Tis’ The Season For Going Social
I’ve been a bit of a skeptic, or scrooge if you prefer about Social Media. I can understand the value of a blog, I do think it benefits a website, as long as the content is relevant and updated frequently. However after looking at other aspects of Social Media like Face Book and Twitter, I struggle to see the business case for it. I believe making the case for high quality SEO can sometimes be a challenge, but in the end we know that a top ten ranking will increase traffic to your website, so to that end just like a retail store if we can put more qualified people in the store, we have done our jobs.
So I have been in search of finding a way to measure the same type of return from a Social Media campaign, and just this week, one of my clients shared a fantastic story with me about how a Social Media campaign launched less than 90 days ago has provided a significant returned. What’s even more interesting is that the return isn’t where you would expect to find it. Our expectation is that if we launch a Social Campaign it will go viral, lots of traffic to the site, and our products and services will fly off the virtual shelves.
Our client is a medium sized retailer with a strong 20 + year history, and outstanding customer loyalty. The online presence was average, but very little Search or Internet Marketing had been done. We helped with the Search Marketing campaign, while one of our partners helped this company ramp up, or really jump start a Social Media campaign. The fact that the company was already established and had a great fan base helped, but the speed with which the loyal customers flocked to the new social media outlets was amazing. Within 90 days the company launched a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter Page, YouTube Channel, and added video to their existing blog. In the same 90 day period the hits on all of these new social outlets increased rapidly and this month the number of Facebook Fans they have puts them in the top 2% of all Facebook Fan pages. Impressive right? I think so, but what about the numbers? Are sales up? I would say it’s too early to tell, but this is where the story gets interesting.
Here’s the short version of the result, based on the dynamic conversation you can have using Social Media, our client was able to collect focused customer demand data from thousands of current customers. Our client took this information which they collected in less than 24 hours to a distributor and the end result could increase the retail distribution into more than 5,000 new retail stores. It’s about more than moving products from a sales page online, it’s about moving from a monologue to a dialogue, and using the conversation to give the customer what they want, where they want it and when they want it. SearchRankings.Net is currently working on a new Social Media Jump Start kit and it will be available in the first quarter 2010.
For more details on this case study please visit our website at: www.searchrankings.net/social
