July 24th, 2009 by Nate Linnell
Before your company dives head first into social media, it’s important to have a plan in place. This includes defined goals you want to accomplish with social media and a well thought out strategy for accomplishing those goals. Unless you have those in place you’re just going to be embarking aimlessly into the world of social media and are likely going to fail in your efforts. But even if you have your goals and strategy in place, how do you know if you succeed or fail with your social media program?
In order to really know, you have to have the measurement capabilities in place at the outset. Ideally you should also have a baseline to understand where you currently are so that you can appropriately measure the impact that your social media program has.
The measurement that takes place should be done both on your site using your web analytics data as well as off site using social media monitoring tools. In addition, there is also a manual piece that allows you to pull more data into your reporting and analysis.
Using your web analytics data you can begin to understand the engagement level and value of visitors that are driven directly to your site from social media sources. Analyzing social media sources can be fairly straightforward. To do it, you simply segment out social media traffic and begin to analyze it in relation to your other segments and overall site traffic. You can then dig deeper and look at individual social media sites to begin to see which types of social media sites and which specific sites drive the most qualified visitors. This allows you to try to better leverage those sites that perform well and try to better understand why traffic from the under-performing sites is not up to par.
Social media monitoring tools are also very important to use in measuring the impact of your social media program. These tools give you great insight into where people are talking about your brand and what they are saying. This in turn allows you to respond where necessary and be involved in the communities that are discussing your brand both positively and negatively. The tools will also allow you to see who the top influencers are so that you know where to focus your efforts when engaging the communities. You often times can also see the demographic and geo-location of those influencers which allows you to get a better understanding for who they are.
The final piece is often a more manual data gathering process that isn’t easily obtained through a tool. These include:
- Subscribers to RSS feeds
- Comments per blog post
- Forum posts per forum member
- New community members
- Number of friends/fans
Having the data necessary to evaluate the success or failure of your social media program is a great feat and more than a lot of organizations currently have. You have to make sure, however, that the data is being used to evaluate your efforts and make adjustments to the program. To do that a social media dashboard should be created to pull all the data together which will allow stockholders to have easy access to analyze and evaluate how the program is performing.
Does this sound a bit daunting and something that is likely to overwhelm you and your organization. Well if it does, don’t worry, because you are not alone. Our team at Serengeti, however, can help relieve the sense of discomfort your organization feels when entering a world you’re not familiar with. We have the experience to setup a social media program that is customized to your organization and help get it off the ground. We’ll then train you and your organization how to engage in social media and how to track your success. So before blindly diving head first into the world of social media, contact us, and we will help make sure you have a clear view of the new social media world that you’re about to dive into.
July 21st, 2009 by John Rhea
Serengeti has just unveiled a complete redesign of their main blog endlessplain.com. Go check out the new, sleek look; stay for the words of wisdom and marketing savvy.
July 17th, 2009 by John Rhea
Whether you have an active social media strategy that you are implementing in place or have chosen to forego social media marketing at this time, as a company you still should be putting in place some type of social media policy to address your employees’ actions on social media sites. This goes beyond the employees that are handling your online marketing whether its’ SEO, PPC, Analytics, Community Managers or even Email Campaigns. Every employee in your company, no matter their title, can have a direct impact on how your company is perceived via social media.
With the ease of access to the internet and the price of computers falling, it is more likely than not more than 90% of your employees have access to online social media sites after they leave the confines of your establishment every day. A good portion of your employees are likely involved with sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr during their off hours. They likely have their profiles filled out with information so that the friends in their network know more about them, including where they work and what they do for a living.
If an employee has questionable hobbies in the off hours of business, that’s not under your control. However, if that employee is involved in social media, promotes those questionable hobbies and then also links to your company as their employer from their profile on the social media site they are involved in, you have to stop and wonder if there is something you can do.
Setting policies in place regarding how your employees should represent themselves and your company in both working and non-working hours is quickly becoming a highly debated topic in both the human resources and marketing worlds. The question of what social media activities the company does or does not have control over is becoming an increasingly murky subject employers have to deal with. Employers don’t want to be a heavy hand, dictating what employees can and can’t say, but they also do not want their company name and reputation put into jeopardy by an employee with questionable hobbies socializing in a forum on the internet listing the company as their employer.
Rather than being caught by surprise, it’s best to work with your online marketing, human resources and legal teams to come up with policies that can be acceptable to all employees. These policies can help your entire staff understand what impact their actions could have on your company’s reputation. It can also hold them accountable for any questionable actions they take that can harm the company even in the most indirect manner.
When devising these types of policies companies need to take into account the following:
- Tolerated Language:
What happens if the company employee uses vulgar, racist or threatening language in a social media site?
- Tolerable Activities:
If employees are linking themselves to your company via the information in their profile, it’s imperative that the employees understand that their activities can have a direct impact on your reputation whether it’s on or off hours.
- What types of activities will your company not tolerate being associated with
- Racist group sites
- Terror group sites
- Illegal activity sites
- Activist sites
- Representation of the Company:
If an employee is active in a community and lists you as their employer, clear policies on how employees should represent themselves while also representing you should be defined.
- What happens if the employee doesn’t list you as their employer, but is well known for working for you?
- What happens if the employee posts something but then it’s taken down?
- On Hours vs. Off Hours:
Is visiting social media sites permitted on the clock if its helping to promote your business? What happens if an employee uses foul and vulgar language in a forum but it’s after hours?
- Repercussions of Actions:
What happens if an employee violates your defined policies? Is there a different punishment if the employee does any type of violation during their off hours away from the office?
- Your Own Social Media Sites:
- What kind of comments will you allow?
- What kind of language you will allow (i.e. no vulgar, racist or threatening language)?
- Will links be allowed?
- What kind of trackbacks will be accepted?
It’s important for companies to sit down with representatives from all parts of the company to devise these types of policies because it gives a better understanding not only of how the company is affected by employee actions on social media sites, but also how employees themselves can find themselves in situations they never dreamed could actually harm their employer. Understanding both perspectives will help your company make better policies that can adapt to most of your employees on staff.
July 7th, 2009 by John Rhea
Li Evans, our Director of Social Media, will speak on Social Media: Managing Conversations and Reputations When the User Is In Control and Images & Search Engines: Getting the Full Picture at Search Engine Strategies: San Jose. She’ll also run a Live Twitter & Blogging Clinic during a session on Thursday.
July 3rd, 2009 by John Lynch
Jeffrey Beal recently posted an article entitled “Outsource SEO vs In-house SEO”, in which he argues the benefits of using an agency over bringing search in-house. He makes several points; some of which I agree and many of which I don’t.
Overall, I don’t think it’s possible to say that one is better than the other. Both have distinct advantages and limitations. The important aspect to understand is that the decision between taking SEO in-house and using an agency must be made at the organizational level. That’s why I’ve created a basic decision tree that can help frame the issue for organizations looking to make an informed decision. This tree is a bit oversimplified, but is a good starting point for making an informed assessment.
In-house SEO Decision Tree
Beal on hiring an in-house SEO expert:
“His or her base salary according to Salary.com on average would be $85,703. That is $7141.92 a month and roughly $42 an hour. This is for one individual with hopes that they bear positive results. Let’s say they do not. It will take 3 to 6 months to start to truly see if the individual is an asset or not. That is $21,425.76 if you decide to let the individual go in just the third month. Not to include cost of taxes and benefits. And if successful, your company just paid $85,703 per year for SEO.”
Beal makes one large assumption that I don’t like: in-house SEO is to be performed by one person and it has to be a new hire. Why not train an underutilized staff member that might be in jeopardy of losing his/her job? Also, why not segment the process between content producers and tech leads? Under this scenario, the only additional expense would come from an outside training and a 3rd party auditing process.
Also, the notion of a one-man SEO is an antiquated model at best. Quality SEO is a combination of technical know-how, savvy PR/marketing, and fresh content. These require combined efforts of multiple departments within a company, not the unilateral actions of one person.
Again, many companies have seen wonderful results from their agency. Others see diminishing results over time for relatively high agency costs. Every situation is unique. The best advice I can give is to have an independent third party SEO audit to determine true ROI. Audit your agency and, either way, you might be surprised by the results.
June 26th, 2009 by Nate Linnell
Web analytics should be the cornerstone of any data driven organization. Unfortunately at many organizations decisions aren’t made based on data but rather on what someone is feeling on that particular day or moment. That will often lead to decisions that negatively impact the organization. So how do you switch your decision making process to one that is based on your actual data? That may not be the easiest question to answer, but there are a couple steps that can move you in the right direction. These include getting senior management buy-in, having at least one in-house web analyst, and having a clear internal strategy for how to collect, analyze, and take action to drive positive data driven decisions.
Getting senior management buy-in is crucial since it will be hard to get anything off the ground if they aren’t supporting the efforts. This is evident in a new report by Econsultancy which revealed that the lack of senior management buy-in is a top frustration with managing and deploying web analytics. Getting their buy in is a critical step and will require you to layout a clear case for why it’s important to have an appropriate web analytics infrastructure and team in place. In order to make a truly convincing case, you will also need to have strong data to support your recommendations. With our Take It In House programs, we can help build the case and help awaken senior management to the benefits of having internal web analysts.
Next on the list is making sure there is a talented web analyst on staff. According to the same Econsultancy report, 46% of companies do not have a single web analyst on staff. That’s likely due in large part to the lack of senior management buy-in. The impact that the lack of buy-in is having on the company is likely not understood at all. What it means is that nearly half of all companies don’t have a real sense of what’s happening on their own site, how their marketing campaigns are really performing, or how their online efforts impact their offline channels. Imagine how much money is being wasted by these companies. Now imagine how much they could be saving if they had internal staff who could analyze and interpret the data and drive optimization decisions based on actual data. My guess is significantly more than the cost of the web analyst(s).
Just hiring a web analyst or team of web analysts isn’t enough. Companies also need to have a clear internal strategy for how data will be collected and analyzed. This needs to be tied to business objectives so that your data driven decisions are helping meet or exceed your company’s goals. This can be an overwhelming task, especially if you don’t have an experienced team. This is where our team of experts can help create a strategic roadmap that will drive success.
Through our Take It In House program we can help setup an internal team and help develop a strategy based on your companies specific business goals. The result will be a holistic web analytics and marketing optimization strategy that will drive business success based on data driven decisions.
June 23rd, 2009 by John Lynch
Bringing SEO In-house: Five Questions to Ask
For companies considering bringing their SEO initiatives in-house, it’s important to ask the following five questions:
- Do I publish my own content? Wouldn’t you want the people creating your content educated on the best search engine optimization practices? Wouldn’t these people be better suited to bring about a positive SEO change than an outside agency?
- Do I want my content publishers to be social media advocates? What if the people creating your content were advocating it on social networks? Imagine the increased impact of content if members of your organization were building Digg audiences or delivering this content to influencers within a given industry.
- Is SEO something that my employees will grasp? Yes, SEO is a cooperative effort between tech leads, publishers, and marketing. If every member understands the dramatic impact they already have on search, then the results of taking a program in-house will be far more potent than those of an agency.
- How do I know if my current search strategy is working? The best way to get honest feedback is from an independent third party without motives. That means no agencies and no internal employees. Both have too many incentives to mislead and can’t be trusted to supply honest data.
- Should I take search marketing in-house? There are situations in which it’s better to engage with a qualified agency. Size, scope, and market share have a considerable impact on this decision. We offer free consultations to help your organization make this decision.
June 19th, 2009 by John Rhea
We’ll be speaking at the Open Government and Innovations Conference on July 22nd in Washington, DC. The conference will “discuss the challenges, perspectives and issues relating to President Obama’s call for government openness and transparency.” In our session we’ll look at how measurement and metrics can play into these goals.
June 12th, 2009 by Nan Dawkins
Many companies spending significant dollars in digital marketing do not have an in-house analytics team. Some have no staff capable of using analytics data to drive marketing decisions. This makes no sense to me.
Even if your digital marketing programs are entirely managed by an agency, in-house analytics capabilities are critical.
- You can’t manage an agency effectively and give them good direction if you don’t have the ability to make sense of results data;
- Allowing the agency to make the decisions about future expenditures based on their interpretation of results data (whether it is your data, their data or vendor data) is allowing the fox to guard the hen house; Agencies have a vested interest in masking poor results
- Multiple sources of data are necessary to make good decisions: Web Analytics data, data from vendors, CRM data, sales data, etc. An agency can’t (and shouldn’t) be responsible for connecting those data dots.
For digital marketers, analytics is like breathing. Nothing else in the body functions in the absence of breathing. No matter how hard you try, breathing cannot be outsourced. This is true regardless of whether digital marketing is accomplished by an in-house team or outsourced to an agency.
Budgets have been cut for everyone, no doubt, but skimping on analytics capabilities is penny wise and pound foolish.
June 9th, 2009 by John Rhea
Li Evans spoke with Robert Garcia of Ecom Phenom on the importance of branding. She also laid out some best practices for building your brand.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/show.aspx?userurl=Ecom-Phenom&year=2009&month=06&day=03&url=Brand-Building-with-Li-Evans
