One of the challenges faced by everyone involved in marketing, branding and PR is measurement. Usually, companies have a number of activities ongoing at the same time - a comprehensive advertising schedule, marketing campaign, PR and social media campaigns. Each department is often fighting for a bigger slice of the budget so how do they prove their worth?
Often, qualitative research before and after a campaign is the only way to know if your particular communication tool of choice is pulling its weight. That's why we're all slaves to website traffic, click throughs and referrals these days.
I set up my blog and twitter around the same time (with my addiction to Quora following soon after) and it's really been a revalation how these things feed into each other. The stats and analysis you get on even the most basic of social media tools is fantastic - where are your visitors clicking through from, which are your most popular posts and what topics get the most traction with visitors.
I'm a little bit too new at this to go showing my hand but I'm very happy to see people DO click through on my twitter links and that I was right - Quora is driving traffic to my blog. One amateur blogger does not a complete research report make but I'll be watching my stats counter with an eagle eye from now on.
The best thing about social media is that there's so much of it out there - the good, the bad and the just plain cringeworthy.
Seen a Facebook page where every post gets a chorus of comments? Look at what works and add it to your own social media strategy. Or how about that Twitter campaign that's getting traction for all the wrong reasons? Watch and learn people...
It's all about keeping up with the Joneses these days. The good news is you don't have to spy over the garden fence to catch a glimpse. It's all there, plain as day on the company blog, in Facebook status updates, Twitter streams and on LinkedIn.
Go ahead, it's not spying. They WANT you to look!
