One of the questions that we are asked on a regular basis is, how does one decide if their Social Media program is a success? What are the Key Performance Indicators? Alban D’Sa, the Operations Manager at Quay Appointments in Sydney, Australia asked this in LinkedIn.

The answer is a simple one. You look at what you are trying to achieve with your goals and use the Social Media tools that are most helpful. Then you look at an indicator to tell you if you are succeeding. One of my favorite success stories in City Social Media is Suisun City. It has two Facebook fan pages. One is for the Downtown Waterfront District, the other is for Suisun City in general.

Both give information about the locale. The Waterfront District is more about business. It has over 400 members. That makes sense for a business environment. The city fan page has almost 2,000 fans. It is much more oriented toward the fun going on in the city. Scott Corey says that it’s easy for him to be the Marketing Manager for the city because it has such good stories to tell. The important thing is, he makes sure those stories are told.

Andy Moore, Director at iThnk.com of New Zealand says, “KPIs such as number of followers/fans, amount of traffic to your page or site and the depth of comment threads from your posts are all good ways of keeping tabs on your social media campaigns.

He suggests “choosing the indicators that are most the relevant to your objectives at the outset of your campaign and monitoring these on a regular basis to make sure you’re on track. For example if your goal is to really engage with people I would monitor the amount of comments and responses you’re getting with each new update.”

He wrote a blog post on this subject recently so please check-out the link below if you’re interested…

http://www.ithnk.com/2010/07/02/what-is-social-media-success/

The Avogadro Group wanted to improve its image and also improve the usability of its site by staff, prospects and others in the industry. The objective was to have a professional website that engaged visitors and also provided some real tools to associates and industry peers.

Read more on our Avogadro Case Study.

Website Functionality Ideas. Consider adding these tools to your website with your next redesign. (more…)

What is the main point of social media?… To create a two-way conversation. Whether you are using; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social media tool it is important to remember you are always working at creating a two-way conversation.

PR and marketing have come a long way from shouting a message at consumers, and that is the first step at being successful at using social media. Meghan Overby, Jan Burch and I were lucky enough to have the opportunity to share our observations and ideas about marketing in general and social media in particular yesterday morning with a wonderful group of people at the Green California Summit and Expo in Sacramento.  There are so many markets niches out there looking to jump into social media and Green is one of them.

It is important to understand the basics of social media and know that it is only one tool to reaching your audience. Also each social media tool is used differently and can achieve different results.  We spent a few hours running over the basics and used this Powerpoint (4mb PDF). Some of the key points we covered included:

1. Make sure EVERYTHING is routed to and from your web site.
2. Treat social media as a two-way conversation; be sure to be a good listener!
3. Social Media is only ONE tool, it is not the one answer to everything.

We wrote a Social Media White Paper, too. If you want it, then just click here!