Brian Solis: Social media roi can be measured

This article is from Socialbeta content contributor Edie, Yu, a British MBA master, has many years in education, marketing, public relations, journalism and other fields of work experience, the social media has a strong interest.

--social media ROI can be measured-if ROI can be viewed as "return on ignorance" (ignorance rate of returns)

After Brain Solis's meeting with Dell-business-to-business Social Media huddle, Dan Martin seized the opportunity to invite the new media guru to talk about how to ensure the direction and value of social media operations.

Brain Solis says the nonsense about social media is audible. It was claimed that it's free or cheap; some people think it's a piece of cake, and anyone can do it, and there are those who simply preach that social media has no meaning or value--these rhetoric is very bad for companies to win customers, to guide their consumption decisions and behavior. These represent "dangerous misconceptions", as one of the most prominent ideological leaders in new media, Brain Solis's book-engage (participation) has been widely recognized as a guide to branding and measuring Web2.0 success. Sure enough, Solis here has a lot to say. The struggle to eliminate fallacies and misinformation is clearly tortuous, Solis admits, because "it cannot be said that the industry as a whole is trying to change them."

For example: Recent Gartner reports predict that about 70% of social media projects will fail this year. This is obviously not true! Solis said,-because how can a project fail if it is not specifically designed to impact performance, if not tightly tied to some important business results figures? And never defined the concept of success (and failure)! This shows 2011 years of confusion about social media.

"I think the ROI is perfectly measurable today"-if this ROI represents return on ignorance (the ignorant rate). Solis explained. "In fact, social media as a use and practice, has never been directly used to bring profits." We know it involves investment-time, energy, and the opportunity cost of your investing in this area and losing other opportunities. But what does this "R" mean? What do we want to measure in return? -because it can never be measured by "friends", fans, followers or browsing volumes. So, what should be measured, if not through "friends, fans, etc.". Solis also thinks it's not necessarily all Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or Foursquare.

"We really need to focus on what the customer is saying, or what they are looking for, or what kind of challenges they face, and then immediately participate in it, to learn how to build a more robust project, better products, better service ..." he explained, " When social media becomes an extension of what I call re-use business ' (adaptive Business), a business can improve over time, learn how to get closer to the needs of customers, and strive to build a more robust organization in general, Let social media be part of the organization. ”

Fill in the blanks (Filling in the blanks)

This can start with a simple practice step, first of all, to make sure you're not stuck in a trap: for example, complacency is a fad, a rush to put money into social media, or a fear that if you don't, you may be at a disadvantage in the competition. Solis therefore suggested: the first step is to investigate-"What is your customer base?" The second step is "why"-"Why should we try to approach these individuals and what value can we bring to them?" ”

By using any number of surveys and social media listening tools (such as Radian6 and research.ly), business units can fill in the blanks in these questions, and Solis has identified the following as key to ensuring that businesses are confident in socializing media and promoting business.

Who: Identify the characteristics and symbols of the brand: listen to online conversations and get the information you need from their conversation when: When your chance comes, make a decision, Seize the moment: study where you need to appear: How to become part of a social group why: to find out how to guarantee the reasons for your participation: identify individuals who can help you disseminate information

Solis further two advice: The third thing is to recognize that social media is just a series of tools, a service, a network connection, a plumbing tool for acquiring different types of customers, and customers are built on what they are looking for and their needs. The final point is to figure out how you will bring the customer value through these channels and build a community.

Once the investigation and preparation work is in place, your business unit will not only need to design clear social media planning goals, but also to determine the commercial results you want--the measurement of ROI in your hands, but it is not possible to rely on a single business result to measure.

If you can design a result from a specific aspect, an action that is very easy to do (easily from action) then you have specific objects to measure. Now we have to look back and ask, "Are we looking for more brand awareness?" or are we going to change our behavior? Or we need to sell the sales, or we need to reduce the customer's telephone consultation. These are the questions that we need to answer, including all of the above, and that's why no one campaign the rules for social media. “

"You have to interact with all the customers to understand how they need to be involved, which is why we talk about business socialization because we need to use different strategies to reduce customer telephone counseling, and different strategies are needed to change customer perceptions or behaviors or emotions." A more granular enterprise will run these projects continuously and consistently, as they try to work on all the front-line departments, each with metrics, milestones, KPIs (key performance indicators) and final ROI to prove their worth, and their investment is worth it. If the results are not good, they will change the pattern to make adjustments, we call it an improved version or an improved metric, or we finally learn that there is no ROI at all, and perhaps we should try to measure it by other metrics.

A grateful social investment (appreciative of the social investment)

While it is understandable that confusion about social media and a lot of preparation on the eve of the engagement prompted some units to outsource social media, Solis that this is not necessarily the right move.

"I assume that the company's external rhetoric must be someone who can speak on behalf of the company," he said. This is not to say that outsiders cannot have the same passion for companies and markets, I think that if you want to be directly involved with people, being transparent and reliable is the basic rule-but what we need is passion, passion, leadership, solutions, and that person must be able to help increase market value.

"Whether you're trying to dig someone out of the way or internal development, these are basic conditions that need to be met." Now, when it comes to implementation, as far as design is concerned, the development of the app, or the content, is controversial-these can be done in-house or externally. But what you really need is someone who will be a warrior and spend a lot of time guarding the business because everything else is just a new channel to represent-it will not change my contact with you on the social networking site. “

In any case, for those companies that have been successful in the social arena, they have completed market research, have identified the value of the delivery and know exactly what business results they want, and the return may be staggering! Solis highly rated sports retail Giantnerd, collaboration app firm signals and Anglo express-, the 3 companies that have successfully used social media to avoid misconceptions that have long been known.

"I think Anglo Express is doing very well because they know how to invest." For example, the Anglo Express OPEN Forum is attracting a number of small and medium business owners who provide value to these business owners. In fact, they have built this open forum to get the best ideas and voices in small companies, in new media, in mobile phones, in technology, to share their insights, and then gather all this information in one place to provide value to Anglo Express customers. Even the owner of a small company can get value from it. This is where Anglo Express really invests. Of course, they also get brand association, of course they are considered heroes of this, so they can attract a lot of new customers to use their credit card, or accept their credit card.

"Signals" is investing in their communities through value-productivity and cooperation. How can we improve productivity, and how can we become more efficient and where is the best tool? What are the most effective procedures, methods, and philosophies? They have designed some of the best content and more customers are "repeat" because they thank Anglo Express for their investment and help them make other buying decisions.

Dan Martin is the editor of MyCustomer.com ' s sister site BusinessZone.co.uk.

Original translation from: http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/social-crm/brian-solis-social-media-roi-easy-measure-if-we-re-talking-return-ignorance/123381
This article link: http://www.socialbeta.cn/articles/rian-solis-social-media-roi-easy-measure-if-we-re-talking-return-ignorance.html
Translator: Edie, Yu