Businesses & Social Media 09 Aleuromedia

Social Media
For Business

Aleuromedia LLC April 2009

Why is this
worth your
attention?

“When the Internet was born, the big rush for
any serious business was to get a Web site up and
running to exhibit its “presence” online.

Presence is no longer enough. People are no
longer going to accept a one-sided dialogue with
the brands they consume.

They want to go and get more information about
a product and connect with other people with
similar interests.”

April 3rd, 2009 Jumping on the UGC bandwagon is a good move for businesses Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 9:22 am

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Aleuromedia LLC www.aleuromedia.com Tara Mahady KSLeBlanc

Does Social Media Even
Matter?
“‘Does social media even matter (to the well being of an
organization’s/it's execution)?‘ Peter Kim says not yet but
it will, certainly...
....Look back at e-commerce 12 years ago and how that
developed.”

Who’s Peter Kim?
Peter Kim Dachis Corporation - Peter is a leading thinker and analyst on social business, which he
discusses in his blog at www.beingpeterkim.com. He has been quoted in the press by media outlets
including CNN, CNBC, NPR, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Peter was previously an analyst at Forrester Research, focusing on the intersection of social
technology and marketing strategy. Earlier, he managed international marketing operations, e-
commerce, and digital marketing at PUMA AG.

Change Management Blog Blog for all Change Management Facilitators, and people interested in this subject. Wednesday, April 1, 2009 http://www.change-management-blog.com/2009/04/introduction-of-social-media-in.html

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Facebook Mainstream
“ Its trafﬁc. In December, 108 million people, or 30% of the world's
Internet population, visited Facebook, compared with 81 million who
visited MySpace, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Its users. Facebook now reports more than 175 million active users,
compared with 130 million for MySpace, its closest direct competitor.
quot;Facebook is eating MySpace's lunch,quot; says Bill Douglass, a social-media
strategist with Brainerd Communicators.

Its value. Two years ago, based on the sale of 1.6% of its business to
Microsoft, Facebook might have been worth $15 billion. That's up there
with household names like Nissan Motor (NSANY, news, msgs),
Halliburton (HAL, news, msgs) and Kellogg (K, news, msgs) today. “

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User Generated
Content (UGC)
“Jumping on the UGC bandwagon is a good move for businesses...”

“Social networking and UGC have proven themselves as formidable
outlets for electronic media as well as powerful forms of communication
for millions of users. Now they are proving themselves as valuable
marketing and advertising tools for a wide swath of industries including
retail, travel, entertainment, education, and many more.

Empowering people to speak out and contribute around a speciﬁc topic
online is the future of marketing and brand awareness. With this in mind,
many businesses are shifting their business models from a broadcast
entity to one where interaction is possible…and encouraged.”

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App-Vertisements
“When branded social applications or “app-vertisements” are
done well, we know that they can work. They have become
an incredibly successful way of extending a brand’s reach
past that of more traditional forms of advertising. We’ve
found that users spend an average of 2 minutes and 35
seconds engaged with our branded applications per visit -
that’s 75 times more time than they spend interacting with
traditional banner ads and ﬁve times greater than the time
spent watching a typical TV commercial. And 85% of our
users returned for multiple interactions with our app-
vertisements, with 56% of the total user base returning 9
times or more.”

April 2nd, 2009 'App-vertisement' 101: How to make branded social applications work Posted by Jennifer Leggio @ 11:02 am http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=880

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World Internet
Usage
Internet Users Internet Users Penetration Users Growth
Region
Dec. 31, 2000 Dec. 31, 2008 (% Population) 2000 - 2008

Europe 105,096,093 390,141,073 48.5% 271.2%

North America 108,096,800 246,822,936 73.1% 128.3%

World Total 360,985,492 1,574,313,184 23.5% 336.1%

www.internetworldstats.com Copyright 2001-2009, Miniwatts Marketing group


http://www.pewinternet.org/Static-Pages/Data-Tools/Download-Data/~/media/Infographics/Trend%20Data/January%202009%20updates/Demographics%20of%20Internet%20Users%201%206%2009.jpg

http://www.insidefacebook.com


http://www.gallup.com/poll/113638/Nearly-Half-Americans-Frequent-Internet-Users.aspx

http://www.slideshare.net/Netpop/netpop-connect-media-shifts-to-social-2009


Social Media Growth - Feb. 08 -
Feb. 09

Total Unique US
Feb. 2008 Feb. 2009 Y/Y % Change
Visitors
Total US Internet
185,017 192,187 4%
Audience

MySpace Sites 67,957 70,303 3%

Facebook.com 32,436 57,375 77%

LinkedIn.com 3,316 6,948 110%

Digg.com 5,546 6,917 25%

Twitter.com 340 4,033 1085%

Comscore http://www.comscore.com/


35+ Examples of Corporate Social
Media in Action
“At the extreme, aproceeding. court recently approved the use of Facebook to serve
New Zealand
papers in a legal

At Charles Schwab, the CEO has been leading the social media charge. The critical
difference is that they don’t call it a social media strategy--it's a customer engagement
strategy (which happens to be facilitated by social media).

Walmart is one of the companies who does social media well precisely because they keep at
it and have learned from their failures.

Wells Fargo has been blogging for a while and just launched Ask_WellsFargo on Twitter.
Their approach was to caution customers not to share conﬁdential account information, and
establish Twitter (as Comcast has famously done) as an open channel to help customers
with service questions.

Dell has been participating for awhile and they’ve made mistakes. They are successful with
”
social media in that they have learned from those mistakes and are continuing to engage.

35+ Examples of Corporate Social Media in Action July 23rd, 2008 | by Aaron Uhrmacher http://mashable.com/2008/07/23/corporate-social-media/
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Media in Action
Blendtec is famous for its bevy of inexpensive “Will It Blend” videos posted on YouTube
(YouTube reviews) and shared by millions.

Adobe maintains a list of interesting company related websites and conversations on the
social bookmarking site Delicious (Delicious reviews).

Best Western sponsors a blog,“On the Go with Amy,” where the author travels the country
writing about her experiences.

Cadence recently relaunched its website that now prominently promotes the company’s
community.

Cisco hosts 12 blogs addressing a variety of audiences for their global business.

Coca-Cola Conversations is a blog written by company historian Phil Mooney that focuses
on Coke collectibles.



Media in Action
Dell leverages a variety of social media platforms for customer engagement, including an
island in the virtual world of Second Life.

Ford publishes news releases with lots of multimedia content and employs a social media
news release format to display them in their newsroom.

Fujiﬁlm recently launched a social network to build a community of photo enthusiasts
around its newest camera.

GM uses blogs to communicate directly with its customers around topics ranging from
design to green tech.

H&R Block created a Facebook (Facebook reviews) fan site to aggregate its social media
activities, engage customers and offer tax advice/resources.



Media in Action
HP used Twitter to power a scavenger hunt at a recent conference.

HSBC built the HSBC Business Network to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and
forums.

IBM was the ﬁrst large enterprise to embrace employee blogging and now boasts thousands
of blogs related to every facet of its business.

Intel has also developed many social media touch points with its software communities,
which includes blogs, Twitter (Twitter reviews) and virtual worlds.

Intuit sponsors the Tax Almanac wiki, where anyone can ﬁnd and contribute to this
resource for tax information.



Media in Action
Jeep connects with customers via a community page with links to photos on Flickr (Flickr
reviews), the company’s MySpace (MySpace reviews) and Facebook pages and a list
enthusiast groups.

JetBlue employs social media as part of its training for JetBlue University, as this video
explains.

Johnson & Johnson uses this blog to show another side of the company, with frequent
video posts and interviews.

Lenovo launched “Voices of the Olympics Games” to aggregate posts from the athletes
competing in Beijing.

Marriott CEO Bill Marriott posts regular updates and stories from his travels to Marriott
properties around the world to fuel the content for this entertaining blog.



Media in Action
McDonalds maintains a blog to highlight the company’s corporate social responsibility
efforts.

National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together
around its new show, LA Hard Hats.

New York Times is beta testing a Firefox (Firefox reviews) add-on that allows users to
share and comment on stories through a decentralized social network.

Nike started a social community on Loopd to connect athletes interested in surﬁng, BMX
bike racing and similar activities with the brand.

SAP sponsored a global survey of social media professionals to learn more about social
media worldwide.

Sears partnered with MTV to create a social network around Back to School shopping.



Media in Action
Southwest Airlines employees share their stories and communicate directly with customers
through the “Nuts About Southwest” blog.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog is the example most often cited for what the CEO blog
can be.

Starbucks started MyStarbucksIdea so that customers can submit ideas for the company
which are then voted on by other users, the best of which will be implemented by the
company.

Toyota started its own virtual world to promote its products in Japan (site is in Japanese).

Visa launched The Visa Business Network application on Facebook to connect small
business users and to help them promote their businesses to a larger community.



Media in Action
Wells-Fargo blogs target two audiences; one examines the company’s history and the other
is for students interested in getting their ﬁnances in order.

WWE has a Facebook application, among other social networking tools and widgets, to
bring fans closer to the action.

Xerox blogs address several of the company’s core B2B constituencies.

Zappos uses Twitter for employees to communicate with Zappos customers about their
shared love of footwear.



BT is a global communications company, operating in 170 countries, with 110,000 employees.

“Ross Chestney, Head of Communication Services at BT, sees this as inevitable: ‘It’s part of human
nature; people want to participate, and that’s true at work just as it is in other parts of our lives’. In
turn, these new ways of working involve some significant cultural shifts. Richard Dennison, Senior
Manager - Social Media at BT, explains that businesses need to move away from communication
being seen as a top –down channel and into a conversation between people. ‘People give their best
if they are recognised as individuals who are entitled to be themselves at work and express their
opinions. The environment must make them feel like they can make a difference.’

It’s a new way of working but, Dennison points out, it wasn’t done for the digital generation but
with them, and with everyone else in the enterprise - because it makes business sense.

The first step in BT’s social media journey was taken by a graduate who bought a simple piece of
software which he housed under his desk and which became BT’s enterprise-wide
wiki tool, BTpedia, and formed the basis for a pilot blogging platform. Its usage gradually spread,
despite the fact that it was not officially sanctioned by IT.”

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Today BT uses many different tools to encourage
collaboration across the enterprise.

These include:
enterprise wide collaboration

project team collaboration

blogging

on-line news

social networking

podcasting
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BT’s Beneﬁts - The
business case
“To the Digital Generation, familiar with social networking, it is not
unusual to have many hundreds of ‘friends’ all over the world. They do not
need people to be located near them to relate to them, they see the value in
connecting with anyone on the planet. This attitude brings huge beneﬁts in
a business environment, enabling people at any level and from any culture
to offer their ideas and receive instant feedback. According to Dennison,
Using technology to break down traditional boundaries encourages a
culture that reaches out rather than locks out, and that is something that
the Digital Generation is ideally equipped to do.” But, vitally, the Digital
Generation is not alone in adopting these tools; they are being used more
and more by all ‘generations’.”

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BT’s Take on Measurement

“Traditional measurements such as ROI are likely to be requested. Richard
Dennison resists this approach, believing that its value to the business is self-
evident. The value of these tools is also ‘emergent’ and so the notion that
you can identify and describe that value before deploying them ﬂies in the
face of the way these tools work. Furthermore, there is little point in singling
out any of the tools and trying to measure their value in isolation; they are part
of a bigger picture.”

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BT’s Take on Risk
“BT is part of a highly regulated industry and, along with the banking
and defence industries, concerns are often raised that this new found spirit
of openness can compromise conﬁdentiality and security. This is certainly
a potential problem for those companies using external social
networking platforms such as Facebook. An intranet based system, such
as BT’s, has the great advantage of keeping communications in house
although there is still arguably some risk that greater openness can
lead to indiscretions. Chestney, however, believes that
employees generally do not want to damage either the business or their
own reputation. The best approach is to encourage responsible behaviors
through education and guidance, underpinned by sound and simple
policies.”

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Did You Know?

“The University of Melbourne study showed that
people who use the Internet for personal reasons at
work are about 9 percent more productive that
those who do not. “

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On Productivity
“Another common concern is that too much bonding and socialising
tempts people away from their real work. But again Dennison remains robust.
In his view there are any number of ways that people can waste time at work if
they wish; that is nothing new. It is up to the performance management systems
to measure employee effectiveness. It’s about trusting people to be responsible; he
adds: ‘If we can’t trust them then we have to ask ourselves why we
are employing them.’ Those who abuse the system soon lose credibility and as
such it is self policing. Designing the system to prevent anonymous publishing
provides another safety net. ...ultimately the technology and the culture have to
ﬁt together. “

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BT’s Conclusion
“For BT, social media tools are here to stay and can bring real beneﬁts to businesses.
They help create a culture of openness and, in turn, this encourages much greater
levels of collaboration.

Whilst these technologies are familiar to and popular with the Digital Generation, BT
sees them as having a much broader value. The Digital Generation plays a key role as
early adopters, but the technology only ‘works’ if it reﬂects and reinforces the culture
of the business as a whole.

The introduction of these technologies and new ways of working brings challenges, but
they can all be overcome.”

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Tyson Foods

“Tyson offered to donate 100 pounds of food
to a food bank in Austin, TX for every
comment left. They ﬁlled the truck in less
than 6 hours and the post has more than 650
comments to date.”

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Tyson Foods
How did you get Tyson into using social media?
Ed Nicholson - “I’m a big believer in social media, and have long been a personal user. I was integrating
some of my work here in Tyson into my personal social media activity. For example, posting updates on my
personal Twitter and Facebook accounts and mentioning my work in my LinkedIn proﬁle .

We added limited social media functionality to our hunger relief website when we put it online in December
of 2007. We assessed the usefulness, usability and strategic effectiveness of the site in Q2 of 2008, and did a
re-design, which went online in July of 2008. The re-design took the social media functionality a step farther.
I also set up a Tyson Foods Twitter account in August of 2008, to separate the brand communications from
my personal Twitter stream.”

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Tyson Foods
How does Tyson measure success?
“In a very broad sense, by the amount of engagement we’re seeing: The people with whom we’re
building relationships and engaging in conversation. I personally believe social media attract a greater
concentration of the people Seth Godin refers to as quot;sneezersquot;–people who have the credibility, the
networks and the capacity to spread stories far and wide. I want to see our company engaged with these
people.

We had a couple of experiments in which we integrated some in-kind giving (food donations) with a
speciﬁc call to action using social media in the San Francisco Bay Area and in Austin . We posted hunger
statistics on our blog about those communities then offered in-kind donations to local food banks for
comments indicating the blog entries had been read. We collaborated with established social media
networks in those communities in the effort. In Austin, it was the Social Media Club and 501 Tech
Club , and in the Bay Area, it was a consortium of bloggers already engaged with the food banks
there.

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Tyson Foods

In addition to blogging, along with our partners in the effort, we reached out to Twitter
networks and measured the quot;reachquot; of those who re-tweeted our key messages. For
example, in the Austin effort, we had 105 re-tweets with an aggregated follower base of
more than 40,000. When you consider that the messages reaching this audience are
much more concentrated and brand-rich, and that they’re being spread among
people for whom trust, credibility and authenticity are critical, I believe you can
place a lot more value on them than what most in the PR industry like to refer to as
quot;impressions.quot;

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What are the long term
implications?


Tire
“Social media forms at the edges of the company.
No clear leader.

Upside: appears very authentic.

”
Downside: one side has no idea what the other is doing.

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Tower

“Led by corporate communications, by executive mandate.
Upside: Lots of resources.

Downside: Not authentic, which saps participation and buy-in. ”

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Hub-and-Spoke
“Some central focus, but with clear ownership at the edges.
Upside: this is the aspirational model because it combines
resources and participation.

Downside: the most difﬁcult to establish. ”

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Three Reasons
“Lack of buy-in from C-level executives

Marketing and using the “Campaign” model

Lack of measurement ”

Experts Discuss 4 Key Reasons Why Social Media Fails April 1, 2009 · 18 Comments http://marketingmystic.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/experts-discuss-4-key-reasons-why-social-media-fails/

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Buy- in
Lack of buy-in from C-level executives has been quoted as
the No.1 reason for the failure of social media adoption and
success in companies.
“Charlene Li bluntly stated that, most companies are not ready for change. “Big guns”
need to get involved and for those executives to get onboard is show the connection to
bottom-line/revenue. Li highly recommends “Go for the sweet spot”, which are
corporate (ﬁnancial) goals that the management is focused on and to demonstrate how
social media can help drive those results.

Jeremiah’s experience was different in that executives are usually the last to adopt.
Smaller groups at lower level management were more likely to drive social media
adoption. However all three agreed on the need for a champion at the executive level
to make social media successful in the long-term.

Kim pointed out another dangerous fallacy and that was the perception that social
media is young person’s game and many companies hire interns to do their social media
strategy. Li thought a good practice she has seen is that many companies are pairing up
marketing folks with younger people. “


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Ownership
“Should you appoint a quot;chief social ofﬁcer,quot;?
There has to be shared ownership and investment.
Appointing a single owner is a bad idea. It perpetuates the
fallacy that there is one person who will take care of
everything.

Social Media all about shared accountability and
participation. Appointing a quot;CSOquot; can send a very mixed ”

http://horngroup.blogs.com/horn_group_weblog/2009/04/why-social-media-marketing-fails-and-how-to-ﬁx-it.html
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Marketing
Treating Social Media as a Marketing Campaign is one of the
biggest problems. Its about relationships and dialogue.

“...social media is changing “...How do we align the need for
the role of marketers in the conversations in public companies with
organization. ...marketing is quarterly pressures, which necessitates
all about promotion and focus on campaigns? ... there should be a
advertising. Social media balance between business objectives and
helps get those other parts community objectives with equal counts
get elevated...” of both.”

“..its wrong and misguided for marketers to “... there is need to change how public companies work
treat social media as just another and the way they think of their external and internal
“campaign”. ...that attitude is the biggest stakeholders including detractors. ...there’s much more
problem, because social media is not a collaboration going on. There are conversations already
campaign. ...it’s about relationships and happening, folks are asking recommendations, and it’s all
conversations, not about technologies...” occuring very naturally for local brands and business.”


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Measurement
One of the the biggest failures or short comings in social
media is measurement.

“...traditional marketers measure using on dashboards that show them the page views,
visits, and other metrics. ...that’s not very meaningful way to measure social media
ROI. ...In order to measure social media success, he suggests using business metrics
around what you trying to accomplish such as customer retention and satisfaction
measures rather than web metrics.”

“...start by asking yourself why are you measuring? Are you trying to decide the
allocation of budget or do a comparison with other channels? ...social media shouldn’t
be measured in isolation but rather as part of the overall measurement of other efforts. “


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Measure?
“Many are measuring social media like web stats but that is
incomplete data at best.

Traditional measurements won’t reveal what is happening like
changes in tone.

As Jeremiah Owyang suggests, Social Media measurement is
more like a “GPS, which tells you where you've been, where you
are, and where you're going...more like business intelligence..”

If you measure you must measure against the other things you’re
doing with marketing. It can't be in isolation. ”

What’s Wrong With Corporate Social Media, and How To Fix It April 02nd, 2009 Jeremiah Owyang http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/04/02/whats-wrong-with-corporate-social-media-and-how-to-ﬁx-it/

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Measure Change
“Certainly there are best practices at a tactical
level--whether you are talking about search,
blogging, community engagement or even social
networking--but what makes social media so
confounding for so many is that its success has
less to do with tactics than it does with
organizational strategy and the ability to effect
cultural change for a common goal. ”

http://horngroup.blogs.com/horn_group_weblog/2009/04/why-social-media-marketing-fails-and-how-to-ﬁx-it.html
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Plan For Success
“In any other business endeavor we start by figuring out what
we want to accomplish. Social technologies are not magic. They
accomplish things, too. It's time to stop doing social because it's
cool. It's time to start doing it because it's effective.”

“First, examine the Social Technographics Proﬁle of your
customers.
Second, choose your objective: listening to, talking with,
energizing, supporting, or embracing your customers and their
ideas.
Third, build a strategy around changing your relationship with
your customers.
Finally, pick the appropriate technologies to implement.
Companies that take these four steps in order and then put
success metrics in place are the most likely to succeed.”

http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2007/12/the-post-method.html
http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,43656,00.html
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Plan For Success

http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2007/12/the-post-method.html
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Measure Success
“ A few examples of what success could look like for you:
We were able to learn something about customers we’ve never known 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.
”
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/01/25/why-you-social-media-plan-should-indicate-what-does-success-look-like/
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Measure Success
“Lake explains 10 steps to measure the effects of social media.

Social media is an effective way to engage
customers and build your brand. “As a
Traffic r e l a t i v e l y y o u n g t e c h n o l o g y, m a n y
businesses struggle to measure its value.
Traffic is a simple way to measure social media. Chris Lake suggests you can measure the
Remember that quality often beats quantity, effects of social media by qualifying traffic,
though not always. interaction, sales, leads, search marketing,
brand metrics, PR, customer engagement,
retention, and profits.”

Interaction
Participation says something about the kind of traffic you attract. Remember that an
engaged customer is a highly valuable one. Interaction can include posting
comments, participating in support forums, and writing customer reviews and ratings.
This interaction can happen on your Web site and on other sites. (I suggest you set
up RSS feeds, GoogleAlerts, and any other tracking measures you can find to
capture social conversations about your business.)

Sales
Econsultancy tracks sales from organic Google referrals and also paid search. They
now track other channels, such as Twitter. Try it. Dell did, and discovered that it made
$1m from Twitter in 18 months. Blendtec's 'Will It Blend?' campaign on YouTube
helped to drive quot;a five-fold increase in sales.quot;
http://www.netstrategies.com/2009-march/chris-lakes-10-ways-to-measure-social-media-success.html
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Measure Success
Leads
Some companies cannot process sales online because their products or services do
not allow for it. If that's the case, try measuring something else. For example, the
automotive industry might measure the effects of its online ad campaigns by the
amount of brochures requests, as opposed to car sales. If you are a consultant and
spend time interacting on LinkedIn Answers then there's a way of tracking that activity
to inquiries about your services. The same applies across the spectrum of social
media sites. Choose your weapon thought leaders!

Search marketing
Don't underestimate the search engine optimization factor. Social media can be
far more powerful in this regard than you might initially imagine. For example, a well-
placed story/video/image on a site like Digg can generate a lot of traffic and a nice link
from Digg itself, but the real win here is that it can generate a lot more interest beyond
Digg. Bloggers and major publishers follow Digg's Upcoming channel to unearth new
and interesting stories. One link and 20,000 referrals from Digg might lead to 40,000
referrals and 100 links from other sites. 100 links means that your page might rank
higher in Google. Remember too that you can use sites like Twitter and YouTube to
claim valuable search rankings on your brand search terms.

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Measure Success
Brand metrics
Word of mouth and the viral factor (inherent in sites like Twitter, Facebook and Digg)
can help shift the key brand metrics, both negatively and positively. These include
brand favorability, brand awareness, brand recall, propensity to buy, etc. TV ads are
measured in this way. Positive brand associations via social media campaigns can
help drive clicks on paid search ads and responses to other forms of advertising. We
know that TV ads boost activity on search engines, resulting in paid search success
stories, so I'd bet that social media can do the same.

PR
The nature of public relations has changed forever. The distinct worlds of PR,
customer service, and marketing are fusing. Twitter means everybody has a blog
nowadays with somewhere to shout about things to their friends (and beyond). Social
media sites are the biggest echo chambers in the world! In any event, if you can
measure PR, then you can measure social media.

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Measure Success
Customer engagement
Given the prevalence of choice, and the ease of brand flip-flopping, customer
engagement is one of the most important of all metrics in today's business
environment. Engagement can take place offline and online, both on your Web site
and on other sites, particularly social media sites. Customer engagement is key to
improving satisfaction, loyalty rates, and revenue. By listening to customers, and letting
them know that you are listening, you can improve your business, your products, and
your levels of service. The alternative is to ignore customers, which sends out a terrible
message. Our research found that an engaged customer will recommend your brand,
convert more readily, and purchase more often.

Retention
Increased customer engagement can increase customer retention. This is evolving as
a crucial factor in business success. Make no bones about it: we are moving into an
age of optimization and retention. Watch your retention rates as you start
participating in social media. Over time, all things remaining equal, they should rise.
Zappos, which is a case study in how-to-do-Twitter, and active on MySpace, Facebook,
and Youtube, is closing in on $1 billion of sales this year, and quot;75% of its orders are
from repeat customersquot;.

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Measure Success
Profits
If you can reduce customer turnover and engage them more often, you can generate
more business from your existing customer base. Happy customers often
recommend your business to their network of friends, family, and social media
contacts. This reduces your reliance on vast customer acquisition budgets to
maintain or grow profits. Remember that old adage that it is cheaper to keep
existing customers than to seek out new ones.

Content created by
or originated from
these resources

Kelley-Sue LeBlanc, Founder
Follow on Twitter: KSL
Join my linked in network: http://www.linkedin.com/in/KSLeBlanc

Tara Mahady, Partner
Follow on Twitter: TMahady
Join my linked in network: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tmahady

AleuroSolutions Resources
http://www.aleurosolutions.com

http://www.aleuromedia.com/blog/
Become a fan on Facebook: AleuroSolutions

Follow on Twitter: Aleuro

Businesses & Social Media 09 Aleuromedia

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