Comments on: Moving Needles

By: Club Penguin Cheats

Club Penguin Cheats — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:03:16 +0000

Telling your customers they need to wait 24-48 hours for a response to their support email won't work today. There's a growing expectation for a certain level of listening from brands/companies.

By: Club Penguin Cheats

Club Penguin Cheats — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:03:16 +0000

Telling your customers they need to wait 24-48 hours for a response to their support email won't work today. There's a growing expectation for a certain level of listening from brands/companies.

By: Are You Shortcutting Your Community? | SonnyGill.com

Are You Shortcutting Your Community? | SonnyGill.com — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:08:24 +0000

[...] is really cut up into two sides. One side is where much of the hard work, tough questions, and moving of needles reside. Those people who are looking to help further the industry, build strong communities, help [...]

By: Donate Blood | Are We Connected.com

Donate Blood | Are We Connected.com — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:26:12 +0000

[...] Moving Needles (chrisbrogan.com) No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Social Media Blood Drive”, url: “http://AreWeConnected.com/2009/03/social-media-blood-drive/” }); Sphere: Related Content Did you know this site has a DO Follow on all comments? (that means you get Google Juice for commenting) The really cool kids all subscribe to my RSS feed. Hey, thanks for visiting! [...]

By: Veronica

Veronica — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:17:22 +0000

Great question. One that was bound to surface now that social media marketing is so widely used and even dependent on during this economic crisis.

This question was addressed in a different way – “Measuring The Cost of Bad or Good Online Marketing” – by Cece Salomon-Lee on PR Meets Marketing. Also an interesting article.

Cece offers some good advice: “start simply – take the most simple measurement and build upon it over time. Otherwise, you may find yourself spending more time assembling reports about your online reputation versus managing it directly.”

By: Simon Mason

Simon Mason — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 10:03:52 +0000

It is easier to measure the effect of digital and social media marketing efforts than it has been to measure the effect of analogue traditional media as well implemented analytics can give a very good idea of where the people who visit your site have come from. (Assuming most people using social media will also choose to research potential suppliers online)

If you are e-commerce it gets even easier as you can track which hits become sales. If you transaction takes place offline you can look at the traffic to your online presecence and compare it with your sales growth to get a rough guide if you are getting a good ROI.

However as with all metrics many companies will continue to ignore the ones they don’t like – see Phillip Van Peborghs comment about trade shows above. In the same way weak marketers will continue to bluff their way through the ROI and measurability arguments.

For the rest of us this is a huge potential advantage – get your analytics set up now and measure your traffic, for the first time this will give you tangible figures to present to your clients and to improve your own efforts. Just remember the only figure the client will ever be interested in is sales and bear this in mind when choosing which metrics to focus on.

By: Tim Jahn

Tim Jahn — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:11:16 +0000

I feel the listening aspect of all this the most fascinating (especially in the context of Twitter).

Telling your customers they need to wait 24-48 hours for a response to their support email won’t work today. There’s a growing expectation for a certain level of listening from brands/companies.

Goes the other way too. Companies can get feedback from their customers quicker through various mediums.

By: Philip Van Peborgh

Philip Van Peborgh — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:22:47 +0000

@Ron Arden, I’m with you. Social media is another set of tools to add. It allows a more efficient engagement with certain parts of a target audience. However most of the business owners I’ve talked to are looking at leveraging social media tools as a silver bullet, a way to dramatically increase their penetration and revenues.

Business has a way of defining only something that can be measured as “real”. Things that can’t measured, therefore, don’t exist. So pushing adoption without metrics is a tricky conversation. Thankfully however most companies have taken that leap of faith before. I’m convinced, purely from an ROI viewpoint that trade shows make no sense, nor do corporate sponsorships but businesses do them anyway. No matter how metric focused, jaded or skeptical anyone is, there is an intangible, unmeasurable benefit to all marketing. Social media is no different.

By: Ron Arden

Ron Arden — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:26:54 +0000

I view social media as just another set of tools that helps drive customer engagement and ultimately sales. It is easier to have unfiltered conversations with Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. The questions I ask: Is my customer base growing? Are sales increasing? Are sales to existing customers increasing? Are customers leaving? By really engaging customers and giving them what they need, I should be getting the answers I want. The needles are the same, the tools have just changed.

By: Michele

Michele — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:22:43 +0000

Metrics! My favorite topic…seriously.

I think I would add a few things:
1) subscription tracking to measure lead quality of readership and might also be an avenue to drive readers into the lead chain.
2) ratings in addition to commentary.
3) inbound communication outside of comments as a result of posts and efforts.