Mediaboss Marketing

Among marketing folk, social media marketing often gets a bad rap.

Since its one of the newest forms of marketing, sometimes its hard to show a return on investment (ROI) based on things like retweets, likes, or shares. Still, for marketers working in socials trenches, they seem to feel they deserve a little more respect from their colleagues working in more traditional forms of marketing.

That was the sentiment coming from a social media-focused panel at Inbound Con, a Toronto-based conference that looked at search engine marketing, content marketing, conversion rate optimization, and of course, social media marketing.

I hate explaining why I have a job, and why social media manager or community manager, or digital strategist with a specialty in social blah, blah blah, I get really tired of explaining why those exist, said Shannon Hunter, social media manager at Virgin Mobile Canada and one of the panellists at Inbound Con. In her eyes, social media marketing just doesnt seem as prized as other forms of marketing. Yet dismissing social out of the gate isnt fair this form of marketing is still in its early days, she said.

Everybody said radio was going to die, everybody said TV was going to die, now prints going to die. Nothings dying. Its an integrated system. What we build on social is no different from Google AdWords were using keywords, were using search terms, were using targeting, she said. Its all just a process and when people come to accept it all connects thats when well all start to feel a little more respect, and people will stop telling me my job is just to tweet shit all day.

If youre anything like Hunter, read on for five quick tips on doing social media marketing, the right way.

1. Use numbers and analytics to prove ROI and eventually, figure out ways to monetize what youre doing.

For Hunter, proving the worth of social media comes down to being able to show other marketers, and potentially the C-suite, why its worth investing in this area. Her favourite tools include Facebook Insights, Twitter Insights, and any analytics tools that provide hard numbers.

Here are your engagement numbers, here are new acquisitions. Heres why were doing this. So I like proof, she said.

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