1. Social media revenue conversion measures how many people become customers through social media referral channels.

Challenges: Social media is great for creating awareness and engagement, but it is hard to measure how many people convert to customers. Facebook’s last click attribution attempts to measure customer conversions by tracking which Facebook links sent people to other websites. However, this doesn’t work well either because there is a delay in the conversion.

For example, someone might see that a friend has posted a link to a brand’s website on Facebook. However, the brand has no way of tracking who clicked on the link, or finding out the social influence of her friends, or if she ultimately made a purchase. Privacy rules also limit companies’ ability to track the entire social shopping cycle. And unfortunately, Facebook Insights (which provides Facebook page metrics) does not offer any context to help the brand discover what motivated someone to click on a link.

Best practice: As the associate director of social practice at Moxie Interactive, Daniel Cho has tackled the problem of measuring social media conversion. When Moxie was tasked with developing social media programs for Verizon Wireless, Cho says, “We focused on total ROI. We put a social metrics layer on top of web metrics. We measured social media conversation volume, sentiments and engagement, which is the number of comments, links and Facebook shares.”

Cho used Wildfire to build a Facebook tab for a Verizon Wireless sweepstakes promotion. Although he could not measure which channel was a better referral channel, he was able to successfully track the social media conversion rates. To do this, he used the number of sweepstakes entries as his main metric. For the secondary metric, he used Wildfire and Google Analytics to calculate the number of tab visits (equivalent to impressions) and opt-in emails.

2. Facebook engagement measures a brand’s ability to communicate successfully with their customers on the social network.

Challenges: Most global brands have multiple Facebook fan pages. Different products and specific regions have their own pages, which are managed by different groups within the company. Businesses need an integrated view of engagement across all fan pages and Facebook app campaigns, so that they can understand what increases their numbers of fans and how this growth compares with industry standards.

Best practice: Many companies use a hybrid solution to track fan page engagement, such as Mediaplex or Google Analytics tags embedded in their Facebook apps combined with Facebook Insights.

SocialBakers the only provider of social media analytics tools that offers an integrated Facebook leaderboard for all brand pages. Their key engagement metric, called “page score,” consists of a combined index score of Facebook page fan growth, content quality and post quality for each fan page.

Ami M. Blaire, senior vice president of marketing at Social Games International, says, “The engagement ratings, the ability to test against and within a competitive set from SocialBakers as well as the contextual metrics are the most valuable tools. Secondarily, the ability to segment by territory and market is and will continue to play a valuable role as we define the best set of programming and promotions.”

3. Social customer support metrics measure the impact of customer support on brand health and the cost of staffing a social support program.

Challenges: Today, people expect their favorite brands to have customer service representatives available on Twitter and Facebook. Companies are trying to figure out how many staff members they need to devote to social customer support and how to best measure the success of such programs. There are several tools commonly used by companies that measure the KPI by counting the number of users supported via social media, but this does not reflect success at a strategic level.

Best practice: Best Buy provides support via Twitter and measures customers’ feedback on the quality of support through a proprietary survey.

Gina Debogovich, a social media lead at Best Buy, told me about how the business shifted focused from measuring return on invested capital to return on engagement.

In 2009, 3,000 Best Buy employees volunteered to answer customer questions on Twitter (@twelpforce) as part of their daily work responsibilities. Through this program, Best Buy was able to estimate the volume of questions from customers and develop consistent, quality answers from its employees. In three years, 50,000 questions were answered. The concept of using employee engagement as a key metric led to the residual value of highly-engaged employees becoming a great social support staff and customers becoming evangelists for Best Buy.

1. Be Human

How many times have you heard the saying, “People don’t buy from companies, they buy from people”? Well, it’s true, and social networks really allow your potential customers to get to know the people and faces behind your organization. So, post photos of your team, talk about what’s going in the office—not just from a business standpoint, but from a personal standpoint as well. The more emotionally connected your audience feels to your organization, the more likely they will be to buy from you.

2. Develop Meaningful Relationships with Your Ideal Customer

Twitter is the perfect opportunity for you to pinpoint your ideal customer and begin to develop relationships with them. Ask them questions, invite them to events, retweet their content. The best part? So few companies do this well, so if you do, you will have a huge advantage over your competition.

3. Monitor Keywords

I really love Twitter, not just because it allows me to develop meaningful relationships with our audience, but also because I can monitor, in real-time, the conversations our audience is having. One of the best ways to do this is to set up notifications for key terms that your potential prospects many tweet, such as your competitors’ company names, pain points, and more. This allows you to follow highly relevant Twitter users, and engage in meaningful conversations when it makes sense.

4. Integrate Conversion Points

Engagement, likes, and tweets are nice. But conversions are where the ROI is. Make sure to introduce conversion points, such as webinar and white paper offers, within your social media campaigns.  Simply direct anyone you are engaging with to a targeted, socailzed landing page where they can get your content. That way, you can give your highly engaged audience an easy opportunity to become a lead (and hopefully, a customer!).

3 Marketing Lessons From Facebook’s Instagram Acquisition

By Matthew Siegel

Pages upon pages of commentary have been written about Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, the astronomical valuation applied to the deal, and the competitive impetus for the transaction. But what’s most interesting is what it implies about Facebook’s perspective on content creation versus content distribution.

Why Facebook Bought Instagram: IPO Buyers And Apple
By Tomio Geron

Instagram will add chops on Facebook’s mobile product side, boost Facebook’s photo sharing and give Facebook’s audience on mobile more to look forward to. In addition to that, and maybe just as importantly, the acquisition helps Facebook’s IPO.

Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out
By Paul Ford

For many Instagram users it’s discomfiting to see a giant company they distrust purchase a tiny company they adore — like if Coldplay acquired Dirty Projectors, or a Gang of Four reunion was sponsored by Foxconn. So what’s going on here?

Facebook Plays Offense and Defense in a Single Deal
By Somini Sengupta and Nick Bilton

Facebook’s purchase of Instagram was an effort to push into a new area before its rivals. As YouTube and PayPal did for Google and eBay, Instagram offers something that Facebook desperately needs — a whole new audience that uses technology in a totally different way.

When Did Facebook Become So Uncool?
By John D. Sutter

Facebook and Instagram’s images couldn’t be more different, so it’s tempting to say that this Goliath-buys-David event is a turning point for Facebook. But people have been writing about Facebook losing its mojo for years now.

What this chart shows is that Facebook is driven by profile stalking and browsing photo albums. Those two activities account for 48% of all our time on Facebook. The one insight this chart doesn’t show is whether users are browsing their friends profiles or brand pages. That piece of knowledge would have dramatically increased the value of this data set.

Another insight that popped out at me is just how much time is not spent on apps. You often hear about Farmville addicts and the social gaming element of Facebook, but it really doesn’t account for much on a macro scale. Some businesses are raging over the belief they need Facebook apps for their business. For some that may be true, but it’s not such a ground swell that every company needs that presence. If your managing your Facebook page effectively and using photos to engage your followers, you’re likely reaching a majority of your Facebook fans.

What do you think? Are you surprised by this data? Tell me in the comments below!

Higher education continues to grapple with its use of social media. Universities’ across the country are still struggling to figure out what they should be doing in the social sphere, and how to do it. In this article I’ll analyze the state of social media and what strategies have been proven successful and should be implemented at any higher education institution.

What You Need To Know

Facebook is a platform that every university needs to be on. This popular social network started as a platform exclusively for college students in 2005. That history still impacts its prevalence on campuses around the United States. When I first began studying Facebook in 2007, I thought I would never say this. Stop posting!

Intensive large-scale research has shown that university Facebook pages with the most engagement post about 15 times per month. That’s four times a week on average. After the 15 post per-month average, the engagement begins plummeting. Find out what your audience wants and give it to them, not just what you think is important or the Director of Communications wants pushed. Focus on quality, not quantity.

If Pinterest has taught us anything, it’s that we’re visual creatures. People love photos. Try and use relevant, interesting and updated photos with your wall posts. Wall posts that have an accompanying photo have proven higher levels of virality and engagement.

Your Facebook page is not a bull horn, don’t treat it like one. If your followers are commenting on a particular post don’t be shy. Jump in the conversation using a clear and consistent tone that isn’t overly “official.” Your followers don’t want to hear about the latest band playing or that a fire alarm went off last night in South Hall. They want interesting topics they can have a conversation about. Figure out the content, post it and engage!

Don’t beg your followers too often about inviting other students, staff or alumni to join the fan page. While at certain times it can be helpful, doing this too much is tacky and doesn’t build good will among your current followers. Try and keep that to a minimum and remember; growing numbers isn’t a sign of growth. Your pages engagement, reach and virality are much more important to building out a long-term relationship with followers. The more you focus on those three pillars, the more followers you will attract. Long-term strategy, not short-term.

Do you manage a Facebook page in higher education? What have you learned with your time spent managing that space? Comment your experiences down below!

Universities are striving to keep pace with the rapid change of pace in technology. New tools and platforms are becoming available every month. Some grab traction…and some don’t. Universities should not be afraid to experiment with new communication technologies. After all, they are suppose to be institutions of research and innovation. One of these new technologies is Quick Response codes, otherwise known as QR codes.

QR codes have been all the rage in Japan for years. These odd looking square bar codes have been apart of Japanese advertising for many years and their growth is exploding the quickest in Hong Kong and Canada. How can universities here in the United States use these to engage students?

The uses are endless. Many universities place them on printed posters and brochures to allow students to access digital content relating the printed material in front of them. My alma mater used them on posters advertising school trips allowing students to sign up for the trip or get on a mailing list about it  by scanning the code and filling out a simple form. Having QR codes on printed materials is great as long as their is convenience and value to the user. Don’t just have the code redirect to your website. Make sure the content it directs to is related to the material they scanned it off of and preferably mobile-formatted.

That’s the simple use of QR codes, I want to get a bit more creative though! The University of Wisconsin-Stout is a wireless campus from top-to-bottom. If you’re standing on-campus you can get a wireless signal. Placing QR codes on campus buildings and then linking to a YouTube video or audio podcast that tells that buildings history and what departments reside there. This could be a “do-it-yourself” tour for new students or prospective students who are tech savvy. It informs and engages them in a way their used to, smartphones, while drawing a sense of closeness with the campus.

Another aspect is Admissions. Your admissions office should consider using QR codes on their booklets they send to high schools whether by mail or on career days. If you’re trying to attract bright, young tech savvy students into programs like computer science, multimedia design and other science related fields, this is a way to reach them. Students outside the tech majors know QR codes, but those who are techies will give your institution huge props for keeping on the cutting edge. Link the QR code to a video about that program including student testimonials in your admissions program booklet.

Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you Athletics. There are huge opportunities for athletics to use QR technology. The first is producing short one minute videos of players and featuring them on your game day programs. Have fans scan the code and up pops a video of their favorite player in a candid, funny interview. Also consider placing a static QR code on your game day program so fans with smartphones can get linked directly to the live statistics for the game. Die hard fans in the stands would love an easy way to get live stats without have to surf and click tiny little links on your website.

These are just a few ideas I have implemented personally and advise other universities to do as well. What has your university done with QR codes, if anything? Are they keeping pace or being left in the dust of technology? Tell me below in the comments!

Generate Your Own QR Code Easily

Kaywa QR Generator

QR Stuff

When you engage with content on an iPad, iPhone or other smaller devices, the experience is vastly different. It’s more intimate and personal than using a laptop or desktop. Within 10 years desktops might be all but gone in normal households with the majority of surfing taking place on tablets, smartphones and the occasional laptop. Desktops wont disappear, some people still need the processing power, memory and big screen. However, this means that you need to be prepared for this shift. Does your company have an immense amount of content that you’ll need to prepare for things like the iPad, e-magazines, smartphones and other devices that are in the pipeline? You should probably be working on this very thing already if you want to be on top of the shifting trend.

One of the biggest and frankly, neatest shifts has been the use of e-magazines and apps like Flipboard. This app isn’t revolutionary in what it actually does, but rather how it does it. The experience of using Flipboard on an iPad if elegant and effortless. A more personal and intimate experience between the content and the end-user. Check it out here:

This kind of content viewing experience is changing the Internet and how users consume their data. Has your company begun preparing for this shift? Tell me your thoughts on e-books, e-magazines and tablets in the comments. Will they change how people browse their digital content?

The problem we’re encountering now is how to manage these massive amounts data and make them easily searchable and filtered. It’s one thing to have a lot of data, but companies need to learn how to manage that data and create value by making it ‘parsable and accessible across many departments and standards.

Here is a infographic that shows the worlds capacity to store information. Is it any surprise that digital has exploded like it has this decade?

Many companies implemented  data architecture without understanding the ramifications of their decisions. To illustrate my point, lets create a fictional company named Caldwell Inc.

Caldwell is a corporation of 15,000 employees who embraced the technology revolution in the 1990′s. They are very departmentalized and acted independent of one-another in many ways in the past. Each department bought their own data storage and archival technologies. Early on in computing history it wasn’t important to have easy ways of sharing information internally. However, that’s all changed. Now days the amount of information being generated by companies is immense. There is incredible value and insight if companies can understand how to manage the intelligence and information their company generates. But Caldwell now has a big dilemma on their hands.

Departmentalization and no strategic planning 15 years earlier has left Caldwell in a tough spot. They will need to learn how to bring all their data together in an efficient manner. Now they have data in different formats, in different silos and different standards for archival. Caldwell will have to overcome this obstacle if they want remain a viable company in the future.

Has your company addressed the amount of data they are generating? Have they created a company-wide standard and instituted good practices for back-up? Tell me about your experiences or your company in the comments below.

(Click Photo to enlarge)