Social media, it’s trending duh! With so many creative ways
to grab facebooker’s and twitterhead’s attention, it has become that main
ingredient for any successful product launch. Social media has become the ideal
place to get your product’s engines revved, and send them off from the starting
line with the most buzz. With the countless unique outputs social media
provides, it’s seemingly flawless. But wait! Does all this social media
impressiveness result in the increased sales like we desire? Umm, yes? Well
prove it!
I knew something had to be wrong, nothing is that perfect! “One
of the greatest challenges with using quantitative measures for social media is
that not all social media can be tracked… it lacks descriptive information: you
know how many are in your audience, but you don’t know who your audience are”
(Howard, Mathews, 2013).
So how do we
determine that the campaign ran on social media, reaching all those ears and
eyes, will result in a profitable outcome? In social media eyes are usually
drawn to the outputs like the hilarious photos or seat edging sneak peaks. But will
it increase that chang-a-lang in that big corporate pocket? So before we go off
about how social media is the greatest thing to happen in marketing since the
billboard first hit those sad empty streets, we need to find out how to measure
that outcome.
You can start by making friends with programs that can help you
determine the shiny success of your social media. Tools such as Google
Analytics, Klout, Wildfire’s Social Media Monitor, and My top Tweet by
TwitSprout provide some good insight into the demographics on your social media
posts. This is one little birdie you do not want to let go of.
Now lets see how you
would do. Lets take goaheadtours.com, first advertisement displayed on my
facebook home page (interesting enough I was just looking at trips to
Italy…creeps.), and examine how we would measure its impact on social media.
What is the first thing you would do to measure your success on social media if
you were goaheadtours.com?
First step would be to define the social media success by
establishing clear audiences, goals, and measurable success. Measure social
media engagement by tracking the amount of shares and comments it has, but keep
in mind that you want to measure influence
not popularity. Use your measurements to determine what has and hasn’t worked.
Do you think social media can be a truly measurable market?
Have you found it to be a useful tool when marketing your
own products or even yourself?
How could social media be counterproductive and work against
you?
I'm going to comment on this blog. Social media isn't totally measurable. It is a market that people are fake and people post things that aren't completely accurate to their activities. With that said, my Facebook posts have brought positive attention to myself more than negative and my Twitter posts are largely the same. Facebook I can be positive and truthful at the same time with what's going on and I can be appreciative of everything with how my friends are keeping track of me. Social media can harm me because of blogging, photos, or interesting posts and it can everybody, so you have to be careful. And I have to keep my people informed without going overboard- we all need to do this.
ReplyDeleteIan you bring up a good point that social media, like Facebook and twitter, can be both positive and negative to your personal brand. I think this has a lot to do with how you conduct yourself on social media. It is a given that social media is a free space allowing you to express yourself anyway you please, however there can be repercussions at the most inconvenient times.
ReplyDeleteJust like how companies want to measure the outcome of their product on social media, we also want to measure our own outcome through our personal social media. A good place to start is your output, what are you putting out there on your personal social media? Do you post interesting and engaging posts accompanied by family vacation pictures to Washington DC or updates about your PRSSA national conference? (Shout out to the PRSSA peeps). Or is your page filled with trolling arguments, inappropriate pictures and humor? The outcome will be measured by others, or the public's reaction to this. Will you land a job? Will people want to work with you?
Great point Margaret. I think when I started my Facebook and my Twitter account, I was trying to use it to connect rather than "career mode" type of media. To help prepare for the career mode, there are ways that I can fix a lot of it, such as deleting jokes or old pictures that might or might not be inappropriate, since I want to land a job in PR and work for Special Olympics. While my page isn't as inappropriate as most college students, there is some things that might hinder with a company that doesn't know me as well. Being in PR, that is something the class as a whole should look at and decide what to do now that will help them soon. Thank you for bringing that up.
ReplyDeleteMargaret, i think you make some very good points. It's so hard for people to see the downfall of social media because we are so busy trying to keep up with whats new in social media and trying to figure out how it works. By taking a step back and looking at what we are really trying to measure i think will help any business in the the long run. We need to remember what the whole point of social media is and how effective our tactics of reaching people really is. I think social media can be measure but i feel it needs to be looked at by quality not quantity. For example,i think though the most effective business and organizations on tweeter are the ones that respond to their customers. At the end of last semester i forgot to return my Chegg books and i tweeted about being upset because i had to pay a late fee. Chegg tweet me back and gave me a pass code for no late fee. I think little thinks like this make social media effective and makes people want to come back regardless of the amount of followers. How do you feel is the best way to measure social media?
ReplyDeleteThat's awesome that chegg got back to you. That two way communication on social media is extremely valuable and builds good loyal relationships. I bet because chegg had your back on the late fee your more then likely going to continue to rent from them in the future. I think measuring social media has more to do with these types of relationships. Instead of viewing success by the amount of people who have seen your post measure it by the amount of people that respond, share, retweet, etc your post. Make sure that you customers feel valued and resolve situations with unhappy customers. I think its a mistake to view social media has a virtual billboard for your company. It should be viewed as a way to create closer relationships with your customers and join in on the conversation about your company.
ReplyDelete