Show Me The Money!!

and I promise this has nothing to do with Jerry Maguire

In most cases and as general concept, the more hits your website receives, the better your social media is performing. Here are some general ‘engagement’ metrics that you can monitor once visitors arrive:

• Unique visitors
• Page views per visitor
• Time spent on site
• Total time spent per user
• Frequency of visits
• Depth of visit
• Conversions

Most companies can use web analytics tools like Omniture or even Google Analytics which is a free tool. This applications and tools give you a brief overview as well as a detailed numbers. This all fine and dandy, but there is still a major factor that can not be measured-How much revenue is upheld via social media.

In business, CEO's and execs want to know if ever dollar that is put, turns a decent profit margin. This is also known as their return on their investment. That's the problem with social media measurements. You simply can't measure ROI this way. There are just so many intangibles. I brought up this concept a while ago, but let's get into it again.

Say someone is on your site and then tells a friend about it and that friend makes a purchase. How do you measure that? Don't forget the the salary that is handed to the employees that manage the site or involved within the social media realm. So that's already a sunk cost, and needs to be recovered via sales. There are so many intangibles that can be measured by any Google analytics tools.

Although there is no direct measurement with social media, there is still a large market audience to gain.

E-mail=Carrier Pigeon?

According the recent articles posted by techies, Twitter will soon replace or possibly phase out e-mail.

The idea behind microblogging is that you summarize your thoughts in 140 characters or less -you're actually limited to the space available. Blogs with 250 word minimums need not apply. Ok, so i know what you are thinking-crap, another blog site that I can waste my time on and possible "connect" with other people. But an article by Robert Scoble says Twitter can do more. You win your clients over by gaging their interests and likes via their Twitter file, check their current status, and set meeting dates.
I have a few quams if you will with this, sorry Twitter

1. When does knowing someone interests become stalker status? Personally, as I client I would not want by advisor calling or meeting with me for the first time and him asking how my Yankees are doing or how I enjoyed movie (fill in your favorite movie).
2. "It's strangely addictive," says NBC videographer Jim Long. Ummmm, not good. So now we have a bunch of financial advisors and employees strangely addicited to Twiiter. So who the hell is doing actual office work?
3. Maybe it's because I just don't like Twitter, but I just do see the benefits of using Twitte out-weighing the costs. I feel that employees or people may spend more time on the site, then getting actuall results. As Robert noted him, he posted that they are expecting a baby. He did recieve any posts or contacts from Huggies, Gerber Baby Food, or other infant related products. I guess Procter & Gamble didn't think the marketing costs for this research was not worth it.

Ok ok, let's switch it up, here's what I like

1. This is a large network.
   
2. Twitter is mobile. You can send an SMS message to the Twitter phone number to update your friends on your everyday whereabouts, and people who subscribe to you will get instant notifications wherever they are.
3. Ask questions, get answers in real time: My favorite part about Twitter is the ability to get answers really quickly to any question you have. You can even track the conversation later using a tool such as Quotably.
   

So to all you businesses (I highly doubt you are reading this, but here goes anyway) when approaching Twitter, you need to do some market research to see if this product will actually put some money in the bank for you. Do your homework and go on with your e-hustle.




Photo Credit
http://silenceandvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/twitter-addicts.jpg