Event Video: Jason Falls On Getting Your Social Media ROI
Nationally renowned speaker and author Jason Falls talk at SMC was our fast-selling event ever, with tickets snatched up in eight hours! Falls talk lived up to the hype with an audience held rapt with a talk on “Moving the Needle” (conversations and engagement are great, but alone don’t drive the bottom line).
SMC Seattle July Event: Move the Needle! from SMC Seattle on Vimeo.
Let’s face it, if you are getting paid to do social media for a company, no matter how many great “conversations” you are having with customers if it’s not saving the company money or driving sales it’s going to be hard to justify the budget once the new-fangledness of social media wears off. Falls pointed to a direction where you can engage customers and still make business owners happy.
And CEO’s are not going to be happy with the “we should be engaging with customers on Facebook, because everyone else is” for long. More and more business owners are asking if social media is helping the company reach its business goals. One example used by Falls is Eric Brown of Urbane Apartments.
Brown is asking his people “Are we (through blogging and using Twitter and Facebook) renting more apartments? Because if we didn’t then social media is just a hobby.”
Falls used some great data that points to just how big a concern this is for business owners. But armed with that knowledge every social media marketer and community manager can look to ways to make their role indispensable to the company.
Part of that is driving traffic to the place where people spend money while maintaining the customer friendly relationship that makes social media so appealing. Falls suggested creating valuable content but with the opportunity for people to buy your product as well. As he put it you aren’t selling, you are helping people buy.
Wiggly Wigglers adds in links to products you can buy in their post. Indiana Spine Group uses a giant web badge that says we are accepting new patients on their blog about spine health. But with all the talk on creating valuable content we forget that sometimes people are coming to our company just to buy. Look at the success of the Dell Outlet twitter feed or the Dollar General circular Facebook page.
Falls also tackled the question that is talked about the most “What is the ROI on social media?” Falls said that depends on your business goals. But it is actually not as hard to track as many might think. You just need to link it to some more commonly used metrics. For example if you know that 10% of you email subscribers spend atleast $100 and your Facebook campaign drove 10,000 new email signups then your Facebook campaign likely made the company an extra $100,000.
But to that end it’s important to figure out what your business goals are for your social media efforts. Drive sales? Cut customer service costs? Drive brand awareness? From there set very specific goals and metrics to prove you are achieving them. Then when your boss asked “What have you done for the company lately?” You bust out your list of achievements and go celebrate with champagne (or at least smile to yourself.)
The talk was absolutely jam-packed with actionable information so it’s definitely worth watching the excellent video of the presentation put together by SMC Board Member Greg Young.
To learn more about Jason, visit his blog http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/
Also if you love seeing great presentations on social media and other geek stuff, join people like you from around the world and register for Gnomedex now.
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Microsoft Office 2010.
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Spring Creek Group
Spring Creek Group is an established social media brand analytics, strategy, and marketing services agency located in Seattle. Whether you need help with your social media accounts or need to run a successful campaign to launch a new product, Spring Creek Group has the experience and passion to help you through the process. The team is comprised of passionate and experienced marketing professionals. Follow them on Twitter: @SpringCreekGrp
