Every presentation on social media or every panel, in every conference around the country and every city this question comes up.   How do you measure ROI on social media?

There are quite a few ways to measure this.   First, sales.  Have you noticed an increase in your sales after your have started your social media strategy?  That’s usually the first concern of all businesses small or large – the bottom dollar.  For example, recently, Old Spice ran a video campaign with the “Old Spice Guy” on YouTube where they answered questions from fans, and the newest stats show that the sales increased 106% since the start of the video campaign.

Second option is to monitor how many hits your sites receives.   This may be the best option for tracking ROI because what this means is that you are achieving brand awareness.   And good advertising and marketing always lead to strong brand awareness and then sales.  You can do this easily by putting Google Analytics on your website or blog.  It creates a comprehensive report of all unique visitors, return visitors, hits, and other variables like best times of day, days of the week, etc.

Another way to check your ROI is if you are creating content via a blog or twitter, are people retweeting your messages and are they commenting on your posts?   If they are doing this then you’re brand is being circulated around and it can be counted.  Numbers are not always the most important when it comes to how to evaluate a social media strategy.

All in all, your ROI should start to pick up some speed after a few months and each campaign is different.  Give it time to grow, and snowball.  Small businesses may take more time than national brands.

By now everyone has heard about the Old Spice commercials.  The Old Spice Guy has been around for awhile as a kind of hit sensation that people love to watch, but Proctor and Gamble took it to a whole new level this week.  If you’ve been trying to figure out a way to make social media work for you, or wondering how it could work for anyone, well, look no further than Old Spice.

Last week, ex-football player Isaiah Mustafa appeared in videos on youtube aimed at specific users.  He would create a video in answer to someone’s question on line.

“The Old Spice strategy makes brilliant use of social media,” said Augie Ray, an analyst with market research firm Forrester. “The response has been terrific. Social networks are buzzing. Video resharing has been very high, and the Old Spice YouTube channel now has 75 million total upload views. And this effort shows evidence of going even more viral.”

Basically this creative account demonstrated how to make viral videos.  They should be whimsical, funny, short, and incorporate the ideas of your fanbase.  Most of the videos actually didn’t display the product at all.   They were stemmed from a successful ad campaign that was developed over time.   A viral video doesn’t go viral on day 1.  It takes a little bit of time to work its way into the public eye, and then it needs to be followed up on.  In this case they created these videos and put out there that all you had to do, was have an interesting question for this leading man in a towel.

These videos utilized a number of video experts to produce 150 questions over the course of two days.  This meant that a lot of control had to be given up by the powers that be in order for creativity to remain the most important aspect.  Fans noticed this, and appreciated the effort and made it a successful campaign.    Take note!

Did you know that today,  June 30th is World Wide Social Media Day?

No?   Well don’t worry.  It was the first one and it was coined not much more than a month or two ago by Mashable.  Mashable is a social media guru’s internet bible.  It is fully of blogs, articles, posts, about anything and everything social media.  It is the epicenter of social media news, as well as information on the hottest topics – such as the new Apple iPhone 4 or the Droid, and reports on anything major happening in the world of technology.

So what is Social Media day?  Mashable created this day in order to give people a chance to meet up and introduce themselves in real life, or to reconnect and network.  In over 600 cities – big and small – domestic and international – people got together for a few hours after work and mingled.  Some of the best networking can come from a general meet up with people you’ve already been interacting with.  And the best part about Social Media Day is that if you’re not following someone, but one of your other twitter friends is, then you have an automatic introduction.

A lot of people on twitter work in similar fields.  Primarily marketing, public relations, sales, and IT people congregate on line in certain communities and a day like this helps to bridge the gaps.  It is one of the best ways to network and create collaborations and projects because you’re already familiar with some of the things people are already up to.  And if for nothing else, you’ve created some excellent friends this way and it’s a perfect time to kick back, relax, have a beer, and enjoy the new relationships you probably wouldn’t have made if it weren’t for Social Media.

We won’t know til tomorrow if this was a success by Mashable’s standards, but it’s probably a safe bet.  Use meetup.com to find more meet ups in your area.  The hope of Mashable was to create one meeting a month in various areas.   Take a look!  And if there isn’t one in your area – it is really easy to start your own! Good Luck!

Creativity.   Some people have it, some people don’t.  Does it matter?  Is it necessary?

Like with many questions the answer is a solid… It Depends.

If you’re a businessman, creativity doesn’t matter.

If you’re an athlete, it doesn’t matter.

If you’re a marketer, it doesn’t matter.

Or does it?

If you’re a businessman – you will argue that your bread and butter is how well you run your business.  How successful a business is.  The numbers are proof of everything.

And that is entirely true.

But do you do it alone?   No.  You have a team of people including a few creatives as well.

And odds are, how you became successful had a fair amount of creativity in it as well.  Did you do something that was ahead of its time?  Did you involve a certain department or technique that others thought was crazy?  You were clever and you used creativity to make your business just that much better.

Same goes for marketers and athletes as well.  IF you do everything by the book, if you pay attention to every rule, and every guideline for how you’re supposed to do something you are only as good as the person telling you.

You have to believe that you can be and do more.  Boundaries must be pushed. Limits have to be surpassed. Ideas need to be created and followed up on. Creativity is in every breath you take if you have a dream and a goal in mind. Devising a plan to get where you want to be is nothing less than integral and you won’t get there by going with the status quo.  Be different, do things differently, don’t follow the herd.

Your business will be that much more successful.

You’re races/contests/games/matches/etc will be that much more fulfilling.

Your marketing campaigns will be fresh and pop and receive the recognition they deserve.  All because you took a few minutes to explore your creative side.

Go ahead – develop that fun website, interesting blog, unique project.  What do you have to lose?  And what is there to gain all because you took a step in a direction that most don’t.  Isnt that what sets apart the winners from the losers?  Hard work, determination, and creativity?  I’d think so.

The biggest buzz words in any professional circle today are “Social Media.”  What is it? How do you use it?  If you have Facebook/Twitter is that it?  How do you know if it’s working?  Who’s supposed to do it?   — It becomes a giant mess when companies start to think it through.  It is really hard to resist the urge of speaking directly with your client base.  They have feedback that you desperately want, and it’s right there for the taking.

Or is it?

Many companies today are creating social media policies and strategies thinking they know what they’re doing once they’ve read a few articles.  The problem being is you cannot just fall into social media marketing.  It is like anything else – needs to be studied and carefully constructed for the optimal results.

There are two people that are needed to pull of an excellent social media strategy: the Social Media Strategist and the Community Manager.  The Strategist is the overall brain stormer, the one who makes things happen in the big picture with all of the technical aspects of the project.  The Community Manager sits in house and connects with the community.  The CM will act as the project manager, the online marketing director, customer services, sales, event planner, and face of the brand.  This person will be full time social media in your company and put your brand everywhere it will go.  They must be a jack of all trades and master of social media and networking.

Together, these two people will acheive your goals in every aspect.  They will NOT just use facebook and twitter to get your brand across.  That is only 3% of what they’re job is.

If you are not ready to pull the trigger on a full blown initiative, you are not ready to tackle it on your own.  Sit down with a consultant first to take inventory of your business, your current talent, and where you’d like to see your business in a year or two.  This might included a strategist and a community manager, and it might just mean having your customer service share one account to interact with people.

Think it through with various people and departments.  Don’t just get a facebook fan page and twitter account and think your job is done.  Consult professionals!

You’ve done all the necessary components for getting your web presence up and running.  You’ve created a twitter account, a Facebook fan page, you remodeled and branded your website, and wrote a blog.  You keep checking Google to see where your business ends up when you type in Keywords, but it just won’t climb and get onto that first page.  Now what?

Google will never accept money in order to put your product or search item higher on the ranking list when someone performs a search.  Working with Google’s search engine means you have to prove to them that you’re worth having a  high ranking.

There are a few things you can do.   If you remodeled your website on your own, pay a company who specializes in web re-design to help you, or at least give a quick consultation on the things that you could do better to draw in customers.  If you are up and running on all the social media networks, dedicate various members of your marketing team to be in charge of the specific areas.  One of the best things you can do, is hire a Community Manager.   This person sits as a part of your marketing staff, and their entire job is to do online marketing.  They will coordinate your efforts, live, eat, and breathe your brand, and put your name out into the world.  They will interact with your customers and THAT is how you become more SEO friendly.

Social Media is a conversation that happens on line.  Keywords are flung around everyday, and the ones that are used most often are the ones that Google rewards with high rankings in their search engine.  In order to achieve this, you must be active in your community and participate in daily goings on with your customers.

Information architecture is the most important and effective way to build website success, driving deliberate traffic in ways you deliberately want to showcase. The logistics and mechanics of good web design rely on information architecture. Think of it as your website’s blue print. How does your website guide information from page to page. What is the link structure and web content of the website as a whole? What are the website’s goals and who is the audience? Information architecture should be both conceptual (first) and organizational (second).

Web Site Family Tree
Similar to the structure of a family tree, information architecture links website content by their relationships to the primary page. The diagram, sketched out, is connected by lines to illustrate the relationship each web site page has between eachother. This illustrates the hierarchy of a website and helps the conceptual process before building a website.

Implementation
Once you’ve got the basic structure of a website, you can now begin to build it. For information architecture and user interface, it is all about navigational choices. Good information architecture can help direct users to certain areas of a website. For example, if a non-profit wants users to donate to their cause, information architecture will put the donation button in a prominent place where a user’s vision is sure to notice, hopefully swaying the navigational choice towards donation. Everything from link verbiage, placement, size, color, and imagery can affect a user’s choices on how they will navigate through a website.

Using design principles and tying them into web design through information architecture is an excellent foundation for website design. Designers should keep design principles in every step of website design, including link navigation and information architecture.

I was recently listening to a report on the radio that was explaining the drop in television audience numbers and the corresponding drop in revenue from advertising sales. As it turns out, television isn’t the only traditional adverting medium that has been losing steam. Print advertising has been reported to be down as much as 14 percent in the first quarter of 2008 alone. Many would argue that its is a sign of our struggling economy and that spending is down in many areas. While there is probably some truth to this, the state of the economy is only a part of the cause. The major influence in the decline of traditional advertising is the internet.

More of the population is switching to the world wide web for many of the activities they used to partake in elsewhere. Reading the newspaper with your morning coffee is now more commonly done online. Watching television programming and renting movies, yep online too. It should really come as no surprise that as the numbers erode from these markets so does the value of advertising within them. As these trends continue, more and more advertising resources are being used in various online marketing campaigns.

While there are many options that can offer a solid return on one’s advertising dollar, I strongly feel that organic search engine optimization is the best place to start. Having a website that is properly optimized for best results in the search engines rankings benefits your business directly. Receiving more visits from targeted traffic is an obvious step in the right direction. However, if you are making use of other internet advertising methods you will generally find that a pre existing SEO effort will augment the effectiveness of those methods as well.

I was recently listening to a report on the radio that was explaining the drop in television audience numbers and the corresponding drop in revenue from advertising sales. As it turns out, television isn’t the only traditional adverting medium that has been losing steam. Print advertising has been reported to be down as much as 14 percent in the first quarter of 2008 alone. Many would argue that its is a sign of our struggling economy and that spending is down in many areas. While there is probably some truth to this, the state of the economy is only a part of the cause. The major influence in the decline of traditional advertising is the internet.

More of the population is switching to the world wide web for many of the activities they used to partake in elsewhere. Reading the newspaper with your morning coffee is now more commonly done online. Watching television programming and renting movies, yep online too. It should really come as no surprise that as the numbers erode from these markets so does the value of advertising within them. As these trends continue, more and more advertising resources are being used in various online marketing campaigns.

While there are many options that can offer a solid return on one’s advertising dollar, I strongly feel that organic search engine optimization is the best place to start. Having a website that is properly optimized for best results in the search engines rankings benefits your business directly. Receiving more visits from targeted traffic is an obvious step in the right direction. However, if you are making use of other internet advertising methods you will generally find that a pre existing SEO effort will augment the effectiveness of those methods as well.