Success in Social Media: Defining Your Business Goals and Observing

Earlier this week, I wrote about how to measure success in your social media marketing, today, I’m going to look at one of the key steps in measuring success that should happen before you even step in the arena of social media marketing — defining your business goals in using social media marketing.  Measuring success begins with understanding what your business goals are and what you expect to achieve in using social media.  Without this, how can you possibly start to measure your success?

Define your business objectives and how social media marketing can help you achieve your goals. If you’re just getting into social media because everyone else is doing it… then I’ve got a bridge you might want to check out. Seriously, if you don’t understand what social media can do for your business, you shouldn’t do it. You’ll only be wasting your time — chances are with very little quantifiable results. Big mistake, especially in this economy with the type of competition that exists online, globally.

What Social Media Can NOT Do For Your Business

There is so much hype around social media marketing, web 2.0, blah blah blah — most business owners (large and small) miss the reality of what social media participation can do for their business.  Much like other online marketing techniques it takes a while for the reality of realistic expectations to kick in and the bubble to burst.  Here’s a look at what you can NOT expect from social media:

If your business is in the hole, you’ve tapped out your list and you’re looking for a quick fix — it’s not social media marketing. Social media marketing’s sales/leads funnel is different by it’s very nature.  It’s not a sales or lead generation strategy that will work overnight.  It’s a tool that facilitates the kind of relationships that can assist in increasing your conversions — not creating them.  Too many small businesses and solopreneurs have this idea that they are going to get on Facebook or Twitter, post a link and the sales are going to start rolling in.

Just the fact of being in social media will not drive tons of targeted traffic to your blog or website. In fact, if you’re not strategic about your social media marketing plan, you’ll likely get traffic that serves no purpose and is not part of your target audience.

Social media is not about outsourcing, automating the entire process, or faking your company’s presence. Yes, friends, you’re actually going to have to participate and it takes people and time, not necessarily money and tools.  To truly benefit from social media you’re going to have to re-think the way you build your presence online.  Period.

The Possibilities of Social Media for Business

Likely you’ve heard it before, but let’s clearly define the possibilities of using social media for business.

Social media can help you target your specific audience. That is, if you’re audience is even participating in some form of social media.  If they are, as a business, one objective could be to expand your online reach of your specific audience.  And, if you’re only thinking about Twitter and Facebook, you’re missing an entire universe of opportunties online to get infront of your audience.  Social media spans far beyond  these sites.

Social media can assist you in developing the kind of relationships with your audience that facilitate dialogue, leading to better marketing decisions on your part. If you’re in the conversation and your participating, better yet, leading dialogue about your company, your industry, and your audience’s needs — you’ll gain invaluable insight into what they want, need, and expect from you.   Listening is one of the biggest parts of social media participation.

Social media can assist your company in providing customer service and facilitating “goodwill” within your audience and industry. Companies like Zappos and Southwest airlines have made headlines by thinking outside the box in providing customer service to their customers.  In doing so, they’ve created tribes across the Net that are evangelistic of their brand, their services/products, and that feeling they give customers to make them want to come back.  Companies who actively seek out creative ways to engage with their customers, always do better in their bottom line.

Social media can and will increase your word-of-mouth marketing efforts. That really is any companies dream — to have your clients, customers, or audience spread your marketing message for you.  It’s a much more powerful presentation to hear about a company through a peer or trusted friend than it is to see advertising.  The power of WOMM is tremendous and can assist your company is so many ways, it’s an entirely different blog post in itself.

These are just some of the many benefits for companies to participate and become leaders in the use of social media,  the list only continues to grow as the technology and mass appeal of social media reaches more and more audiences.  The real question is…

How to do you translate the benefits of Social Media into achieving your business objectives?

The first place to start is to determine the specific goals you plan to achieve with social media and determining the exact links between your business objectives and your social media activities. Realize that many of your social media activities, such as blogging or customer service through Twitter, can actually serve more than one purpose for your company.  What would this look like?

1. Determine your companies business objectives — not necessarily tied to your use of social media, but what you actually need to achieve for your business.  Be specific and be reasonable, just like you would in any other area of your business decision-making.
2. Determine the social media possibilities that could assist you in achieving those objectives.  Again, be realistic about the possibilities, looking at costs, resources, opportunity costs, etc.  Assuming your audience is there to start.  You’ll trim down to what will actually be feasible given your target audience later.  This is all about possibilities and feasibilities.
3. Determine the social media reach of your audience.  Where is YOUR audience participating in social media, what is YOUR audience doing in social media.  Research, research, research… critical in developing any social media plan.  Don’t assume that just because 10 million plus users are on Facebook, that your audience has to be there.  Remember, it’s not about them just being there, it’s about them participating and really being there.  Also remember, social media marketing goes far, far, far beyond what you think is popular.  It involves communties, mutlimedia sites, and any other place where the nature of the site is social.
4. Determine how your company can participate, lead, and generate in the social media arena — tied to what you determined in #1-3.  In other words, what you do in social media should always be tied to your business objectives, the possibilities, and what will actually reach YOUR audience.  Don’t do social media just for the sake of doing it or to be in every possible place at one time.  Reach is not enough to make it worth the cost and time involved.

Obviously, the actual tasks of doing these things is much more complicated than my general statements above. But, it’s generally what it looks like.  Social media is so dynamic and organic in nature, if you don’t plan and don’t tie things to actually benefiting your business quantifiably — you’ll soon be lost in a sea of social media activities that you can’t really justify other than it’s been said to benefit your company.  That’s simply not good enough.

Look, social media is not going anywhere, it’s simply evolving and advancing — eventually you will need to participate, your success depends on your planning, your understanding of the reality of social media, and your implementation of your strategies.

When in doubt - research, observe, and listen… intently.

Here are some resources that can help you research, observe, and listen:

SM2 by Techrigy is a great tool for monitoring what’s going on in all areas of social media, driven by the key search terms you provide.  You’ll also have access to information and tips from other companies using SM2.  Best part, is there is an ample free account that will help you in your social media observations.  My team has been using SM2 since it’s inception and find it to be invaluable in our client’s research.

If you can afford it, check out Radian6, for much more than just monitoring social media and topics of relevance to you.  If you’re not at that point yet, subscribe to their blog, tons of free information about what’s doing on in social media is shared.

Compete is a great way to track your competitors in all areas, including social media.

Blog Pulse is a great way to monitor topics and trends across the blogosphere.  Great tool for bloggers to keep up on hot topics and great for companies to spot potential blogging influencers in your industry.

KeoTag is a social media search engine that is scours the social media web for keyword searches.

Serph is a social media search engine, a one-stop place to track in real-time topics and conversations on just about anything.

Boardtracker is a great way to track keywords and conversations across bulletin boards, forums, and other board-based communities.  Alternatives to widen your search include:  BigBoards and BoardReader.

BackType and Commentful let you track comments by topic, keywords, and even by specific users.  Commentful goes a step farther and tracks comments on social news and bookmarking sites and more.

There are tons of tools to help you monitor and observe in social media. The key is finding the right tools to give you the best cumulative and cohesive information possible, so that you can build on what you know is happening.

Updates

[12/12/08]  Creating a Winning Social Media Strategy from Personal Branding Blog

[12/12/08] Sniping and Marketing Your Audience Using Social Media from Kwiqq

[12/12/08] Conversations, Social Media, and Your Brand from Brian Roy

[12/12/08] Social Media Monitoring and Analytics from Connie Bensen

Do you know of any tools you find particularly helpful?  Share ‘em in your comments

Related Diva Posts:

• Social Media Marketing Success Series Part 3: Define Your Target and Measure Their Participation
• NLP Master Ron Hudson Interviewed for the Marketing Masters
• Doing Social Media Marketing Right with Nancy Marmolejo
• Social Networking Taken to the Next Profitable Level
• Beyond Social Networking to Profitable Community Empire

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