Are You Blasting or Listening When You Market Online?

Since last week’s post about measuring what you should (not what you can) generated some nice feedback, we thought it merited a follow up discussion.

As our good friend Stephen D. Rappaport noted in a recent guest article for one of our clients, “social media is still considered a broadcast medium” by too many organizations and “that’s a huge missed opportunity.”  

While Steve’s piece was intended for trade association executives, many of his key points are relevant for financial and professional service firms like yours. For instance:

·         Too many organizations still treat social media as a one-way broadcast medium and are missing great engagement and intelligence-gathering opportunities from clients and prospects.

·         Social media strategy is much greater than merely nudging or bribing your audience to share, tweet or follow your content and calling that engagement.

·         Think of your audience as belonging to a tribe, with your leadership as the elders. Discover the core reasons for your tribe’s existence and why members want to belong.

NOTE: Click here for information about Steve’s new book, The Digital Metrics Field Guide The Definitive Reference for Brands using the Web, Social Media, Mobile Media. Put in on your summer reading list.

Conclusion

Whether it’s a tweet, a blog post, an enewsletter or a video, if you’re still using social media to blast things out to clients and prospects—rather than using it to stimulate a discussion—then you’re missing the point. No matter how well your pieces are designed and written, if you’re using them as a one-way bullhorn rather than a two-way dialogue, then it just shows you’re cheap, possibly lazy and not respectful of your clients’ and prospects’ time.

Have a great weekend. Best, HB

Our blog has more, as does the FREE Resources page of our website.

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TAGS: Steve Rappaport, Digital Metrics Field Guide, measuring social and mobile media, one way broadcast vs. two-way medium 

Are You Measuring What You Can…or What You Should?

Most of you on this distribution list are numbers people. We live in a world of Big Data, analytics, CRM, BPM, ROI and benchmarking. Even the baseball stat junkies among us have a profession named after them—sabermetrics. So how come it’s so hard for us to determine if our marketing is working, especially our digital marketing, which is supposed to be so measurable? 

As our good friend Stephen D. Rappaport noted in a recent guest article for one of our clients, “The great majority of digital metrics put a number on tactical results—the things that campaigns encourage people to do, such as opening emails, clicking links, reading pages and viewing videos, posting and commenting, sharing, downloading content, installing apps, liking, checking-in, and friending, connecting or following.

But according to Rappaport, who’s been a longtime advisor to our firm, putting a number on tactical results is not the whole story. We’re often measuring data that’s easier to collect, not what’s strategically meaningful. Instead, Steve says you need to:
*  Develop a theory about how digital media should help your firm or organization achieve tangible goals like thought leaders, client retention, recruiting, or new client acquisition.

·     
 * Create a measurement framework based on your theory, such as awareness, engagement, participation and advocacy/evangelism.

·         * Select and fit metrics to the framework.

NOTE: Click here for information about Steve’s new book, The Digital Metrics Field Guide The Definitive Reference for Brands using the Web, Social Media, Mobile Media. Put in on your summer reading list.

Conclusion

If you have the courage to ask what you need to hear--not what you want to hear--about your marketing efforts, then you’ll be well on your way to understanding what metrics really mean and what steps to take next. Steve’s got 197 of his favorite metrics for you just waiting to be explored.

Our blog has more, as does the FREE Resources page of our website.

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TAGS: Steve Rappaport, Digital Metrics Field Guide, sabermetrics, measuring social and mobile media