Monday, November 1, 2010

Justin's Blog Post on Social Media Metrics

Social Media Metrics – How to measure and optimize your marketing investment by Jim Sterne

Copyright 2010




Social Media Metrics


I selected this book, because I was looking for a resource to give me a good solid base to the subject of social media. I am not technologically advanced, and the idea of social media is new to me.


The book discusses the value of measuring the sentiment and influence of social media and its importance to organizations and brand creation, building and protection. Sterne says brands no longer belong to the companies, but instead the consumer. The book communicates the important value of your social media effort and gives the reader a metric to begin answering the question regarding how much budget and time should be allocated to the effort.


The first chapter is about identifying the goals for the social media effort, which according to Sterne is most often skipped by many social media marketers. He says your business goals, including the ones driving your social media effort, should be chosen only if they generate one of three outcomes: Increased revenue, Lowered costs, or Improved customer service. The author says that if the work you do does not provide an uptick in one or more of these areas, you are wasting your time.


The book talks about the process and each component of the business process: Setting goals, reaching your audience, Identifying the influence you have, recognizing reaction, Triggering the desired action, Hearing the conversations, and seeing the future. The book also tells the reader what to measure and what not to measure and he gives very general advice on how to do it without going into too many technical details. This is not a book of regression analysis, thank you Jim.


This book is for anybody involved with a business that is using or thinking of using social media. In the You Tube link below, Jim Sterne explains the importance of the book and why he thinks social media is so crucial to today’s business world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U79DxwUg_7I


Jim has spent more than 20 years selling and marketing technical products. He began his career as a professional explainer, helping people understand VisiCalc at a time when "personal computer" was an oxymoron. He successfully described sales order processing systems to people using hand-cranked tabulators. He was at the forefront of the Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool revolution and has clarified the salient points of object-oriented programming to software engineers across the country.


The book has many examples and a large amount of information for today’s marketers. It is a book that should be readily available and cannot be fully implemented after one read. It is a reference tool and should be readily available for today’s social media marketer.

Book Review Power Point You Tube Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6oUhHFAPHU


Submitted by Justin Weis

6 comments:

  1. Good stuff. The more we look at the social media subject the more interesting it gets. The strategies you say they recommend in this book are similar to the ones my book recommends. What gets me is that these are not new strategies. Listening to your customers and respecting them is nothing new. That was always a good idea. Realizing that your company is fragile and must continue to evolve to survive is not a new truth. Y

    These books do however remind you that to ignore what companies have always known will fatal much more quickly than in the past. That is what I am taking from this.

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  2. OK - That should say, "Jim Sterne said":
    ------

    Thanks for the write-up and the links Justin as well as the video review - very nice.

    David - Listening to your customers and respecting them is nothing new. Realizing that your company is fragile and must continue to evolve to survive is not a new truth. Those were always good ideas. But from being in marketing for 25 years, I am still astonished that people need to be reminded. We spend so much of our time doing our job, we forget to ask those for whom we are doing it whether we're doing it well ... from their perspective. So yes, yes and yes, customer centricity is the lens through which I view everything.

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  3. Good write-up. I'm excited to see the presentation now, as I'm always trying to find effective ways to measure the success of certain marketing campaigns. I'll have to get this book now.

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  4. Yeah, I think Metrics are probably one of the most important factors of using any form of social media. You have to be able to track it and see what results are coming from the work you do. Thanks for posting your review, and I look forward to checking it out!

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  5. Justin,

    What were the recommended metrics for Facebook?

    Please reply at tcutshall@gmail.com

    Thanks,

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  6. Nice summary of what seems to be a pretty in depth analysis of social media. It often seems that metrics are underutilized in social media campaigns due to the inherent difficulties of quantifying the results. The number of followers or fans an account has does not necessarily equate to increased revenue, at least in a linear fashion. Again, great summary, I look forward to reading this book.

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