Social Media Metrics

Hey everybody,

Its a cloudy Sunday morning here in South Florida, so I figured the best way to occupy my time would be to write another blog posting.  Its official, I will now being moving to a new role at Ion dealing more with internet marketing and social media.  I'm really excited about this opportunity and eager to work with our new marketing director as well as our social media director.

On top of that, I just started reading this book titled "Social Media Metrics" by Jim Stern, which was also forward by none other than David Meerman Scott.  Its not a how to book, or a book that explains how important social media, blogging, and other forms of internet marketing are to businesses around the world.  Rather, its all about measuring social media to ensure that you and your company are getting the most out of it.  Also, if you're still stuck on the "old rules of marketing and PR",  it might be a good idea to experiment with social media.  The times have changed and the internet seems to be taking over the world.

First and foremost, you must understand what it is that you want to get out of social media.  If you're wise, it would be beneficial to use social media to attain these three business goals:

1.  Raise Revenue
2.  Lower Costs
3.  Increase Customer Satisfaction

If you are not using social media to attain at least one of these goals, then you are waisting your time.  Let me say that again, If you are not using social media to attain at least one of these goals, then you are waisting your time!  So before engaging in the realm of social media define your goals, ask yourself what do we want to get out of it?  You'll be much more successful going in with a plan rather than just entering because everybody else is doing it.

Hope this is helpful,

BH

More Education, Why Not?

I don't know if most of you know this but I've taken a break from my MBA program and won't be starting that up again until late spring.  In the meantime, I've been doing a bunch of research on masters programs in integrated marketing communications and internet marketing.  With a year completed in an MBA program, it didn't make sense for me to start all over and switch programs.  Instead, I stumbled on the University of San Francisco one afternoon and noticed they offered a Masters Certificate in Internet Marketing.

The program consists of three 8 week classes:  Integrated Online Strategies, Search Engine Marketing & Usability, and Advanced Interactive Marketing & Measurement.  I'm pretty excited to start this Certificate program because theirs a lot I still have to learn about online marketing despite landing a great job @ Ion Interactive.

Just a quick update on what I'm doing @ Ion:  DHL has consumed my life and we are about to launch their micro sites in over 250 countries.  Once things with DHL slow down, I'll hopefully be able to get more involved in Social Media to get a more hands on experience with it.

Talk to you all soon,

BH

Is There Such A Thing As Over Tweeting?

So I've had a twitter account for about a year now but never understood the potential marketing power that it had behind it until really recently - lets say the last 2 months.  I guess I just saw it as a way to connect with long lost friends rather than utilizing it as a marketing tool.  Now, for the first ten months or so, I was tweeting about the most random things from my work at Sharkzoo to being super bored in graduate classes and couldn't figure out why I only had ten followers.  Sad, I know but why was this?  Well, it could be because I'm not super famous like Justin Bieber, but I have a feeling it was because I had no clue who my target audience was.  I was tweeting about the most random things and its no wonder nobody was following me.

So the past few months, I've really tried to figure out who my target audience was and then it came to me.  Since I'm a young marketing professional I decided to tweet about interesting marketing techniques and post interesting articles about social media, blogging, email campaigns and other forms of online marketing in hopes to reach other marketing professionals.  This began to give me a more recognizable voice as apposed to having no voice at all.  David Meerman Scott even started following me on twitter and posted on my first blog article.

Anyways, what I really want to know is if theres such thing as over tweeting?  I ask this because this morning when I logged into my Twitter account I noticed one of the businesses I was following (I'll keep them anonymous) had posted 27 tweets in a row and I think I stopped reading after 5 of them.  If anybody has an answer to this question, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks,

BH