With an expected increase in online sales up to $9.2 billion by the end of this year, the brands have become more strategic in their approach towards the use of social media for the promotions.

The brands are witnessing customers buying products on the basis of reviews posted on Facebook, twitter or by clicking on the product links posted on these websites. The sentiment towards a brand is getting changed by how a brand handles its social media presence, thus making it a major buying influencer.

The marketers have started focusing on the use of this platform but one question which they need to answer is how should they calculate the ROI for social media.

Calculating ROI is based on a simple calculation of:

Benefits- Cost*100

Cost

The benefits is the revenue generated and the cost is the money invested but in the case of social media the benefits has two parts: tangible and intangible.

Tangible:

-          Different types of impressions and the value of those types of impressions

-          Clicks to the website

-          Increase in attributable sales from the website

-          Leads generated from the channel

To attach value to each, you need to try and find equivalents in your existing media plan. Please see some examples below.

Some of the intangible benefits could be:

Intangible:

-          Share of voice i.e. the likes, user engagement, people talking about, retweets etc.

-          Conversations i.e. the content (FB wall posts, tweets, blog posts), comments, interactions, pins etc.

-          Advocates i.e.  Fans, followers, pinners etc.

-          Customer Care i.e. handling customer complaints, answering product queries, solving customer issues etc.

The cost for social media includes three parts:

-          Content generation

-          Technology

-          Ads and promotion of the social media channel

As you cater for more and more metrics as tangibles, you will realize that the list of intangibles comes smaller. For example, the number of followers on twitter has a value. Some of that value is captured when we measure re-tweets.

By separating out and attaching value to the tangibles to the extent possible, the ROI formula now looks like -

[Value (likes, comments, shares, people talking about)] – Cost    *100 + Intangibles.

Cost

At this point, you could decide at the level of ROI you are comfortable with for the tangibles. For example, even at a tangible ROI of -20%, you might allow this activity to continue as you believe that the intangibles actually take the ROI into the positive domain.

Did you find this post helpful? Please do let me know.

In case you don’t already know about it, Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks.

In a span of less than 3 years from its launch in March 2010, it has beaten Yahoo in terms of organic traffic driver and has grown more than 4000% last year. According to the reports by comScore, Pinterest buyers spend more and make more transactions as compared to any other social media buyer. With around 17 million total visits per week, Pinterest has become a valuable marketing tool toleverage the online brand presence and value.

Businesses have started using this platform to increase the web traffic and to create high brand awareness with the use of more compelling content. While Facebook allows to post photos, videos and text on the business pages where visitors can comment and interact, Pinterest has a rather unique approach to create brand awareness. The site allows individuals to interact, share and discover new interests, and products by pinning images or videos to their own or other’s pinboards.

Businesses want visitors. Pinning is definitely one of the ways of attracting them. The images which are pinned on the boards; have back links to the source and every time the image gets pinned, a new link is generated.

With each repin, the visibility is expanded and helps in lead generation as it increases the number of people who see the board. So the businesses need to be very innovative towards their approach on using the pins and making the pin boards to get the best of this tool.

Before plunging in, do weigh on the following thoughts –

1. Pinterest’s main audience in still in the US and Western Europe. Check to see how your target customer is liking pinterest.
2. Pinterest is a visual format – Does that suit your product or service?

Happy Pinning!

It was a watershed year for the social media team at Envigo. From a two people team, we are now a seven people cross functional team which can handle the social media mandate for clients across industries.

Unlike the other teams at Envigo which are very process oriented, we are engagement oriented

Please don’t for a moment think we do not have processes. We have processes but they are slightly different!
If I was to look at the SEO and social media team processes, then, this is how they would compare.

Anything for getting those coveted likes, comments and impressions!!

But here lies a catch. This is not what the client gets to see! We remember to wipe our shoes on our trousers before meeting a client.We are evolving and we try to learn from everyone around us

With a lot of support, encouragement and some push and pull these are the social media campaigns that we ran in 2011:

1. Scientist Bhaskar – Foodles instant noodles by Horlicks
   • http://www.facebook.com/ScientistBhaskar
   • https://twitter.com/#!/scientisbhaskar
   • http://www.youtube.com/user/BhaskarKiKahani
2. Ranbaxy Revital
   1. http://www.facebook.com/MyRevital
   2. www.twitter.com/my_revital
3. Fortune Hotels
   1. http://www.facebook.com/FortuneHotels
   2. http://www.youtube.com/user/FortuneHotelsIndia
   3. www.twitter.com/Fortune_Hotels
4. The Frunos – Eno by GSK
   • http://www.facebook.com/Frunos
   • www.twitter.com/fruno_babli
   • www.twitter.com/fruno_sunny
   •  www.twitter.com/fruno_chintu
   •  www.twitter.com/fruno_JC
   • www.twitter.com/fruno_Guru
   • http://www.youtube.com/user/TheFrunos
5. Max Bupa http://www.facebook.com/MaxBupaHealthInsurance
6. Lifelong Learning – http://www.facebook.com/LFAIndia
7. Stratedge – GSK –Ch Buzz – http://www.facebook.com/GSKCHBuzz
8. The Wine Society of India – http://www.facebook.com/thewinesocietyofindia

It was a mixed bag of brands and we were able to deliver satisfactory campaigns across industry verticals.

In my next blog post I will map the qualities of the social media team which translate into successful social media campaigns. So stay tuned!

Social media has proved to be an evangelist, revolutionising marketing, communications, and the outflow of information. Brands and businesses have always had an access to rich promotional channels, but, the true promise of social media lies in the direct connection and communication. The most beneficial by products of social media are:
1. consumer engagement,
2. creating brand value and
3. building customer loyalty (stated in order of priority)

The dictionary defines engagement as, ‘to attract or hold attention of, engross’. Consumer engagement on the social platform therefore, refers to anything that glues a customer to the brand or business on the social media channel. It could be an update on twitter/tumblr, a page on Facebook, a profile on LinkedIn, an account on Orkut or an upload on you tube. The brand needs to be everywhere and anywhere the consumer is and mere presence is not enough. Of utmost priority is to keep the customer engaged to all the events and updates. The simplest way is to communicate all that takes place within the brand premises so as to build curiosity in order to gain affinity; else the brand needs to get curious about all that lies within the range of interest of the consumer and build affinity. The main idea is to have the consumer coming back to the page or continue searching for the brand.

This however, isn’t as easy as it sounds. Consumer engagement is not tangible, it’s hard to measure or track. The brand/business needs energising and motivating content to remove any kind of viewer fatigue. It is important to establish a personal connect making way for a 2 way process of communication, initiated by the brand. To maintain engagement on the page, it is highly recommended to follow up on each post. A simple thank you note for any feedback/suggestion may not do wonders but not acknowledging consumer action can sure do blunders.

In social media, just like in the real world, presence is felt between people who represent companies and the people who define markets of interest. Engagement helps weave the graph of social significance and success. All brands and businesses are out there, swimming in the ocean of social media, so engagement is the ingredient that serves as a mast, for the brands, against which they can pull their sails and voyage unhindered.

A question asked by hundreds of people in social media is how can they increase the engagement on their pages? The answer to this persistent question is complex but never truly illusive. However, we decided to view the question differently and thereafter, derive an answer to it. The question should really be what makes a particular page so engaging that fans can’t resist interacting with it. The answer really requires cognitive reversal of theories to determine what interaction attributes a successful post that result in a psychologically engaging user experience. Here are a few pointers you must keep in mind each time you wish to start a conversation on a page.
1. Simplicity breeds familiarity
Simple and basic interactive posts do not require too much thinking on part of the user. They are familiar with the language and the message being communicated. And their response to the post is prompt without having to spare a second thought or an extra second.

2. Add details where needed
If the posts are brutally simple and familiar all that it can breed is boredom. Therefore, now a need arises to add necessary details to the content. Once the fan’s mental model of how the page interacts is well formed and fully embedded (known technically as schema formation) to elude boredom and using familiarity add details to the page keeping in mind the profile of the targeted audience and user base. The posts should slowly move on to being user centric addressing their needs, solving their queries and forming a bond.

3. Cleverly Manage response time
The quicker and prompt the reaction time, the better will be the engagement. The aim really is to marry the user needs and the brand page resulting in many loyal customers. Time management can be leveraged to add to the quality and depth of engagement on any page.

4. Measure the engagement and proceed
The engagement on the page can be measured by the likes and comments and interaction per post. But the success really depends on when you can track profile of the most loyal amongst them and interact with them directly, in turn increasing their affinity to the page.

Social Media and social media marketing are the order of the day. Are you thinking about it as well? We wanted to put some perspective behind it, by comparing it with all the other main channels of online marketing.

Social media is different – it is new and it is still evolving. While traditional online channels could be compared along the dimensions of risk, targeting and monetising models, social media does not really fit in very well. The differences between an affiliate sending traffic to you compared to you buying traffic from Google on these dimensions are below:

1. Risk – Who bears the risk of conversion – the risk of conversion sits with the affiliate alone as in the latter case, Google gets paid on a click

2. Targeting – How well is a user identified as a potential buyer – Similar in both cases- A user clicks a button for more information and writes out a keyword for more information

3. Commercials – What is the payment for the advertising based upon – Payment is based on competitive bidding, but in both cases, there is an element of earning per click which comes into play by the volume provider.

Social media fails to fit into such a model except as an over-simplification. The reasons for this are the same as the reasons for its popularity. Social media is -

1. Free in form – blogs, tweets, posts, discussions, status messages… (and pokes)

2. Free in channel and media – the web and the phone converge here – text, images, videos, maps and mashups are all equally acceptable

3. Free to edit, create, contribute, destroy – Yes, of course you can. Of all things, even an encyclpaedia is freely editable (but in a social manner)

4. Free of control – In the traditional sense, yes. There is no one owner. There can not be. It won’t be social any more.

5. Very important for a marketer – Free to engage and influence – The customer is present, directly and without any intervening chatter. You can chat him up – one on one – like never before. He can single you out (for good or for bad)

Search engine advertising was the magical new boy in college – strange at first but a well behaved person who lived by the rules, albeit new ones. You had to learn his language and customs and he became your best friend and did magical new things for you. Social media advertising is the brash new rock star – everyone wants to be with her but no one really knows how to tame her.