Measuring Success
Once the resources have been developed and the pitch delivered, you should monitor the success of your campaign to determine its effectiveness and to take lessons for future projects.
The author speaks of a "marketing dashboard" that provides graphical representations of key metrics, but they tend to reflect a mass-marketing mentality in which numbers are important and each source is treated as equal, whereas in reality, some sources (and the referrals they send) are far more important than others.
A better approach, until better tools are provided, is to consider your objectives and monitor success in the most meaningful terms for your campaign.
Key Metrics
Some common metrics are:
- Visitors - A head-count of the visitors referred from external sources that accept your campaign. You should extend this to determine the actions they take once they get there, as a visitor who "bounces" after viewing only one page is less valuable than one who peruses the site, registers for an event, or buys a product
- Links - Monitor the number and usage of inbound links to your Web site. Of importance, look for the appearance of new referrers, as these links were likely the result of the campaign. (EN: The author suggests using Google, but using the server logs would be more accurate and timely)
- Social Network Activity - Look for increases in the number of people who "fan" your Facebook page, subscribe to your twitter feed, comment on your blog, etc. in the period following the launch of the campaign.
- Conversations - Look for an increase in the number of times your company is mentioned (even if it's not linked) in blogs, Facebook entries, and other online conversations. Eventually, dig into the instances to explore the context and evaluate whether the buzz is good or bad.
- Media demand - Keep an eye on your videos, images, and other media resources to monitor increased usage.
- Social bookmarking - Check into sites like Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon to see how many users are referring others to your site
A note is added to be realistic. Due to the media hype over the social Web, some companies have unrealistic expectations that their YouTube videos will become overnight sensations, a blog post will send thousands of new customers to their Web site, and so on. The author suggests that the net effect is often in the hundreds, and what's more important is the cumulative effect
Tools for Measuring Success
The author provides a mishmash of tools that can be leveraged to monitor and measure your company's success in the social Web.
- Web site analytics track the behavior of users on your site, which includes where they came from (mostly) and what they do when they get there.
- Google's "alerts" service can be used to provide an almost-real-time alter when certain keywords or phrases are mentioned in major media outlets.
- You can simply run a search (on various sites) to get an idea of the number and nature of Web sites, blogs, videos, images, tweets, comments, discussions and other things that mention your company (either explicitly or in tags)
In addition to looking for mentions of your company name, see if people are searching for products, the names of senior executives and spokesmen, etc., and consider including common misspellings
The author lists a couple dozen sites to check out, and mentions that you can probably get clerical help to do these tasks on a regular basis rather than tying up your own time, as it's a lot of work that must be done, repetitively, on a wide array of sites.
The author mentions a new site, Yahoo Pipes (pipes.yahoo.com), that is geared to search and monitor social media, aggregating the individual searches you might have to conduct in order to gather this information. He indicates it's quick and dirty, and that it's build with "duct tape," so it may not be a reliable solution at this time.
How to Respond to Posts
If your campaign succeeds, it will create buzz about your company, and you may wish to respond to those who discuss you, either to thank them for noticing your company or mitigate any negative press.
Etiquette is important: you must be gracious rather than defensive, and use your response to address the post, not do further marketing. Of importance, phrase your response as if writing a note directly to the person who wrote the post (that's how it's taken by the author) and be as friendly, professional, and courteous as you would be in a face-to-face encounter.
Also, be genuine. Write as a person, not a corporate identity, and understand that your response will have an impact not only with the blogger in question, but also with any lookers-on who will take not of how you comport yourself, especially when you're under fire.