Measuring Your Social Media Efforts

So the experimentation with social media has begun; well it’s begun for us and more broadly a lot of businesses are beginning to test the waters, that is, if they are not already fully submerged!

Social Media Marketing is a key strategy to employ when trying to enhance the your websites landing page SEO. At Intelligent Information Systems the experimentation has begun in correspondence with the overall of our website in an effort to improve our overall web presence and to conjointly improve the SEO of our site.

Social Media is a way to get high quality back links to your website.

The key tools for measurement which shouldn’t be overlooked are:

Google Analytics

Google analytics will not help you understand the viral nature of various social media completely. But when using the combination of Google analytics and conversion tracker, you can learn an awful lot about where traffic is coming from and map it to your social media campaign to see what is working; at least directionally.
You should look at sources of traffic and see if it is broadening to include the elements of your social media campaign. You can also look at key variables like:

•Time spent
•Bounce rate
•Page views

Looking at and considering these variables will all help you make inference-based decisions on the quality of the traffic you are driving to your website.

Emerging Social Media Measurement Tools

Many new tools are emerging for measuring social media effectiveness. Most are limited in scope to one channel or type of social media experience.
One promising new tool, that will measure the viral effects of social media, is the popular ShareThis platform. ShareThis reaches over 400 million people a month though the social media share buttons you can add to your content that they provide as part of their service. This service is simple to implement on your site. If you don’t already have sharing functionality, you should consider implementing ShareThis or something like it.

ShareThis is about to add the ability to analyse social media by business category, which will be very useful for niche businesses. The company recently shared some interesting stats regarding social media with TechCrunch. According to the company, Facebook accounts for 45 percent of all shared content across its network. E-mail followed with 34 percent and Twitter with 12 percent.

The key here is thinking about social media as a coordinated piece of your overall marketing mix and measuring it as such. While measurement tools are not perfect, you can get enough data today to make solid decisions to help you optimise your social media campaigns.

Original Article: All Business.com

Social Media Best Practice

Our efforts at Intelligent Information Systems have been noted in relation to our social media practice. Within this months SAP Social Media Webinar broadcast to channel partners the spotlight was put on Intelligent Information Systems as we were given a mention for our endeavours.

Our Social Media Best Practice has thus far has involved the following:

Establishing the platforms that we wanted to create a presence.

Forming a Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn company page as well as a LinkedIn company group.

Finding our customers and competitors on the various platforms.

Setting up a company blog and you tube channel and regularly updating it with relevant and insightful content.

Integrating all the social media platforms, and using Tweetdeck to update them all at once.

Ensuring that our posts across the various platforms and sites remain consistent.

Joining and interacting with groups and blogs within our customer verticals, as well as within areas of interest to us most notably SAP and SAP Business One.

Our next step is to begin to make use of the free online tools to monitor our social media presence; we shall keep you updated!

There are lots of integration tools and apps available on the different platforms and branding options. We have put a lot of effort in to ensuring that we have made use of everything that is available. Check out or presence on the various sites via this blog page. Feedback, insight and tips are all very welcome!

Climbing the social media ladder – listening and learning

As promised we said we’d share our learning and insight gained from SAP in relation to social media and how to fully embrace every aspect of it, or as much as is relevant to your business. As an SME ourselves our learning couldn’t be more applicable to our partners and we feel it’s our duty to help you along the way!

The focus of the most recent webinar was on listening and learning. A recent area which I myself have been interested in, in terms of measuring our social media presence and improving and building upon it. We endeavour to become even more responsive to our customers and are seeking to use social media tools and the web as a whole to proactively engage with and stay in touch with our customers’ needs within the various verticals.

Evidently what has been brought to my attention is the fact that you can also use free online tools to determine how successful other marketing activity you have or are carrying out is by actively listening to the conversations that are being held across the web in relation to it. This insight could be even more valuable than asking customers direct questions and seeking feedback as it isn’t limited by specifics.

Are customers/businesses talking about their passions, pain or are they giving praise? The key buzz metrics to consider are noise and the level of it, sentiment, topics, where in terms of geographical or online locations, and who, whether it is users, industry experts or journalists involved in the conversations.

Some key tools which we are set to test and will provide feedback on once we have done so ourselves are Google Alerts, Social Mention, Delicious.com and Blog Pulse.

These are all free tools. There are paid for tools available from and including cymphony, visible technologies, radian social media monitoring and Nielsen buzz metrics. Though the insight from these may not be immediate they potentially provide more insight and support you in ensuring that you don’t just acquire data, you acquire information; interpreted data and knowledge!

SMEs acquiring more customers with Twitter and Facebook

Small and midsize companies are figuring out how they can use social media to gain customers. Small businesses are acquiring more customers using Twitter and Facebook than large companies, even though large companies spend more money on so-called “social marketing.” This is recording to research carried out by Nielsen Co.

To ensure your small business doesn’t miss out get started by setting up a Twitter account, find your customers and ask them what they want. It’s that simple.

Small businesses know there customers which helps when it comes to your tweets and knowing what to say. You can also undergo market research by soliciting feedback about a new offering or design that you are considering.

For some small business owners, traditional advertising channels such as television, radio and newspapers are prohibitively expensive.
For others, the web is a medium more in tune with their potential customers. It provides an opportunity for small businesses to advertise on a level playing field with their larger counterparts.

While large companies usually try to accumulate a lot of Twitter followers, small businesses tend to be smarter and use the service to build relationships with people. A Twitter relationship means that you reply to all tweets to you, and you encourage your followers to send you private direct mail or “DM” messages whenever they want.

Another advantage small companies have over larger ones is that they can usually respond to Tweets more quickly. Larger companies normally have to go through layers of management to make a public comment, but smaller companies can respond on Twitter within a day or so, which means if something needs fixing, you can get to it faster than your larger competition.

You can also let some of your firm’s personality shine through. You don’t have to sound generic and overly professional like the big guys. Be friendly and personal. Research shows that the Twitter world is conversation-obsessed. Consumers spend almost half of their tweets on conversational messages.

Build up your relationships with your customers on twitter and when they are happy with your business, products and service they are sure to tweet their followers about it and potentially retweet your business tweets which will bolster word of mouth communications for your business.

5 Reasons Recent Graduates or Interns are the best people to kick start and manage your social media presence

College students or recent graduates are being cited as the best people to look after your company’s social media presence, all be it with some supervision, as they are seen as being far better at interacting online than those higher up.. This was suggested recently by Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media writing on The Business Insider War Room.

Even if you think your online image is too important to entrust to interns or recent graduates you should take a leaf out of their book and follow their example.
Some of the reasons they can help you achieve social media success are:

They are chatty – this mindset and their willingness to interact and converse on a range of topics as they are happy to avoid the other perhaps more mundane and repetitive tasks such as photocopying works in their favour in the world of social media.

They are closure to the ground – they are more likely to pick up on information, interactions and underlying problems or difficulties from the ground up that CEO’s are unlikely to acknowledge or be aware of. They can bring an outside and fresh perspective and potentially help your company overcome its misgivings and things which could potentially be hampering it’s intended identity and perceived image.

They are excited and enthusiastic – they are in touch with day to day reality far more so than CEO’s are likely to be. They are potentially closure to your customers in terms of understanding their perspective and what they are interested in. Being in tune with the social world that your customers reside will come across in your social media presence as well as their general enthusiasm and excitment for potentially some of the same issues.

They know they have weaknesses – a student or a recent graduate is more likely to be in touch with their weaknesses and will be happy to admit them and their ambitions to overcome them. This is far more attractive to customers as opposed to being greeted by a constant message that your company is perfect which may be portrayed by a CEO.

They take chances – the risks may not be as high for a student or recent graduate, they are optimistic and striving to prove themselves and are therefore more likely to take chances. This is necessary within the world of social media as it needs to be constantly driven by ambitions to make everything better.

Once guidelines and policies are in place there is no reason why your social media presence shouldn’t be managed by your interns or recent graduate employees; seemingly it’s all about taking risks they just need to be monitored and quantified!

"Intelligent Information Systmes" Our Professional LinkedIn Group

Having updated our company profile, created my own personal profile as a member of the Intelligent Information Systems team, joined and begun to interact with groups the next step on the LinkedIn Platform, as advised by the SAP social media support team.

Having created a facebook company page, blog and dedicated youtube channel I wasn't sure about what additional benefits a LinkedIn business group could offer.

LinkedIn is seen as a business-oriented social networking site and people tend to act more professional in this network than they would in Facebook or MySpace. Plus, many professionals tend to visit this site more frequently than they would other social media sites as they use LinkedIn to research companies and potential contacts.

There are seemingly many great benefits for having a LinkedIn Group for your business.

•Individual Visibility — when someone joins your group, they can elect to have a small badge representing the group display in their profile (and people generally opt in for displaying the badge). This badge signifies that someone has a particular affinity with your company and brand.

•Corporate Visibility — the group gives your company additional visibility. When someone sees the group badge in your profile or the profiles of others, they may click on it to see what the group is all about. If a customer joins your group, it shows that they are committed to what you are doing and makes them ‘stickier’ and less likely to take their business to another company.

•Corporate Announcements — you can use the Groups feature to contact your group members with an announcement or other news. While you can only use this feature once per week, it is a low cost way to keep members informed about new programs, offers or company news. The alternative would be to use an email or newsletter solution that could cost you from $25 to $100 per month or more.

•Job Postings — you can also use your group to post job openings for your company or affiliates. Only members of the group can see the postings, so this is another reason for people to join your group.

•Better Connections – even if you are not directly connected to another group member, you can still send that member a message or invite them to connect with you because you share the group affiliation.

•Group Newsfeed — any activity in the group is reported in the news feed for anyone who has joined the group. For example, I can easily see if there are any new posts or news added to the group site by reviewing my newsfeed. Users can also opt to get daily or weekly email updates of new activity.

We look forward to utilising our new group presence on LinkedIn and would love for anyone interest in SAP Business One, Intelligent Information Systems or Intelligent Essentials to come join the Intelligent Information Systems Group on LinkedIn. It may also be of interest or use to anyone involved with or working for an SME regardless of whether you have implementated SAP Business One or any ERP software solution within your business as we endeavour to enlighten you and keep you informed and up to date on the latest developments and benefits until you feel the time is right to take the plunge!

LinkedIn For the SME

LinkedIn is geared towards professionals and has become one of the world’s largest virtual networking platforms. It

For a small business it is seemingly not what you know but who you know. It’s all about the contacts, building relationships and taking advantage of the dimensions of your business relative to your larger competitors!

LinkedIn’s mission is to connect the world’s professionals supporting increased productivity and success.

Set up 6 years ago it has achieved continuous monumental success by linking over 70 million professionals worldwide across 180 countries and 157 industries with approximately 3 million new professionals joining every month which is the equivalent to 1 joining every second!

There are now over 675,000 groups, with 1,500 new groups being formed every day and 1million status updates every week. The UK has the largest membership in comparison to its European counterparts with over 4 million professionals signed up to the network.

When you sign up you build a profile, add you C.V and information about your experience, expertise, interests, accomplishments and qualifications. From there you can begin to construct your network, searching for people you know first and foremost and from their connecting with additional professionals through invitations, introductions and links.

When searching for people you know consult your outlook contacts or business cards and carry out a quick search for them as well as anybody you may have worked for or with, in the past or that you are seeking to work with in the future.

The whole point of LinkedIn is to network, get to know people in your vertical, advertise job posts or seek out employment, offer your services or advice, create discussions and gain insight that you may otherwise remain oblivious too.

For small businesses it removes obstacles such as geographical isolation and time constraints creating a level playing field with larger competitors. Everything is done online which means that networking can be done almost anywhere and anytime whenever the time is available.

Through making valuable connections professionals can build their brand and find new opportunities.

Social Media Can Improve Productivity

There countless social media platforms now being presented to us and some companies are making every effort to become involved in what they see as being the key platforms. But really it’s not about the scale of our efforts, it’s about the way in which we are utilising the tools which are available, and the efficiency of our endeavors in this new and opportunistic discipline.

There is also the big question mark hovering somewhat like a storm cloud over whether businesses entering the world of social media is perhaps hampering productivity levels as employees become distracted and hours spent embracing and interacting the world of social media are considered to be immeasurable in terms of the impact on business.

This is true in as much as it is true for marketing as a whole. The rewards and benefits may not be immediately discernable but as with any activities being undergone within an organisation, if the objectives are determined from the outcome, however specific or broad, the ease by which the results and outcomes can be measured will be shaped.

Some managers believe this new work style which involves workers engaging in social media activities has resulted in a blur between personal and professional time. The question is whether the potential benefits of engagement outweigh the widely acknowledged and cited drawbacks.

There are few noted areas within which social media can potentially enrich productivity.

Scalable Networking

The majority of networking is today being carried out online which saves a hell of a lot of time and supports networking on a much larger scale than would be conceivable on a face to face basis.

Information Overload Can be Avoided

Some may argue the opposite, but if searches are refined and networks, forums, groups and platforms are selectively embraced then information becomes more distinguished and specifically tailored to meet the needs of the any particular business or business person.

Freedom to Collaborate

In a world where collaboration is most often supported by some type of software, social media can provide the functionality to make sure that everyone can be productive while using the tool that works best for them. That said it is something which does need to be monitored as the freedom which the world of social media bestows could potentially be abused.

I think the blur and potential for social media to be abused can and should be ideally overcome be developing or utilising the ethos which exists within an organisation. If everyone is on the same page, is committed to the organisation and its objectives and holds its values in high esteem the potential shortcomings of social media as identified by many managers should certainly be surmounted.

Social Media can evidently be a double edged sword and it is fundamentally down the organisation or individual user to identify what they want to achieve through their involvement, examine the way in which they are using the tools available and endeavor to make the most of them.