So, you’re going to launch a social media campaign huh? You’ve got all the tools, resources, and processes together, but did you remember to set some goals?
I get to meet and talk to many companies that are adopting social media from a variety of levels of sophistication: unsure, scared, excited, embracing, overly ecstatic. One of the biggest challenges they have is forgetting to visualize what success looks like. In many cases, they are overly focused on fondling the hammer, that they forget about the overall goal.
Even if a company is doing a trial project (externally, internally, whatever) part of the expectations of the project should include a page, slide, or document that indicates what success will look like –even if they know that it may not be reached, here’s a few example to get you started:
A few examples of what success could look like for you:
We were able to learn something about customers we’ve never know before We were able to tell our story to customers and they shared it with others A blogging program where there are more customers talking back in comments than posts An online community where customers are self-supporting each other and costs are reduced We learn a lot from this experimental program, and pave the way for future projects, that could still be a success metric We gain experience with a new way of two-way communication We connect with a handful of customers like never before as they talk back and we listen We learned something from customers that we didn’t know before
As you prepare your plans (you’ve got one right?) to use social media, don’t forget to include a section on “what does success look like”, and visualize and aim for you goals. Oh, and guess what, your goals can change over time, and they should.
Experimentation with these are important, these are radically different ways for companies to communicate with customers, so be sure to indicate to your management how this is experiment, and you’ll need a bit of wiggle room and latitude for the unexpected. It’s their job to empower and trust you, knowing the risks that could happen as you learn to let go to gain more.
It’s important to setup expectations for yourself, your management, and your customers (feel free to let them know why you are doing this) in order to give yourself a purpose as you embark on connecting in new ways.
I agree any campaign should have metrics. However your suggestions are goals, rather than metrics.
Although I agree they would be good goals to look to achieve, you still need the numbers to prove you have achieved these goals.
Like any other project, the best road to finding (and agreeing) on these success metrics is dependent on answering the most critical question of all:
Why are we doing this?
Once you can answer this question for yourself (and generally speaking, the line “We need to do this because our competitors are doing this” just doesn’t quite cut it), then you can better come up with metrics that can best be applied to your particular program.
As you can see from the examples above, there are no “right” answers (all circumstantial based on the company, the desired change in relationship between company and customers, comfort level with opening up/company culture, etc.). But if there’s one message that really needs to be heavily emphasized with the executive community when pitching these projects, it’s the fact that commerce MAY fall out of this, but social networks are not commerce engines themselves.
It sometimes makes it more difficult to sell, given that you’re not saying you’ll grow your business by another $12 million in year one, but getting acceptance of this fact will be critical in getting support after the community starts to take off and it starts raising concerns from others in the company who may question why you’re doing this project to begin with.