You hear a lot of talk in virtually any business environment about the use of “best practices.” These are the techniques which, in a given situation, are regarded as the most effective choices for delivering a desired outcome.
Entire companies and rating systems have risen up over the past few years specializing in rating and ranking best practices among companies. In fact, there are probably best practices for almost anything you can think of…except social media.
Industry experts say that the social media phenomenon is too new to have any established best practices. While that may be true, it doesn’t mean that social media is in total anarchy. We do fairly well at policing ourselves and following what conventional wisdom has determined to be “how things are done.” They may not be “best practices” yet, but it’s getting there.
Attempts have been made to discuss “best practices” in social media, but published articles run the gamut from extremely general to very specific. There’s even a Facebook group about the topic. None of them seem to agree with each other, which is hardly what you want if you are establishing “best practices.”
Until a governing body is created and somebody finally does produce an agreeable “best practices” list for all of us to follow, it’s a good idea to create a solid infrastructure for your social media efforts that you can drill down to certain social signals that search engines look for.
Here are some quick suggestions on how to obtain, analyze and refine your marketing strategies and infrastructure:
- Data investment. Your company’s social image can affect every aspect of a potential clients purchase decision. That’s why it’s important to collect as much data as possible about consumer behavior on your social media campaigns and activities. Create ways to determine the amount of consumer awareness, influenced transactions and brand impact created by your social media presence.
- Monitor your sites in real time. One big problem with Social Media input is most of it is extremely short-lived. If you’ve ever participated in a conversation on Facebook, for example, you probably notice that even the most popular posts run out of steam in about two days. That means, if somebody asks a question or makes a comment on your site that you feel compelled to answer, you need to answer it promptly and completely. You may need to hire (or train) someone to become your online social media monitor, a voice for the company who can respond within 24 hours to anything.
- There’s room for innovation. One area that currently requires more product development in order to support “best practices” in social media is the creation of better metric tools. For example, the ability to monitor the effect of online conversations about a product and actual use or purchasing of that product has yet to be perfected. Metrics for spotting influencers and measuring the holistic impact of social media are also sorely needed.
What’s more, you need to invest your time into listening to what your customers have to say. React to the comments they leave on line. Use them all to help determine your social media campaign.
Fortunately, there are many social media monitoring tools you can use to help you keep track of your social media accounts. These tools can measure everything from brand visibility to sentiment analysis, the practice of determining the attitude of a speaker or writer in reference to a given topic. There are even tools that can analyze the mood level of bloggers. While they’re not perfect, over time they can help you recognize patterns in your audience’s overall opinion of your products, services and business.
Twitter has become such a mainstay in people’s lives that there are probably more tools for measuring tweets than there are for almost anything else. Of course, that’s not to say that other social media outlets are that far behind. Facebook, LinkedIn and many others have authorized and non-authorized popularity measuring tools available.
There are many additional tests and steps that can be made to fully determine a solid infrastructure for your social media campaign. However, these tips should get you started nicely. If you need some help getting started, or you have some ideas on “best practices” for marketing as they pertain to your business, you know who to call.
Author: Tony Berastegui
