Large consumer giants like Coke and Unilever are switching up their digital strategy again. According to a recent article from New Media Age, Coca-Cola and Unilever are shifting their digital focus away from traditional campaign sites and towards community platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, as social media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010. This move comes as no surprise as many companies are now relying on full-throttle, web strategies and not just a corporate website. Microsites will not be eliminated completely, but rather serve as a method to drive users ...

In my previous post about social media ROI,  I talked about establishing a baseline as one of the first steps. Remember, after you establish your baseline it's important to track those metrics on a monthly basis. The next step in calculating social media ROI is to create and maintain a time line of all of your marketing activities. By creating a time line you can overlay your sales data and start to determine trends that will help you connect your investment to its impact on the bottom line (connect the "R" in ROI to the "I"). Start today and from this point forward record all ...

After you have defined goals for measuring social media ROI the next step is to establish a baseline, or internal audit, of where your organization stands now. You need to take an inventory of a variety of business variables (both financial and non financial) that you can use to determine social media's impact on the bottom line $$$. It is best to establish the baseline before implementing your social media strategy. However, if you are already engaging in social media it is still important to establish a baseline of where you stand right now so that you can best determine future ...

Before you can measure social media ROI you first need to define what you want to accomplish by setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-Bound) goals. In addition to being SMART, your goals also need to be tied to an impact on sales. As I discussed in my previous blog post about social media and ROI, decision makers don't care about engagements or conversations. They care about how your allocation of resources has either added to the bottom line $$$ or provided a cost savings. Primary social media ROI goals fall into three basic categories. Here are some ...

Measuring ROI of your social media marketing IS possible. You can focus your efforts on building a network of engaged, active customers AND you can measure how social media affects the bottom line. Also because social media is NOT free (see the diagram below) it is important to demonstrate this tactic's contribution to the bottom line in order to keep C-Level management happy and the budget allocations for social media flowing. So why then are 84% of social media programs not measuring ROI? I think it's due in part to a lack of understanding about the fundamentals of ROI. Defining ...

I am a huge fan of LinkedIn. I use it to connect with our clients as well as other thought leaders in the industry. One of my favorite aspects of the tool is the Answers section. Inquisitive by nature, over the past year I have asked and answered dozens of questions on topics related to web strategy and digital marketing. Traditionally when you ask a question you can anticipate answers from people with various levels of expertise and backgrounds which makes the information you learn more balanced. I am always pleasantly surprised at the quality and thoroughness of the answers people ...

Yesterday Google revealed additional details about the capabilities of their new Social Search which is available in Google Labs. As I discussed in my previous article, last week both Bing and Google announced they would be including status updates from Twitter and Facebook into their new real-time search capabilities, which will have a dramatic impact on search engine optimization. According to Mashable: Social search, demoed at the Web 2.0 Summit by Google’s VP of Search Marissa Mayer, combines results from your friend’s blogs, Flickr, Twitter, FriendFeed, and a wide variety of ...

Social media and SEO have taken another step closer toward being inseparable. With last week's major announcements from both Google and Bing (Microsoft), search engine rankings will now depend more heavily on updates from Facebook and Twitter. Both Google and Bing plan to include Twitter status updates as a part of their real-time search capabilities in an effort to improve usability. "We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make ...

As a social tool a blog is a great way to build relationships with customers and prospects. It is a way for marketers to remove the mask and be transparent.  In addition to the social benefits blogging can also offer, there are also other marketing advantages. If you don't already have a company blog here are five great reasons to start one. According to Hubspot's Blog Study and Technorati's 2009 State of the Blogosphere Report blogs can offer organizations: 1. Amplified Website Traffic Websites with blogs have 55% more visitors than those who don't, fueled by 97% more inbound links, and ...

A new study from comScore and GroupM Search reveals further evidence that social media exposure and search behavoir are intrinsically connected. The study shows consumers who are using social media are far more engaged with brands than those who don't and are much more likely to proactively search for brands. Key findings from the study include: Consumers exposed to a brand’s influenced social media and paid search are 2.8x more likely to search for that brand. There was a 50% CTR increase in paid search when consumers were exposed to both influenced social media and paid ...