By Alexandra Reid
Over the last two weeks, I have taught our readers how to grasp the basic concepts required for monitoring and managing social media so they can be more effective in marketing their businesses on these channels. As the last in my three-part series, this post discusses how to measure the information received through the first two processes to provide actionable insight required to carry out successful, long-term social media strategies.
In earlier posts, I explained how to develop a social media strategy and carry it through and how to track social media efforts and reach your benchmarks. Your strategy should include your social media goals, determined by analyzing your business to decide what you want and are able to achieve through social media and what you are able to offer your audiences as well as other businesses to understand what they are doing successfully so you can compete. You can also look at reports and other key benchmarking data, provided by organizations such as MarketingSherpa, MarketingProfs and Forrester. Your strategy should also include your plan for measuring success, laying out your key performance metrics and how you will collect and analyze the data. I suggest you read these posts first to provide you with a good starting point for today’s discussion. This post will provide details on how to actually measure social media, including tools and measurement methods we employ.
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Is it the last day of June already? Perhaps it whooshed by because we were so hard at work, writing about what it takes to bring technology to market. This month, we told you about bridging the investor-entrepreneur gap, accelerator programs for startup mentorship, how to become an investor magnet, the right circumstances for bringing tech to market, how to accelerate women’s involvement in tech, the importance of food in making good decisions, incubation, the role of champions and making effective use of social media, among many other pearls of wisdom.
In case you missed anything, here is a recap of our posts from June, beginning with, in chronological order, the latest installments in our ongoing series, The Commercialization Ecosystem.
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By Alexandra Reid
This is part two of my three-part series on monitoring, managing and measuring social media. Last week, I discussed a range of tools for monitoring social media and how to use them to their best effect. This week, I’ll teach you about modern, yet free and simple, management methods that I use to organize the information that ours in from my monitoring efforts.
Choosing what to track
Online tools such as Google Analytics, HootSuite, Social Mention, Kurrently and others provide users with excessive amounts of information that can be hard to digest. In my previous post, I explained how to channel the waterfall of information into relevant streams and then filter out the content that is most relevant to you. Part of the management function is to understand what it is your business wants to get out of social media. Knowing the long-term goals and key performance indicators will help you narrow your focus and determine exactly what it is you need to track.
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By Alexandra Reid
This is part one of a three-part series I will write on how to monitor, manage and measure social media. I have discussed best practices for each of these processes in previous posts. However, after receiving a comment on LinkedIn, I realized that I neglected to dive into any of these subjects in great detail. I hope this short series will help social-media newcomers grasp not only the basic concepts required for each of these areas of community management, but also provide the most modern tools and techniques so they can be more effective in marketing their businesses on these channels.
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By Alexandra Reid
Readers of this blog likely know that we work exclusively in the B2B marketplace. It has been common knowledge for some time now that social media is not limited to B2C companies; rather, B2B companies are succeeding (if not dominating) in engaging with online communities through social media channels. It is an exciting time for our clients, who are both intrigued and excited about the potential social media presents for allowing them to engage with prospects, customers, journalists and industry thought leaders.
B2B companies are excelling past their B2C counterparts in social media in many areas. Just check out these data points from a study conducted by Brian Solis:
- 81 per cent of B2B companies maintain company-related profiles on social networks, compared to 67 per cent of B2C.
- 73 per cent of B2B companies monitor brand mentions, compared to 55 per cent of B2C.
- 66 per cent of B2B companies engage in discussions, compared to 43 per cent of B2C
- 50 per cent of B2B companies upload content to social networks, compared to just 32 per cent of B2C
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By Alexandra Reid 
