I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jeff Reeder from Staffing Industry Analysts for the cover story of the April 2010 issue of SI Review magazine. The feature titled “Developing a Social Media Plan” focused on how staffing and recruiting companies should go about planning a social media strategy as well as setting expectations and evaluating ROI.
Here are a few of the key takeaways from this great article…
Why should you consider adding a social media component to your marketing mix?
- Blogs and Social networks are now more popular than personal email
- 90% of Inc. companies use social networks for marketing and branding
- Nearly 90% of businesses that blog and use social networks find them useful
- 2/3 of the world’s Internet population commonly visit blogs and social networks
- Most importantly, 93% of social media users believe companies should have a presence on social networks
How can blogging and social media benefit your business?
- Drive more traffic to your corporate website(s)
- Increase lead generation
- Increase sales revenue
- Improve search engine rankings
- Improve brand recognition
How should you get started with social media?
- Develop a plan and stay committed
- Define your goals – outline what you want to accomplish with social media
- Assign ownership – ensure a person or a team is assigned to keeping your social media presence current
- Develop a policy so employees know what’s allowed–and what isn’t
- Be smart and efficient – spend your time on activities that will reach the bulk of your target audience and use technology to automate postings on other networks
- Be a good listener, don’t sell, and provide helpful and insightful answers to problems
How should you measure ROI?
- Look at your overall website traffic using a tool like Google Analytics
- Examine where traffic is coming from (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
- Determine if more traffic is now coming from Search Engines
- Analyze your growing network – are new contacts, good contacts?
- Have you generated more inbound leads and closed any business?
For more detail on each of these key points be sure to read “Developing a Social Media Plan – Make the Most of Interactive Technologies” in the April, 2010 issue of SI Review.