I recently wrote “News isn’t transactional for advertisers”. I am not going to go out on another limb and say – “Social Media isn’t transactional for advertisers.” I am sure there are exceptions to both, but as a rule I will stand by them. I don’t foresee either media becoming systematically or predictably transactional for advertisers any time soon.
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Social Media Isn’t Transactional For Advertisers… Either
When I talk with “normal” businesspeople (you know, the kind who have actual physical addresses, not just IP ones), they always ask me the same thing. “I can see the appeal of that Twitter stuff for my teenage daughter — but how is it supposed to help my business?” Of course, you know the answer to this question. You’re a social media power user. Maybe even a ninja. You’re using social media to: Find new prospects Turn them on to your great content Entice them into subscribing to your blog or email list Convert them into paying customers, then . . . Continue to nurture your customer relationships, creating the raving fans that will make all your business dreams come true. Easy, right? But if you could still stand to learn a few things on those topics, you may want to take a look at the Social Media Success Summit . What’s the Social Media Success Summit? The Summit is a virtual conference designed to cut through the clutter around social media marketing. It gives entrepreneurs the key strategies and next steps to use social media effectively. Not to make friends. Not to “join the conversation.” But to grow their businesses. The conference consists of live sessions (running between May 4 and May 25), which include time for live questions and answers. Those are wrapped up with full transcripts, recordings, and often additional material so you can keep mining the conference for business ideas for months to come. (The Summit actually makes everything available for you to listen to and download for a full year.) The Summit’s 24 speakers this year include Gary Vaynerchuk, Guy Kawasaki, Muhammad Saleem, Steve Rubel, Jason Falls, Mari Smith, Chris Garrett, Ann Handley, and many more. Just a few of their sessions include: Specifically how and what to measure with social media ROI The three most critical upcoming social media trends How to use social news sites like Digg and StumbleUpon to get traffic and killer SEO How to bring raving customers repeatedly to a local business (your own or your clients’) How to create buzz with social media contests How to create a YouTube marketing strategy How to bring mobile marketing into your mix What you do after you’ve created that Facebook fan page There’s also a Twitter power panel featuring some bright guys you may never have heard of — Brian Clark, Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, and BlogWorld founder Rick Calvert. Darren and Brian are also cooking up a bonus panel on where social media is going — what’s going to be hot (and what’s not). And Brian’s doing a third panel on how we at Copyblogger use social media to build our growing unstoppable empire array of businesses. Today’s the last day to save $300 Today (that’s Thursday, April 15, 2010) is the last day for early birds to save more than half of the full conference fee. If you’re running any kind of online business (or if you’re serious about starting one), the Summit should easily be worth your time and investment even at the full rate. But since you can get all of the goodies (including some sweet instant-access bonus sessions) for less than half, why not? To get the discount, you need to sign up today. Click here to get all the details and register for the conference . And since Brian is involved as a presenter, we’re also a marketing partner for the Summit. As you know if you’ve been hanging out here regularly, we don’t promote anything we don’t think is first rate. Last year’s Social Media Success Summit was exceptionally valuable, and we’re confident this year will be even better.
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How to Master Social Media Marketing
From eMarketer: It’s no secret that online marketers care about measurability. Six in 10 respondents to Datran Media’s “4th Annual Marketing & Media Survey” said measuring and understanding their audience was a priority, and more than 87% said accurate online audience measurement was at least somewhat important for driving increased brand awareness, revenues or performance. Bringing hard metrics to the realm of social media remains a challenge, however, with marketers worldwide in disagreement over whether 2010 will be the year they see quantifiable results from their efforts. Just over one-half think they will, but nearly four in 10 are unsure. “For the few marketers who do attempt to apply quantitative measures to their social marketing efforts, the metrics they use are not terribly sophisticated,” noted eMarketer CEO and co-founder Geoff Ramsey in the eMarketer Insight Brief “Seven Guidelines for Achieving Social Media ROI.” “Most marketers today do not invest sufficient time, effort or money on social media measurement.” The leading metrics used to measure social success focus on increased site traffic, which can be an important barometer of consumer interest for a brand but on its own it cannot justify heavier investment in social media. Quantifiable Social Media Results This is why social media is nothing more than just another broadcast channel albeit a new and as yet unmeasured one. If I were in the social media business, I would be doing everything in my power to keep social media from being measured – that’s right keep it from being measured. Why? Because once its performance gets measured particularly against its online competitive advertising alternatives, social media’s value as a whole will plummet – at least to those who had invested money in it.
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Quantifiable Social Media Results?
Nope… and I like I have said before – I don’t expect to see anything other than hype suggesting Social Media can produce a return on investment for the foreseeable future. From another blogger this past week: Examples of a real-dollar Return on Investment (ROI) from social media marketing programs are rare. Unfortunately for most ecommerce teams, having hundreds of thousands of fans often doesn’t translate into revenue. For your CEO and CFO to take social media campaigns seriously, you need to be able to demonstrate a direct measurable impact that either reduces costs (say in reduced customer service heads) or increases sales. At the moment, most social campaigns are doing neither.
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Social Media ROI?
From eMarketer: In November 2009, MarketingSherpa surveyed US marketers about their stage in the social media life cycle; a plurality were still in the transition phase. But a substantial percentage had progressed to using social media strategically in their research, objectives and actions. That entailed having a formal process that was routinely performed for social campaigns. Paul Verna, eMarketer senior analyst, said in the report “ Five Reasons Why Marketers Need to Have a Social Media Strategy ” that marketers often neglect an integrated strategy because of the perception that social media is easy and cheap to do. But much of the real cost of social campaigns is in the people-hours spent fostering and maintaining social conversations. According to data from eROI nd eMarketing & eCommerce (eM+C) , US marketers spent 13% of their online marketing time on social media in 2009, the second-largest share of any tactic. Marketers who spent 13% of their online marketing time during 2009 on social media have surely already questioned the amount of time they plan to commit to social media in 2010.
