Reviewing ROI: Is Social Media Worth It?

John M Potter: Here is a question for Paul that I get all the time. People come up to me, especially business people, and say, “You know I like social media but I don’t think it’s worth the time”. How would you counter that? Paul Kortman: I would actually use two elements that Max said in his presentation. One was that you can use analytics to judge all your marketing vendors. I mean, if you hired me and you’re not looking at Google Analytics then you’re wasting your money. Because you need to know whether or not I’m doing my job, whether I’m achieving the goals that you have set out. So any of your marketing vendors, you have to make sure you’re looking at the right indicators to determine if it’s any good. And that’s true with marketing initiatives. So even if you don’t use a vendor for social media, and you’re doing it in-house, what are your goals, and not just Google Analytics, but what are your actual goals with social media. And how are you tracking that. If you’re not tracking that – then sure, don’t mess with social media. So that was one thing.

The other thing is that Google is making shifts. Links from websites won’t be as important as links from social media in the future. That means, if people aren’t talking about you and your stuff, you won’t show up in Google. So how to get people talking about you? One, have really good stuff, have something that is worth talking about. Marketable content that somebody would make a comment about. The other thing is be there, engage your target audience, because believe it or not your target audience is on these social networks. I know some many people who are like “We’re B2B, we sell screws, it doesn’t matter.” Yeah, but guess what? Talk to any of your clients and they’re all on Facebook. So, because Google is making this change to their algorithm, because they’re moving towards social as a major factor in rank, you need to be there. And your target audience is there. It may be a challenge to find them in a B2B environment, but you can. We’ve done it. But like I’ve said, make sure you’re analyzing what you need to give and take.

John M Potter: Are there any social media metrics that are becoming more popular? We talked about Klout for instance.

Paul Kortman: There’s interactions, engagement updates. So, Facebook has their own algorithm. If you try to do really well at search, SEO, Google has their own algorithm; Facebook has their own algorithm so one of my clients has 2000 connections, a thousand fans on their page. They post a piece of content, five people will see it. Because their algorithm has determined that the content isn’t worth it. You can easily get 2000 people. I guarantee you. It’s fun. Cause Joel has some really good stories about that back in the day. So this algorithm, how do you beat that? One is interactions: comments, likes, and shares. This is the goldmine of Facebook marketing. That’s the number I would pay attention to.