If you read my blog regularly enough, you’ll know I enjoy using social media. I owe a hell of a lot to it. In fact, I’d probably still be waiting for my first visitor if it weren’t for StumbleUpon & Sphinn. However… lately I have been pondering its applicability as a legitimate corporate marketing tactic. Sure, social media works beautifully in driving traffic to tech and marketing blogs, but can it really stand up as a genuine tactic in the marketing mix…?
It seems I’m not the only one considering the issue. Dave Harry wrote an excellent post a few days ago questioning the value of social media as a professional (and chargeable) service. He’s gathering feedback from some of the web’s most influential social marketing gurus to help understand measurement metrics used and the ROI of social media. Undoubtedly, their input will carry far more weight than mine, but I thought I’d chime in to the discussion nonetheless. After all, social media is the only medium I’ve utilised to drive my blog. So I think I can contribute a nice little case study.
So… let’s get down and dirty. While I’m not a web analytics guru, here’s what I consider important in measuring the value of the social media traffic I have generated:
- Engagement – How long are visitors spending on my web site? Are they going on to read other pages?
- Loyalty – Do the visitors return to my site after initially finding me via social media?
- Inbound links – Was the content considered valuable enough to draw links from other bloggers?
- Conversion – Do visitors subscribe to my blog? Not a perfect or typical measure of conversion as Dave points out (blogs aren’t structured with subscription as a primary action). But we have little else in terms of a transaction. So it will have to do.
Let’s have a look at the stats:
Engagement
Length of visit:
Page Views:
Hmmm…. it seems the social media folk are a fickle bunch. Wham, bam and thank you maam… online versions of the two minute man. Actually, most would be happy with two minutes. Three quarters of visitors don’t stay longer than a minute. Perhaps they need some of that nasal spray stuff…
But wait… I hear you ask. The page views are encouraging. Over 57% of visitors are going on to view a second or third page. Wrong! This is a strange StumbleUpon phenomenon I’ve never really been able to explain. It seems StumbleUpon users are particularly fond of the refresh button. A closer look at the navigational paths on a good traffic day reveals this trend. In the shot below I’ve analysed the traffic for one of the more popular posts ‘The importance of blogging frequency’.
Ho-hum… 39.91% of the 41.28% to ‘visit another page’ seem to have hit the refresh button. They actually haven’t gone anywhere. D’oh! I think it’s safe to say at this point that engagement isn’t a forte of my social media traffic.
This is hardly groundbreaking research. It’s fairly common knowledge that most social media consumers are drive-by readers. And I can hardly blame them. After all… that’s exactly the way I consume most social media aside from a handful of my favourite blogs. Pot meet kettle…
Loyalty
Number of times each unique visitor has viewed the blog:
Not good news here either I’m afraid. Almost 93% of visitors have failed to return. And three quarters of those stayed less than a minute. It’s a little sobering when you think of it like that…
Inbound Links
Ummm… do we have to discuss this…? Fine… it’s zero. Let’s never mention it again.
Conversion
At this point in time my humble little blog has 10 subscribers. Don’t snicker please… it is new after all ? You can laugh if this count is similar in July. My conversion rate looks something like this:
Unique visitors – 592
RSS Subscribers – 10
Conversion rate = 10 / 592 = 1.7%
Hmmm… are we on to something here…? A 1.7% conversion rate ain’t that bad right… particularly in the absence of a clear call-to-action. After all, most ecommerce sites convert at around 2-3%. Surely a little site optimisation could get me up to the standard conversion rate… That may well be true, but it all comes down to ROI.
I haven’t been tracking my hours, but I suspect I’ve invested well over 50 this year on the following tasks:
- Setting up the WordPress platform
- Organising a domain name and hosting
- Writing and researching new articles
- Reading other blogs and commenting on them
- Contributing in Sphinn & StumbleUpon
- Struggling through the various associated technical problems (and I mean really struggling!)
Now, I’m not a digital marketing consultant. So I don’t have an established hourly rate. But let’s just say for arguments sake that I charge $50 an hour (pretty damn cheap for an online marketer).
$50 x 50 hours = $2500
$2500 / 10 subscribers = $250 per acquisition
Ouch! I don’t know too many marketer’s who’d be happy with a cost per acquisition of $250. And if they did… they’d be out of business. Naturally, this equation will improve with the technical infrastructure now in place. I’d also like to think that participation in social media over time will bring economies of scale, whereby I work less for more traffic. But I’m a long way from that point…
So where does this leave social media?
By now it probably seems as if I’ve given up on social media. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason is that I know it works in my niche. Social media delivers results (both traffic and authority) in the digital marketing industry if you are persistent enough to establish a real presence.
But…
That’s my personal decision. I’m not measuring ROI. All I’m investing is my own time… as valuable as it is. And I’m not in it for monetary gain.
Corporations are a different story. Social media participation is just a one more tactic in the overall marketing mix (albeit a tactic generating a lot of buzz). I tend to think my experiences are completely typical of anyone starting out with blogs and social media. How many marketeers will persist with it after those first 50 hours. Not many I would think… Why would they when they can set up a PPC or affiliate campaign that generates a similar conversion rate (if not better) and takes just a few hours to set up?
There’s also the question of how much traction social media can generate in industries with lower participation levels. We must remember that as digital marketers we are unique. Most people don’t Stumble and they don’t Digg… and they never will. How many people are going to vote for blue chip content addressing the latest developments in steel and iron ore? Not many… which is a shame because blue chip organisations are probably amongst the rare few with the budget to invest in social media.
In the end it will all comes down to reach. Can social media ever reach a saturation point when content voting and submission becomes a standard part of online behaviour for your average Joe? It’s only at this point that social media benefits will be transferable to a broad range of industries and truly become a genuine marketing tactic for the corporate world. I’m sceptical…
A final word
Aaron Wall wrote an interesting and provocative article on SEO Book this week comparing SEO with PPC. He chided most companies for focusing on short term tactics such as PPC at the expense of SEO, which delivers a true long term competitive advantage.
The same may be true for social media. Some corporations will undoubtedly make it work. Video in particular holds real potential. Those with the vision, dedication and customer focus have the potential to reap the long term benefits of traffic and authority. However, I suspect most will dabble, and write it off as a failure within months of inception…
For now I hold little hope for social media in the corporate marketing mix. But who knows what the future holds? After all, few would have predicted the rise and rise of corporate blogs at the turn of the millennium. Never say never…
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Thanks for the article. I look after a bunch of corporate recruitment sites in the UK and social media has long been on the radar as a potential technique for driving more traffic towards our sites.
Return on investment is absolutely critical for our business. When it comes down to it, the most important performance criteria for our sites is the quality of traffic rather than quantity – i.e. we want candidates, and decent ones at that.
In this context I am suspicious of the value of social media in my own commercial context. What value is there is driving a large amount of low-quality traffic that pushes up your bounce rate and does not improve the rate of candidate acquisition?
Given the amount of time and effort required to make a convincing go of social media, I can only really see it having value in an indirect sense – i.e. using it to boost the authority of your domains and indirectly improve your SERPs.
Excellent write-up. I absolutely love this site. Keep writing!