JitterJam® Social CRM

Statistics? Fun?

Yes! Statistics can be fun. It’s fun to know that there are 500 million people on Facebook. It’s nice to see swirly, twirly, pretty graphics depicting how many times Dr. Who has traveled through time. And it can be particularly useful when you’re building a business case of creating a Facebook presence or a Dr. Who marathon weekend. So where do you find these statistics and swirly, twirly graphics? Here are a few resources.

1. Information is Beautiful.
• Yes it is. Here’s a fabulous blog that showcases phenomenal visualizations of interesting (and sometimes obscure) statistics. David McCandless, the creator of this blog and of the visualizations, is now marketing his creations in a book as well as in limited edition posters. His blog also has a short blogroll of other sites with very cool visualizations. Be forewarned…you can get drawn into the vortex of “lost time through surfing” when going down the rabbit hole of blogrolls.



2. ClickZ Stats.
• Want to know which sites are the most popular? What activities users are really engaged in online? What parts of the country or the world are growing most rapidly for social media use? ClickZ is your answer! ClickZ is a wonderful aggregator of Marketing and Digital statistics and news. They also have some great free tools for you to use to evaluate your cost/benefit for online advertising, website optimization and customer acquisition. Subscribing to their free newsletter also brings daily stats to your mailbox. What could be better for the stat-hungry marketer?



3. eMarketer.
• This is my favorite site for marketing metrics. eMarketer aggregates market metrics from a number of sources and provides daily reports containing these gems of data. While their business model is to create and publish market data and reports, their “free” daily analytics provide great insight for marketers on what others are doing, who is seeing success, and what behaviors consumers and businesses are exhibiting in the online world. And again, you can sign up for a free daily newsletter to get these valuable insights delivered right to you.

Statistics may not be the sexiest items in the world, but to a marketer, a good stat is an essential hallmark of market presence, progress or opportunity. That’s what I call FUN!

Today marks the fortieth annual celebration of Earth Day, and it is an understandably popular topic across the Web right now. Both the phrase “Happy Earth Day” and the hash tag #EarthDay are currently trending topics on Twitter. But there is one specific Earth Day-related search phrase we’ve been really interested in all day, and that is “Earth Day resolutions.”

Why Earth Day resolutions? Well, a resolution is actionable—it’s something someone wants to get done. And there is therefore an opportunity to help. For a business in the eco-friendly space, Earth Day resolutions offer a wealth of possibilities. To name just one example: a search on this simple term would bring up dozens of potential customers for a cloth bag manufacturer (ditching plastic shopping bags has been a popular resolution choice).

Days like this need not (and should not) be exclusively about direct, immediate conversions, however. For the eco-friendly business, like the client who first turned us on to the idea of Earth Day resolutions, establishing a presence in a holiday- or event-related conversation can be just as much about showing a passionate dedication to the ideals set forth in the company’s mission statement. Letting customers and prospects know you care deeply about the same things they care about is never a bad move.

Either way, if your company is engaged in social media marketing, the opportunity to help or to inspire on a day like today is one that should never be passed up.

Last month, I wrote about the importance of measurement in social media campaigns. In that post, I identified three things you should be tracking in particular: the buzz building around your company and industry; the ROI on the special promotions you’re running; and trends in the development of your contact list.

We’ve already talked about trends in the development of your contact list. This time, let’s focus on the buzz building around your company and industry. Here are three tips on how to handle it.

Contribute without selling. Don’t enter into the conversation looking to sell. As with any social media interaction, enter the room with the aim of being helpful first and foremost. Be subtle and tactful as you try to raise awareness of your product or service. This is especially crucial if the conversation is about your industry in general and not your company specifically.

Don’t duck in and duck out. Become a presence in the conversation, not just the person who sneaks into the picture to get noticed, then leaves. This ties in with the point above: Show your potential customers that you are engaged in this conversation for the long haul, and that your first interaction was not just a token appearance or some kind of marketing stunt or trick.

Research the origins of the buzz. A key piece of reacting to buzz is anticipating and reacting quickly. If you didn’t react as swiftly as you’d like this time, the key to reacting quicker next time is in understanding where the buzz started, how it started, and who started it. If you’re seeing buzz consistently originate from the same people or sites, it might be time to start tracking what they’re saying more carefully. Use tagging or segmentation features in your marketing platform (like those found in JitterJam) to create a group of contacts you should be checking in on more regularly.

Those are just a couple of the strategies that come immediately to mind when thinking about buzz management. Have anything to add? Drop a note in the comments below.

According to five separate surveys cited by eMarketer.com, site traffic was the number one metric that marketers used to measure social media marketing success in 2009. But, as eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey wrote in his company’s report “Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media,” site traffic “on its own it cannot justify heavier investment in social media.”

So, what other ways are there to measure success in social media marketing? What about contact growth? A contact means more than an IP address in Google Analytics, after all.

I’m not just talking about a growth in Twitter followers or Facebook friends here, however (though that’s part of it). What you really want when it comes to contact growth is a growth in your contact database. Whether you manually input intelligence on your social media contacts or you use a marketing platform that ties directly into a database (like JitterJam), it’s essential that you’re bringing data on your customers into a place where you’re in control, and where data can be stored for the long term (something Facebook and Twitter themselves aren’t particularly good at).  You need to able to add communication channels, to add intelligence, and to segment your contact list. Only then will you be able to effectively turn those followers and fans into customers. And a high conversion rate, of course, is a metric that would certainly justify a heavier investment in social media.

What do you think? How are you measuring your success? Leave a comment below to let us know.

St. Patrick’s Day is upon us, and that seemed to me like a perfect excuse to bring Fun Stuff Friday to Wednesday. So, here’s a fun tip on using real world events to promote your brand and produce measurable results.

Every year in March, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) holds tournaments to decide the national champions in both men’s and women’s basketball. This is where the term March Madness comes from, of course. Last year, in March 2009, I put a spin on the phenomenon to help increase the number of user interactions on my pop culture blog, Geek Force Five.

Between March 10 and March 17 (the start of the tournament), Geek Force Five users submitted suggestions by e-mail to help determine the top 16 pop culture obsessions in four categories: Movies/TV, Games/Technology, Comics, and Music. These obsessions were then pitted against each other within four brackets, just as basketball squads are paired off in the real-life NCAA tournament. Users were asked to comment and vote to determine the eventual winner. There was a Sweet Sixteen, an Elite Eight, and, finally, a Final Four.

Over the course of those four weeks, user interactions numbered 1,534 (comments + votes). That represented a 12x increase in the number of user interactions versus the previous four-week period.  To say the promotion was a success would be an understatement. Several of the more prolific commentators from that month eventually became contributors to the site, and the rise in popularity over those four weeks was one factor which led to the site being awarded a Best of NH award in 2009 from New Hampshire Magazine. And all of this was the result of a well-timed promotion.

Have you had any success using real world events or holidays to help promote your business? Leave your success stories in the comments below.

And have a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Measurement is an important part of any marketing campaign, but it’s especially important with social media campaigns. You should be measuring three things, in particular: the buzz building around your company and industry; the ROI on the special promotions you’re running; and trends in the development of your contact list.

Let’s talk today about trends in the development of your contact list, and what to do about them. Here are three areas to pay particular attention to:

Contact Growth. Obviously, the picture we want to see painted in any graph of contact growth is a steady incline. Spikes, sharp declines, and stagnancy are things to watch out for. When it comes to spikes and sharp declines, determine if these increases and decreases in numbers correlate with your actions. If not, figure out why you are seeing these dramatic changes, and what you can do to correct the trend (or further it, in the case of an upswing). Conduct searches of the social networks and the blogosphere on a regular basis to see what customers, competitors, and industry commentators are saying about you. Find an answer!

When it comes to stagnancy, the key question is whether maintaining the list’s size is part of your plan or whether efforts to increase your list are proving ineffective. If your efforts are proving ineffective, are there competitors whose social media efforts you can look to gauge what’s working and not working? Are there other places to look?

Reciprocity. Reciprocity is a crucial unit of measurement on Twitter. Are you being followed back by the users you’re following? If not, why not? And, if they aren’t following you right away but are eventually following you, why are they reciprocating when they do? Look at the campaigns you were running during any spikes in reciprocation and ask yourself what you might have been doing then that you aren’t doing on a regular basis. Use the information you uncover to refocus your day-to-day efforts until following you back is a no-brainer for customers and prospects.

Number of Contact Points. How many different places can you contact a customer? It’s an important question to ask. After all, what happens if the contact quits Twitter or Facebook? And what happens when they change email addresses without telling you? You should constantly be measuring the number of contact points you have for your customers, and you should always be looking for new ways to capture secondary and tertiary contact information.

Those are just a couple of the strategies that come immediately to mind when thinking about trend management. Have anything to add? Drop a note in the comments below.