Simple Guidelines to Boost Your Social ROI

You can effectively connect with potential customers via social media, but only when you make use of it in the correct way. A survey conducted by a business community resulted in the finding that though more companies engaged in the use of social media in the year 2012 as compared to the preceding year, only about 40 percent got an actual return on investment.

Here are some simple steps that can help you get maximum benefits from the money and time you spend. These easy-to-apply approaches can help in increasing both efficiency and engagement:

Organize your social profiles

The Lightspan Digital (Chicago) President, Mana Ionescu, is of the opinion that small businesses often waste considerable time arriving at a perfect post or tweet. To save this time, her agency came up with Daily Social Media Workout, a tool which included some specific tasks, like re-posting a couple of good tweets and sharing pictures, so action plans can be formulated and best practices learned alongside.

Gateway for Cancer Research, an institution placed in Schaumburg, Illinois, managed to increase their fans on Facebook by over 160 percent in 8 months using the tool and working regularly on social media. It also saw a four-fold increase in the number of followers on Twitter. Marketing specialist at Gateway for Cancer Research, Ashlee Landis, said the tool encouraged working smarter in place of harder. She used the list every day to find content efficiently and post details that were likely to engage followers and fans resulting in a saving of 3-4 hours weekly.

Coyote Logistics got similar results by making use of the tool for topic and organization coverage. Within a period of 18 months, the company without a previous social presence had 2,300 followers on Twitter and over 2,400 fans on Facebook.

Use tools for time saving and efficiency

Social media manager of Fusion92, Arlington Heights, Illinois, John DeLuca, feels the use of free scheduling tools can help businesses set up tweets, pins and posts in advance to make sure accounts don’t get neglected when days are busy. Tools like Hoot Suite enable users to see multiple network streams simultaneously so they can track posts from various platforms easily. DeLuca also suggests using Feedly and Netvibes as RSS readers for quickly organizing content for online sharing.

Strategically offer a freebie

Rather than spending large amounts on direct mail pieces which normally have a low rate of conversion, Joe Chura, advised a client Fisher Auto at Boulder, Colorado to offer oil changes for subscribing to the company’s email and posting Facebook "Likes". Chura, CEO at Launch Digital Marketing feels that both exposure and revenue can be increased by investing money in online giveaways.

 

There was a 30 boost in Facebook likes, which resulted in $2,700 worth of free oil changes, but there were $6,000 of additional sales during the visits. The promotion campaign was ready in a few hours as compared to the several weeks required to put together direct mail pieces. Chura is of the opinion that people need to offer their most popular services or products as freebies since this would probably create maximum interest in the brand and promotion.