How To:
HOW TO: Become an Expert in Your Industry
by admin on Dec.31, 2009, under Blogs, Facebook, How To:, social media
Today it seems that no matter what industry you’re in, your competition is stronger than ever. How do you stand out and get that sale when people aren’t as loyal to brands as they used to be? How do you get their attention in an ever growing sea of noise when they’re so often swayed by price rather than quality? One answer is to become recognized as an expert in your industry, someone other people seek out for information.
The most important part to becoming known as an expert, of course, is that you know a lot about whatever it is you do. That could be construction, public relations, HR, dogs — whatever it is, in order to gain the requisite knowledge to be regarded as a thought-leader in your field likely requires years of schooling or real-world practice, or both. In addition, when your goal is to be recognized as an expert you need to always keep learning, and to constantly share that expertise. But first let’s talk about why you might want to be an expert.
Benefits of Being an Expert
Being an expert in your field makes you the go-to person for your industry. There are many people that I trust inherently on different subjects simply because they know their stuff, and they’re not trying to sell me anything. They just want to be helpful in their own space. These are people that I learn from, but also whom I would buy from because I trust their knowledge and expertise.
Being an expert helps you:
- Establish yourself as an industry leader
- Help others
- Become a trusted resource
- Get interviews and media coverage
- Gain access (via conference/speaking invites, etc.)
- Convert followers to sales
Keep Up-to-Date
Blogs & News – Blogs in your industry are a great place to find out the latest tools and news. If you’re not already reading blogs, do a web search for to locate some blogs that cover your business niche. Find ones that you like and subscribe to them by RSS so you won’t forget to read them.
It’s not a bad idea to set up a Google Alert to search for news about your industry. Paying attention to news headlines is a great way to stay abreast of changes in your field.
Online Education – There’s no reason you have to enroll in college (again) to keep learning. There are a variety of online resources at which you can take free or cheap webinars or e-courses to keep the wheels churning.
Social Networks – Increasingly, social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, and Delicious are where people are sharing news and information that matters to them. By following the already established experts in your niche, you’ll gain access to the information they possess, which will in turn increase your knowledge.
Conferences & Events – Every industry has conferences, trade shows, and other events, at which other experts in the industry gather to share their knowledge. Attending these meetings can help you in your quest to continually learn new information. You can find out about conferences by reading industry blogs, searching events sites like Upcoming.org, or finding local user groups on Meetup.
Imparting Your Wisdom
By sharing your knowledge with others, you’ll quickly become known for your expertise. This can translate into sales, job offers, gigs, or other opportunities, as you build your personal brand as an expert. Here are some ways you can share what you know.
Blogs – The easiest way to start sharing is by creating a blog. Blogs are fantastic if you’ve got a ton of information in your head and need a place to dump it. The bonus is: you can help others through that information. Blog about what you know. Share news, offer advice, give your opinion, and make yourself the go-to resource for what you do. The key to successful blogging is to consistently put out good, original, and useful content that encourages readers to engage with you and with each other.
Social Media – Social media sites are designed for experts! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a question about something, tweeted it, and gotten free advice back, later, the people who provided me with expert advice are the people I buy from when I need their services. By providing free advice on Twitter or Facebook, you will build a base of fans that both trust you and look to you for expert advice. These fans will seek you out and recommend you to others seeking advice and information — in other words, by sharing your knowledge and gaining trust, your network will grow on its own.
Video – Don’t underestimate the power of video. For those who do well in front of a camera, sharing free how-to videos on sites like YouTube or Vimeo can lead to increased awareness. It also demonstrates to television producers how well you do on camera, which means online expert videos can lead to television appearances.
Speaking Up – You should already be attending industry conferences, trade shows, and user group meetings, and you should make sure to assert yourself as a knowledgeable voice in the community while at those events. Whether that means lining up formal speaking engagements — which will be easier to do the more you grow your personal brand as an expert — or just networking and sharing your expertise with other attendees, speaking up is helpful in building your expert brand.
Consulting – Offering consulting services can do two things: first, it can make you a little money, and second, it can help you establish yourself among industry insiders as someone who knows their stuff. One consulting gig can lead to many based on referrals and having a list of business owners willing to give you a recommendation can be invaluable. If you plan to offer consulting services, put information about your services on your blog and in your social profiles, and consider offering phone consultations.
HOW TO: Setup Free Email Newsletter Through Google’s Feedburner
by admin on Dec.23, 2009, under Blogs, Google, How To:
Google’s Feedburner allows you to set up free email updates based on your RSS feed. Here’s an easy tutorial on how to set it up.
Burn Your Feeds
You first need to head over to Feedburner to claim your blog’s RSS feed. Log in with your Google account and enter the URL of your feed into the “Burn a feed right this instant” box:
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Click next and you’ll be asked to choose a title and address – the defaults are usually fine. Follow the rest of the instructions through and you should arrive at the Feed Management page.
Enable Email Subscriptions
Hit the “Publicize” tab and select “Email Subscriptions” from the left hand side.
Click “Activate” to enable the feature.
Customisation
In the left hand navigation you should now see four more options below “Email Subscriptions”.
“Communications Preferences” allows you to change the from address and subject/body of the confirmation email your readers will receive on subscription.
“Email Branding” lets you edit your email’s subject, fonts, colors, and allows you to add a logo.
At this stage it may be wise to edit the subscription email and subjects so that the tone is consistent with your blog. The applies to fonts and colours too – leaving the email as it came out of the box looks dull and lazy.
Finally the “Delivery Options” page lets you customise the time zone and delivery window. Ensure that the time zone matches that of the geographic location of the majority of your readers (check this in Google Analytics) and think about the best time of day for your email to go out. The nature of your content may dictate this, but generally just before lunch is a good shout.
Add to your Blog
Go to the “Subscription Management” page to get the code to add a means of subscription to your blog. The Subscription Form Code adds a form like this:
The Subscription Link Code adds a straight link. There are also widgets available for TypePad and Blogger.
Simple!

Manage Successful Social Media Promotions
by admin on Dec.08, 2009, under How To:, social media
With holiday shopping in full swing, social shopping is already making a big impact. Data from Hitwise shows that downstream traffic to the Retail 500 coming from both Facebook and Twitter increased 36% and 15% respectively on Thanksgiving from the previous day. Downstream traffic to retailers grew again on Black Friday and Cyber Monday as many retailers promoted sales through fan pages and tweets.
This data is very encouraging for marketers, but a social media campaign must still be managed correctly for maximum ROI. Here are some tips on how brands can best engage their customers by offering what everyone now looks to social media for – a bargain.
New Strategies to Turn Buzz Into Buy
Other recent research confirms the fact that people are increasingly turning to social networks to get deals on products and services. Razorfish found that the primary drivers of “friending” or “following” a brand were promotions and discounts. Over one-third of social network users and 44 percent of Twitter users engaged with a brand through discount promotions. This is good news for marketers, but the stats also pose challenges to the way marketing programs and advertising budgets will be structured in the future.
Brands have long spent big money on commercials, media placements, direct mail, and more. With most of these methods, there is little way to measure the impact on your bottom line. You either get lucky with a surge in sales after your campaign, or it didn’t work. Either way, success or failure was impossible to measure.
If done right, social marketing is a fantastic way to get the best of all worlds from a campaign – wide-scale and targeted distribution of your offer, for free. But to get it right, marketers have to step lightly. If you’re too pushy with too many promotions, your followers will feel “marketed at” or “spammed.” If you don’t offer good enough deals, your customers may become frustrated and stop following you. After all, they don’t really want to be your friend. They want bargains. Here are some steps for getting social media promotions right.
1. What Are People Saying About Your Brand?
Find out what people are saying about your brand, why they are saying it, and who they are saying it to. You have to do more than just get a vague reading on brand buzz. Track the actual pass-along of your brand’s social content via tweets, blog posts, Facebook postings, etc. to see which content is driving the most sharing on which sites. You can use social media traffic tracking software to do this.
Tracking this word-of-mouth buzz is crucial to formulating the right marketing messages and promotions. You must deliver relevant social deals that resonate with people’s interests.
2. Create a Social Promotion
Once you figure out what people want using the tracking methods above, go ahead and give it to them. For example, you might find that everyone loved your last 20% promotion – it was shared to hundreds of thousands of people via social sites and email – but that the most frequent negative comment was that shipping costs were too high. In your next promotion, offer free shipping.
Or, you may find that there was a huge surge in Twitter searches, blog comments, and Facebook updates about your brand’s winter boots during a snowstorm. This is a great opportunity to immediately put out a social promotion for 20% off boot purchases for one day only via Twitter, Facebook, and/or your company blog. Have fun with your social promotions. Unlike paid search ads and other media buys, you don’t have to plan and budget for them. Instead, just try one or two out and see what happens.
3. Did It Work?
Figure out whether your promotion worked, and what bottom line impact it had on sales and profits. Go back to your social media tracking and measurement tool and find out how much your promotion was shared, what increase it caused in traffic to your website, and what direct impact it had on conversion. You might want to compare two different promotions run during a similar time frame to see which worked better and why.
For example, did a 50% Off promotion drive more sharing, visits, or conversions than a Two-For-One? In addition to doing simple “A/B” tests, compare results for promotions like these against the data from your regular marketing analytics platform to see whether your social media promotions are performing better or worse than traditional paid marketing campaigns. Social promotions almost always perform better than paid media ads in terms of conversion, but paid ads may drive a higher volume of traffic to your site.
Lastly, do an ROI analysis of your social media promotions to find out their real impact on bottom line profits.
Conclusion
Social media promotions are here to stay. Make sure you use the social channel to deliver “exclusive” deals that make your friends and followers feel special. They’ll thank you by making purchases.
What social media tools do you use to increase sales and measure your brand’s reach? Please share them in the comments below.
Start and Run a Successful Twitter Chat
by admin on Dec.01, 2009, under How To:, Twitter
If you spend enough time on Twitter, chances are you’ll come across an occasional chat being held on the platform. Twitter chats are scheduled gatherings of people on Twitter to discuss pretty much anything that interests them, using a #hashtag to keep track of the conversation. There are chats for everything from blogging to art to agriculture — over 80 of them are listed in this great running list of Twitter chats.
Here are some tips and tricks for how you can start and run your own chat on Twitter.
1. Choose a Time, Topic, and Tag

The first thing you have to do is choose a topic. Unless you’re looking to start a competing chat, you’ll probably want to choose a topic that isn’t already being done, so ask around, do some searches, and check the Google Spreadsheet linked above.
You’ll also want to make sure you pick a time that doesn’t conflict with a pre-existing chat in topic areas that might attract similar chatters. Ask around and make sure there aren’t many other chats at the same time, especially if it’s something that both audiences will be interested in. Choosing a time can be the toughest part. Just realize, you’ll never be able to please everyone. I suggest choosing a time that works best for you, to make sure you’ll be committed to it.
Your chat’s hashtag should be as short and explanatory as possible. Everyone who participates in the chat will have to use the hashtag with every tweet, so the shorter the tag, the more space they have to write chat messages.
2. Choose a Format
There are a number of different formats that chats can take:
1. Single Topic, Question Based
This is how I run the chat I am involved with. We choose a general topic, then ask specific, numbered questions throughout the chat within that topic. Each question gets roughly 15 minutes, and the chat lasts one hour.
2. Multiple Topic, Question Based
The longest running chat, #journchat which was started by Sarah Evans, uses this format. All questions are submitted by participants and numbered. Any topic goes, as long as it’s related to PR, Journalism, and Social Media.
3. Single Topic, Freeflow
This is how Mack Collier runs #blogchat. He chooses a topic, and just lets the discussion take a life of its own. This chat runs for 2 hours.
4. Q&A
Jay Baer runs a different kind of chat. He brings in a guest to answer 20 questions over 90 minutes. While the focus is on the guest, many people follow along and share their thoughts on the questions as well.
5. Free For All
No specific question, just bring everyone together and let them ask whatever they want. It’s a bit messy and I haven’t seen any chats adopt this format permanently, but I’ve seen a few try it for one week and the results have been great.
3. Launch the Chat
Of course, this will be easier for some than for others, depending on how engaged you are with the audience that you’d like to participate.
Promote it to your community leading up to the chat. Let people know beforehand when they can join and how the chat will be run. It may be smart to reach out to a few key people personally and ask them if they’d be interested in participating.
Be prepared for a slow start. Like any community, a Twitter chat takes time to build participation.
4. Tips to Help Your Chat Grow
Whether you’re starting a chat for business or for fun, I can tell you that it is an extremely rewarding and exciting experience. It’s an opportunity to bring people together and engage in valuable and insightful discussion.
If you’re starting it for a business, it is best to choose a general topic that relates to your business, and always keep in mind that these chats are for the community, not for the hosts. If you’re too promotional, your chat will fail.
Here are a few tips to help make sure your chat is a success:
* Stay open to new formats. #journchat got so popular that Sarah Evans began to look for new formats to host the chat, including video streaming, and even a country-wide live event. Always stay open to changing things up based on the community’s needs.
* Bring in guests. Every chat I’ve seen has at some point, brought in a guest moderator to host the chat, or a guest expert to take questions. It’s a great way to bring in a lot of new people and bring credibility to your chat.
* Take the chat beyond Twitter. A monthly chat for public relations students called #PRStudChat created a LinkedIn group for their chat, for example. They use it as a forum for the community to interact, and for them to share announcements and ideas.
* Consider multimedia. The weekly #DesignChat streams its chats live on video each week. The chat’s host and guests interact with participants over Twitter and answer questions on video. Video services like Tinychat (and Ustream) integrate with Twitter, making them ideal platforms for Twitter chats.
* Promote your participants. At #u30pro, we send out a weekly digest every morning after the chat, in which we announce a “featured participant,” share 5 blog posts from the u30pro community from that week, write a recap of the chat, and more. Highlighting community members and the things they’re doing gets people more engaged.
* Keep it up! Luckily, Twitter chats are inherently viral. Because when someone participates in your chat, all their tweets appear in their stream with your hashtag, and they bring in their followers. As long as you keep to your schedule and keep holding regular chats, the chat will pick up new participants over time.
Track Social Media Analytics
by admin on Nov.30, 2009, under How To:, social media
Social media is a relatively new phenomenon, but Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon and other social media websites have become an increasingly important source of website traffic. This also creates a massive demand for data related to social media. Where are users coming from? What topics excite them?
These are questions that, when answered, can be the difference between a successful website and a failed social media campaign. But social media analytics is young, and not many people know where to start. This guide is designed for that purpose: to help you get started with some of the best tools and habits so that you can effectively gather and analyze social media analytics.
Understand what you want to track
As with most things in life, you can’t conquer what you don’t understand, or at least what you haven’t really thought about.
What is your goal? Do you want to track how people are sharing your website? Do you want to track a specific social media campaign? Or maybe you’re just interested in trends related to a specific meme or social media phenomenon? Each one requires different tools and different focus.
You’re going to focus on traffic statistics if you’re tracking social media website engagement, while if you’re tracking a wider campaign, Twitter response and positive comments might be a more appropriate metric.
Optimize your existing analytics software
Most of us use analytics software like Google Analytics, Woopra, or Omniture to track website data like traffic, visitors, pages per visitor, and traffic sources. Most of these analytics tools can track a wealth of data, but they are not designed to track social media data. Luckily, there are a few ways to beef up your analytics software for social media. Some quick tools and suggestions:
Social Media Metrics Plugin: Social Media Metrics is a greasemonkey extension that adds a social media information layer to Google Analytics, providing information on Diggs, stumbles, delicious bookmarks, and more for each individual page. Be aware – it’s not perfect.
Set up specific campaigns and events for social media: Most analytics software has custom campaigns to make it easy to track specific events. You can track a specific Twitter traffic campaign or DiggBar URL with campaigns.
Reorganize dashboards and set up email reports: To get specific information on social media, have traffic stats from top social media websites (i.e. Digg, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) emailed to you so you can see it all in one place. In addition, reorganize any dashboards you have to show this information for easy access.
Add new analytics tools

Even with web analytics tools, you don’t have all the tools necessary to get started tracking analytics related to social media. Why not add some more tools to your inventory that track detailed social metrics? Some suggestions:
Bit.ly: When you use a URL shortener, it’s always a smart idea to use one that has analytics information, like Bit.ly. This will track information like number of clicks, traffic sources, and even at what time clicks occur.
Xinureturns: Despite the funny Scientology-inspired name, xinureturns provides a great dashboard overview of your website’s standing in social media. Run a report and you will receive information on Technorati, Googe Pagerank, Diggs, and even backlinks to your website.
PostRank: Formerly known as AideRSS, PostRank provides detailed information on Tweets, stumbles, diggs, and FriendFeed all in one place. It’s best for blogs and websites with a lot of content.
SocialToo: SocialToo is a comprehensive tool for creating social surveys and tracking social stats. It also will send you a daily email describing follows and unfollows on Twitter.
Aggregate your analytics
There are a lot of tools for gathering social media information, but no one place has everything you need. You don’t have time to look at all of the tools, so aggregate your analytics information.
There is no single tool that will bring this information together, so you’ll have to do it yourself. Export data into excel, pdf, or email and record all of the information to one area, whichever works best for you. Building a spreadsheet may be best for playing with the numbers. Make it easily accessible.
Analyze and engage
The last step is always the most important one – the actual analysis. It takes years of dedication to the art of web analytics to really understand how each variable affects website traffic and user engagement, but by looking at this data in one place and comparing the information, you will hopefully be able to pick up on trends.
This guide is only how to get started with social media analytics. Take the time to find great tools and to understand how each of the social media levers affects traffic and analytics data. But most of all, use the data to engage your audience. You can figure out what they’re looking for using social media analytics, so be sure to act upon the data once you’ve analyzed it.
HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on YouTube
by admin on Nov.12, 2009, under How To:
There are thousands of different websites that you can leverage to build your own personal brand, but only a few that will give you both the reach and credibility to make a major impact. Here is a detailed look at how you can build your personal brand on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. YouTube is the largest video sharing site on the planet.
With over 120 million U.S. viewers, YouTube is used by President Obama for his weekly State of the Union Address, by universities who share lectures from star academics, and by celebrities such as Miley Cyrus who use it as a lifestream. Aside from the popularity of YouTube, the site exploits the most powerful branding medium of them all, video.
The reason why video is so effective in communicating your personal brand is because your audience will already feel like they’ve met you by the time the video is over. With video, you get a sense of who someone really is based on their voice, their face and their body motions. Video can support your branding efforts like no other medium on the web.
1. Brand your profile
In order to build your personal brand on YouTube, you have to decide how you want to position yourself. If you already have a brand, then carry it over onto your YouTube channel to make it consistent with your other web properties. Channels that have multiple faces should be branded under a topic or a company. Channels that only have one face and voice should be branded under a full name. This is extremely important to understand because you can’t change your channel name at a later date.
Choose a channel name: Depending on your branding strategy, you could choose your full name, your company’s name or a unique “show” name for your YouTube channel. For instance, if you want to brand yourself as an expert in your field, you might want to do it under your own name. The URL you will receive in return for a successful registration on YouTube is youtube.com/user/yourfullname.
Profile setup: Just like with Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, filling out your profile is important because it will allow people to locate you on a platform where millions of people are competing for attention. You are able to upload an avatar or use a screenshot that they give you from your latest video. Use the avatar/professional picture that you have everywhere else. You also get to add a single URL, which should be the website that best represents you as a brand, such as your blog or LinkedIn profile.
Channel information: Most people don’t know that there are different types of accounts you can choose on YouTube. If you’re an expert in your field, then I recommend selecting the “Guru” account type because you can use a custom logo and add links. To access this page go here.
Customize your channel: Log into your account and view your channel as it currently stands. On the top right of your screen, select “Switch to Player Mode.” This will change your current display to the newer layout, where people can view your latest video and select any other ones that they want to watch from the sidebar.
Channel title and tags: Where it says “Edit Channel,” you should click on “settings” and then give your channel a title, such as “Mike Smith’s Internet Marketing Show.” On the right, you’ll want to type in tags that reflect your video content, such as “marketing” and “mike smith” because that’s how people will find your material while searching.
Themes and Colors: Under “Themes and Colors,” find the colors and overall look that align with your website, blog, business card, PowerPoints, etc. You can also upload your own background image and change fonts and colors. There are websites that have free YouTube designs that you can use too.
Modules: Now you want to go to “Modules” and check all options because comments, recent activity, and friends are all important if you want to build a community around your YouTube brand.
Latest video: The last thing you want to do is to click on “Edit” on the top right of the screen and where it says “Featured Video,” select “Use the Most Recent.” This way people will be viewing your latest video automatically.
Now that have presented your audience or future audience with a legitimate profile and design on YouTube, you’re ready to start developing videos that will put your brand in the spotlight, while helping you build your business.
2. Create remarkable videos
Content is king and on YouTube, the only true way to be successful is to have content that is worth spreading. Typically, this means it has to be either really funny or extremely interesting. Here are a few examples of remarkable content. Video isn’t for everyone and you shouldn’t fool yourself if you know you’re introverted and shy.
Video equipment: I recommend either using a web camera from Logiteck ($99) or a Flip Ultra HD ($200). The flip is higher quality, but the webcam allows you to do video chat or live video in addition to regular videos for YouTube.
Advanced video equipment: If you’re really serious about creating a video show on YouTube, then you may want to invest in a sounds system, amplifier, lighting, and other professional tools that will make it look professional.
Produce content: The best part about taking videos of yourself is that if you don’t like the end product, you can delete it very easily. I recommend that you shoot multiple videos at once and then cut the ones that don’t work well. Make sure all of your videos fall under the theme of your YouTube channel and that you fill out the title, description and tags for each. In the description of each of your videos, there should be a link back to your blog or website because the people that watch your video might have never heard of your brand before.
Once you have about five or six videos, you will want to start promoting both your channel and each video to your audience.
3. Promote your videos
When promoting your channel and your videos, you’ll want to use the network that you already have before you start to get creative. In the past year, YouTube has streamlined the sharing process through various social networks.
Facebook Application: Using the YouTube Video Box Application on Facebook, you can add your videos automatically on your profile page or your Facebook Fan Page. This is a great way to give each of your videos additional visibility without additional labor.
Autoshare on Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader: Go to your YouTube account settings and click on “Sharing.” In this menu, you can automatically syndicate your YouTube updates (such as when you upload a new video) through Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader. Before you check all three off, please understand who your audience is on each social network. For example, if you share your professional videos on Facebook, where only your college friends are, then it might be awkward.
Add your blog: Go back under YouTube account setting and click on “Blog Setup.” This will allow you to link your blog (Wordpress.com/org, TypePad, Blogger, etc) with your account. This feature will enable you to post your videos on your blog directly in just a few simple clicks.
Embed your videos: If you have a blog or traditional website (corporate or personal), you can embed one or more videos from YouTube on it. YouTube embedded videos give you options, such as a border, different size arrangements and a variety of colors.
Link to your channel or videos everywhere you can: The more links you have to a video, the higher it will rank when keywords are searching in YouTube or in Google. Also, more links typically means more traffic to your videos, which helps build your brand. Link to your channel and videos from your resume, from your social networking profiles (possibly as a graphic icon), from your email signature, from your presentations and everywhere else.
YouTube isn’t going anywhere. It’s one of the most trafficked websites in the world and it’s a great place to get started with online video. Even though many of your videos might not get 100,000 views, the important thing is that you can leverage that video content and share it on all of your branded properties. Your YouTube channel can become a very important asset to your brand, one that provides your authentic voice and appearance like nothing else can.
Live U2’s YouTube Grabs 10 Million Live Streams
by admin on Oct.26, 2009, under Blogs, How To:
Did you tune into YouTube on Sunday to catch U2 performing live form the Rose Bowl? If you did, you had some serious virtual company.
The LA Times reports that Sunday’s show generated 10 million streams across 7 continents. The whole show was archived on YouTube Monday and has been viewed more than 1 million times since then.
YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is calling the U2 concert the largest event in the company’s history and it very well could be a glimpse into what the GoogleGoogleGoogle-owned service plans in the future.
After all, it’s hard to make money off of short-form content, but with live streams, YouTube could potentially capitalize and maybe even come up with a payment model (a la Pay-Per-View) for really big events.
You can check out U2’s concert here:
So did you tune in Sunday night? What do you think about YouTube moving into live events? Would you pay to watch a live concert on YouTube? Let us know!
HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
by admin on Oct.11, 2009, under How To:
Companies and executives are finally beginning to really jump on the social media bandwagon, and that’s fantastic. However, for social media to fully work (for everyone), businesses and brands need to be able to evaluate the impact their social media use is having, both positive and negative. Measuring social media ROI isn’t impossible, but it can be difficult because many of the pieces that need to be evaluated are difficult to track. This guide is designed to help you track down those pieces and determine the ROI you’re getting on social media.
ROI Reality Check
As a standard formula, ROI is pretty basic, ROI = (X – Y) / Y, where X is your final value and Y is your starting value. In other words, if you invest $5 and get back $20, your ROI is (20 – 5) / 5 = 3 times your initial investment. In the financial sense, ROI is measured purely in the context of dollars and cents, however, the principles can really apply to any type of investment — monetary or not.
Having concrete goals and concrete baselines is crucial to calculating your return on investment. So before you set out to measure and monitor your social media returns, you need to have a clear idea of what it is you want to accomplish. Once you have your goals defined, you need to gauge the baseline for your levels before starting or changing your social media strategy. For example, if your goal is to increase social media mentions of your company, in order to measure the ROI of any actions taken toward that goal, you need to know where you stand now. You can’t evaluate the ROI accurately without a baseline.
Metric Tools

Google Analytics It’s free and it can provide a really powerful baseline for a variety of different factors. You can track incoming links and then the activities of the users they send, which can be helpful.
The trick is to not rely solely on the numbers, but on what the numbers end up leading to. For instance, does your increase in website visitors correlate with higher sales? Are people that find your website from Twitter or Facebook then clicking on your product pages or going to the e-Commerce section of your site? That’s the sort of data you want to be able to look for.
HOW TO: Oraganize an Event on Facebook
by admin on Oct.03, 2009, under How To:
Some people wonder if all this social networking is really making us more social — we’re just sitting in front of our computers, after all. But Facebook, the web’s largest social network, plays host to 3 million event listings each month. And these are offline events, ranging in size from small, friendly get-togethers, to company picnics, to enormous political protests. In the past, getting the word out about an event, even if you only intended to invite your close circle of friends, meant a lot of work getting on the phone or emailing invitees individually, coordinating RSVPs, or even hanging up flyers. Facebook, though, allows you to quickly create an event listing, invite people, and then watch word of the event spread virally out from your network of contacts (if you choose to allow it). This guide will show you how to successfully run an event on Facebook.
Read full guide HERE


