Intro to Social Media Marketing & Importance of ROI

As most of us know, social media has become a way of the world.  Social media marketing, on the other hand has also become a prominent tool for business people and corporations worldwide making it possible for them to brand themselves in a way that can make themselves marketable to potential customers, employers, etc.

Todd Kelsey, author of CASA Marketing: Intro to Social Media Marketing explains in his book that social media marketing has a ton of options, making it a bit overwhelming for people to approach at first.  However, he explains it is very doable when leaving intimidation behind and taking incremental steps by trying things out to build confidence in the field.  

ROI

Of course social media marketing is a great skill to have.  However, it is essential to know how to apply this skill in ways more complex than just advertising via social media sites to promote a product or service.  A key question in social media marketing is: what is the return on investment when an individual or organization spends money on social media marketing?  However, regardless of how closely people are tracking the ROI on social media, it is clear that social media will be around for a long time...Essentially, social media marketing should be viewed and treated as any other skill and should contribute to a business or organization in a positive way.

Social Monitoring

Social Monitoring

You are an account executive at a publicity firm and everyone left the office to go to lunch and left you there. Then a new client walks in, and says they need your help urgently, and they lay $10,000.00 down on the table. "Can you help me? I just want to know what the public thinks". So you say, "sure, no problem, I'll do a search right now. Please feel free to drink a cup of coffee while you wait." So you need to do some research using various tools.

What can one do to research this client? What company is this client representing? How is this person or company viewed by the public? There are a lot of questions that may come to mind when attempting to research a client. It is essential to gather information through research using various tools.  Without a doubt, Google is the first thing that comes to my mind when needing to do a search on something or someone that I am not familiar with.  However, when it comes to certain people, brands, products, companies, etc., it takes more than just a search through Google to get what information you are looking for.

Social media has clearly made a prominent impact on our world today and has become a leading source of the news and is the key source that allows access to the public's opinions on almost any topic or person of discussion. So in regards to researching the client who wishes "to know what the public thinks"... here are some of the things that I would do:

• Start by gaining background information through Google
• Definitely use www.socialmention.com - this site is life changing! Just by searching your topic of interest, you will instantly find out the search's strength, sentiment, passion, reach, in addition to: average seconds per mention, last mentioned, etc.  It truly is a great way to get the information you are looking for quickly and effectively.  
• Check Twitter by using the infamous hashtag (#) by putting the topic of search in front of it. (For example, when searching Barack Obama, I would personally type #obama into the twitter search bar to find what topics are trending about him and to see what the public is saying about him)
• Check other social media sites that use the hashtag (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) by searching the same way (#obama)
• Search blog sites! This is a way of finding a more detailed description of a person's view and opinions on the topic or person that you are searching.