Conference Buddies

Social Media ROI: What, How, Why

Panelist(s): Rob Hahn, Jim Marks, Sherry Chris, Mike Simonsen, Dan Green
@mikesimonsen
@BHGRE_Sherry
@jimmarks
@mortgagereports

What is an ROI?

Traditional ROI = Return on Investment
Social Media ROI = Return on Influence

ROI is a measure on traffic, clicks, and dollars. The basics of ROI is that, how much money you put in is how much you get in return. It can be summed up as such:

Time invested and sphere of influence put into Social Media => Return on Influence => Return on Investment

Time Spent on Social Media

To give a perspective on how social media works, Dan Green provided his background on his foray into social media. When he first started social media interactions, it took 18 months to get the first lead. Now he spends on average: 132 minutes per day or 13.5 hours per week on blog, twitter, facebook (essentially equating to about 1/4 of a week on social media). The pay off is that he’s closed over 100 real estate deals via social media contacts.

Another one of the panelists stated that it took 6 months of blogging before receiving his first lead, and now he’s gotten 4 real estate deals of $300K each.

The success isn’t to say that you make your conversions on social media. It’s a way to market yourself, gain access, garner contacts, and eventually close the deal. Traditional means such as a phone call or a face-to-face meeting are still necessary in closing the deal.

Structure Strategy, and Direction

Jim Marks states that for a successful social media effort, you need a structure, strategy, and direction. If you don’t know the direction you’re going in everyday, you have to change your strategy. Blogging works, since a byproduct of blogs results in traffic and conversions. Aim to bring online clients offline. Create relationships.

Corporate Blogging and Social Media

Sherry Chris says that getting approval for a Corporate Blog maybe difficult. However, the payoff could be substantial. For example: using BHGRealEstateBlog.com and through “tweeting”, it resulted in closing a $13M business deal.

Some tips for Twitter :

• When retweeting, use a teaser
• Give a reason to click on the link
• Lead them towards a means to close the deal

Moderator:
Rae Hoffman

Speakers:
Brent Csutoras, Social Media Marketing Consultant, Brent Csutoras, Inc
Jen Miller, Manager, Delta.com Onsite Marketing & Content, iProspect
Dave Snyder, Co-Founder, Search & Social

Think social media has nothing to do with search? Think again.

QDF = Query Deserved Freshness

Social Signals (What are the signals?)

• Engagement
• Methods and systems for personalized network searching
• Relevancy Feedback Indicators
• Upstream and Downstream data (where you go)
• User Reviews (how people rate things)

Drive Early Traffic from Twitter

• Plan out your campaign
• Utilize well crafted DMs
• Engage Top Users
• Track via Query String Paramenters
• Add Retweet Capabilities to the page (add retweet badges)
• Control the bookmarking of your site (Delicious)
• Increase use of site (javascript)
• Add Engagement Points (i.e. video, voting, widgets, quizzes, review)

Speaker: Brent Csutoras

Using Stumble Upon!

Stumble Upon is a social aggregation site, showing users popular content based on votes.
Stumble Upon will only show a page once per person (category with 30 people, only 30 visits)

2 Ways To Add:

• Browser Tool Bar
• StumbleUpon.com/submit

Tagging:

• StumbleUpon.com/ads
• Be targeted, pick the right category or you will get negative reviews
• Cross tagging
• Look at what other people are tagging, edit yours

Add and make friends:

• Subscribers, testimonials, votes
• Post to your blog
• Vote videos and photos
• Tag and Review
• Choose a niche

Tips:

• Don’t review the same site multiple times, this looks like spam (by promoting yourself)
• Avoid patterns in voting, discoveries, shares (i.e. It looks like spam if you only stumble friends, click on the same button too many times in a row, or discover too much from one section)
• Choose and Use the Right Tags
• Most importantly…Make Your Profile Rock!

Speaker: Dave Snyder

Creative Commons license:

• Find pictures
• Use their picture in your article (we liked your picture, featured in our article and gave you credit) – they may link to you. They are pro amateurs (but not pros – top professionals won’t let you use their photos).
• Join flickr, start contributing, creative commons commercial reuse picture work the best

Speaker: Jen Miller, Delta.com

Integration is key to success

Interlinking tactics:

• Target keyword list & link to main site
• Blog links to YouTube & Flickr
• Links back to specific blog post

Tracking & Listening Tactics:

• Measure with a dashboard
• Action on key metrics
• Give ‘em more! They’ll talk and link

Other tactics:

• Be flexible
• Specify Goals
• Cross promote
• Give customers what they want

SESSION LEADER:
Shelly Palmer, Managing Director, Advanced Media Ventures

Propagate your intellectual property = more value

Currency/Value:

• self-selected groups (subscribers)
• attention
• passion
• fame
• intention (Google profits from visitors intention to find/search)
• respect
• things that make your quality of life better

Translate Value Into Wealth

The speed of information is directly related to economic wealth

Social Media

• MySpace = Good for music business, bands
• LinkedIn = don’t put pic if you want to be hired, too much legal liability
• Twitter
  • mico-blogging generating micro-fame
  • a tweet is a blog post
  • tweet value and make it personalized

Social Bookmarking: Turning monetize information into knowledge

Digital communication is faster, not more effective – Quick does not mean good

Websites should be straight forward on your purpose and self-persentation without many clicks deep.

SESSION LEADER:
Paul Pangaro, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CTO, CyberneticLifestyles.com

Conversational Marketing/Media

How do we design for conversation? By Applying Cybernetics:

• Science of “getting what you want”
• Helps us to understand, navigate & regulate complex systems
• encompasses individual, social & technical aspects includes a branch called “conversation theory”

1. What are the goals?
2. How do we measure if we’re on course?
3. What are the levers?

Context (Advertising Media) > Shared Language > Action > Reaction > Action > Exchange > Agreement > Transaction

These fundamentals will not change:

• Brands want consumers to buy
• Consumers need to believe by buying they will get what they want

1. Join the converstaions
2. Understand which conversations can be influenced
3. Facilitate productive conversations

Customer terms/language: consumer need-states, wants & desires

• then can communicate want to brand, want experience

Enticement to be engage: collaboration, voting, commenting

Agreement = common history, trust built, beliefs are validated or changed

P2P (Person to Person) + Internal Conversations are needed to ensure beliefs are shared

Trust is Established:

• History ensures compatible goals
• Sets expectations for future conversations
• Trust is powerful – it lowers risk & saves time

Transactions:

• Ability to coordinate beliefs with customers in order to lead to actions/transactions

Conversation Relationship Management – Relationship History Trust > Lifetime Value > Infrastructure of Commerce:

1. Context
2. Language
3. Exchange
4. Agreement
5. Transaction

How to find the right moment to present & engage?

All successful evolution is co-evolution: each participant must change in response to the other

• Conversation is the most efficient means to co-evolution
• Design for conversation = viability today & tomorrow

Are you sincere in your message? Truthful?

Conversation Engagement Other Than Twitter, Facebook, etc:

• Suggestion Box
• Widget Platforms

SESSION LEADER:
Conor Brady, Chief Creative Officer, Organic

SESSION PARTICIPANTS:
Niels Aillaud, Senior Manager Digital Marketing, LG Electronics
Scott Briskman, VP, Executive Creative Director, Agency.com San Francisco
Jared Cluff, VP, User Acquisition, Ask.com
John Rabasa, Executive VP, Managing Director, Publicis Modem West

1. Markets are conversations, but make sure you are invited
2. Social Media is about 2 things: context & people
3. Participation is good, but creative participation is better
4. A good campaign is organic, and will want to keep going
5. If your brand is friended, be a friend back: commitment to be active in the community

Start with one channel for testing, the top performers will be expanded & built-on to the next medium/channel. Examples include:

LG Phone:

• From Micro-Site to Facebook
• Viral Marketing on YouTube to Landing Page to Micro-Site

Ask.com:

• Display Ads (Simple Flash) to Rich Media (Video Banner: 15 sec.) to TV
• TV advertising included:
  1. Contextual Crawls: Bottom Third of TV (performed 4 times better than commercial spots)
  2. Commercials: 15 sec. spots
  • Ask.com: evoke curiosity
  • LG Phone: top fashion theme

Creative & Strategic Capital: new way of integrated marketing

Relevance between message to audience

MODERATOR:
Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB

PANELISTS:
Neil Ashe, President, CBS Interactive
Jeff Berman, President of Sales and Marketing, MySpace
Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO, Denuo
Carol Kruse, VP, Global Interactive Marketing, The Coca-Cola Company

Coca-Cola (Brand Company):

Involved in social media, mobile, consumer control media

Fox:

Involved in consumer insights, mobile (5 fold increase), MySpace

What consumers are doing

Word of Mouth, Social Media

• Most speak about and heavy users are the most vocal & usually negative
• Last users are most important

Engagement

Behavior shows that people want utility not engagement

Advocates (FANS) vs. Detractors in Social Media

Social Media:

• Keep/Maintain the communication between campaigns
• Communication Marketing/Planning
• Improve Product, Customer Service, Provide Utility (new & useful to community) > Friendship Trust > Ongoing Conversion

Social Media = young & hysterical

• Not collected/sophisticated/well-dressed
• Less campaigns & more ecosystems

Search: direct market (metrics)

Creativity:

• Content, create interest = brand (know who you are)
• New ideas & combinations/integration
• Media is the new creative
• The key is to enhance user experience

The importance of integration between art and science/technology.

Using technology to enable the capturing & allowing what people want to do.

Content is King while Context is Queen: need to go together in order for it to work

MODERATOR:
Seth Goldstein, Co-Founder and CEO, SocialMedia

PANELISTS:
Mike Hoefflinger, Director of Brand Product Marketing, Facebook
Andy Mitchell, VP, Interactive Marketing, CNN Worldwide
Randi Zuckerberg, Director of Market Development, Facebook

Social Media Engagement:

• Be genuine for the medium
• Challenge yourself
• There will be mistakes but learn
• Set ambitious goals
• Creative with audience mindset
• Creative test plan
• Have plan B

Engagement Ads:

• What is in it for them? Providing something, not necessarily free promos, incentives, exclusive content (ie. taking fans behind the scenes)
• Asking questions for engagement
• Think 360: cross promote in different channels (ie. Facebook to website/TV, TV to Facebook)

Utilizing Social Media and Web 2.0 to Market Your Business – Miva Merchant 2009
Speaker: Hal Lublin, President, BuzzBuilderz

Conference Notes:

• Social Media = People driven, social, collaborative
• Estimated search engine marketing spend is $11B in 2010 = SEM (Search Engine Marketing Professional)
• 65% of people feel constantly bombarded with too much marketing and advertising and consider to be out of control (Forrester)
• Average person receives 70 spam emails a day (McAfee)
• Become Part of the Community
• Physical networking is being replaced by social marketing
• Create a professional profile
• Frolleagues = colleagues who send friendship requests
• Plaxo = Professional Profile
• Facebook = Personal Profile + fan page for business
• MySpace
• Yelp = Local businesses
• LinkedIn = Professional Profile
• BLIP.fm = Music Social Network
• Seesmic = Video
• BriteKite = GeoTagging
• Flikr = photo sharing (shared to twitter and blog)
• 12seconds.tv = Video (documentally = funny)

Twitter Corporate Voice Examples:

• Better Homes and Gardens
• BHGrealestate
• WholeFoods
• TravelChannel
• Comcast Cares

A Few Twitter Tools:

Twirl, TweetDeck, SocialTool, Twengager, TwitterFeed.com (blog)

Other Social Examples:

Coke Cola Blog
AMEX Open Network (Small businesses)
Miamism.com (Miami Blog)

Reputation Management Cycles:

Profile -> Identity -> Reputation -> Trust

What are you posting and sharing:

Digg, Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon

Social Tips:

• Claim your handle
• Create a profile that can be replicated across several platforms
• Be Genuine
• Be Consistent
• Have Fun
• Listen & Read First
• Try things – You cannot break the Internet

Other Tools:

Checkusername.com = check if your username is taken across other social media sites
squarespace = blog service

Use LinkedIn/Facebook/Yelp to Create Your Web Presence + 20 More Sites

Nicole Nicolay, Effektive Solutions
Rick Rochon, AdSymetrix.com

Rick Rochon:

Social Marketing Puzzle

• Web 2.0 Terms
• Creating a Web presence
• Blogging for business
• Social Networking
• Social Media
• Taking online … offline
• Monitoring what others are saying

Social Marketing Puzzle:

• Your Business   -> $$$
• Your Content -> www, video, blog
• Their Content -> content around your content -> consumer opinion, blogs and websites, Favorites

How we used to Market:  (Print, Broadcast, Mail)

How we can market now?

Don’t stop offline areas, instead add new things to the Mix

Nicole Nicolay:

Web2.0 – Online interaction

• Social Networks
• Social Media / New Media (Video, podcasts, blogs, comments, twitter, etc.)
• Blog vs. Website  (one s static, and one is updated frequently)
• RSS -> Really Simple Syndication – Flow of information (TV, Newspaper, etc.  now online feeds, subscribe to websites and blogs)
• SEO -> optimize website get on search engines
• Blogging for Business

Why blog?

• Enhance your online presence
• Build a community
• Share your knowledge
• Enhance your credibility
• SEO, Search Engine Optimization
• Turn blog traffic into business

State of the Blogosphere: (Technorati):

• 1.5 M blogs created in last 7 days
• 77% of internet users read blogs
• Over 184 million blogs have been created since 2002

Blog’s:  Easily consumable, easily digestible by Search Engines.

Some Syndication Tools:

zecoda and feed blitz = blog tools to syndicate content

Offer freebies, advice, to collect users

5 Steps to Create your Blog

1. Go to WordPress
2. Sign up for account
3. Choose your domain & blog name
4. Activate account
5. Start blogging

Things to Keep in Mind for a Blog

• Target Your Audience
• Grow You Readership
• Write good content with your keywords (Natural… not stuffing!)
• Post frequently 3-5x a week
• Encourage readers to subs to your newsletter (freebie)
• Submit your blg to directories: google, yahoo, dmoz, blogged, etc.
• Foster community with commenting your and others
• Link to others within content or blogroll (related, higher rank)
• Employ backlink strategies (beg, borrow and make badges)
• Spread the love and good content w/guest posting
• Tag your posts
• Aggregate your blog content on your social profiles
• Cross promotions (online/offline)

Misc Tips:

• Don’t make it a mystery for users to get a hold of you or buy
• Analyzing your readers:
  Click Analytics:  getclicky.com and google.com/analytics
• Don’t cut marketing

The most successful companies

Facebook:

• Over 110 million active users
• 4th most trafficked social media site in the world
• Over 55K regional, work related, collegiate, and high school networks
• More than 30M photos uploaded
• Over 24,000 applications

Linked In:

• Profile oriented for professionals
• Asking questions, answering questions, join groups

Flickr:

• For your photos/images
• Social network around your photos
• Groups
  Throw events, give cards out

ITunes for podcasts:

• Hardware Mic: Snowball
• Software: audacity
• or use…Blog talk radio

Flip TheFlip.com ($179) (minnow) – one click to YouTube

• Create 1 best video
• Creating your own Ads
• Automatically upload to YouTube

Other misc:

• SpotMixer.com
• Animoto.com

Taking Online … Offline

• Eventbrite.com  (workshop, seminar, etc.  for knowledge expert on topic)
• Meetup.com

Web Monitoring:

• Yelp.com
• Google.com/alerts

Plan, Place, Perfect – Create your web presence plan

• blogging
• commenting
• social networking
• social media: pictures, podcast, video

Q & A:

Handling a Negative review on Yelp:

• Read the Yelp business rules
• Don’t call the user directly or their boss, that violates the Yelp business rules
• Contact yelp customer service / legal

Other

Recommended length of a podcast  = 1 Min. for initial one.   Then create a longer one for a deeper one for those users interested.

TBD.com is the social network aimed toward the older generation

I attended the SES conference in San Jose. Here are key notes from the conference that you may find informative:

Summary: Measuring Success In a 2.0 World

1. Ask client questions – ask how, why, what if
2. Segment the segment: Slice up the data and ask more questions to understand the context / what is the story the data is telling
3. Web 2.0 is a movement from static web pages to empowering people to contribute/participate
4. Social media traffic comes mostly from other social media site and not from search
5. Do not concentrate so much on traditional analytics/numbers but the trends and what is the story or consumer behavior. When the people click on the Blog, why and what for – what is the intent?
6. Analytics = no current metric system will help you tell the story. Expert panel still has to use Excel to crunch the data and help tell the client story. Better to hire an analyst than to upgrade software at this time.