Why You Shouldn’t Measure ROI With Social Media

There’s no denying that in today’s competitive environment, numbers matter. Using numbers to measure business decisions give quantitative data to the decision-maker data on the outcome of that choice. The most popular form of measurement is Return on Investment where the basic question goes as follows: “If we spend x amount of dollars on a plan, then what measurement can we use to determine a successful outcome and how long do we give the plan to determine its success level?”

Many businesses try to use the same question when implementing a social media plan. Big mistake. Let’s go with the basic premise that we can measure something pretty easily, like Twitter followers in this example.

You’re an owner opening up a store and you’re looking for a cheap way of promoting your business. Your friend advises that you promote your business via social media, but you’re clueless on how to use it strategically. How do you take care of the problem? Call your neighbor’s 20-year-old son studying at a local college and ask him to help you. He promises to get you 1,000 followers in two months. Problem solved, right? Wrong.

The Death of Your Old Facebook Marketing Strategy (And Web 2.0) Part 2

Blogger’s Note: This is Part Two of my analysis on the latest additions to Facebook. This section will address the Media Partnerships, Gestures, and Color. Click here to see Part One of this post.

In the last blog post, I hopefully calmed some of your fears on the new Facebook while giving you some realistic action items to implement.

Hopefully, you’ve already started to see that Web 2.0 is very quickly becoming a thing of the past and Web 3.0, or the semantic web. The difference is that in the past, someone would expect to find everything they need in a search engine. Now, users should now expect their internet to give them what they want without typing in anything.

The other big lesson is that ROI takes a back seat with these tools in favor of increased engagement. If you think these tools are going to help you measure results, you’re missing the point. Get your employees and customers talking about you as much as possible, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised about what happens to your business.

In addition, there is a new social media war between Facebook and Google+. The new changes pretty much gave Foursquare the final knockout blow and Twitter will become more like a complementary tool to either network, rather than a competitor.

With that said, here is a look at the rest of the changes Facebook made and what they mean to you.

The Death of Your Old Facebook Marketing Strategy (And Web 2.0) Part 1

Blogger’s Note: There’s way too much information to fit into one blog post, so I’ve addressed the Subscriptions, Top Stories/Ticker, and Timeline in Part One. Partnerships, Gestures, and Color are in Part Two.

You’re probably using a certain f-word in response to Facebook’s newest changes in addition to its news from the F8 Conference.

Remain calm.

I understand your frustration over all the work your summer intern put in going to waste and that your strategy is back at square one. Many companies are in the same boat and are wondering how they’re going to adjust to all of last week’s changes, especially when they don’t have the time to figure out the differences in this new Facebook geared towards Web 3.0.

There are several options here. Run from the problem and not use social media? I have a better question: when does running away from anything ever help? Switch over permanently to Google+? The developers at Google would like that to be your solution, but then you’re losing out to a network of over 800 million people. Besides, G+ won’t be ready for businesses until November. Don’t make any adjustments and try to use the old Facebook features on the new one? That’s like buying an iPhone for the purposes of texting and phone calls. Yes, you’re using its functions, but no, you’re not maximizing its use.

Instead, take a look at the first part of my suggestions for how companies can use the newest Facebook features for their marketing strategy.

Social September: The Week That Will Define a New Era

If you care about social media, this is the week to remember. The social media world exploded with activity and it’s no coincidence. This is going to be the week when we finally make the change into the Web 3.0 world.

Everything that happened this week is a precursor to the new social media reality we are about to witness. Users are no longer satisfied with easily finding what they need at their finger tips. Instead, the expectation is that the user’s device, whether that be a computer, phone, or tablet will know exactly what they want and customize information to the user without having to ask the computer.

Fool’s Gold: NCAA Forgetting Students in Conference Shifts

Ignore whatever it is college Athletic Directors are saying these days. Conference realignment has everything to do with the ability to make more money and that’s it. Those who think otherwise are only kidding themselves.

Those schools have every right to do whatever they think is going to help them maximize profits. In that process for pursuing more revenue, however, they are hurting themselves drastically in public relations.

I’m not saying that schools are going to lose money. Between the insatiable demand to watch the top college football/basketball school in the country regardless of where the venue happens to be, there’s no reason to worry about ROI.

Ticketmaster Turns Shelling $200 on Patriots’ Tickets a Social Activity

If you’ve ever tried to sell a single ticket to a sporting event, chances are you haven’t been too successful. Similar to going to a bar, there seems to be some sort of unwritten rule that says going to a game or a concert alone is socially unacceptable no matter how badly you want to go to that game.

Ticketmaster finally realized this fact and recently turned buying tickets into a social experience. According to Mashable’s blog post, Ticketmaster did research to suggest that every time a buyer shares his or her purchase with friends online, the activity converts to $5 in additional ticket sales.

Ticketmaster reacted to its research and made it so that buyers can select the seat they want and find out where their friends are sitting with miniature Facebook flags on different seats inside the stadium.

Why Derrick Rose Will Have the Best Sports “Brand” in Chicago History (Sorry MJ)

I’m not someone who often gets excited by shoes. Even when Michael Jordan’s shoes were the must-have product of my generation, I never valued the $100+ shoes as much as some of my other friends.

Based on some recent news, I have a feeling that’s about to change. Derrick Rose came out with a shoe called “Windy City.” Check out The Basketball Jones blog for pictures of the newest addition to the Adidas family. The main colors are red, white and black (Bulls colors) with blue shoe laces, which are supposed to symbolize the Chicago flag. The back of the shoe says “The L” and the sole of the shoe has a map of the L system while the tongue reads, “All flights canceled.” I take this in two ways. The first is a reference to O’Hare airport, which customers are frequently frustrated with for canceling and delaying flights. The second would be a jab at Jordan. I doubt Rose would ever want to undermine “Air Jordan,” with that phrase, but considering the fact that Jordan’s shoes were Nike and Rose is with Adidas, you never know.

But that argument is not why I’m talking about this shoe. I’m talking about it because it’s a sign of things to come from the new face in Chicago sports (with all due respect to Starlin Castro).

A Tale of 2 Companies

As the unemployed college graduate, one of the biggest challenges I have is trying to keep my work-related skills as sharp as possible — or maybe even improve them — so that when the right job finally comes along, I won’t have to shake off too much rust.

Enter genyrants.com.

I’ve become an editor for the site and a weekly columnist, focusing on company’s use of social media strategy. Over the past two weeks, I’ve written about Deloitte and T-Mobile. While the management consulting firm has become an industry leader in social media, T-Mobile implemented and failed — so far– to utilize Facebook with its VoIP effectively. I encourage you to check out my latest columns below and send me your feedback.

Deloitte and Touche: Your Corporate Version of the Harvard Law Student With a Jump Shot

 

T-Mobile Forced to Scramble After Skype, Facebook Merger

A New Face: Why the Warriors Teamed With Former Facebook Exec

In late July, Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob promised a complete revamp of his front office on both the basketball and business side. In order to change the culture that plagued the Warriors, the Mercury News blog included staff members from the scouting department to people who had nothing to do with basketball.

The most significant change to the organization is the addition of Chamath Palihapitiya. He is a former executive of Facebook who left the organization in June and recent bought shares of the NBA franchise in Oakland. Paulihapitiya’s experience includes being Vice President and General Manager of AOL and a variety of other positions in the online world.

Even a team that doesn’t sell out every game has a terrific online presence by any normal standards. The Warriors have over 40,000 followers on Twitter and a quarter million Facebook fans. Needless to say, the question isn’t how Golden State can increase its social media presence, but how it uses it. When a team is trying to change its reputation with fans, having someone who had such an important role with a company like Facebook is a great way to start.

According to Sports Business Daily, the NBA has a strong social media position compared to other leagues (Adam Vincenzini happened to do a terrific case study on the NBA’s use of social media). In addition to daily social media sessions (assuming there is no lockout, of course), NBA players happen to be excellent at utilizing social media with 10 players in the 500 most-followed accounts on Twitter. The article goes on to state that it is the highest number of athletes in the Top 500 of any professional sports league. It makes sense that the NBA would have the highest Twitter participation since there is no other sport where individuals are as marketable as they are in basketball.

Why You Can’t Resist Google+

The naysayers are out in full force. “Google is late to the party again” and “If Wave and Buzz didn’t catch on, why is Google+ any different?” I’ll admit that both statements are legitimate concerns, but neither understand exactly why “the +” is the fastest growing social network ever.

Don’t believe the hype, if you want. It’s true, Google+ is tapering off and at this point, the hype is greater than the promise, but only because people are still figuring out how to use Google+ and the company isn’t done adding to its features. Remember, Facebook wasn’t even available to the general public until two years after its inception and Twitter didn’t have the popularity it has now until its third year in 2009.

Google+ is going to break some serious records by next summer whether people like it or not. The applications itself are nothing special. Yes, Google lets people instant message on their phone without having a Blackberry and video chatting multiple people at one time via the Hangout is a great feature. However, it’s only a matter of time before Facebook rolls out the same features.

What makes Google the irresistible social media tool that is ultimately going to be a must have — especially for socially conscious businesses — is its search engine. Facebook is going to pair with Bing at some point in the near future, but Google still has the upper hand when it comes to where you go to find what you want. In fact, Google is so effective that it is now a verb as in “I Googled the nearest restaurant.” The same can be said about Facebook and Twitter, but when’s the last time you heard “I’m Binging person x’s name?”

Google has what you’d call a certain brand loyalty. Whether its a simple question or a quick search for directions, using Google for a search is pretty much an impulse.

Google knows this.