You have a lot of numbers to wow you… # of followers, visitors, visits, # of comments, time spent per user, # of friends, # of connections, # of links, and so on and so on.
Sure, the numbers may be impressive individually, they may be interesting to review, they may even be fun to talk about, but don’t obsessively focus on these measures of social marketing and forget to ask some critical questions.
- What are your objectives and goals for your social marketing activities? (positive buzz, customer service improvement, consumer insights and feedback, sales opportunities, sales, etc.)
- Are you getting valuable and useful feedback, comments and input from consumers, prospects and clients?
- Are your social marketing activities leading to sales opportunities?
- Are your social marketing activities leading to real sales?
- Are you improving customer service with social marketing?
- Are you expanding your multi-channel marketing approach with social marketing?
You need to determine how you want to use social marketing. Don’t let the lack of a single ROI metric stop you from developing your own measurements of success. Just don’t jump in without knowing what you want to accomplish.
You may have thousands of followers on Twitter or thousands of friends on Facebook, but are these people buying from you or are they time bandits?
