At the end of the day, things like website visitors, community engagement, or number of people submitting employment applications means absolutely nothing unless you can assign a monetary value to the data. However, connecting the dots can sometimes be convoluted.

Ask yourself, “So what does all this non-financial data mean?”

For any business, cost reduction and revenue growth are the focus for all short-run and long-run activities. Thus, if you can show that your social media activities directly affect one or both of those two performance indicators, you can justify using social media for your business.

How to Justify Social Media for Your Business

To justify using social media, you must establish a baseline for comparison. What are your current monthly sales? How many hours per week does your customer service department or representative spend on issues? Taking the time to gather these metrics will make showing ROI easier. Moreover, they actually give you something to show a correlation to your social media marketing activities.

For example, instead of just showing an increase in the number of hits to your website since you began your social media efforts, show the correlation between an increase in sales and the number of people visiting the website. Have you had more sales inquiries? What is the total for net new customers? Assign a dollar amount to those potential sales and then you’ve got something.

The Bottom Line: Use trend analysis to make correlations with your social media activities. You must assign dollars to the data you collect.

Have you used or seen good examples of trend analysis to justify ROI for social media activities? Tell others in the comments.

Josh Gibbs (@jkgibbs) // Social Media Consultant // Strategic Insights

I think most people aren’t getting the point of Google Buzz. Yes, right now it may seem annoying because everything is just popping up. People are asking “Doesn’t _______ already do this?”

The answer is yes, but what Buzz does do that nothing else does is aggregate everything together AND allow you to pick what you see.

With Twitter and Facebook, you get everything with no filters (aside from Twitter Lists). Google Buzz learns what you like and don’t like. After a while, even though everyone’s posts are constantly updated, you only get things you find relevant. So, Twitter, RSS, and other posts are made visible to you ONLY if you actually find them relevant.

Furthermore, the innovation of Google Buzz will drive other social networks to better organize content within their platforms. I believe that it is still overwhelming right now. That’s why “non-techies” view it as a time waster. Once there is an easier way to sift through the noise, I believe social networking and content sharing will boom with other audiences.

Will Google Buzz stick around? Probably not or at least not in its current state. Will it make a difference? At the very least, we will know what NOT to do.

What are your thoughts on Google Buzz?

Josh Gibbs (@jkgibbs) // Social Media Consultant // Strategic Insights

“Google introduced a social networking tool called Google Buzz Tuesday that allows sharing of status updates, images, and videos via a new Gmail tab called Google Buzz. The Google Buzz features will also be available on Android based phones as well as the iPhone (via a Web-based application) allowing for real-time updates to your Google Buzz feed that can show up on a new version of Google’s mobile maps.”

Read entire article »

The great thing is that if you embellish both the good and the bad, and handle the bad with proactive and open efforts, it will make your brand look even better. Clients and potential customers will flock to a business that can show the ability to respond quickly to problems and questions. Making your efforts visible in a public or social network is one of the easiest ways to do this.

Keep in mind that no matter if you are the one that creates the place for discussion or not, the discussion will and is taking place. Whether or not you are a part of that conversation, negative or positive, is what makes the difference and can show that your brand is able to respond to problems and questions. If you are facilitating the environment in which people are commenting, you have the ability to not only establish rapport and control your image, you also gain  insight into your own brand or product(s). You may even learn that you need to pitch your product in a different way, change your value proposition, or even make the product/service better.

If you start it, you have to maintain it. Allocate a resource to your social media communications. It looks worse for your brand if the conversation is happening right in front of you and you still are not acting. This same principle applies to any aspect of your business. If people are calling sales and you don’t respond, you lose a sale. If they call customer service to get a question answered and no one responds, they go to your competitors for help.

Josh Gibbs (@jkgibbs)  //  Social Media Consultant  //  Strategic Insights

See entire article: US asks Twitter to maintain service after Iran vote: official

“It seems that everywhere I look, I am reminded that we are battling tough economic times. Whether watching the news or my favorite TV programs, reading content on the web, at the bus stop, or while reading magazines…I am bombarded with advertisements on how I can afford products and services in an economic time that rivals the Great Depression. Most advertisers seem to recognize that in order to keep sales up in a time when many are cutting “unnecessary” purchases, they must appeal to consumers where it counts the most…click here for full article.

View the whole article: Best Pratices for Branded Twitter Accounts

by Josh Gibbs, New Media Development

What’s in store? First off, Whitehouse.gov has an all new Web 2.0 look, complete with frequent homepage blog snippet updates, intuitive site navigation/search, and site mapping. To help promote blog posts and stay even more in touch with online users, the White House has launched its own official Twitter. To date, the White House has just over 6,000 followers and has made over 200 tweets. However, it looks like whoever is in charge of managing the official Twitter is somewhat of a follow snob since it only gets updates from people like Joe Biden, Senator Chris Dodd, and the Governator himself – Arnold (who also seems to be more popular…go figure).

Obviously social media is here to stay and will probably play a large role in our new administration’s methods of communication to the public. So if the President can do it, so can you.

Does anyone know of any other Social Media tactics being implemented by the government or political officials? Slap ‘em down in the comments.

by Josh Gibbs, New Media Development

MyTireMonkey makes buying and installing tires fun. You can choose on your favorite brand tires at wholesales prices, then pick your preferred neighborhood installer and you’re done! Low prices on top tire brands like Goodyear, Uniroyal and Michelin. Passenger, light truck and off-road tires. Great prices and fast delivery to your local neighborhood tire installers, plus guaranteed low-price installation.

by Josh Gibbs, New Media Development

1. Where customers can go online to view the content.
2. How to hook a PC up to a TV

The reason behind Viacom’s decision is that fewer advertisers are willing to pay to have their ads on the network’s programs. This is because fewer and fewer people are willing to pay for high costing cable and satellite connections. I personally canceled my cable subscription about 7 months ago because it was simply too expensive for the amount of television I watch. Instead, I use my existing subscription to Netflix to instantly stream both movies and TV shows straight to my TV via an Xbox.

I also visit sites like Hulu.com, TheWB.com, and Joost.com to stream even more free movies and shows. What’s even better is that I can watch whatever show I want, whenever I want. I don’t have to worry about missing any of my favorite shows, and I don’t have to buy an expensive DVR to record anything. It’s all on demand.

So what’s it all mean? Advertisers are going to start shifting their media dollars to these online video sites in lieu of traditional broadcast. And why wouldn’t they? Since many of these sites allow users to create profiles, advertisers will know exactly who is watching (name, age, gender), where they are watching (down to the exact street), when they watch, and all kinds of other information. Additionally, advertisers can directly interact with consumers, driving them immediately to a website with more information. There is no drop-off rate for the call-to-action (such as visiting a website) because watchers only have to click. And watchers are already engaged with the ad because it is usually very targeted. Also, since there are so few ads, people are more likely to pay attention. In contrast, traditional television watchers have to:

1. Actively acknowledge the ad in an array of ad clutter
2. Actually go to a computer, that is away from the TV
3. Remember the URL of the site

Each step is a huge expectation for the consumer with drop-offs at each step, especially in an age of instant gratification from the internet.

In much the same way newspapers are failing to properly leverage the web as a compliment rather than a competitor, TV networks and companies are falling behind because of the lack of integration with online streaming video. The video sites are here to stay as far as I can see. So networks need to get on the bandwagon, follow audience trends, and start offering combo packages for advertisers to hit both traditional and new media outlets.

by Josh Gibbs, New Media Development