Does anyone "like" your business?

It’s no secret that Chandelier Communications believes in the power of conversation but many businesses (including a few of my clients) are still wondering why they should care about social media and how their own companies can benefit from becoming a part of the 2.0 marketing world. It is also no secret that anyone with a set of fingers, a computer and an internet connection can have a blog, Facebook page, twitter account and so on; so what’s the benefit from outsourcing another company to manage the strategy behind it? Well, that’s your answer. Strategy.
It takes more than fingers and a computer to develop 2.0 strategies, just like traditional marketing concepts, it takes creative direction, ingenuity and commitment to make a cohesive social media identity work. Now, that’s not to say that individual business owners and companies can’t do well at it on their own, there are plenty of companies that are success stories in their own right. However, I have found that for many of our clients that an overall lack of knowledge and/or desire was the driving force behind their lack of social media initiatives. Some had started their Facebook and Twitter pages and then lost interest and others were too consumed with the struggles running a business in a failing economy to dedicate time. There are of course companies and services out there that will never find value in Facebook and Twitter as they are not consistent with their brand statement or company goals. That portion of social media is not always relevant for everyone; but that doesn’t completely count those companies out, there are many ways to utilize video podcasts, blogs, YouTube, etc where Facebook and Twitter have lacked in relevancy.
The last and maybe most important questions we have been posed with is “What is the value or ROI of Social Media? And “How do I measure the ROI of social media?” And these are great questions that companies should be asking. Unfortunately, there is no one answer. While we can certainly obtain some metrics through tools like Twitter Search and Google Analytics, some of social media is simply about building goodwill and nurturing relationships. Like the good old-fashioned golf game and the “Let’s Do Lunch” strategy, people like connecting with people. To a certain extent it would be like me asking you to quantify the value of all your business relationships, you know that there is value there but it might be difficult to put a number on it. The trick is to not rely solely on the numbers, but on what the numbers end up leading to. For instance, does your increase in website visitors correlate with higher sales? Are people that find your website from Twitter or Facebook then clicking on your product pages or going to the e-Commerce section of your site? That’s the sort of data you want to be able to look for, as that is the data that truly matters. Just like with any marketing or advertising campaign your company develops or initiates, at the end of the day you should be able to see the value it has added. It’s as simple as that.

Here are some stats that we found particularly interesting on the ROI (return on investment) of social media

1. Over 300,000 businesses have a presence on Facebook and roughly a 1/3 of these are small businesses.

2. Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice Facebook program incented users to give up ten of their Facebook friends in return for a free Whopper. The estimated investment for this program was less than $50,000 yet they received 32 million media impressions which roughly estimated equals greater than $400,000 in press/media value. Which to put in context is somewhat like reaching the entire populations of 19 states (understanding this doesn’t account for unique vs. repeat visitors, etc.)

3. BlendTec increased its sales 5x by running the often humorous “Will it Blend” Videos on YouTube blending everything from an iPhone to a sneaker.

4. Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter.

5. Naked Pizza, a New Orleans Pizzeria that specializes in healthy pies, set a one day sales record using social media. In fact 68% of their sales came from people “calling in from Twitter.” And 85% of their new customers were from Twitter. So, yes, social media does work for small businesses.

6. Tweets for a Cause sent out a tweet from Atlanta to encourage support of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. As a result of retweets, the Atlanta Chapter site received 11,000 visitors in 24 hours as a result of this initiative by ResponseMine Interactive.

7. During Barack Obama’s rise to the White House, he garnered 5 million fans on social media and 5.4 million clicked on an “I voted for Obama” Facebook button. Most importantly this resulted in three million online donors contributing $500 million in fundraising. An astounding 92% of the donations were in increments of less than $100.

8. The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center witnessed a 9.5% increase in registrations by using social media.

9. eBay found that participants in online communities spend 54% more money.

10. 71% of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40% because: a) Low Cost Marketing b) Getting Traction c) We Have To Do It.

Basically, if you are not using social media, then begin now. Because today, people want to get excited. They want to engage in dialogues with the companies that they support. So, to thrive and grow you must use social media to create exciting ideas and to stimulate conversations and to build online brands with which people have passionate love affairs. Social media has become the great equalizer as it allows every business to leverage huge numbers of people by creating an online community and generating excitement around its brand.

Is your company making the most of its social media potential?