@hedenius, a distinguished and most prominent colleague of mine came up with the idea for this post. The 100th post of jesperastrom.com. Social Media and conversion is one of those questions I think about all the time. The foundation for my analysis lies within the presentation I held at Searchmeet in 2009. It is all about baby steps, looking for small conversions leading to the final goal of a financial transaction.

1. The landing page is only about the offer

One of the greatest misconceptions when it comes to social media conversion is that of the offer. When you are working with search engine traffic or e-marketing, they you are looking at putting an offer in the face of your visitor that he or she can say yes or no to. You try to make your offer seem as valuable as possible by highlighting it, by making putting it in the proper placement or by simply covering the whole page with it.

Social media traffic does not want the offer. At least not the offer you are interested in selling. They think that the offer is in the way of the deal. When they trust you, then they will come to your page for that offer through a brand search. If you only highlight your offer, then you will be stuck with only a fraction of the value you could generate from the users you receive from social media traffic.

First rule of social media conversion is that you shouldn’t sell anything. You should build trust, then sell when the visitor returns through the search engine. Help them research through social media. Give them the tools to do this research and help them tell others about it. But DON’T offer them to buy anything at this point. It simply doesn’t make you a credible talking partner.

2. Making your Value proposition all about the money

Which brings me to the second misconception about social media traffic. It doesn’t matter how much money you put on the table. Think about it this way.

Your goal should be to become a part of the group. If you have ever been associated with a group of people you know that there is a social hierarchy in any one of them. You know that there is this one person that you all care if he/she is there or not, and you know that respectively there is a person that you simply don’t care if they’re around.

If you put money on the table first, then you will only be the person the group comes to if and when that money is on the table. You need to get the group to respect you. Cause just as in the group. If you are that one person who is the cool kid in the click, people will listen to your suggestions.

If you make your value proposition greater than money. If you make it about trust, or as simple as friendship, or as a source of invaluable information. Then your value, and the value of your services will increase accordingly.

3. The shortest way is the most profitable

For search engine traffic, or at least the buyers that come from the search engines, they have a set mind that they want to buy. You should give this traffic one option when they land and this should be an obvious one. They should be able to hit buy and be out of there in a matter of seconds.

When you’re looking at converting social media traffic you have to take the way around the park first. Disregard the Dell Outlet for a while cause that is just spam, really it is. If you’re looking at converting social media traffic you’ll have to take it in steps. You have to think of where they enter in the purchase process rather than just offering them one single way to convert. With this I mean you have to give them the option to subscribe, the option to sign up, the option of becoming a member or just leaving a comment.

When doing so you’re collecting some valuable piece of information about them that you can then later use to convert them. CRM-style!! If you learn about your client first and then make the offer, then you’ll be able to extract more money out of each buy.

4. People are rational, that’s the rational

Most conversion theory, just as economics is based on the notion that people are rational. In real life, we know that no one in this world considered a human being is rational. We all have our “just cause” preferences that screw up our clear judgment. When converting traffic from the search engine, the buying process has already begun with the search. The buyer is already on his/her way to make the buy.

The social media visitor thinks differently. You actually have no idea in what frame of mind they are. You know what they are interested in as they arrived at your website clicking a link. This represents great information for you when trying to convert them. However, it doesn’t tell you about their frame of mind. Thus, you need to find that out instead of trying to push them towards a sale.

The best example is if you think of real life when you’re out shopping and you have an item to return to a certain store. If you’re only offered the chance to buy more when you arrive at the store you’ll be pretty pissed off. I mean, if the clerk doesn’t accept your claim to return the good, doesn’t understand your need, then you will probably leave and be reluctant on coming back.

When looking at social media traffic, these people are just the same. You have to have a look at them, understand what they’re about, and then aim to convert them to what they like, in the tone that they want it. I mean, in the example of the store above, it is not uncommon that you can sell more stuff to a customer gone happy, than one that is pissy with some garment they do not want.

5. Direct conversion is all that counts

Anyone engaged in social media will have two KPIs skyrocketing if successful. First of all it is mentions online. Second of all is brand searches in the search engines as well as direct traffic. These are the three most important KPIs out there for social media conversion. You know that your conversion rate on brand search terms is HUGE. Look in your statistics.

Thus if you can increase this metric, it is great for you. One of the best ways to increase brand searches and direct traffic are to get into the head of people. You best do that by talking to people.

Now. Brand search increase most often get rewarded to the SEO people in your organization. Even though they haven’t done anything to increase the search volume. This is one of the greatest lessons you can learn about converting social media traffic. IT doesn’t convert right away. But it increases your overall conversion rate as your brand searches increase when you’re doing it well.

Update #1: Just as @Jaamit from FreshEgg SEO says, links are a truly one of the MOST important KPIs when working through social media. I can’t believe I didn’t write it from the get go. But, I guess I’ll reward Jaamit with a link instead of getting pissed off and thank him for pointing out my mistake. Thnx for the comment!!

Update #2: Stumbled across this post about brands and behavioral economics that is HIGHLY useful when trying to explain for old school ppl what social media and conversion is all about.

Why SEO conversion theories don’t apply

Basically, SEO traffic has a specific frame of mind that you can convert through. Social media traffic has no such frame of mind. At least not that you know of. In order to convert the social media traffic you first of all need to find out the frame of mind of the user, then convert the user. Lesson learned right?

The secondary effect is that your brand becomes more dense in online conversations. This requires a lot of work, but we can see that those companies well integrated in social media made higher revenues than those who didn’t engage in social media. Those engaged were more frequently mentioned. Those more frequently mentioned got more of the business.

Especially in mature markets. Social media becomes what conveys the online consumers to buy from you as they believe you are the best choice (regardless if all rational says otherwise). SEO then takes care of them when they are ready to buy.

Now, how you go about doing this is up to you. Or to me…

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There has been a debate with regards to whether or not social media is the death of email or if the two live in a symbiotic relationship with one another. As an interesting piece to the puzzle, Nielsen Online published an article about one of their studies on how social media effects the usage of e-mail.

What they found was not quite what you might expect as they could see a clear positive relationship between the use of social media and the consumption of email. If you have time to critically examine this statement, then visit the article through the link above. All others – eat this table taken from that article.

Source: The Nielsen Company – Is Social Media Impacting How Much We Email?

This relationship speaks in quite the contrary direction of what many hard core talkers in this field are suggesting. But how can they be so wrong? They are journalists, consultants and everyday users of these tools. Why is it that their analysis of what seems to be, or logically might become, in dire contrast with what the data tells us? I think the problem is that they are neglecting the shift in purpose for email.

Email is no longer an inbox, but an identifier
Ever since the web based ESPs such as Hotmail and Gmail made their way into our lives, our email has shifted from a static computer location to a mobile identity that we can access from anywhere. Since then, our email has also become the prime object for identifying ourselves whilst online.

We use it to create accounts, we use it to confirm ownership, we use it to connect etc, and thus the send and receive purpose of a static address has shifted towards a more dynamic usage. Thus, our email is no longer an inbox, but an identifier.

So how is email effected by social media
In the article from Nielsen they argue that it is because of the updates from various social media websites that make us use email more. I think in part this is a correct analysis of the how. But it doesn’t dig deep into the why.

What I am trying to say is that there is no platform yet to challenge emails efficiency as an identifier, syndicating all the accounts and identity problems we have out there. Even Facebook Connect, which might be the most successful in the online id-projects out there, still use email as the prime identifier for an account.

Email is the heart of the modern web
So, if communication between people is the blood of the modern web, I would even go so far to say that  email is the heart of it. A person without an email, cannot become social as all the technologies out there require email as a way of saying that “hey, I exist”.

It might not be the best way, but it is the way we are used to do it. We might have several hearts, but we still use them to make the blood flow through our vains.

Email and social media combined
At the eMetrics conference in Stockholm (12-13th of October) I will hold a session with the title – How to Combine Social Media and E-Marketing to Increase Revenue?. I will post the Prezi here in my blog after the session.

I will talk about a case where social networking, email and IM-clients were used to generate profit increase.

Please comment below and give me some pointers before the event so I can prepare some needed data.

//Jesper

My boss Björn Alberts once showed me an excellent (suckin’ up big time) chart displaying the master matrix of any online web project. Since then I have basically made these types of matrixes as a way to structure my thoughts. This post will display one of those matrixes. Maybe not as useful as the one linked to above, but for organizations stuck in SEO-land, it might help with the visualization of where to go and what to do in order to go there.

Basically SEO centered business models rely on highly rational processes. The future models of making money online are however less rational and more behavioral.

I am far from ready with the model above, but it combines the worlds of online marketing that is evolving right now. You might want to criticise it for its lack of banners. But I truely and passionately advocate against banners as a means of online sales and thus I keep it out of the model. Secondly I sincerely feel that any marketing that has not at least a long term connection to some kind of sales, is a waste of money.

How to read the model
Well… it is quite simple. If you start out working with SEO, your revenue will increase as you optimize your search engine presence. This can be done in a very rational manner that has a clear ambition of converting search engine traffic.

Once you’ve got yourself up and running with the SEO, you should start working with your E-marketing and Social Media activity. Why not before? Well.. in order to get the trust in social media you need some ground visibility so that people searching for your brand or products, or even more importantly –> your people, will find them and be able to “confirm” their existance easily.

Then you move onto relationships.

Optimization is good, but in order to gain trust you need to customize your communication. This will also increase your hit-rates, your conversion rates and your relevance with the people you are talking to. Customization is a step towards loyalization. Talk to people the way they understand and listen to them to build relationships will in the end gain you their loyalty.

Equally the third step going from conversion to returning customers builds on trust.

Rational vs Irrational
Once you’ve gained the skill of working in the rational areas of online marketing you can take steps towards working with irrational marketing. Irrational marketing is when you try to engage peoples preferences for your products rather than them choosing another – otherwise similar – product.

Irrational marketing increase the surplus value of your products. It is both irrational in the way it aims to have people give your products an added value, but it is also irrational as its method is not at all about promoting your products, but it is all about keeping your promises, listening, being honest and continuously changing in the direction of your closest supporters.

Anyhow… have a field day with this one! I am not yet done and I need to add to this model. Please help me get going.

//Jesper

There has been some discussion lately about using Social Network websites for CRM purposes. Besides the relationships you build when engaging in social networks, you sometimes need som kind of industrial model to go when trying to convince your bosses that this is actually simplifies your work.

The added value being that the users update their own “customer cards” as they update their profiles -> hence you save the maintenance costs of having your own CRM database.

Testing content
The whole idea started molding in my brain in 2006 when I wanted to test content on the users our social network Globy. I wanted to ask them for their opinion and discuss the content with them. We would then save the data and analyze it. Then we would change what we published and post it as new content. NOT!!

Quite frankly, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing, we where just doing it. We had our own social network and we thought we rocked. This was three years ago and we were making a buck running viral e-mail campaigns. Our failure however got me realizing that there was something greater with social networking as some succeded whilst others (read Jesper) failed terribly.

The above model came out of my conclusions. And I will shortly explain it below.Some needs before you start:

• A website to publish content on
• A social network group or page – in this picture a facebook page
• An excell spreadsheet – or a database
• A weekly meeting session

Posting content
Post some content on your website that ends with a question. It is important that this question is not based on “what do you think about this?”, but it is almost a statement or a conclusion. This conclusion should try to extract a reaction from the user. They should be for or against.

Then publish an icon that leads to your social network group or page. “Comment on Facebook”. (With Facebook connect this can be done directly on your website. But more on that later when I get my screen recorder working.)

Discussion of the content
In the group or on the page you should post a thread that encourages discussion at a certain place. Link the icon from your website directly into the discussion –> not to the start page of the group or the page.

Save everything
When I say save everything, I mean save EVERYTHING in a spread sheet or in a database. Make sure you have one field for user name and one field for “In response to user” (where you can add a user name of the user that the initial user was interacting with).

Analyze the data
Are there any people that are interacting more than others. Are there users interacting more with eachother than with others. Can you identify anything in particular? Any words used more than other words when discussing your products or content?

This is done very easily if you use excel and three fields. I’ve actually enclosed such a file here. (It is really simple. From this spread sheet you can see that Jesper and HisEgo likes discussing with eachother and Someuser loves the website whilst Someotheruser really hates the same.

• Social Networking analysis spread sheet

Use analysis to produce more relevant content
There are several ways you can use this data. I will list a couple of them below:

• Use the keywords that the users are using -> this is probably what keywords they also use when they search and thus when using them you will better your performance in the search engines
• Use the relationships that you see between users when inviting people to offers, competitions, focus groups etc. If you see someone who is very influential -> give that person special treatment and the rest will want to fall in line (I know that is wickeidly put, but I think you get what I mean deep inside)
• Use critique to change your products -> or to better describe your products so that people know what they buy. Anyone who knows what they buy will not be dissatisfied.
• Use promoter stories for storytelling on your website

Concluding remarks
Well. It is a sunny Saturday here in Stockholm, Sweden. I am soon to go to a friend and watch el classico between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid. All though this model is not that profound I wanted to share it with you if you have problems at your company trying to explain Utility of social networking. More will come, and if you have any thoughts please make comments, write a blog post of your own etc. and we’ll soon be able to talk about these things as natural parts of any online business.

Product develpment with users is really easy. All you need is Excel, a website and the will to imagine your social networking as a CRM activity.

//Jesper

Have you ever wondered why your digg or stumble traffic does not buy your stuff when on your website? Here is the foundation to my view on how you should go about converting social media users into buyers in theory. In later posts I will talk about how you should do this practically.

Previously I have been talking about The Mindset of an Online Consumer in Social Media in a previous entry. This entry however will take a deeper look into how you make your social media user become a returning customer just as you are converting your SEO-traffic today. If you are not converting your SEO-traffic today, well, then perhaps this will give you some insight too.

The Value Staircase of Online Business
The Suspect
As a user enters your website, regardless of source and your aim is to convert this user into a buyer, that user for you is a Suspect. You have no idea of who it is more than what you can tell from your analytics tool. Sometimes that is a lot, but most of the time not enough to know what kind of offer this person is out to get.

The Prospect
If the user entered from the search engine, you might know what keywords they used. Are those keywords “buyer” keywords such as “wanna buy your stuff right now” it would be an indication that a user wants to buy your stuff. That user has then taken a step in the ladder and has become a Prospect. Similarly, if your user enters from some other website or via direct referral, but starts klicking buttons such as “products” or “payment details” or perhaps even “terms of service”, that user indicates some kind of interest in buying your stuff.

The Lead
The next step in the staircase is the Lead. A user converts into a Lead whenever they leave some kind of personal information to you that can identify them and enables you to contact them again at a later stage. Ie. a Lead can be an e-mail address, a name and a phonenumber, a license plate or basically anything that gives you access to contact data of that person.

The Conversion
Bonus and Jackpot! We’ve now reached the phase where you start making money. As soon as a user makes a transaction, a buy or any kind of final goal you set out for your site users, they have become a Conversion.

The Returning
If you have a user that has converted once and then come back to convert again, you also have a Returning customer. These are the highest valued users in all of your traffic. Returning customers are often satisfied users. Satisfied users are generally net promotors of your business.

The Buyer and The Information Seeker
Enough about the value staircase of online business. It is time to take a look at two types of traffic that you get to your website. There are several other types of traffic, but we’ll only handle these two big groups in this post.

The Buyer
Generally entering your website from the search engine on keywords that are related to your products. Either general product categories or even stronger -> specific brands. If in combination with a “support keyword” such as “online store + brand name”, then you sure as hell got a buyer on your website.

A buyer can also be identified based on how they click on the website. If they enter and the first thing they do is to click – “Offers” – then you can be pretty sure you have got a buyer. It is not as rock solid as the keyword indication, but is definitively strong enough to bulk that person with the buyer group.

Buyers are there to buy stuf if you’ll just let them do so swiftly and easily. The buyer has a ME perspective, ie. they have a problem that they need to solve -> they need to buy something and get out of there. They are in other words highly pupose driven users.

The Information Seeker
In contrast to the buyer, the information seeker behaves completely differently on your website. Usually an information seeker enters your website through a referring domain or through keywords with word combinations such as “where to..” or “how to..” or perhaps even “compare ..”.

When you recieve traffic from a social media website it is generally, or most absolutely information seekers. Why you might ask? Well they came to your website when clicking a link posted by another user telling a story of some sort interesting enough for the now visiting user to click on it. I can say this complies to 99% of the traffic you recieve from social media websites except for one type of traffic and that is the SPAM traffic.

[Regardless of what anyone says. If your company has adopted a SPAM strategy for your social media activities you will sell stuff. Sometimes even a lot of stuff will be sold depending on if your product is a elastic or an inelastic product. But your SPAM tactics will hurt your brand. So, if your products value lies within its brand, then I wouldn't recommend this strategy. Your choice however lies within calculating what tactic will meet your short term and long term goals.]

Back to the issue at hand. Information seekers are not your website to buy. Actually, they might not even know why they are on your website else than that they clicked an interesting link and ended up there. What you will find however is that this target group of people will link, bookmark, share, comment and go bananas with your content if they like it.

Simply put, they are there to find out cool stuff, and if they do find this out, they will scare the living crap out of you as they share your content with others in their own personal way. They are on your website with a WE perspective and thus think about everyone else and how your content can be shared whilst on your website. They are in other words research driven users.

How to Convert the Buyer and the Information seeker
This is when this post starts becoming interesting as this is the question everyone asks me and I seem to be the only one bold enough to give a straight answer about it.

First of all you need to split your conversion process into several pieces and really think about how to make your user climb the ladder. Here is what I have found works for the different groups. I have displayed this with words in the “arrow blocks” above.

The Buyer Buys when:

1. They come to your website as suspects because you had good SEO or Social Media Optimization (SMO)
2. They become prospects because your design, features, information architecture complies with their liking
3. They become a lead because they seem to like what you offer to solve their problem or purpose for being on the website
4. They convert if it is easy enough to convert -> CRUCIAL try to take away all hurdles for a lead converting. It should be like a walk in the park or even less of an effort…
5. They become a returning customer if they like the stuff you sold them the last time

The Information seeker buys when:

1. They come to your website as a suspect because you or someone else has provided them with an interesting link -> good SEO or SMO
2. They become prospects the second they enter the website and starts clicking around, if they bookmark your website, if they write a blog post about it or…
3. The thing that will convert them into leads however is whether or not you spark their curiosity. In contrast to the buyer information seekers are boosted by curiosity and being updated on good content and stories. Example: If you try converting a buyer they want the best offer -> a bonus or a discount. The kind of phrasing you should use are such as “Register to get super bling bling for FREEEEEE”. If you try converting an information seeker on the other hand you should want to try with the approach “Enroll to our e-mail updates to know what happens when it happens”. (perhaps not the best copy, but I think you see the difference)
4. Then it is all about reliability. KEEP YOUR PROMISES no matter how small. If you say you’ll keep people updated -> keep people updated. DO NOT try to sell stuff through this e-mail subscription. Cause I tell you, as soon as you break a promise, they will be ruthless towards you. They will give you as much shit as they gave you praise and as we all know, bad smell travels fast. As your users are able to rely on you. When they see you live up to your transparent intentions. THEN they will buy from you. And they will not buy the cheapest stuff in the shelves. They will buy whatever you tell them to buy. They trust you, and as long as you are up front with your offer, they will buy from you as they know you know your stuff. And I know you have all felt this once or twice. You see value in stuff that isn’t actually practical value, but artificial or social value. A shoe is a shoe, but a shoe with a swoosh is just a little bit better and so I’ll pay more for it.
5. Now to the easy part. Now you’ll just have to nurture your relationship with this individual. This means admiting to mistakes, not bragging to much, keeping in touch on a regular basis and just being that soulful and trustworthy dude you’d ask to babysit your kids. Maybe not that much of a trust, but at least the kind of trust that makes you belive in the “Gates” or the “Jobs” religion.

Conclusion
Well, the main point I want to put across is that you will have to know the difference of the kinds of traffic you get to your website and then treat this traffic dependently on what kind of visitor they are. People say it is impossible to make diggers into buyers. I strongly disagree. It might take a bit more time to have them buy your stuff. But when they do start, my god, they will buy whatever you recommend as long as you tell them what they get.

Trust me. They will even buy from you if you tell them “This is the worst deal around and it is a huge freakin’ hassle. But it is sooo totally worth it.”

[I recognize this post has some holes every here and there. Please help me fill them in.]

//Jesper

Irrational economic decisions are made all the time in order to get something now, that will really cost us more in the long run than the value it gives us right away. Theories on irrational economic decisions are quite interesting when discussing social media KPIs as the basis of recommendation, word-of-mouth marketing, which is the basis of social media marketing, is really quite irrational in itself.

It is all about creating an artificial value that is placed on top of an actual value. I feel I need an example for this one.

The example of the Red ball
Imagine a red ball. It is spherical and red. Now imagine another red ball. It is spherical and red. Which ball is worth the most?

Ball #1

Ball #2

Well. You will probably reply that they are worth an equal amount, as they look the same.

Now imagine that your best friend tells you that ball number 2 is the most valuable one. Are you still as sure? Now, given that your friend haven’t got abilities that the rest of us lack such as x-ray vision or special ball expertise, there is no rational reason for you to start agreing with him. Only your belief and trust in your friend, change the otherwise irrational belief that ball number 2 is the most valuable one into a rational belief.

You have a history with your friends. Perhaps your friend has been right before and so he/she is probably right this time too.

The mindset of groups of people is irrational
It is considerations such as the above example that needs to be taken into account when talking about how to work with social media. Especially when you are talking about marketing through these channels. You have to gain trust in order to be able to give advice on choices between similar products and services. Hey, you actually have to start being good at what you do… DOH!!

Well… actually you don’t. You just need enough people saying that you do your job, or produce a magic product. It doesn’t hurt if you do, but it is not a necessity. What is important however is that you can make believe that you do. Just as in other situations with brands. If you’ve got a brand you can sell a product expensively that would otherwise be worth next to nothing. That is what a brand does. It is not based upon product quality but on self fullfillment and perceived utility.

Now, what does this have to do with KPIs for Social Media?
Well it has everything to do with Social Media and KPIs as your Key Performance Indicator is not the amount of sales you gain from direct social media traffic, but it is the influence you can exert on your followers, friends and diggers. With good hearted or malicious intentions, this is what you need ways to measure in order to know how you can make people buy the products and services you offer with the highest margins. Increased trust –> Increased influence –> increased perceived utility –> increased dollars in wallet.

So how do we put metrics on influence… well… that needs a post all by itself… and I am not quite done yet with that one all though the theory part of it is written… I need stats to back it up.

Now you might say; “Well Jesper, this is not a How-To post”… well in a way it is as it is important to understand the building blocks leading to my conclusion. My first part was about the time optimum. This post is about irrational decision making. Eventually it will boil down into both on site and off site metrics that can actually be measured as indicators on how you are performing with regards to your key goals.

//Jesper

KPI
A Key Performance Indicator is a measure of how good or bad you are performing on some measurements that are key to your business success. Generally a KPI is constructed as the sum or regression of some specific success events that you have pre-determined to be good for your company’s performance. Ie. a KPI should produce an indicator whether or not you will be successfull in reaching your goals.

For an e-commerce website these KPIs and success events are quite easy to determine and measure as anything that leads to a sale, or is in fact a sale, makes up the core of your existance. Hence, any kind of event that leads the user to commit the most profitable choice for you should also count as success events in your KPI.

With regards to corporate communication, events such as downloads of quarterly reports or whitepapers can be crucial for your corporate communication and should hence be defined and measured as success events leading to your aggregated KPI.

Social media and KPIs
With the introduction of social media in the toolbox for analyzing web success the regular model has to be extended. Problems in defining what actually determines your success has appeared on the skyline. What are the success events of social media? What can you as a company measure to know whether or not you are successful in what you do in social media?

The pragmatic take on Social Media KPIs
There are many different measurable metrics in social media. Metrics such as friends, followers, favourites, reviews, references, quotes, likes, stumbles, digs etc. can be easily obtained and tracked. These metrics are off site events that can be measured as successes if they increase outside the website. However, there are also on site success events that should be tracked in order to find the nominal indicator of how successful you are in social media. Such events as comments to articles and blogs, ping backs, RSS and newsletter signups, buys and “tell-a-friends” are such events that can be counted to the aggregated success of your social media activities.

The evangelist take on Social Media KPIs
For the evangelist of social media, a company is seen as successful when it is influential, when it listens and discusses key issues with its target groups through social media. The relationship that leads to a successful strategy is built upon trust. Hence we have to find a way in which we can determine success events leading to trust, which is the basis for influence in social media and in any kind of business for that sake.

Joining the pragmatic with the evangelic view
I have had a difficult time navigating towards what is the hen and what is the egg in this equation. A fan on Digg or a follower on Twitter is not a success event in itself as it is not a guarantee for increased online influence. However, you need followers and fans in order to be able to use your influence in a way that is counting towards your company’s long term success.

Time is the most valuable component
I have realized that time is one of the most crucial success events. In order to show accurate indicators however, we need to separate marketing/sales campaigns from corporate/brand communication.

Marketing/Sales Social Media KPIs
Given that your campaign is for a product or a service that leverage upon the PR value of it being a new thing, your exposure time has an expiry date. Given that the value of a product or service decrease over time, the pace at which you can get your new product shared to the most people become of utmost importance.

Corporate/Brand communication Social Media KPIs
If successful the value of your brand and communication will increase over time. Thus you want all of those you communicate with through social media to adapt a behaviour that is beneficial to your brand and maintain that behaviour over time. If people trust you, they will not only follow you, but also share your thoughts with others as they look upon you as a valuable source of information.

Boiling it down
As an increase in brand value will prolong the value of our products and services as it puts a brand price premium on top of the actual price of the service or product, we should try to maximize the long term brand value whilst making the highest short term ROI on our products.

In the following posts I will determine how to find metrics that can be measured in order to determine good KPIs through using a set of examples.

[This post is work in progress – please comment and get back to me with suggestions]

In the following posts I will handle topics such as:

• Problems with simplification and exclusion of basic metrics
• How to measure influence over time
• Produce a matrix for separating Marketing vs. Brand KPIs
• Show how by keeping small promises through marketing – build your long term brand

To Sphinn this post please visit this link Jesper on Sphinn

Here you see a picture of my newly added Google docs account. If you are working with any type of affiliate marketing this is the best launch pad for your viral campaigns. Using this, the pirate bay and YouTube, you can create an under ground viral campaign targeting special target groups.

How to prepare the Google Docs viral campaign
Create a Google Docs account. Depending on what your purpose is, you should create a user name that sounds pretty under cover. For example, if you work with sales of computer games or web hosting, you should create some kind of techy name that plays upon some well known profile within a game or within the industry.

Once you’ve created you Google Docs account you should create a document that you call “Secret campaign codes” or something in the same name vicinity.

Now you have prepared your Google Docs viral campaign.

How to launch the Google Docs viral campaign
You should round up some white-papers and put them in a directory that you seed through The Pirate Bay. Enclosed in the directory you should put a “ReadMe” .txt-file. In the .txt-file you should enclose an e-mail address with a complimentary text such as:

[Your gmail e-mail] Shared Google Docs file on [your topic + bonus codes, cheats, discount codes etc]

You should give your upload such a name that it becomes findable for your target audience. If it is a video game you want to pull traffic too, then it probably should include the video game name and “cheats”, “unlock”, or “keygen” in the title.

Now launch your campaign by seeding it.

How to make your Google Docs viral campaign turn viral
You simply do this by allowing who ever is added to the campaign to spread it to other people. You should even write something like:

Invite a maximum of two friends per person, no more. Remember we want to keep this list to only initiated people. Don’t cheat, I will notice.

…in the head of the document.

Then add what ever affiliate links you can find and produce that leads to special deals.

These kinds of campaigns can be launched through a variation of social media websites in many different ways. If you want more information on this you should e-mail me at jesper dot joakim dot astrom at gmail dot com and I will add you to my Google Docs, where I share different viral techniques for social media.

If you are looking to convert through social media, you have to recognize that it is a completely different task than converting traffic from a search engine.

In this post I will quickly run through two situations where the mindset of a person will enable you to make a sale through social media.

• The must have buy
• The viral buy

The mindset
First of all you have to take the mindset of people engaged in social media into consideration. Imagine the off line activity when you sit with your loved one in a restaurant and all of a sudden one of those flower guys shows up to harrass you.

In any circumstance other than this one you would probably flick him off and hope he/she goes to hell for intruding with a sales proposal whilst you are trying to engage in some quality time with your babe. However, you see your loved ones face, how desparately he/she wants a flower, whether or not he/she admits it, and so you have to bow to the intrusion and buy a flower. (Don’t try to tell me that you buy flowers cause you want to…)

Secondly, imagine if the flower sales man would come up to you, but instead try to sell you a car. Even though your loved ones desparate eyes might have some effect upon you, I am sure most of the worlds population would be able to resist.

The must have buy
The example above illustrates one of the strongest driving forces behind a buy in social media. The “have to” buy is the best situation you can find yourself in as a marketer. Many social networks have been successful in launching “have to” buys through introducing artificial value artifacts such as icons that you can buy to another person to show them that you like them. Generally these gifts are placed on your profile page of the social network and thus shows your status amongst friends.

Thus, when ever you can find a situation where your potential consumers can earn status from buying your product, you should try to use this in your marketing technique.

The viral buy
Another way of successfully working with marketing through social media is to work with “word-of-mouth” or viral marketing. Taking the example of the loved one again. Imagine if you are currently choosing between two different car models and your loved one says she perfer the one or the other. This will make you more likely to buy the car. Also, if your best friend recommends it, or if some kind of expert recommends it, it is not that drastic to assume that you will buy the car.

Now, there are two VERY important pieces of information in the pharagraph above. Firstly, the person you will be able to sell a car to through social media will have to be in a choice situation. Secondly, the recommendation has to come from a trusted source.

In this post I will not go through how to find people who are in a choice situation or how you become a trusted source, but I will cover this in later posts.