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Measuring social media may test your mettle

Stand by for the real results

Industrial business owners ask me, what can I expect in return for my investment of time and company resources in social media? Are the results measurable? Will it add to my bottom line? I realize that for some of you, having an answer to those basic questions has to be the place to start. You gotta know if this stuff makes sense for a small industrial business. Besides, if you decide it is, you’re going to need help getting everybody else on board with social media later. Particularly when you accept how important they are to your overall success. You think, well, if I could get warm leads— sure! Others with more sophisticated marketing discipline would be happy with semi-reliable data illustrating customer sentiment, behavior and preferences. That would go miles to convince even the most fervent skeptic of social media’s value. But, I am here to tell you, that’s not going to happen just yet.

Situation analysis

First, consider this post an important preface to the next and last step of the Bastard’s series: Plan social media strategies like any other major initiative. I tee-up the subject of measurement and ROI in this post and then in the next, run through the process and the metrics that are available to you.

This series was conceived to be a seven-step argument for taking care in adopting a social media program. To be credible, I felt that it had to address measurement and ROI. Otherwise, I surmised, the series could not be considered a legitimate marketing initiative. I mean, if you get nothing in return, or if there were no way to track the response or impact, why would you participate? Don’t we need a way to track social media in order to understand how it works?

The quest for answers

As I approached step seven I, again, checked my sources on the state of social media. (As you might guess there’s a zillion bits of information written on the topic. Some very compelling.) But I had to keep asking, “Is this relevant?” Does that make sense for small niche businesses with unsophisticated marketing practices? I still believe it does.

Think about how email evolved—beginning as a text-only medium. The real utility emerged after a period of adoption, experimentation and then widespread use. Now with links, and video and campaigns we use email to tee-up many types of marketing initiatives and we can measure it six ways to Sunday. Social media will most certainly take the same path. Aren’t you glad you adopted email?

The early adopters of social media are still busy experimenting, pushing the limits, and trying to figure out what can be done with all the power of the network. The big brands are toying with it as well, but mostly they are monitoring—trying to listen and learn from it all. You should do the same: Get involved at comfortable rate—experiment, watch and listen. Our questions about ROI are well taken, but the answers—the real results—will remain elusive for a while yet.

We know that social media is dominated by non-business communication. Next, most of the news articles and blogs and websites that cover social media development view it in the context of the commercial, or maybe more specifically, the “e-commerce” web of the Internet. These are the clicks that make up the most monitored, and measured of all purchasing behavior. It’s very difficult separating the wheat from the chaff to find the relevance to niche industry.

Meanwhile, industry is jogging in place on the sidelines. Some of the big brands are in it with both feet but they’re only a couple clicks away from their B2C customers. They also realize (and probably benefit from—we don’t really know) the spill over to their B2B audiences as well.

Social media is a fast moving target, and it’s extremely young in the scheme of things. There’s a lot of activity. Lots of watching, listening and monitoring. Social media occupies the Internet so well the trend is guaranteed limitless boundaries. It’s too easy to participate, to cheap to ignore. Relax, don’t let it test your mettle—it’s a party we’ve just started to plan.

HIT Solutions believes the more your business keeps up with important trends, the more you will be “improving your product, improving your bottom line.”

Stay tuned for step seven where I will wrap up this series. Feel free to send me your comments or questions.

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