SEO

Everyone talks about social media and how businesses should be taking an active part in this internet  phenomenon that has waves of people communicating online, from a whole raft of social media platforms.  The internet is fundamentally about sharing information so it’s no surprise that these social media applications have become so popular in the last 5 years, from facebook, twitter and you tube to name a few.

Can every business benefit from this explosion in communication? Does it have a place and real marketing value for small companies or does it really just benefit the already established brands?

Well there a few case studies and scenarios, where some companies have grown and survived only because of the viral reach of social media.  If you offer something that is fundamentally compelling and invaluable to a target audience, at the right time it stands a good chance of success. There’s no doubt that social media can enhance a company’s online status, with the little help from the internet community you build around your brand, service or products.

If you are an online business thinking about embarking on a social media campaign and using the services of an internet marketing or seo agency, here are a few questions and answers, as well as some of the ways that you can benefit from outside help.

What exactly is Social Media Optimisation? What kind of tasks does it involve?

Social media is basically a way of marketing online through the sharing of information of individuals and groups using various media platforms.  Examples include using a facebook business page or group to market an idea, your services or products.  Other common tasks would be blogging, blog commenting, market and content research, writing/editing to name a few. Facebook and Twitter management is a given for most companies.

A marketing agency would carry out a number of tasks to leverage social media to do some of the following, enhance your business brand, create a community of followers, creating a common purpose or cause, increase awareness, overcome negative comments and many more.

For social media to work effectively, there needs to be a clear set of objectives and goals before planning a social media campaign. In short, you want people to buy your products and buy into your brand.

How do I get started with a Social Media Campaign?

First look at your competitors and get some ideas of how they are using social media successfully.

Next, monitor and baseline the online chatter about your company. There are many free and paid tools to use for this purpose.  Then create a social media community map of ideas and thoughts around your business – the types of online groups to target; contributors, critiques, power users and the type of message/media that you think they would like to share amongst their circle of friends.

Prime these people, get to know them online through communicating via social media, and then give them something that is valuable to them that they. It could be an article, video or image.

Get creative and think about how you can create something that potential buyers may like. It could be a forum or community area on a topic related to your products or services, a face book support group/idea that people are passionate about, not necessarily a self promoting exercise, but something that will empower users.

How can I measure Return On Investment?

This isn’t has daunting as it may seem on the surface, but some metrics are less tangible for social media compared to quantitative methods.

Metrics that can be monitored using quantity would be page views, followers, tweets, bounce rate etc

Qualitative measurement incorporate  emotional reasoning and involves human behavior and decisions – there is no hard data to analyse, just observations, nuances and resulting trends.

You can also track ROI and work out how many prospects became customers and resulted in sales . This does require integrating your social media tools with a web analytics solution. The large enterprise social media monitoring tools like Radian6 do integrate with Omniture, so you can track the end to end activity.

The most important formula in social media is your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). In a very basic sense, Customer Lifetime Value is the amount of revenue a customer will bring to your company over the course of their lifetime with your brand.

In addition, social media also helps your link building services in that it promotes natural links, which can often be more relevant and carry more authority than say a directory link.

Why outsource your social media campaigns?

It’s important with social media to understand a business before you can market it effectively, but outsourcing your SEO campaigns is so niche and specialised that it really needs to be done by experienced people. It can also be work intensive and take a large slice of your time up and maybe learning on the job is not something you want to do.