“If you can’t measure it you shouldn’t be doing it” – I always used to say. My opinion changed with the social media boom. There were, I felt, benefits to getting a brand onto the SM bandwagon that outweighed the need to measure the results too soon.

Companies want to see a RIO, often in their ‘own’ format rather than anything an analytics programme can provide. Too many established outfits, however, are not prepared to invest the time or resource in learning new analysis. Sadly ‘back of cigarette packets’ calculations still drive many SME businesses. They expect it to ‘just happen’. They don’t understand how things have changed.

Sure some take a stab at SM marketing, or web marketing, or email marketing but then panic when there isn’t an immediate result. I call this Wylie E Coyote marketing.

So what’s the solution? How do we provide real detail behind our gut feel for SM?

Amber Naslund has written an excellent article on SM measurement. She outlines some of the areas you should consider.

Revenue and Business Development: (benchmark before and after SM initiatives begin)

• Speed/length of sales cycle
• Number or % of Repeat customers
• % of Customer Retention
• Number of customer referrals (new business), net number of new leads
• Transaction value per customer
• Customer lifetime value
• Conversions from blog/email subs to leads or customers
• Website conversions for leads or sales
• Organic search rankings > converted leads
• % of Converted leads from online vs. offline sources

Potential Cost Savings:

• Shorter customer service/issue resolution time
• % of issues resolved via offline vs. online channels
• Number of support calls before/after outreach effort
• Recruiting costs through online presence (vs. recruiters)
• Training costs
• % of quarterly or annual customer/account turnover
• Overhead costs for communication (measure costs of online outreach vs. analog as compared to resolution ratios)
• Number/ ratio of viable community-driven product ideas
• Length of concept-to-development cycle (use of online community as testing/focus/idea development)

Value, Awareness, Influence

• Brand Loyalty
• Sentiment of posts online – advocates, detractors
• Share of conversation/voice
• Number and frequency of mentions in media (online or print)
• Net Promoter Score (likelihood of recommendation)
• Subscribers to blog/email/newsletter
• Comments/engagement on posted material, downloads of ebooks, etc. (interaction with content)
• Inbound links to site/blog (total as well as on-topic/relevant)
• Number of Tags, votes, social bookmarks
• Fans/followers/group members for social profiles (implication of a brand following)

I recommend reading the full article  from Altitude.

By Shiv Singh

Well worth a read.

Learn how easy it is for your market to get your message

Nowadays, if you’re not tweeting, Facebooking, or blogging, what are you doing? Everyone has a Twitter account, a Facebook page, or a blog—even celebrities! With the popularity of social networking comes the need to learn about social media marketing. Social media marketing is a cheaper and highly effective way to spread up–to–the–minute news; an easy, inexpensive way to enlarge your audience, customers, and business.

Social Media Marketing For Dummies provides an indispensable resource for small businesses and start–ups looking for low–cost online marketing strategies, as well as for marketers in larger companies who want to be more involved with social media. Learn which social media site best fits you and your business and how to:

• Use Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and other social media outlets to full advantage
• Create your own online spokesperson for your brand
• Identify social media sites that appeal to your target audience
• Tell which social platform works for which objectives
• Develop a unique, Google–able voice in social media
• Optimize your page to attract clicks and customers
• Set up a program to assess your success and measure your results

Cucusoft are offering 50% off  their YouTube Mate (Downloader + Player + Converter, all in one) A free YouTube Download and playback software.
Using the coupon CUCU-M0CA-WUSH  grab your discount now.

According to the company, Cucusoft YouTube Mate – is the most powerful YouTube assistant on the planet. It is free for downloading videos any playback.
YouTube Mate helps you download, convert, play and manage your favorite YouTube videos… and it’s very easy to use. If you’re a YouTube fan, you’ll love YouTube Mate!
YouTube Mate easily:
* downloads YouTube videos
* supports unlimited simultaneous downloads (a real time saver!)
* automatically names the downloaded video the same as the YouTube title
* converts YouTube videos to various video formats, including avi, DivX, XviD, rm, rmvb, MOV, MPEG, and WMV (Only full version includes this feature.)
With YouTube Mate you can also convert downloaded YouTube videos to a format compatible with your favorite portable device; including – iPod Video, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, iPhone, Zune, PSP, as well as video capable MP3 players, video capable mobile phones, and Pocket PC.
And finally… YouTube Mate’s embedded player will allow you to watch all your favorite YouTube videos off-line. So now you can enjoy any .flv and .swf videos anytime!

Free Webinar from HubSpot

Cowbrough Communications have added video to their portfolio.

Unlike most offerings Cowbrough’s videos have real impact for business of any size. The days of video costing the entire year’s advertising budget are long gone. However, just because it is easier / cheaper to create video it doesn’t mean production values have to suffer. Check out this video from Cowbrough Communications and you will see what I mean. This is the way all businesses should be communicating today.

With 15 year’s experience, including recent short listings for awards from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Cowbrough Communications has the expertise and contacts to deliver for you.

Cowbrough Communications has a track record of success in delivering a range of communications support to help businesses grow and to support organisations achieve their goals.

It has particular experience of the public and voluntary sectors and in supporting small and medium sized companies with impressive results for clients across Scotland, Africa and Central America.

Now wedding planners can do their bit to offset carbon and save their far flung relatives some cash – without losing out on the whole expereince!

IFDNRG can broadcast your wedding onto the internet allows family and friends from all over the world to be able to attend your special day.

The company have mnore than 8 years of experience broadcating a range of events and with all the expertise you’ll need, you can leave all the technical aspects to them.

IFDNRG broadcasts a variety of events onto the internet for clients and in addition to handling the streaming aspects they can also provide full production facilities.

IFDNRG provide reliable live streaming (webcasting) for events in the UK and beyond. They can provide streaming facilities in either Windows Media ( WMV) or Flash (FLV) formats and can provide everything you need right down to a technician and broadcast encoding equipment.

E-consultancy have released a major update to their Technology Adoption Statistics report. The document is a comprehensive compilation of internet statistics and online market research with data, facts, charts and figures that are ideal for presentations, business cases or client pitches, RFPs and understanding the marketplace as a whole.

The sections include the following:

• Video
• Video Market Size & Growth Trends
• Video On Demand / Catch Up TV
• User Generated Video & Video Sharing
• Audio
• Audio Market Size & Growth Trends

• UK viewers of selected video sites, Dec 2006 to Apr 2008. [Source: Nielsen Online via Ofcom,
  Aug 2008]

“We’re excited to say that support for watching 1080p HD videos in full resolution is on its way. Starting next week, YouTube’s HD mode will add support for viewing videos in 720p or 1080p, depending on the resolution of the original source, up from our maximum output of 720p today.” said a YouTube spokesman

It had to happen. Camcorders are increasingly offering 1080p HD level video. Movies are coming out in 1080p HD. TV shows can be seen in 1080p HD. I even hear that life has gone beyond 1080p HD resolution. So now YouTube has joined the pack and will stream 1080p video starting next week. You better make sure your computer is up to scratch and have a fat pipe as I imagine that rendering YouTube videos at 1080p, even with hardware acceleration, will be quite a strain. Time to get ready and see your favourite YouTube stars in more detail than you could ever want!

Check it out here