What is social media? How is it measured? And what benefits do i get out of it?…
Are pretty much the only things anyone cares about whilst we are a) free-falling into a recession (i am particularly amused by the FT’s ‘Recession Forecast’. Perhaps it’ll be run alongside the weather in months to come), and b) resultantly having to become accountable for our expenditure.
So, i can answer, in brief, the following:
- Social media is, broadly speaking, engagement marketing.
- It is measured through exposure (think AVE) and tracked engagement
- You get…well. LOADS of benefits out of it. But foremost you get to engage with your customer base.
Now, above i have outlined the what’s and where’s of social media in a very crude fashion and, in looking deeper into social media measurement we will see bloggers and experts such as Jeremiah discussing all manner of really interesting theories, such as social media velocity.
But in layman’s terms, what does it get you? Is there a tangible ROI? Why not advertise instead? Well, if you follow the Adweek Blogs’ feed of ‘adfreak’ you’d probably be turned off social media in general. But then i guess their agenda is slightly different, and i can imagine that they are being rather negatively affected by the downturn in traditional ad spend. It didn’t however stop the ex-Google renegades from developing and launching their (quite frankly, rubbish) social media defying SEO algorithm platform, Cuil.
However it IS beneficial, and it works a lot better for brands. Engagement marketing returns us to the core values of what marketing is and what it is intended to be: gaining buy in from customers through recommendation and trust. And if we can engage with brand advocates (or detractors) and present them with a product/brand/idea that is so good they want to talk about it, then that is the most valuable marketing tool there is.
And it works above the line and below the line - handy!
Tags: above the line measurement, ad spend, below the line measurement, Cuil, fleur hicks-duarte, FT, Recession, ROi, SEO, social media
