In the past few weeks I have been meeting up with social media specialists/experts, and I have read a fair amount of articles about the topic.
Most consultants I met insisted on integration: use a tool such as hootsuite to spend as less time as possible posting on various "channels" (youtube,facebook, twitter, linkedin) - post once on your blog, and then dispatch info on facebook, twitter, etc.. Measure how many likes & followers you have, and use these number as main KPIs.
It kind of makes sense, you don't want to post many times the same thing - time is money... but it also turns out that the same consultants often specialise in one or two specific channels (facebook and youtube, facebook and twitter, etc.. ).
My opinion is that business should focus on one main channel (blog, facebook, linkedin, etc.. ) and be great at it. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Social Networking reinforces this idea of focusing on single channels (long term content strategy, develop readership through consistency and good quality posts) and segment target market instead of trying to be everywhere.
Lesson #1: find out about which social media marketing channel matches your market the most, and focus on it. My target market is LinkedIn. And this is what I'll target for my business. This blog comes in handy to support my activities on LinkedIn (expertise in web applications development & online marketing), but is not what I should focus on.
Likes and followers can be compared to "links" in SEO. This can be used as a metric, but at the end of the day "traffic" is the most important metric. And I think that "traffic" should also be the main metric for social media.
One may argue that unlike SEO which brings traffic to your website, social media websites host your content (facebook pages, linkedin company pages, etc.. ), and you may have a lot of visitors to these pages who never make it to your main website.
However, I have developed many micro websites in the past to support SEO campaigns, and "links" can also be considered as "external content". The objective of SEO is not to bring traffic to your website, but to bring traffic to your content / brand / services / products.
Lesson #2: social media is no revolution. reporting KPI should measure traffic & conversion rate. specific KPI such as likes, followers, shares, etc.. are secondary.
Most consultants I met insisted on integration: use a tool such as hootsuite to spend as less time as possible posting on various "channels" (youtube,facebook, twitter, linkedin) - post once on your blog, and then dispatch info on facebook, twitter, etc.. Measure how many likes & followers you have, and use these number as main KPIs.
It kind of makes sense, you don't want to post many times the same thing - time is money... but it also turns out that the same consultants often specialise in one or two specific channels (facebook and youtube, facebook and twitter, etc.. ).
My opinion is that business should focus on one main channel (blog, facebook, linkedin, etc.. ) and be great at it. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Social Networking reinforces this idea of focusing on single channels (long term content strategy, develop readership through consistency and good quality posts) and segment target market instead of trying to be everywhere.
Lesson #1: find out about which social media marketing channel matches your market the most, and focus on it. My target market is LinkedIn. And this is what I'll target for my business. This blog comes in handy to support my activities on LinkedIn (expertise in web applications development & online marketing), but is not what I should focus on.
Likes and followers can be compared to "links" in SEO. This can be used as a metric, but at the end of the day "traffic" is the most important metric. And I think that "traffic" should also be the main metric for social media.
One may argue that unlike SEO which brings traffic to your website, social media websites host your content (facebook pages, linkedin company pages, etc.. ), and you may have a lot of visitors to these pages who never make it to your main website.
However, I have developed many micro websites in the past to support SEO campaigns, and "links" can also be considered as "external content". The objective of SEO is not to bring traffic to your website, but to bring traffic to your content / brand / services / products.
Lesson #2: social media is no revolution. reporting KPI should measure traffic & conversion rate. specific KPI such as likes, followers, shares, etc.. are secondary.