Posts filed under 'Measurement'
Posted March 18th, 2009 by Kevin
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to join a panel discussion on The Strategic Growth Concepts for Small Business, a blogtalkradio show discussing the basics of social media and how small business can leverage community activity to grow. For many small business owners and marketers, navigating social media can be a challenge due to lack of time and resources. As a result, many companies miss out on an opportunity to harvest customer insights and data through online relationships that could drastically impact their bottom lines.
Simply getting started can be daunting for many folks who haven’t grown up with the technology. The panel stressed that having a strategy and plan in place that details your goals and expectations is crucial before jumping headfirst into the social media conversation. This isn’t just good practice for small business, many large organizations should think long and hard about their current activities and how the disjointed efforts may impact future initiatives and segment their audience. All too often, many marketers fail to see the big picture, understand the extent of the commitment and know where to participate to obtain the greatest ROI. You don’t need to be everywhere and you don’t need to reach everyone - reach the right audience in the right place with the right information.
For more insights, listen to the panel discussion featured here and feel free to leave comments on the blog or direct message me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/KevinMGreen) if you’d like to discuss further.
Posted January 26th, 2009 by Rebecca
Will the economy make advertisers run for the traditional advertising hills? This was the topic of the evening at the Digital State 2009 BIMA/MITX event I attended recently.
All 5 the panelists were survivors of the dot bomb. And 4 out of the 5 agreed that the economic downturn of 2001 was far more devastating to the industry, largely because the Internet was in its infancy and the value of digital marketing was not yet established.
Their experience reinforces our thinking at Digital Influence Group – that a flight to safety by advertisers would be a huge mistake. Clients who reduce their presence online could miss out.
Those who capitalize on this environment by using social media could gain an increased ability to listen to the market, share their vision, influence their customers and generate business income.
Major takeaway from the evening: the economy is tough on everyone. But, savvy clients will recognize that some of the best opportunities come after a downturn and that the value proposition digital marketing offers is now clear and measureable.
Posted October 24th, 2008 by Brian Cavoli
Forrester released an interesting report last week about measuring social media applications. Even in an economic downturn, the popularity of social applications has never been higher. Their report finds that companies approaching social media with clear objectives and track more meaningful influence metrics beyond visits and page views are driving profitable business results.
Some of the examples the report include:
- Accuvue Facebook app got 500,000 people to share “winks” resulted in a 17% increase in sales
- Dell’s Twitter channel has sold over half a million dollars in hardware
- An e-commerce sites that added customer reviews boosted sales 26%
- Tech company generates a dozen leads a week from their company blog
For more on these examples and others, you can purchase the report at “Metrics For Social Applications In A Downturn”
Here at Digital Influence Group, we’ve seen that marketing in social media environments is generating business results for a lot less money than other traditional marketing or advertising method. For the past couple years, this has just been a smart business idea. Now with a global financial crisis squeezing marketing budgets and driving consumers online to do more research before making a purchase, participation and measurement of social media is a necessity.
Posted October 21st, 2008 by Brian Cavoli
Digital Influence Group will be sponsoring another great marketing event this fall. On November 4th and 5th we are one of the premium sponsors for the 2008 ITSMA Marketing Conference “Maximizing Marketing’s Influence: The New Marketing Rules” which will be held at the Waterfront Renaissance hotel in Boston.
This is one of our favorite events of the year. The discussions this year will be about helping IT companies increase the influence and effectiveness of their marketing during a weakened economy. You’ll hear keynotes from Jonathan Zittrain author of “The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It” and Tom Davenport author of “Competing on Analytics: Turning Potential into Performance“.
If you are not familiar with them, ITSMA (IT Services Marketing Association) is an association for marketing executives who provide technology-related services and solutions.
ITSMA CEO Dave Munn recorded this podcast with additional details on the event and the keynote speakers:
If player doesn’t appear, you can link to the recording here.
We hope to see you there!
Posted July 19th, 2008 by Brian Cavoli
Our colleague, Philip Sheldrake, at Racepoint in the UK just released an extensive ebook on Social Web analytics. Phillip covers a lot of ground in this detailed 99 page document. He describes why social media measurement is important for business, he summarizes many of the free tools available and he introduces several of the paid vendors in the marketplace. Here’s how Phillip describes his book:
“If you could go back to the mid-90s and offer a marketer a little box that could sit on her desk and let her listen in on thousands of customer conversations and participate in those discussions regardless of geography or time zone, it would appear so far-fetched that she’d probably call security. This eBook is about that reality.”
The ebook is free and available here.
We also created a short presentation of the book on this Slideshare presentation. Feel free to leave your comments or contact us to discuss these tools in more detail.
Posted June 16th, 2008 by Brian Cavoli
One of the most common questions companies have today about social media is how to measure and evaluate success of their efforts. Since we are well beyond need to “do it because it’s cool”, marketers need to demonstrate how their blogging, community participation and influencer outreach is impacting their business.
Social media is all about relationships. Everything you do in social media is about cultivating and nurturing the relationships of the people that shape your brand. The different ways to measure that influence is what the slides below are all about.
This short presentation summarizes the different types of influence in social media and how they can be measured. Since that elusive business impact is so difficult to quantify, I included some interesting industry studies that point to the specific ways social media is impacting business results.
I’d love to hear what you think about these slides and if you have additional ideas to make it better. Leave a comment, send an email or find me on Twitter.
