Mediaboss Marketing

Social media has changed not only how we interact with friends and family, but also how we do business and interact with our customers. Companies of all sizes have joined in to see how social media can add value to their business and increase revenue.

Marketing experts believe social media helps grow business. However, it has been hard to quantify the direct effect on sales. In an infographic by Ad Week and Social Pro Daily titled Examining the current state of social marketing, written by Kimberlee Morrison, one challenge was linking social media campaigns to sales and revenue.

The report says that nearly half of top marketers could not demonstrate social media spendings effect on their business. Only 15 percent of marketing officers could demonstrate social medias quantitative effect on their business.

However, the evidence shows that social media marketing does work. Fifty-four percent of business-to-business marketers have generated leads from social media.

The conversion from Facebook likes to long-term customers has been hard to measure and track.

Social media credibility is the perceived image a customer gathers about a company based on what others are saying about it on social media.

This includes how the company listens, interacts and responds to customers requests and, above all, creates a buzz about its brand.

What does social media credibility do for you? While those who follow and like your social media page may not be your customers, they create a likability factor for your real customers to stay, interact and do business with you.

The real measure of your posts, likes and followers on social media is how they make new visitors feel about your brand. Today, before a company enters a contractual agreement with another company, its social media presence is one way of doing due diligence to take a social measurement of what people are saying about the company and how they are responding.

This gives a real-life profile of the company far better than any self-written corporate capability statement.

Social media credibility is what makes you want to go to the restaurant in a busy downtown, with a long line of customers waiting, while others with similar services have no customers. It is like a celebrity endorsement of a brand, but the celebrities are you and me, who used and experienced the brand. The endorsement is more credible since we are not being paid to endorse.

How do I measure my social media credibility? Here are some thoughts:

Professor Hari Sundaram at the University of Illinois is working on a study, using an app to study the behavior of people who want to adopt new habits, but somehow cannot seem to change. He gives an example on healthy eating: If you are about to go out for lunch and get an alert on your phone that seven out of 10 of your friends just ate salad, this may influence your food choice.

This will help motivate you to attain your desired behaviors by the choice of food your friends made. You are going to be influenced by actions (likes) that you saw or experienced, which will make you more likely to adopt a similar behavior.

We are influenced by decisions people make in the presence of social signals. Knowing what your friends or other people do will influence your choice.

In the context of social media, we are influenced by our perception of a product or brand by how others interact with it. We may end up buying an item even though the people who liked it on social media just liked it.

Akwasi Oppong is a digital marketing professional who helps small businesses develop their online brands and develop and automate their marketing processes. Akwasi is a SCORE Frederick certified mentor.

SCORE Frederick is part of a nationwide volunteer network of 310 chapters dedicated to the formation, growth and success of small businesses. SCORE Frederick provides free and confidential business advice and mentoring to start-up businesses and to established small businesses in Fredrick and Carroll counties. SCORE Frederick also offers business workshops for both start-ups and established businesses. For more information, go to http://www.scorefrederick.org. Once on the site, to register for mentoring, click on register for mentoring, fill in the request sheet and submit.

Read this article:
SCORE Frederick: How social media credibility affects your marketing strategy - Frederick News Post (subscription)