My Blog » Social media: without clearly defined, measurable business objectives, you’re just wasting your time.

Large organisations are under much pressure to engage customers via social media that they often launch Facebook pages and Twitter accounts before they have a roadmap

Using social media to “join the conversation,” “create engagement,” “foster dialogue,” “connect with people,” “reveal real personalities behind the brand,” and “show their authenticity and transparency.”

All of the above are virtually impossible to quantify, because they aren’t real business goals; they’re marketing strategies.

CEOs and stakeholders do not want their company be “more engaging” or “conversational.” They want growth and profit with demonstrable ROI. Yet many corporate marketeers are still diving into social media without any direct link to their organizations’ bottom lines.

Social media types talk about monitoring the number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, RSS subscribers, retweets, @replies, blog comments, video views, etc. You may be able to calculate engagement by measuring these things (in reality, these stats are usually dismal for most institutions), but what does this engagement lead to? What are the results? What about sales? Revenue? Customer acquisition? Even if you claim “customer retention” is the goal, how are you measuring and quantifying it?

No doubt social media is where it’s at. Yet corporate marketing is somewhat dull.  Marketeers are bombarded with articles and blog posts reminding them how awesome institutions that are actively using social media are. They see peers celebrated and respected for being innovative, so the pressure to “do something” in social media increases.

But in reality what this means is that many start with the tool, and then look for some way to use it. “We’ve got to incorporate social media into our next campaign.” But you wouldn’t pick up a saw and roam through your home looking for something to do with it would you? You only use tools as and when they are specific to what you want to accomplish.