Are you interested in learning how to set-up, launch and run an effective social media campaign?

In my book, How to Make Money with Social Media, I provide a series of tips on how to manage a social media campaign that actually generates revenue. The book is designed to help business people (like you) who are interested in creating ROI-based social media campaigns.

(Special thanks goes out to BKV Digital and Direct Response, the parent of the 60 Second Marketer, for allowing me the flexibility to write the book.)

Business people don't do social media to be social -- we do it to grow sales and revenues. Here's a step-by-step plan to help get you get going.

What follows is a checklist of questions you should ask yourself before, during and after you set up your campaign. Think of this as a roadmap designed to get you on the right path.

Here goes:

The Preliminaries:

• I’ve conducted a review of my company’s business and understand its mission, goals and objectives
• I’ve conducted a review of my company’s sales program and understand how a prospect is brought into the sales funnel and converted into a customer
• I’ve conducted a review of my company’s marketing program and understand what role the marketing program plays in the overall success of the company
• I’ve conducted a review of the strategies, tactics and tools involved in a social media campaign and understand what role each of those strategies, tactics and tools plays in a well-run social media program
• After doing all of this, I’ve asked myself (again), “Is social media right for my company?” If I’ve concluded that it is, I’ve moved on to the next steps

The Competitive Landscape:

• I’ve reviewed the overall strengths and weaknesses of my company’s top 5 competitors
• I’ve reviewed the sales and marketing efforts of my top 5 competitors
• I’ve analyzed the specific social media campaigns being conducted by my top 5 competitors
• I’ve created a list of social media strategies and tactics that my competitors are using that appear to be effective
• I’ve created a list of social media strategies and tactics that my competitors are using that appear to be ineffective
• I’ve joined my competitor’s LinkedIn groups, Facebook pages, YouTube channels, Twitter accounts and other social media member sites my competitors are running
• I’ve set up Google Web Alerts and Blog Alerts to send me notifications any time my competitor, my industry or my company is mentioned in blogs or articles online

Your Internal Management Team:

• I’ve asked the social media proponents in my organization to be advocates for my program. I’ve asked them to be engaged in any way they can to help my social media program succeed
• I’ve identified people within my organization who might not be social media advocates and have begun a program to help them understand the value a well-run social media program can bring to our company
• I’ve assembled a team to help me set-up, run and manage the social media program for my company
• I’ve asked each team member to buy How to Make Money with Social Media to ensure we’re all working from the same play book. (That’s a joke. Kind of.)

Setting Yourself Up for Success:

• I’ve assembled a social media team to help me execute my program. (Your team can be as small as 1 or as large as 100+)
• I’ve set Specific Measurable Actionable Realistic and Timebound Goals (S.M.A.R.T. Goals) for my social media campaign
• I’ve reviewed my S.M.A.R.T. goals with my team and encouraged feedback and input
• I’ve done an in-depth analysis of my target market and have a genuine understanding of who they are and what makes them tick
• I’ve set-up my social media campaign so that it can be measured
• I’ve conducted a review of each of the three categories of social media platforms – networking platforms, promotion platforms and sharing platforms
• I’ve developed a strategic framework for my social media campaign that will help me accomplish my overall business goals
• I’ve developed a tactical framework for my social media campaign that will help me accomplish my strategic goals
• I’ve developed an executional framework for my social media program that will help me accomplish my tactical goals
• I’ve aligned my social media campaign with my overall branding campaign so that they’re essentially one-and-the-same

The Days Prior to Launch:

• I understand that a social media campaign is an ongoing process and can’t be executed in “5 minutes a day.” As such, I’ve allocated a realistic and reasonable amount of time to execute my program.

• In an effort to get started quickly, I’ve completed the following tasks:
  • I’ve updated my company’s LinkedIn profile
  • I’ve joined several LinkedIn Groups within my industry
  • I’ve created a Facebook business page
  • I’ve set up a Twitter account
  • I’ve followed several hundred other people on Twitter who are in my industry or have similar interests
  • I’ve incorporated a blog into my website
  • I’ve created a YouTube channel
  • I’ve created a MySpace page
  • I’ve created an eNewsletter for my customers and prospects using ConstantContact, ExactTarget or iContact
  • I’ve updated our company profile on Wikipedia
  • I’ve opened accounts on Flickr, SmugMug and Picassa
  • I’ve uploaded content to Slideshare, Scribd and Slideo
  • I’ve added Feedback, Uservoice or Get Statisfaction to my website
  • I’ve investigated and incorporated accounts on other social media platforms including hi5, Xanga, Plaxo, Xing, Ning and Friendster
  • I’ve expanded my social media campaign into the mobile media world by creating a mobile website, exploring the use of mobile advertising and claiming my business on platforms like FourSquare, Facebook Places and Gowalla

The First 30 Days:

• I’ve committed myself to the following goals for the first 30 days of my social media campaign:

• • I’ll update my company’s LinkedIn profile once every 2 weeks with news and information about my company
  • I’ll visit LinkedIn.com/Answers and answer 1 to 5 questions each day
  • I’ll update my Facebook business page several times a week (at a minimum)
  • I’ll send out helpful, interesting Tweets anywhere from 10 to 20 times a day
  • I’ll write 2 to 3 blog posts a week (none of which will be about our company Holiday party or our CEO’s trip to the convention)
  • I’ll comment on 5 blog posts a week with a relevant, insightful comment
  • I’ll upload a series of YouTube videos designed to provide value to our customers and prospects
  • I’ll update my company’s MySpace page with relevant posts and content that will help build awareness for my company’s product or service
  • I’ll upload photographs on Flickr, SmugMug and Picassa that are business-oriented and that help sell my product or service (no summer party photos, please).
  • I’ll upload content to Slideshare, Scribd or Slideo once or twice a month during the launch of the campaign
  • I’ll respond to the Feedback, Uservoice or Get Statisfaction comments left on my site within 24 hours of receipt

Measuring Your Success:

• I understand that social media can help me with customer retention and customer acquisition
• I’ve installed Google Analytics, Omniture or CoreMetrics on my website so I can track inbound traffic and analyze when and how a prospect converts to a customer
• I’m prepared to generate weekly and monthly reports that highlight the success of our social media program
• I’m continuously testing my social media program so that I can improve the results and generate an increasingly robust return on investment

This step-by-step program is designed to give you a roadmap for setting up, launching and running a social media campaign. The steps outline here will also be featured in my book, “How to Make Money with Social Media” which will be published by the Financial Times Press in October.

Are there any steps that are missing? If so, let me know.

Onward.

Posted by: Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer, the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response

There’s really only one important thing to measure in a social media campaign. Do you know what that is?

I’ll give you a hint — your CFO is very interested in this metric. As is your CEO. As is your CMO. (By the way, whenever a CFO, or a CEO or a CMO is interested in something, you should be interested in it, too.)

What's the point of running a social media campaign if you're not going to measure the results?

Do you know what the only really important metric is in social media? You guessed it — your return on investment (ROI). Every other thing you can measure in a social media campaign is just a stop along the way.

In previous posts, we’ve listed all the different things you can measure in a social media campaign. The problem is that there are so many metrics, they can get confusing pretty quickly.

For example, here’s a short list of just some of the things that can be measured in a social media campaign:

• Twitter followers
• Facebook fans
• Comments
• Social bookmarks
• Pageviews
• Inbound links
• Click-throughs
• Leads generated
• Ratings
• Downloads
• Conversions
• CPM
• Likes/Favorites
• Uploads
• Growth rate of fans, followers and friends
• Online mentions across blogs, microblogs, message boards, etc.
• Geographic distribution of mentions
• Demographics of followers, fans and subscribers
• Positive sentiment surrounding your brand
• Negative sentiment surrounding your brand
• Viral video activity
• Bounce rate

As you can see, there are so many different metrics that it gets pretty confusing after a while. Which is why Dr. Reshma Shah and I developed a way to group these metrics into buckets that allow you to wrap your mind around them and use them effectively.

The groups are discussed in-depth in our upcoming book “How to Make Money with Social Media” which will be published by the Financial Times in October, but here’s a sneak peak.

All social media metrics can be divided into three important categories:

1. Quantitative metrics: These are the social media metrics that are quantitative in nature. By that, we mean the metrics that simply measure data and have very little emotional content around them. They include items like the number of Twitter followers, the number of inbound links, the geographic distribution of mentions, the click-through rates and other items that are data-centric in nature.
2. Qualitative metrics: These are the social media metrics that are qualitative in nature. By that, we mean that they provide information about the emotions, thoughts and the intensity of feelings about your product or service. (For example, if the word “cheap” is used to describe your brand, that’s very different than if the word “inexpensive” is used.)
3. ROI metrics: These are the social media metrics that help you track your progress towards your ultimate goal, which is to make money with social media. They include metrics like leads generated, customers retained, prospects converted and, most importantly, profits generated.

You could argue that the ROI metrics are quantitative in nature — and they are — but they’re important enough that they deserve their own bucket so that they can get the attention they deserve.

In upcoming posts, we’ll cover a lot more on the subject of measuring social media. But for now, take a spin through the list of social media metrics above and drop them into one of the three buckets. I suspect you’ll find that they’re much easier to wrap your mind around them once you’ve started categorizing them as quantitative, qualitative and ROI-specific metrics.

Onward.

Posted by: Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer, 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response

By Jamie Turner

Chief Content Officer, 60 Second Marketer

The 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media Measurement are a short list of the most common mistakes people make around measuring social media. It’s a good idea to be aware of these as you move forward. After all, it’s sometimes easier to learn from others’ mistakes than from their successes.

• Deadly Sin #1: Not Measuring Your Social Media Campaign. Not measuring anything around your social media campaign is … well, not very smart. Surprisingly, there are a good number of people who dive into social media without setting up a plan for measurement first. Remember, set your business objectives first and then to set up how your going to measure against those objectives. We think of this as taking a step back before you take a step forward. It’s a good approach.
• Deadly Sin #2: Measuring Everything. Social media is digital in nature, so just about anything can be tracked. You can keep an eye on uploads, downloads, ratings, comments, bookmarks, fans, followers and a whole slew of other things. But if you don’t have a plan behind what you’re measuring, you’ll end up with too much data. Believe it or not, you can run a successful social media campaign by keeping track of as few as 5 to 10 key metrics.
• Deadly Sin #3: Measuring Just to Measure. Don’t just measure something because you can. After all, there’s no point in having information if you don’t also have insight. Take the data that you have and spend some time developing insights around that data. For example, don’t just track the data that shows the average person only visits 1.5 pages on your site. Try to understand why they only visit 1.5 pages, then try to get them to increase their page views to 2.0 per visit and more.
• Deadly Sin #4: Measuring the Wrong Thing. It’s easy to get distracted with social media. The result of that is that many people go off on tangents and measure things that don’t lead towards making money. For our purposes, the only reason to run a social media campaign is to make money, so be sure what you’re measuring leads you in that direction.
• Deadly Sin #5: Not Tracking Your Progress. If you’re taking the time and trouble to measure something, be sure you can compare it to past performance. That way, once you see improvement over time, you can go into the CEO and say, “See? I told you this social media stuff works. Here’s proof, Mr. Big Shot.” (Please be advised: Don’t call your CEO “Mr. Big Shot” unless, a) he’s a man, and b) you’re on very good terms with him.)
• Deadly Sin #6: Not Sharing Your Progress. Remember the CEO you were calling Mr. Big Shot? Whether you call your CEO that or not, be sure to share your results with all the relevant members of your management team. It’s better to over-share than to not share enough. You always want key influencers and decision-makers within your company to be aware of your social media successes.
• Deadly Sin #7: There Is No 7^th Deadly Sin. There are only 6 deadly sins of social media measurement. But if we called this the “6 Deadly Sins of Social Media Measurement,” it wouldn’t have the same ring to it, so we called it the “7 Deadly Sins.” Can you think of a 7^th deadly sin of social media measurement? If so, let us know about it. Just make your suggestion in our comments box below.