Archive for the 'ROI' Category

28
Sep
10

Tweet Dreams Come True: Twitter to Provide Free Analytics

By Mark Plumb Leave a Comment
Categories: Analytics, Business Strategies, Communications, Marketing, Marketing Budgets, ROI, Social Media, Social Networking and Twitter
Tags: , , , , , ,

Twitter plans to release a real time analytics dashboard in Q4.

We’re enjoying the new Twitter interface discussed in the SideNoteBlog yesterday, Home Tweet Home. If you can breakaway from the new interface there’s much more exciting news coming from the microblogging site.

Ross Hoffman, a member of the Twitter business development team, recently discussed at the Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit a soon to be released free analytics dashboard that will help Twitter users understand how others are interacting with their tweets.

The dashboard is being built by Smallthought Systems, the team Twitter acquired in June. One of the exciting parts of the announcement is that by providing free analytics, Twitter is reversing the policy of incorporating analytics as a part of their business model.  Additionally, this is a shrewd strategy, as free analytics will virtually shut out third-party analytics providers such as Klout and Twitalyzer.

For marketing professionals, this is huge news from Twitter as analytics are critical to justifying marketing ROI and improving efforts. Hoffman said the product will also leverage algorithms from Twitter Resonance in order to show users which tweets are spreading and who is influential in their network.

Let us know what you would like to see in terms of Twitter analytics and how you plan to use analytics to improve your social media marketing programs. Let us know in the comments below. You can find Weise Communications on Facebook and follow @Weise on Twitter for more updates.

19
Jul
10

3 social media measurements every company needs

By Mark Plumb Leave a Comment
Categories: Business Strategies, Facebook, how-to, LinkedIn, Marketing, New Media, ROI, Social Media, Social Networking and Twitter
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Building a relationship is not easy; explaining the value of a social media relationship is virtually impossible without tracking and measuring specific variables.  There are three things you must measure in order to validate the time spent on social media activities: Endeavors, Connections and Results (ECR).

Endeavors – This refers to the efforts your company undertakes: how much, how often and how frequently you post, blog and tweet.

Connections – This refers to the reactions from your audience: your comments, followers, views and retweets.

Results – This refers to your financial measures: revenue generation, cost reduction, leads and sales.

Before beginning a social media marketing effort, it is important to establish the success levels of your ECR components. Since these vary from company to company, there isn’t a general rule to follow.

Ideally, developing your ECR score will determine your overall level of customer engagement.  With the prevalence of social media, customer engagement is key to improving satisfaction, loyalty rates and revenue. By actively listening to customers and engaging them in discussion, you can improve your business, products and service levels. EConsultancy, a social media research firm released Customer Engagement Report 2010. Key findings include:

  • The proportion of company respondents who regard customer engagement as “essential” has increased to 55 percent.
  • The tactics that have come to the forefront for driving customer engagement are email newsletters, social networking and Twitter activity.

Ultimately, the research shows that an engaged customer will recommend your brand, convert more readily and purchase more often.

What do you use when measuring social media activity? What indicators work for you when measuring social media? Let us know and connect with Weise Communications on Facebook for future updates.

18
May
10

YouTube Celebrates Five Years

By Heather Horsey 2 Comments
Categories: Public Relations, ROI, SEO, Social Media, Uncategorized, Video Ads, Viral and YouTube
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I was in a public relations class in 2006 at the University of Colorado at Boulder when I first heard about YouTube. I was listening to a speaker from Metzger Associates talk about how social media had changed the PR landscape, when a student raised his hand and said, “What do you think about YouTube?” Several in the class knew exactly what this student was talking about but most of us, including the speaker and professor, looked back at him puzzled.

Since then, YouTube has become a household name and billion dollar enterprise. Creating a teen sensation, making household names and providing an outlet for anyone to “broadcast themselves,” YouTube has reached 2 billion daily views.

Although YouTube can be a perpetual time-suck, it does function as a video source, a search engine and an outlet for anyone to become a storyteller. This is the real value of YouTube, it provides a platform to tell the story about your company, your products or yourself. You can post silly videos of your kids to share with grandma, you can capture a breaking story on your cell phone and share a first hand account with the country, or you can tell the 20 something’s out there how to do their hair for their fun night out. With the advents of the Flip camera and affordable video cameras along with editing software truly anyone can become a YouTube star. With such a wide landscape of possibilities the limits of the value of YouTube to you and your company are only limited by what you can imagine.

Here are some of my favorite videos from the past five years of YouTube:

26
May
09

approximately 50 percent of BtoB marketers are not tracking results of email campaigns.

By Joshua Woolery Leave a Comment
Categories: ROI and Twitter
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measure1Tracking ROI is becoming increasingly important in today’s economic climate. Organizations need to be sure that every dollar allocated to marketing is realizing its full potential while accomplishing the organization’s marketing goals.

Dave Lewis published an article last week in BtoB Magazine that aims to help BtoB marketers develop a four-step plan to track ROI metrics of an email campaign.

1.    Look at the processes your email marketing team has in place
2.    Study the metrics to determine if the email campaigns are yielding at least as much as     you’re investing (From both a financial and human resources perspective)
3.    Examine the relative performance of the same campaign over time and as compared to others
4.    Take a critical look at the impact of your campaigns on your brand and lifetime value of your customers

(Full Article)

This list is great because Lewis keeps his plan simple enough. BtoB marketers should be able to use his guide to establish a process for tracking ROI.

Speaking of tracking ROI, in his article Lewis cites a recent report published by Forrester Research that found, “about 50% of b-to-b marketers don’t use e-mail metrics to measure their results.”

This statistic is frightening! It is critical that B2B marketers track their results. Otherwise they will find it difficult to identify weaknesses and duplicate successes.

I’m curious to know what factor(s) is holding these marketers back from tracking these metrics? Are they short of personnel? Do they know how to track these metrics?

What do you think?

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