The White House pulled an about-face in record time with the Shirley Sherrod situation. Why? For the most part Social Media. The White House may have been able to contain and manipulate this “faux pas” to a degree within the traditional media outlets, but Social Media has changed all that. Just ask those involved up on Capitol Hill.

As we discussed the speed, reach and that all-powerful transparency in one of our prior posts - Meet the new corporate boardroom the White House was “tenderly” nudged into an about face. Maybe the White House should have read our Blog post.

History is filled with these types of incidents and there’s a lot more to come. The caveat in the Social Media age is that the need to get it right is magnified. It seems as if the facts no longer matter in the digital world. Fast paced snippets of copy, be it video, digital or social, can be so easily manipulated and misinterpreted – or uncovered.

In all fairness to the White House, they were not the only ones who did no fact checking. The NAACP and Fox news were just as guilty; running with a story with no background research. News cycles and the need for speed can cost in a big way.

PG article:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10203/1074552-84.stm

Sherrod Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9NcCa_KjXk&feature=player_embedded

Being in the Social Media and Information business we tend to look for things in this space that our audience may find of interest. In this case, courtesy of ESRI, http://www.esri.com/services/disaster-response/gulf-oil-spill-2010/index.html a manufacturer of GIS, Geographic Information Systems software, we’ve found an interactive monitoring tool that is keeping tabs on an ongoing catastrophe that impacts us all – The BP Oil Spill.

ESRI’s software allows you to view location based feeds in real time including recent news, threatened  wildlife sites, Tweets , Twitter photos, and YouTube videos. You can also add your own content and updates which allows for input from real people - unbiased by any of the media, corporate and PR outlets. In our humble opinion, this is Social Media at its best.

Blackball Online Marketing specializes in Pittsburgh Twitter Marketing and Social Media solutions for small business.

Not long ago we read an article about measuring ROI for Pittsburgh Social Media campaigns. We think ROI is a term meant for advertising, marketing, or branding initiatives and we aim to explain why.  If you're measuring for ROI, you've got to call it advertising, marketing or branding. If you call it advertising, marketing, or branding it's not social media even though that may be the platform used to deliver the message. That’s the fundamental difference between Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing and why the distinction in terminology. We measure Social Media campaigns in conversions.

The term ROI stands for return on investment. The only way to measure the ROI for anything is to separate the return and the investment costs from all other factors including all other advertising and marketing. The sum total of everything it takes to achieve your goal is by definition your investment. Time, money, internal resources, outsourced solutions, and opportunity cost are all factors that must be included to determine investment. If you define “return” in other ways such as website traffic, blog traffic, or hit counts it’s not ROI it’s a conversion rate. We think the author gets ROI and conversion rates confused.

Another reason ROI is a bad measure for Social Media is that business is not static, neither is your competition. There are too many factors that change too frequently to measure ROI for social media campaigns. Business cycles, geographic, seasonal, and climatic factors, as well as other external reasons all affect your results and bottom line. To nail down a number is a pursuit in futility. If your going to come up with a measurement metric make sure it’s valid before you base investment decisions on it.

It's the sum of the parts not the measurement of each part that matters in our opinion. Conversions, however they come, are cultivated through the whole marketing plan.

Social Media Tips:

1. Use your skills and resources wisely as they are all finite.
2. Give campaigns, social and otherwise, a fighting chance by planning a prolonged dedication of resources and don’t waver.
3. Only after a defined period of time can you look back and determine where you’re campaigns are successful and where they need work.
4. Be persistent.
5. Have Fun.

Blackball Online Marketing is the home of the Online Marketing Technologist. Liven up your online presence by contacting us. “Helping People is Good Business”

Have a different take on this subject? Do you think we are getting this all wrong? We’d welcome your thoughts.

Pittsburgh Social Media Marketing Campaign Strategies

The first 3 posts in this series:

• Planning Your Social Media Campaign
• Analyzing Your Social Media Campaign
• Implementing Your Social Media Campaign

have showed how to plan your social media campaign, analyze the social media market, and implement a social media campaign. Now it’s time to look at measurement of your efforts to determine your campaigns effects on Traffic, SEO, and Reach.

Measurement statistics or analytics, as they are referred to, provide a way to judge how effective your campaigns are to date. Analytics can provide valuable insight into strengths and weaknesses of your social media campaigns and sniff out opportunities that you may have to promote your campaigns and your business.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING MIX – ANALYTICS

All websites and blogs should have some form of Analytics. The screenshot above is from a Twitter analytics tool called Twitalyzer. Measuring your success in the Social Media arena is very important. There are many great social media platforms to choose from; as mentioned in the previous posts in this series. Measuring your traffic on your website or blog can be done with a simple hit counter. Other more involved statistics can be done by implementing Google Analytics or AWstats.

Here is a great article to show you how involved statistics can be and how much they can cost. (see comments) Having said that there are loads of free tools that you can utilize to measure your social success in the marketing arena for free.

A great free tool for you to benchmark where you are at any time is http://www.socialmention.com/. This is very powerful and provides you with a number of options for finding your content and reach. Of course if you are yet to start your campaign then it can give you an idea of how competitive the social media landscape has become for your terms.

Another free tool we really like is http://www.howsociable.com . This tool generates scores based on your level of involvement in dozens of social media sites. It is no frills, no login, and generates a nice idea of how well your campaign is progressing.

Just remember that analytics are only a barometer of how well your doing. The true measure of your success is always conversions. Need help with your Pittsburgh Social Media Marketing campaigns? Contact Blackball Online Marketing for a free analysis.

Pittsburgh Social Media Marketing Campaign Strategies

We hope you have already read the Planning Your for Social Media Marketing Campaign and the Analyzing Your Social Media Marketing Campaign posts. If not take a minute or two to catch up. That was quick. Having gone through the steps in the previous posts all that’s left to do is have some fun. Research for us is fun.

Now that you know your company’s strengths and weaknesses as identified previously it’s time to research the Social Media channels that are right for you. We mentioned previously about asking your present clients “What if any social networking sites do you use?”. This information can now be put to use in a real way. Explore a little and draw your own conclusions.

The absolute first thing we did was to build a blog. While this may not be a strategy you wish to employ right now keep it in mind. There are many blogging platforms out there. Blogger, WordPress.com, WordPress.org, and Drupal are the top blogging sites according to the Alexa rankings as of this writing but there are also other alternatives.

Social Media Blogging Platforms

Blogging on your own site has a number of distinct advantages. The traffic you generate will be all yours. As you become more proficient with your blogging tools and your writing, you will generate a clear channel to your audience with no static. A one to many relationship between you and your customers / readers. Why not have the traffic you generate with your words and your thoughts benefit you? Sounds fair – right? This is not the case when you choose a platform hosted elsewhere. Yes, you can link back to your main site but it doesn’t carry the same weight. One the flipside, more technical skill is required and someone must administer the blog thus using company resources. Blackball Online Marketing designs custom blogs for small business and can help you implement your small business social media campaigns.

One last thought on blogging. This requires commitment as well as any other business initiative. Social Media, and business for that matter, is really all about commitment. Cultivate your audience and your business relationships will grow and prosper.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING MIX – IMPLEMENTATION

Into Action - Whether you chose to implement a blog or already have one it’s time to take your research and put it to use. Use Alexa to find the sites with the most popularity and the most reach. Are any of these on your lists of sites already mined from your customers? Have a look at the Social Media sites on this list and do your homework.

A short list of must have sites in our opinion.

• Twitter – This site is easy to understand and implement and it lets you get your feet wet with minimal effort. Please read all their valuable info on the site to get you started.
• YouTube – This is the second largest search engine on the Internet – don’t let it pass you by. Get creative and make some videos for publication.
• LinkedIn – A very business oriented site that let’s you develop a business profile and sharing level without the non business noise that comes with most of the other sites.
• Facebook – Yes we said Facebook. Although there are still some privacy concerns as far as simplicity, this is still the big dog of social media marketing and should not be overlooked.

So if you’ve been following along and developed a list of sites to submit to, here is where your blog or website represents you to the rest of the blogosphere and the rest of the net. Share and promote your blog/site everywhere you can. It’s the world’s view of you. So keep this in mind when blogging and commenting on other posts or pages.

As you grow your social media following you’ll likely have many logins. Write these down as you submit to them. It will save you a lot of grief later. Hope to see you on a social media site out there or get started now and join our blog and comment right away. We’d appreciate it.

Pittsburgh Social Media Marketing by Blackball Online Marketing