As colleges and universities scramble to set up Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace pages, analysts are scrambling to discover how impactful the social-media marketing has been. For some, the answer is “We can’t measure this,” while others believe there are statistics that reflect their social-media efforts.
Aaron Uhrmacher, considered the guru of social media, wrote, “Social media measurement is one of those topics about which everyone has an opinion but nobody agrees on the solution.” His suggestion—as a beginning point—is simply to decide on what to measure.
What’s Your Social Media Marketing Goal?
If your goal is to increase your reputation—get prospective students talking about you in a positive manner—then assign someone to visit social-media sites and monitor what’s being said about your institution.
In a brief run-through searching Twitter, we found several disparaging comments about a college’s poor handling of problems for distance students. At another site, a student complained that it took days to get a return phone call, leading her to wonder if she was choosing the right school.
In both instances, a social-media point of contact—shall we call it a czar?—could have reached out to customers via direct message or e-mail and turned a damaging situation into a win-win. After all, social media is about the “social”—building relationships.
If your goal with your social-media marketing is to measure traffic, then set up an analytics program that tracks incoming links; this will tell you if your visitors are coming from Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Although Google Analytics are excellent (and free), we also suggest Xinu, a free site that tells how your website is doing in terms of search engines, search engine optimization, social bookmarking, RSS, and other social indicators.
Measuring ROI on social media marketing isn’t a precise science, but what we know for sure is that businesses and entrepreneurs need to have a success metric in mind before jumping into the game.
Contact Vantage Point for information on setting up your social media marketing campaign
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