Social media is fictitious. You can’t measure it, can’t participate in it and sure can’t make any money out of it. Your ROI will be zero and your attempts at success will be futile.
Aside from sounding like a total Debbie Downer, I’m actually attempting to reiterate the opinions of Augustine Fou who clears up the difference between social media and social networking.
With traditional forms of media – television, radio and print – marketers can buy airtime or print space and make money. People’s conversations, on the other hand, can’t be purchased by advertisers, so they can’t be considered media.
Ok, I’ll accept that. However, I would still consider social networking sites, forums and online communities a loose form, or second tier, of media. Sure, you can’t make direct profits from starting conversations, but you can improve your brand visibility and in the end, attract more people to your product.
I do agree with Fou when he says you can’t measure your ROI with “social media”. You can’t do this because your returns on the time you invest are not direct and may not result in purchases. So how do you measure your returns?
Examine your social actions and social intensity. What are people saying about you or your product? How many are interacting, leaving reviews, commenting or sharing? What is the rate and quality of these interactions? Once those questions are answered, look for patterns of things that worked and keep socializing.
To be successful you need to provide a place for your fans to talk. Make sure that this place is easy to find and that positive feedback is archived and can easily be found by new visitors. Make sure that you have an awesome product and give it to a few people for free and let them do the advertising for you. Then, just be present online and keep the conversation going.
End the end, Fou explains, you have to look at it as social marketing and not social media. Don’t pay for it and don’t try to measure it with conventional media metrics.
