Lately I’ve been asked to speak more and more on social media and online marketing. I love it because as a geek I’m thrilled that people are starting to pay attention to the powerful opportunities that are available to people who understand and make the Web an important part of their customer relationships.  Unfortunately most people start with questions like “Do I need to be on Twitter?” or “How do I put video on my Facebook Page?”  And so I counter with my favorite question, “What does success look like?”

Usually I get a stammering answer about community, new customers or something about being “with it.”  It’s astonishing to me that so many people can invest time, effort and money into an initiative without knowing what outcome they’re looking for.

Define “Which Way is Up”

So, let’s not let that be you.  If you’re going to start using social media for your business first answer the question “What does success look like?”  Write down what you’re trying to achieve.  This doesn’t have to be rocket science; but it should be goals that you can track to.  This will be your “up” and once you define your “up” you’ll be able to see how you’re doing and what you can be doing to optimize your climb to success.

One thing to caution against is thinking purely in terms of closed sales and transactions.  Those are important; but we have to look at the reality of the social space in terms of generating short-term revenue.  Of course, social media can provide closed sales; but the medium is not transactional in nature, and it’s relational foundation makes it unwelcoming to quick transactions.  By definition it favors meaningful and trusting relationships that are fostered over time and pay dividends over the long run.

Bottom line, if you’re looking for a quick sale let’s look at Google Ad Words.  If you’re looking to build something of lasting value, let’s keep going.

If you’re not looking for immediate transactions (although we’ll take them if they come through) what are you looking to do?  In my opinion what you want to do is build assets.  Assets like an opt-in email newsletter, a Facebook Page with fans of your business, a Twitter following comprised of the people who are important to your business’s success.  All of these allow you to create an ongoing dialog and relationship with your customers, suppliers and potential customers.

Back to “up,” consider both qualitative measures as well as quantitative measures.  Here are a few things to think about:

• Number of conversations you have with followers, fans, email list subscribers
• Growth of all three assets over time
• Number of mentions of your product or service over time
• Number of referrals of your product or service over time
• Number of comments, tweets, retweets, Facebook posts over time
• Number of times your email newsletter is opened, forwarded
• Number of times blog posts are shared
• Number of reviews on Yelp (positive, negative, neutral)
• Number of sales, repeat sales, referred sales
• Average purchase size of members vs. non-members

To make sure you focus not just on the short term think of your success in terms of not just what’s in it for you; but answer the question “What’s in it for the people engaging with me online?”  By keeping that question at the front of your thinking while defining your goals you’ll find that you create success for both you and the people important to your business.  Avoiding one-sided benefit thinking ensures that you’re thinking of your customers and suppliers, etc. as partners in your success and not just as leads, cost centers and transactions.

Remember, you create your own definition of success; these are a just a few items to get you started.

How are you doing?

Once you’ve created your definition of success you need to properly track against those goals to see how you’re trending.  You can do this through a variety of tools such as the Facebook Page insights, Google Analytics, and social media monitoring tools like Scout Labs, Radian6 (for bigger firms), Twitalyzer and other tools.

The goal should be to keep the KPIs (key performance indicators) lightweight enough so that you can easily manage tracking them, while being robust enough to give you a clear indication of your success or shortcomings.

Then once you measure you need to watch for trends or turning points that may provide insight into the success (or lack thereof) of your efforts.  For example you may be trending below your goal Fan number on Facebook, or you may be seeing a jump in the number of reviews you’re receiving on Yelp.  Either way, for each number look at what the data is telling you.  Are you trending up? Trending down? Not making any progress or shooting through the roof?

Course Correcting

The greatest part about measuring is that it gives you the ability to see where you have opportunity for improvement.  It’s not just a gut reaction about whether something is working or not; but rather real insight that can help you refine and continuously improve or correct to get to your desired end state.  For example, if you’re tracking the number or tweets your blog articles get you may find some that resound more than others.  By having that data handy you can review your most-shared posts for clues on how you can continue to get that level of engagement across more of your content.

Of course this goes for traditional measures like Web traffic too.  If you track the number of conversions of people to your site to a desired goal (say placing an order, filling out a contact form, downloading a menu, etc.) then you can test different tweaks to your Web site copy, images, layout, etc. to see if you can optimize for that goal.  For example I recently tested the effectiveness of two lines of new Web copy on a form I had developed. By adding those two lines of copy and simplifying a couple of other elements on the page I saw a 3x increase in number of conversions I was getting.  A huge success.

The more data you have the more you can course correct on the fly.  It gives you the ability to reach your goals and turn lagging efforts into winners.  Without the data you can’t tell which way is up.

Constantly Test

The beauty of the Web is you can continuously test and benchmark.  Once you set a new high water mark you can use that as the number to beat.  If you have a certain number of Facebook fan signups you’re looking for over a given month you can track week over week signups.  If you run a giveaway or promotion in one week and get 100, and the previous week you got 50, you can learn from that giveaway and see what you can do to get 150 for the following week. Probably not the most elegant example; but I hope you get the point.  By continually refining and using bench marks you can continually optimize your social media efforts to reach your defined success.

And it’s not just good for you

While we’ve focused on your efforts in this post it’s important to look at the flip side of this article as well.  If people are signing up to your Facebook page or tweeting your articles you’re doing something right.  You’re providing them information, content an experience, or some benefit that is attracting more people to you.  Bravo.  If you’re headed in the wrong direction it gives you an opportunity to ask why aren’t people engaged with what I’m doing here?  Am I not listening to what they want? Am I blatantly, overly self-promoting?  Am I a bore?

You can make sure that you keep your focus on the people important to your business by defining your goals and successes as mutual successes.  This way you’ll be sure that your efforts are not solely driven based on what you want but rather on what is beneficial to both you and the people your business relies on to succeed.

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