as a communications channel, it’s important to be clear about why and how you’ll measure success before you start, what part of the campaign will Facebook play for you – traffic, awareness, lead generation…?
Who are you targeting?
Facebook is huge with over 500m global users logging in at least every 30 days – are you focusing on UK, single female professionals – for example? It’s important to define for your creation of your social media “product” and for promoting within Facebook and for designing your fan page. Creation of an effective … » Read our full article
