Final Piece Consulting, LLC

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How to Avoid Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS) in Social Media

It’s partly human nature.  We want to be associated with what’s new, what’s up and coming, what’s next.  This is especially true when it comes to social media.  Everyone is talking about Pinterest, Path or Google Plus.  It seems as though everyone has written a blog post titled something like “10 Ways to Use Pinterest for Business”.  All of these conversations about the up & coming social networks are a good thing, but it doesn’t mean these new social networks are right for your business.

Too often I’ve heard, “Everyone’s on Facebook & Twitter; we need to be on these networks!”  Your company may be successful by jumping on the social media bandwagon but I’d highly recommend doing a bit of research before jumping into your first social network as an company.  A little research goes a long way & will help your organization avoid SOS.

Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Social Network

Is it right for your company?  Does your target audience, or your potential clients, hang out on this social network?  What are my goals? (ex: leads/sale, branding/awareness, etc.)  These are the questions to ask before you decide on a social network.  I like to look back at the Conversation Prism (by Brian Solis & JESS3) every time I’m building a social campaign to remind myself of the sheer number & diversity of social networks.

Final Piece took this approach recently with a paint manufacturing client.  Facebook & Twitter were involved heavily in their product launch campaign (mainly for channel marketing/referral purposes) but the bulk of our social time was spent in a discussion board for paint & coating professionals.  A discussion board is not one of the new, sexy social networks but the audience was perfect.

After several months on the boards, we ran a promotion giving away the new product & garnering hundreds of quality leads from this relatively small corner of the Internet.  Why did the discussion board work?  It turns out that folks who own their own their own painting contractor companies don’t spend a lot of time on Facebook or Twitter.  So how did we find this discussion board?  Where should you go to find your audience online?

Target Audience Research Tools

• Social Mention – A tool for finding out who is saying what & where they are saying it.  Also includes sentiment tools.
• LinkedIn Groups – The new statistics feature allow you to easily see the group’s demographics & if a LinkedIn group is dominated by potential or current clients.
• Addict-o-matic – Primarily a listening tool, it can also be used to find your audience. Bonus points for ease of use.
• Forrester’s Social Technographics Tool – All social media users are not created equally.  Featuring both B2B & B2C tools, Forester helps you break down how your target demographic uses social media.

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Improving Your Visitors to Leads Rate

Does your company make money off of it’s website(s)?  Or is your website simply a line-item cost of doing business in the 21st Century?  One of the tricks to getting a business website to generate revenue (or more revenue) is to make sure your lead capture system is working efficiently & effectively. In other words — what’s happening to your website traffic?  What percentage of overall traffic turns into leads & what percentage of your leads convert into a sale (or better yet, reoccurring sales).

The five tips below are intentionally broad.  There are numerous strategies for improving your lead capture rates & many are industry-specific but the tips below will help any B2B or B2C business improve their lead capture rates:

• A Unique “Thank You” page URL - This is one of the most often overlooked aspects of a business website, the contact form or “Contact Us” page.  Ideally, your contact form will automatically re-direct those who complete your contact form to a unique Thank You page.  This page should ONLY be used for those who fill out your contact form.  Ideally this page will use the “no follow” tag & company website traffic would be filtered out by IP address(es). You can then setup a Google Analytics Goal (see #4 for more on GA Goals & Funnels) using the specific Thank You page URL & even assign a value to each lead/goal completed.  Knowing the value of your average lead (or segmenting your leads so averages work better) is also crucial to making informed decisions about web development work.
• Constantly A/B Test Your Landing Pages - The importance of testing your landing pages (plural) cannot be understated.  Seemingly nonsensical changes can greatly improve lead capture rates. For example, does a bright red call-to-action (CTA) button on your landing page perform better or worse than your existing lime colored CTA?  Before you get into a heated debate with the rest of the web team (or into an “ego-off” with a member of the executive team), A/B test those CTA buttons!  There is no shortcut for testing your landing pages.  Consider also building landing pages for all of your key marketing campaigns that include lead capture.  It’s not draining from a resources standpoint & can often provide near-miraculous results (I’ve seen lead capture rates double from a single change in a sign-up form).
• Identify User Loops & Website Problems with Visitor Flow (new version of GA) - The new version of Google Analytics (you can check it out by clicking on the link in the top right of GA) offers several new features worth knowing about.  The one I like the most is called Visitor Flow (last report under Audience in the new GA) which provides a visual representation of how people are using your website.  Spend some time in this section.  What it’s showing you is how people behave once they visit your website.  Are there any traffic loops that show people are confused on a key page & are hitting the Back button?  What are the typical paths in which visitors that turn into quality leads navigate your website? The Visitor Flow report is excellent at helping to identify visitor behaviors (both positive & negative) on your website.  Be sure to change the Dimensions (the thing being measured) in this section as well.  The default view is Country/Territory.  Try clicking on the green box & searching for dimensions like Source or Keywords for more valuable information.
• Develop GA Goals & Funnels - In the settings section of any GA profile (a little cog icon in the upper right of the new version) you’ll find the ability to add in GA Goals & Funnels (links to a setup guide).  You get a total of 20 goals per website, so in most cases you can setup goals around specific website or business goals (for example, improving your lead capture rates).  This is also the place where you enter in lead value.  GA considers this information optional, but it really is a requirement, even if it’s only an educated guess.  Knowing your average lead value is incredibly important to making informed paid search (AdWords) & web development decisions.  In the case of lead capture goals, you will want to enter in your custom Thank You page URL as the Goal URL & select the proper match type (most likely Exact if you have a static Thank You page URL).  You can also add in Funnels for each goal.  Setting up your preferred funnels (the path you would like visitors to take on your site before signing up) is useful for identifying website behavior.  Funnels can be used in conjunction with the Visitor Flow report to identify how visitors should be using your company’s website (funnels) vs. how they are actually using the website (visitor flow).
• Obtaining Referral URL Information - Some contact forms appear on multiple pages of a business website.  If potential leads can fill out a contact form from any page on your website, it’s essential to also ask the form to provide information on the referral URL or, in other words, which page of your organization’s website is responsible for the lead?  This will go a long way to identifying your best performing pages (they may not be your most trafficked pages) & will provide additional insight on what to A/B test.  If your contact form does not provide referral URL information you can switch to a contact form software that does provide it or contact your friendly neighborhood website developer for a quick & relatively painless addition.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, these 5 tips are not a catch-all for improving your website’s revenue.  Leads may go up, but if the sales staff isn’t “on point” & treating each lead as valuable, then you may not see an overall increase in online revenue.  If lead capture rates were improving for your site but overall search traffic for your keywords has been declining than so to will your leads.

There are numerous scenarios & many moving pieces involved in making (more) money off of your company’s website. Improving your lead capture rates is one piece of the puzzle.

Happy with your lead capture rates but can’t find that missing piece to improve online revenues?  Contact Final Piece & let us find the missing lead capture piece for you.  It’s what we do (#shamelessplug)

Photo Source: dougwoods

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Social media analytics and monitoring tools have been growing exponentially over the last several years.  This shift is also indicative of larger national and international social media trends.  Businesses big and small are beginning to see the value of adding social to their marketing budgets.  The question is no longer, “Why social media?” but rather, “What does success look like?”

We’ve seen this trend in the Triangle as well, with startups like Argyle Social and Spring Metrics creating unique measurement and analytics options for a growing list of businesses selling products/services online and through their social media channels.  I would highly recommend a paid social media monitoring/analytics tool for small and medium sized businesses with active social media campaigns.  The proper tools will allow you to test, analyze and consistently improve your social media platforms!

But what about those businesses or individuals who are testing the social waters?  Dipping that first toe in before jumping into social media with a big splash and the proverbial cannonball?  While there are many paid solutions for the measurement of social media campaigns, there are fewer quality free social media measurement tools – but they do exist!

With that in mind, I’ve highlighted 10 of my favorite free options (in no particular order) for tracking your next social media campaign below.  Several of these are platform specific, but are so good they made the list anyway.  Think I’m missing something important?  Please add your favorite free monitoring options in the comments:

1. Social Mention – Social Mention is one of the first places I go to get an overview of an online conversation.  There’s sentiment analysis, top users, and a breakdown of social sources.
2. Topsy – A Social Mention competitor, Topsy is another source for reviewing conversations online and offers many of the options available on Social Mention.
3. Addict-O-Matic – My favorite topic/news summary website.  It’s very simple, type in any subject or brand and see a summary of all the discussions occurring around this topic on major news and social websites.  Addict-O-Matic gets bonus points for the level of customization available.
4. Google Analytics – I may get smacked for including GA on this list, but the truth is it is a useful tool for social analytics if used correctly with segmentation, link tagging, etc.  See #9 for more info.
5. Bit.ly – One of the more common URL shortners, bit.ly has made a name for itself in an extremely crowded space for its excellent analytics.  Why? Simply add a “+” to the end of any bit.ly URL to see detailed analytics on the link.
6. Compete.com (Competitive Intelligence/Traffic) – Compete has both paid and free options.  It’s an exceptional tool for benchmarking & competitive intelligence (estimated site traffic over time).
7. Twitalyzer (Influence) – Despite its namesake, Twitalyzer is a website that aggregates several measures of social influence online.  This is a time saver and critical to getting a more complete picture of social influence related to a topic or brand.
8. Facebook Insights (Analytics) – Although platform specific, the new & improved Facebook analytics is a powerful tool for the social media marketer.  Facebook has demographics information that is unavailable from almost any other source.  Self reported information like occupation, interests & other demographics allow for extreme segmentation, targeting, etc. 
9. Google URL Builder+ Google Analytics + URL Shortner = Profit – While I realize this is more than just 1 tool, I had to include this powerful combo.  Use the Google URL Builder to tag your links for specific sources (ex: email newsletter, Twitter, Facebook, etc.).  Make sure that Google Analytics is recognizing your tagged links (must be connected with AdWords or manually connected if not using AdWords) & finish up with a URL shortner to make it all work.
10.   Insert your favorite social monitoring/measurement tool here – Unfortunately there are SO many free, quality, social media monitoring and measurement tools available that a top 10 list is unable to cover all of the effective options.  You’ll note that a few of tools above are fairly specific tools (competitive intelligence, social influence, etc.).  These are some of the tools I use the most. 

What are your favorites? Let us know in the comments. 

Photo Source: liako on Flickr