Stadf Finance

Archive for June, 2011

In business, can social media marketing be measured? If it can, how do you go about measuring the return on investment (ROI)? One important thing to remember is that the numbers are not the same for every company.

We all remember from Marketing 101 that the ability to measure the effectiveness of marketing activities as well as calculating ROI is imperative to a company’s go-to-market strategy. Although it is rather simple to measure ROI with most traditional marketing channels, such as print, radio, and even search marketing; it is much more difficult to measure ROI from social media marketing.

Social media measurement is one of the topics about which everyone has an opinion; however, people never seem to come to a consensus.

When it comes to ROI on a social media activity, it isn’t always measured by a direct sale. If a company tries to use social media strategies to directly sell products or services, they will most likely be disappointed with the result and the reaction of the company’s senior management will be that social media doesn’t help the company’s bottom line.

 

Different rules apply to measuring success as a result of social media than the success of a company that has sold products or services in the traditional way.

In the absence of any accepted metrics, businesses still need to be able to figure out whether a social media program is moving the needle, moving product, or otherwise making an impact. This greatly depends on the social media objectives of the company. Because these vary greatly based on the organization, it is impossible to agree upon standards. However, we can still measure ROI at the company level.

A company can have several reasons for wanting to employ a social media strategy. Any one of the strategies can be measured as an ROI. Your company may have a blog and may want to increase the number of people who subscribe to it. Maybe you want visitors to take part in a survey that will increase brand awareness. All of these social media activities are measurable and can demonstrate the success or failure of your business.

In most cases, if you are leveraging social media, you are driving traffic back to your website. Here are some general “engagement” metrics that you can monitor after visitors arrive at your website. Most of these metrics can be tracked by web analytics tools such as the free Google Analytics tool:

• Unique visitors

• Page views per visitor

• Time spent on site

• Total time spent per user

• Frequency of visits

• Depth of visits

• Conversions

There are several other elements that you can examine when measuring the success of your social media marketing efforts. Here’s a high-level view of “returns” that you can measure and to which you can assign goals:

Blogging:

• Number of subscribers

• Number of comments

• Number of links that posts receive

Twitter:

• Number of qualified followers (human follower, not bots)

• Number of retweets

Facebook/MySpace (and all other social networking sites):

• Number of fans/friends

• Number of comments per day/week/month

• Number of discussions started by fans

Brand Lift/Sentiment:

• More mentions of brands/products/services

• Increase positive sentiment

• Decrease negative sentiment 

 

Strengthening an individual’s reputation:

• Number of new network connections as a result of creating buzz around an individual, strengthening his/her reputation

• Positioning the individual as a subject matter expert (SME)

• The quality of the new connections

• Conversion of new connections to business partners and/or loyal clients

Videos/Photos:

• Number of subscribers/friends

• Number of views

• Number of comments

• Ratings

Forums/Message Boards:

• Number of new members

• Number of active members per month

• Number of posts per day

• Number of topics started per week

Conclusions

The final question that you need to ask yourself is: “How much are you investing in using social media to help your business succeed”? The investment most likely consists not only of the price of the software that you are using but also the amount of time that you and your staff are putting into this aspect of your business and the equipment that you need to buy to support the additional traffic that you generate from social media marketing. Remember that it is very important to include all of this in your strategy when you are determining whether the ROI is greater than all that you have invested in the social media strategy itself.

The key takeaway message, regardless of how your company chooses to measure engagement, is that you have a metric that measures success in mind before you begin. Without some sort of benchmark, it is not possible to determine your ROI.

People often think of Japanese products as much inferior products than the American product. However, things are different now because Japanese companies had changed the way they manufactured their products. Hence American consumers can see clearly many Japanese products in the American market now.

One of the consumer goods that are gaining acceptance fast by the American is the products brought to America by JC Uni-Tec. Sushi warmer, vegetable cutters, coffee makers and scores of kitchen equipment are all welcomed by the American whom noted on the fact that the products had already passed the health and sanitation standard set by the government. Americans always look at the Japanese standards as inferior but the company dealt the stigma by making some minor changes in their products. The minor changes had been proved effective because the government eventually passed the products from the import entrances.

However, there is another reason for the wide acceptance of the products by American consumers. This is the wholesale price tags that are set for the products. Consumers can easily spot these much lower price tags especially when they shop through online method. While the shipping fee still needs to be put into the most careful consideration in the shopping, the final prices are amazingly kept at the lowest level as possible. In fact, many consumers had uttered their amazement toward these price tags. What make this company preferable among consumers are also its coupon codes by which consumers can have even lower price for the products.

Six years can be a short or lengthy period of time, depending on how one looks at it. In the oil and gas business, six years may not be enough to break even. At the same time, surviving for at least six years is not enough to prove one’s capability of sustaining production rates and keeping customers happy. But Texas Allied Petroleum, founded in 2005, was more than able to prove everyone wrong.

In just six years, Texas Allied Petroleum was able to carve a place for itself in the tough and incredibly competitive business of oil and gas production. It definitely helps that TAP completely relies on its own operations from scouting potential sites to improving existing drilling operations and distributing its supplies. One other outstanding feature of the company is its strategically gifted and visionary business team, which had succeeded in acquiring a diverse range of oil resources. Besides its various oil fields in Texas, where the company was founded, TAP also has existing operations in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.

The average daily production of Texas Allied Petroleum is estimated at more or less 500,000 cubic feet with a strong possibility of increasing, thanks to its efforts in implementing additional innovations to existing operations. The company also benefits from continuous acquisitions. One of its recent purchases was Main Pass 35 in Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish, which adds fifteen more wells to the company’s possession. Last October 2010, the company also enjoyed positive drilling and testing exercises with their newly completed 2,200-foot well in Kansas.