The Dealer Impact Blog

Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign

Here is an interesting article about calculating the Return On Investment of your Social Media Campaign.

First the bad news: If you’re going to calculate the ROI of your social media campaign, you’re going to have to know math. That may come as a disappointment to people who thought social media was only about accumulating Twitter followers or monitoring Facebook “Likes,” but it’s true. The future of social media is about math, metrics and monetization.

The problem is that most companies aren’t doing an effective job of measuring the value of their social media campaigns. In fact, a recent survey by Econsultancy found that 47% of the companies it surveyed said they were “not able to measure” their campaigns and that “the jury is still out” on the value gained from their social media investment.

If you’re one of the people who isn’t measuring your social media campaigns on an ROI basis, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Here are some tips, advice, and a little bit of simple math to get you on the right path to ROI success.

Via: Mashable

10 Steps for Successful Social Media Monitoring

Here are some Social Media Monitoring strategies to try:

1. Define an Objective
2. Decide Where to Monitor
3. Decide What to Monitor
4. Prioritize
5. Develop a Plan
6. Involve Others
7. Listen First
8. Inbound vs. Outbound Conversations
9. Build Relationships
10. Select Tools that Match your Strategy

Via: Mashable

How 7 Startups Are Building Their Online Communities

Great post about online communities and how manage/grow them.

Community management is anything but a science. But, more and more startups are figuring out early on that defining what “community” means to their business, and then working to incorporate and respond to that community is an essential element in their growth and the maturation of their products.

What follows is an in-depth look at how seven startups at various stages of development are approaching community management. For some, the in-house Community Manager is a must. For others, it’s a bit of an all-hands-on-deck approach. Regardless of technique, you’ll find that each of these startups uses a combination of support software and social media tools to ensure that even if the customer isn’t always right, the customer is always heard.

A few themes resonate throughout these examples: make users happy, listen to everything, incorporate community feedback into product development when appropriate, and stop fretting over the trolls. These may all sound like simple truths, but it’s the continual practice and adherence to these purist community ideals that make them complex.

1. Pandora: Measure Success One Interaction at a Time
2. Shwowp: Make Your Users Happy
3. Seesmic: The Community Manages You
4. Disqus: Feedback is Never Lost
5. Posterous: Community Starts at the Top
6. Klout: Respond to Each and Every Request
7. Curate.us: Celebrate the Community

Via: Mashable

Dealing With Twitter Complaints

Here are some great steps on Mashable about dealing with Twitter complaints.

1. A Quick Response Goes a Long Way
2. You May Have To Respond As You, Not Your Company
3. Give Yourself More Than 140 Characters To Respond
4. Let Someone Else Respond For You
5. Know When To Let It Go

Via: Mashable

Top 5 Emerging Brand Trends on Facebook

1.) Facebook Exclusives
2.) Facebook Places Experimentation
3.) Facebook Commerce
4.) Facebook Support Centers
5.) Facebook Giving

Field of Dreams may have popularized the notion that, “If you build it, they will come,” but in today’s Facebook  generation, brands are beginning to go where the masses are, instead of relying on the masses to come to them. With 500 million members, Facebook represents real-time access to the online mainstream.

For years, brands have been using their Facebook Pages to connect with customers. As Facebook blossoms, so too does brand ingenuity, and in recent months we’ve seen a surge in campaigns that inspire Facebook giving, incorporate Facebook Places and feature Facebook as a prominent part of product reveals and fan exclusives. Application makers are also building tools that small and big brands alike can use to sell their products and offer Facebook-tailored customer support.

What follows is a deeper look at how and why these five emerging brand trends are bubbling up on the world’s largest social network.

Via: Mashable

5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now

What’s the first thing young women do when they wake up? Check Facebook. How do enterprise employees pass the time at work? With social media. With so many studies highlighting ever-accelerating social media usage rates, the conclusion is obvious — social media is everywhere.

What follows are five of the hottest social media trends right now. Each are influencing our social, online and mobile behaviors in significant ways.

Entertainment checkin services are changing the way we watch television. Mobile loyalty applications are helping us connect the dots between our real-world shopping behaviors and digital rewards. A new breed of Q&A services are changing the way we search. Barcode scanning applications are making products social, and deal-of-the-day sites are giving us ways to save by recruiting our friends to the party.

1. Social Scanning

2. Q&A and Intelligent Information Discovery

3. Group Buying

4. Mobile Meets Loyalty

5. Checking-In to Entertainment

via: Mashable

Buick Is Creating Brand Ambassadors Via Twitter

In this article from Social Fresh. Automaker Buick is doing its best to create brand advocates in order to revamp and redefine its mature image. Just a quick disclaimer the author of the post is currently working as a Buick Brand Ambassador in Chicago on behalf of the brand.

In an effort to reinvent the brand, Buick knows they have a lot of work to do. They want to trade in the old fuddy-duddy grandpa image that has plagued the brand for the last decade for a hipper more modern brand impression.

In August, AdAge reported Buick was the fastest growing car brand in the US, but they are still struggling to rid the brand of their dated image. It is a large effort that General Motors has undertaken to broaden the appeal of Buick. And just as they have been doing with Chevrolet, they are reaching out to social media to help change the public’s awareness of the brand.

Via: Social Fresh

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HOW TO: Avoid a Social Media Disaster

If there’s one thing that keeps social media marketers up at night, it’s the ever-present threat of a PR disaster. By now, every marketer is well-aware of how quickly dissatisfied consumers can turn to the social airwaves to vent about a brand. Nestle, BP, Domino’s, Southwest Airlines, and many other brands have witnessed the unbridled power of social media as a platform for disgruntled consumers to rally around an anti-brand cause.

1.) Create a Social Media Policy/Community Management Plan
2.) Have an Escalation Plan
3.) Plan for the Worst – Expect the Best
4.) Respond Quickly, Personally and Directly
5.) Don’t Play the Blame Game

Via: Mashable

Why Some Companies Don’t Get Social Media

1. Senior executives don’t use or get social media. If you’re an older, hard-working senior executive, you probably don’t have the time to really check out social media.

2. There is no simple way to measure ROI. If companies are trying to apply traditional ROI metrics to social media, it’s a lot like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. Social media is a different beast with “hard” and “soft” metrics.

3. Many companies cling to belief that if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it. With the global economy appearing to be in recovery mode, many companies have been able to stick with traditional marketing and advertising tools.

4. As Lee Oden also pointed out, many companies have a difficult time trying to understand that social media means they have to change their behaviour.

5. The social media ecosystem has done a pretty lousy job of putting the spotlight on social media “success”.

Via: Sysomos blog

Dominos UK Social Media Initiatives Help Increase Profits by 29%

According to Domino’s UK financial earnings report, the company has increased its pre-tax profit by nearly 29%, which equates to roughly $26 million. The UK pizza retailer attributes social media initiatives and its Foursquare promotion for the gains.

In the earnings statement, CEO Chris Moore points to the rise in online orders — which now account for 32.7% of all orders — as proof that their web and social media efforts are paying off.

Moore reports that when it comes to the web, “Our main Facebook site now has in excess of 36,000 fans In addition, we have led the way with social media initiatives such as affiliate marketing, our superfans programme and the development of a link up with Foursquare.”

Via: Mashable