"It's a good list and I love Amber's posts about SM Time Management, I see this as a really good outline and frame for building a social media plan. My question is about the wins/losses. What do you mean by those? The tactics didn't work, the strategy ended up unraveling, the goals were unrealistic and couldn't be met, or something else entirely? Are the wins increased sales, the goals met and or exceeded? I assume the wins/losses you're talking about would be driven by the goals you're setting at the beginning, but I'd still like a bit more info on when you consider it a loss (negative ROI on sales based goal, dismal numbers, negative impact to sentiment analysis, etc.)?"
- Josh
"It's a good list and I love Amber's posts about SM Time Management, I see this as a really good outline and frame for building a social media plan. My question is about the wins/losses. What do you mean by those? The tactics didn't work, the strategy ended up unraveling, the goals were unrealistic and couldn't be met, or something else entirely? Are the wins increased sales, the goals...
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- Josh
"Thanks Tim, I really appreciate the comments. When writing the book we were trying to keep it as focused on the core ideas and tactics as we could."
- Josh
"Measuring is incredibly important. It not only helps you know where you've been and which needles you're moving, but it also helps you see where you need to go next. One thing that definitely can't be repeated enough is that ROI while very valid in a financial sense, it doesn't always apply. Look at customer service initiatives like Comcast has. There are zero sales involved and so ROI is not, and would not ever be used. Customer service and Tech support are always financial "black holes" for companies. Knowing when to use ROI is just as important as knowing what it is. MySpace has it's own niche that it caters to and locally (in SLC) there are many companies that use MySpace to speak to and communicate with that niche. 99% of those companies are small locally owned coffee shops, boutiques, record stores etc. They use bulletins to give out discounts and event tickets to their friends and they use it to build the connections with their local community. It's very valid, but has become..."
- Josh
"Thanks for the comment and first let me say that I do not advocate setting up auto-follow accounts based on keywords. Following in the hopes they will follow you back and buy your stuff is not a good strategy. The easiest thing to do is to setup your keywords to be delivered via RSS to the feed reader of your choice (google reader, bloglines, etc). Then you can watch the flow and see if it's unmanageable, if there are overlapping results, etc. Then the best thing to do is read the tweet and see if it even warrants you talking to them. Are they talking about a band that released a song called bird feeders and have nothing to do with you? Are they relaying a childhood memory, or are they actually looking to buy a bird feeder? If you can engage them on a human level then do so, if not, move on. You need to look at the search results as possible leads and discern if they are qualified leads. By no means should any one be following anyone else JUST because they mentioned one of your..."
- Josh
"Thank you and they are coming soon. I wanted to get them all written at once so that they would read as one constant thought broken up into 4 subjects."
- Josh
""If we are not there participating in the messaging, they will have an 'open mic' to our potential students." That is a very good rason to get involved, don't want your competition to have the stage all to themselves."
- Josh
"ROI does not equal Impact. They are 2 completely different things. You don't measure impact by measuring ROI, they are NOT related. ROI is a 100% financial metric, and is only used when the end result of what you're doing is to get people to buy something. Which is why it's often a metric used in marketing and sales, the end result of what they're doing is to get you to buy more. If you're trying to do something like say increase the online sentiment of your company or product. Then what you're going to be doing is measuring impact. How much your efforts “moved the needles”. Social media is like the swiss army knife of online tools. It's a tool that is comprised of many other tools. Measuring your ROI has nothing to do with the tool it self, it's all about HOW you use it that will determine if ROI is even the right metric by which you measure your success."
- Josh
"ROI does not equal Impact. They are 2 completely different things. You don't measure impact by measuring ROI, they are NOT related. ROI is a 100% financial metric, and is only used when the end result of what you're doing is to get people to buy something. Which is why it's often a metric used in marketing and sales, the end result of what they're doing is to get you to buy more. If you're trying to do something like say increase the online sentiment of your company or product. Then what you're going to be doing is measuring impact. How much your efforts "moved the needles". Social media is like the swiss army knife of online tools. It's a tool that is comprised of many other tools. Measuring your ROI has nothing to do with the tool it self, it's all about HOW you use it that will determine if ROI is even the right metric by which you measure your success."
- Josh
"I have abaondoned all the twitter apps on my G1 and have moved to just using powerful mobile sites like dabr.co.uk, though Twidroid was my go to app when I used them."
- Josh