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The Do’s and Don’ts of a Social Media Strategy

December 11th, 2012 :: Monika Jansen

To make sure you’re avoiding common mistakes when using social media for marketing, follow these simple rules:

Do: Have goals

Before you get started, decide how social media marketing fits into your overall marketing strategy. Do you want to find better quality leads, engage with and retain current customers, generate word of mouth? How do your goals complement the other pieces of your marketing strategy, like your blog, SEO, content creation and online advertising?

Don’t: Dive in without a plan

An editorial calendar will keep you organized. Decide what you are going to post when and on what network. Take timing into consideration, as well: What times are your fans and followers more likely to see your activity?

Do: Use social media consistently

Randomly using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ and any other social network is a waste of time. Inconsistent use of social media sends a signal that you don’t care about and are probably not that interested in your customers.

Don’t: Ignore SEO

Search engine optimization is important for any online activity, whether it’s your blog or a how-to guide on your website. Sharing content on social media is great, but to snag a wider audience, make sure all that content on your website is optimized with keywords so search engines redirect people to you.

Do: Use visual content wisely

People engage with images, so when you use them, think about how to make your brand fun and accessible. You can showcase products and services, fans and customers, user-generated photos, your logo, employees, events – get creative!

Don’t: Make it all about you

Social media is not a one-way bullhorn. People love to talk about themselves, so be sure to focus your social media activity on your fans and followers. What do they like? What do they care about? How can you help them?

Do: Engage

This is a corollary to the above: social media is a conversation. Respond to direct messages and mentions on Twitter, comments on Facebook, messages on LinkedIn, etc. Ignoring people is no way to build a community.

Don’t: Assume anything

Don’t assume you know what social networks your customers and potential customers use or what sort of information they find most valuable. You have to do your research first, or you will be wasting your time (hint: ask them).

Do: Measure the right metrics

Likes and retweets are not marketing metrics – they’re popularity metrics – and the two are not the same thing. Instead, measure how much traffic Twitter and Facebook are sending to your website, how many downloads your content and shares your blog posts are getting, and how many leads from social media are converting into customers.

Did I miss any do’s or don’ts?

Image courtesy of wellhappypeaceful.com

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Tags: analytics, do's and don'ts, editorial calendar, Marketing, marketing strategy, metrics, seo, social media, visual content
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

7 Email Marketing Metrics You Should Be Tracking

April 5th, 2012 :: Monika Jansen

Email marketing is still an effective way to reach customers, clients and prospects, but if you aren’t measuring your campaigns’ performances, you may as well be sending emails out into the dark. Tracking key email marketing metrics will allow you to compare current campaigns with past ones to know whether your message is being received. Here are some email metrics, from the marketing pros at Hubspot, that will help you tweak your campaigns.

1. Bounce Rate: the percentage of emails that could not be delivered to a recipient’s inbox

The bounce rate can help you discover problems with your email list by tracking “hard” and “soft” bounces. Hard bounces indicate email addresses that are no longer functional, so they should be deleted from your list. Soft bounces are a result of a temporary problem with a valid email address – perhaps the recipient’s inbox is full, or there is an issue with their server. You should try to send these emails again later.

2. Delivery Rate: the percentage of emails that were actually delivered

To calculate the delivery rate, subtract the hard and soft bounces from the gross number of emails sent, and then divide that number by the gross number of emails sent.

You should aim for a delivery rate of 95% or higher. A delivery rate that falls over time may indicate problems with your list (see hard bounce above). One campaign with an especially low delivery rate means you should examine that message again for elements that may have been flagged as spam. The delivery rate sets the stage for your email campaign success because it shows you whether people are receiving your message at all.

3. List Growth Rate: how fast your email list is growing

To calculate list growth rate, subtract opt-outs and hard bounces from the number of new subscribers gained in a month, then divide that number by the original list size

You will naturally lose some of your subscribers due to people changing jobs, forgetting passwords and creating new accounts, etc. To keep your list refreshed, you need to continuously reach out to potential subscribers and keep that list growing.

4. Click-Through Rate (CTR): the proportion of an audience that clicked on one or more links in your email

To calculate CTR, divide unique clicks by the number of emails delivered.

This one is huge because the CTR indicates whether your message was relevant and the call-to-action effective. Because CTRs can vary according to the type of message sent (newsletter, promotion, etc.), it’s a good idea to track CTRs based on each type.

5. Email Sharing: the percentage of recipients who forwarded the email to a friend or used share buttons to post it to a social network

When your email messages are shared, you increase your reach by tapping into your subscribers’ own networks. Shared content means your message was relevant and interesting enough to be passed on, so pay attention to the types of content being shared when planning for future campaigns.

6. Conversion Rate: the percentage of recipients who clicked a link and performed a desired action

Of all the email marketing metrics to track, this one may be the most important. An effective email message compels the recipient to take action, whether it’s clicking on a link or making a purchase. To accurately track this metric, you’ll need to create unique tracking URLs for your email links to identify where campaign clicks are coming from.

7. Revenue Per Email Sent: the ROI of your email campaign

To calculate your ROI, divide the total revenue generated from the campaign by the number of emails sent.

If you use email marketing to sell products, then this metric is for you. Simply put, it tells you how many sales resulted from your campaign. Be sure to integrate your email metrics with your ecommerce platform to get the full picture.

As with any marketing initiative, it’s important to measure performance to be sure you are reaching your goals. Try tracking these seven metrics for a clearer understanding of how well your email marketing campaigns are performing.

Image courtesy of creative design agency Arrae

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Tags: bounce rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, CTR, delivery rate, Email marketing, email sharing, list growth rate, Marketing, metrics, ROI, social sharing
Posted in Email Marketing, Marketing | 2 Comments »

11 Things You Need to Think About in an Online Marketing Strategy

February 11th, 2010 :: Steven Fisher

If you have a small business these days, chances are you are online in some fashion and looking to leverage that channel and do some sort of online marketing. In order to prepare for your online marketing activities we came up with 11 lessons learned that you should consider with your online marketing strategy.

1.) What is Your Pitch?

Many clients I have met want to run head first into online marketing without asking a simple question – what are we pitching? The art of the pitch revolves around the marketing message you are looking to convey combined with the take action that the person you are engaging will take.

2.) What Are Your Goals with Online Marketing?

Once you have the pitch and the take action down you need to ask another very fundamental question – what do you want to accomplish with online marketing? Some goals can be to get new leads or subscribers or store customers.

3.) Where Are Your Customers to Engage Them? (email newsletters, online video)

Gone are the days of “build it, they will come”. You have to build a web site but also reach out in many different channels to get attention. You have to go where your customers are and engage them. In some cases it can be after the fact when they sign up for a newsletter or subscribe to your blog, only to be brought back to your site when the offer is right. In other cases it is using tools like online video, Twitter and Facebook to engage them.

4.) What Will You Offer On Your Web Site?

When you build your web site you should ask a fundamental question and that is “what will you offer someone that visits your web site?” and that is because people will come there interested in your business and wanting to get something from it. This could be a free e-book, photos, contact info. Something that people need. This can also be separated into specific offers that are tracked and go to a certain place. They are called landing pages.

5.) What is the “Take Action” on Your Web Site? Subscribe to email newsletter, Get Leads, Sell Something, Get an Appointment?

Following up right after you know what you will offer on your web site, you need to ask a follow up question – what is the “take action” of this site? Should my goal be to get an email address for a newsletter? Sell them a product? Make it easy to request an appointment or free consultation?

The site needs to have a take action in some form or because if you spend your time driving traffic and potential customers to your site and there is nothing to take action on, then there is nothing you will gain from having the web site in the first place.

6.) Should Have a Blog?

These days many people are almost expecting a company to have some sort of blog but many companies fail miserably at it using it as a press release dumping ground or worse writing a few things at first and then…..nothing. So you have to ask yourself, is your company the type of place that would benefit from having one? Do you have the resource to dedicate to it? Are you looking to establish your company or you as a thought leader or is this a channel that can connect you with your customers in dialog?

7.) Should You Leverage Social Media Channels? (Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, MySpace, YouTube)

I mentioned above that you will need to be where your customers are to engage them. As part of your online marketing strategy is the emerging and hot topic of social media. The core of social media is about having conversations with people and being at various “outposts” where your customers are located. The most popular social media channels are Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. You must explore and research where your customers are spending time and how they like to interact with you.

8.) What is Your Search Engine Marketing Strategy?

Yes, this old chestnut. Search engine marketing is really the tip of the spear in your online marketing strategy. All your activities do one of two things – improve your search engine results so people find you better or you use search engine marketing/advertising so people find you better. All to come your web site and take action in some form that we mentioned above. This works in unison with things like social media that increase your search engine rankings and improve your results.

9.) Will You Advertise? What Types?

There are many types of online advertising, pay-per-click, banner ads, video ads, etc. The main question is, will you advertise to direct traffic to you? It should be some aspect but you need to to your homework on what might work. Most important is to have your campaigns identified and test, test, test.

10.) What Are Your Metrics of Success for All of This?

Each business is different in how they measure success. Before you jump into all these activities we talked about above you need to know what will be a measure of success for your campaigns. If you have an e-commerce site it might be % of visitors converted to sales. If you have a content or services web site you might be looking to maximize your e-mail or blog subscribers so you can market to them at a later time.

11.) How Will You Measure?

That depends on the tools your employ and the metrics you need to gather. If you are looking to track social media metrics, you can utilize a tool like Radian6. If you are tracking pay-per-click or landing page campaigns, you can use a tool like Google Analytics. There are many tools out there and you need to know the metrics of success first and then researching for the tools will be much easier.

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Tags: metrics, online marketing, search, social media
Posted in Email marketing, Marketing, Resources, Search Marketing, small business, social media, Thought Leadership, Web Design | 13 Comments »