Monthly Archives: March 2012

Measuring The Results Of A Social Media Campaign

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Over my last few posts I’ve explained how to plan and run a social media campaign. In this post I will cover the final stage of the campaign – measuring the results. As an agency you will be expected to provide your client with a return on their investment, and if you are running the campaign in-house you will be expected to show similar results to senior management.

results against KPIs

You will have determined the KPIs in the campaign planning stage. Now each month you should measure your results against those KPIs to ascertain how successfully the campaign is in reaching the set targets. For example, a KPI might be to increase the traffic to a website by 10% in 6 months. Monitor the traffic to a website, calculate the percentage increase (or decrease) and report back to the client.

monthly metrics

As well as providing clients with results that match their KPIs you should also provide the following statistics where possible on a monthly basis:

  • Number of fans, followers, subscribers etc.
  • Number of video or content views
  • Volume of user comments posted to a blog, profile or posted content
  • Retweets or peer-sharing statistics for related content and posts
  • Comment or retweet resonation (number of user comments multiplied by how many followers or friends each user has)
  • Company website traffic statistics (where you have has access)

These statistics can usually be found in the dashboards of the social media channels you are using. Alternatively freely available tools such as Hootsuite can provide you with them.

ROI

The direct ROI will usually be measured by the client rather than their agency since it will involve them comparing things such as revenue gained from social media channels against revenue from other channels. Generally they will not want to share this type of information.

conclusion

Measuring the results of a campaign not only shows whether it is a success or not but can also indicate which specific channels are more effective. With this information you can either abandon less successful activity or change it. Likewise if a particular social network is producing outstanding results you can ramp up your activity in it.

Recruitment Of Social Media Followers

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My last post explained how, as an agency, you can set up social media channels for your client. This post refers to the recruitment of fans and followers for those channels.

By now you will have a campaign strategy, you know where your target audience can be found online and you’ve activated channels to reach them. Now you want to get people following your client. There will be plenty of potential followers but you should begin by seeking out the most high-quality ones.These can be defined as thought leaders within the client’s sector who are active in social media channels and have a sizeable following already.

I’ve categorised them into four groups:

  • key bloggers
  • Twitter influencers
  • Facebook Group moderators
  • website and forum owners

I’ll explain how to find them, contact them and give advice on recruiting them below. Continue reading →

Setting Up And Using Social Media Channels

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Expanding on my last post which concerned the development of a coherent strategy for social media campaigns, this post will address the setting up and use of social media channels.

It is not my intention to discuss technical issues, instead I will explain how the channels can be used tactically as part of the overall strategy. It is written from the view of a specialist digital or PR agency who will be providing social media marketing services for their client. Continue reading →

Creating A Social Media Strategy

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My last post covered the effective planning of a social media campaign. This next phase of the campaign sees the results of the research being used to inform a social media strategy.

Without a strategy untargeted messages will be posted in channels where the intended audience might not be active. It ensures that there is a common tone of voice used across all the social networks pertinent to the campaign, and that any content posted is relevant. Finally, it determines the results that will measure whether the campaign has been a success or not.

The key stages of strategy development are: monitoring, theme development, channel selection, content planning, setting KPIs and defining the engagement policy. These stages are described below.

Continue reading →

Increase Donations To Your Charity: Get Your Donation Button Right!

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The secret: make it as easy as possible.

Donate button that says "Donate Now! Click here".You’re running a successful charity, you get plenty of people visiting your website, and people appear to engage with the information and content you provide, but there’s a vital key ingredient missing: Your hordes of eager visitors are failing to put their mouse where their money is. Don’t feel bad; you’d be surprised to learn how many people get donation buttons wrong. Here’s how to do them right… Continue reading →

Planning A Social Media Campaign

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Social media continues to sweep through the marketing departments of businesses large and small. Eager marketers are commissioning digital and PR agencies to build Facebook apps, Twitter pages and blogs, and then populating them with a seemingly random range of comments and promotional messages that so often fail to have the impact expected.

If you are developing a social media campaign for your client it is crucial that it is well planned before a single status message, tweet or video is uploaded. This ensures that the stakeholders’ expectations are managed and that the scope of the project doesn’t creep beyond its original scale and budget.

The campaign planning stages are described below. Continue reading →