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What kind of benefits could companies achieve from using social media?

Today, social media is a new phenomenon, especially in Sweden. Therefore it is important to jump on the train because, in a near future everyone will use social media.

How to measure social media benefits?

The benefits of social media usage should not be measured by quantitative measures but use much more parameters focusing on quality. Social media affects both internal (increases employees knowledge and their feeling to be involved) and external (short-term: increased attention, and long-term: increased knowledge about the brand). All marketing is about selling, so it must be measured.

Everything can be measured so the company must decide what is important for them. Measure attention (ROA), engagement (ROE) and revenue (ROI). When measuring ROI it is important to not forget the internal revenue.

It is important to monitor your brand and take advantage of measuring milestones. Social media is a long-term and continuously work. If the measurements do not meet the expectations you should change your present, not end it. There are no single tool for measuring social media yet, so you need to set up a bouquet of measuring instruments, for example Google Analytics and Woopra.

How to coordinate the use of social media in business?

There are no number one service that you have to use. Choose the one there you think you will find your brands target. It is stupid to point out any service because these can change and become uninteresting. You should create such wide digital footprint as possible, but there are no use of a service without your target. Create a presence that are as valid, relevant and effective as your resources allow.

You should divide the use between different services by:

• which target you have (Twitter is more of a niche than Facebook).
• the service’s own logic (Facebook is a forum and Twitter is a real-time media and you should adapt to this).
• which budget you have (to reach as big audience as possible maybe Facebook is to prefer).

It is quite unusual that consumers following one brand at more than one service, therefore you could post same messages at different services, but social media is about a personal and informal behavior so maybe it is not such as good idea. However, posting the same message at different service enables conversations with a bigger target.

I does not matter if you have one or many accounts at one service as long it is clear that it is the company who is communicate, but some services (like Facebook) has rules for company usage that prevent more than one account. Though, communicate from private accounts enhances the brand credibility, as long as you do not try to hide that it is the company’s message.

Social media is web 2.0, an upgraded version of the web. Actually there is not a choice if you want to be a part of it or not, consumers will talk about you. Therefore you should use different search services to find these discussions. Even though, if you choose that social media is not your thing, you should know why and set up a analyzed impact strategy for this.

When promoting an event the name does not matter, the importance is to keep it alive between the events. Keep updating will extend the past event by memories and create anticipation for the next event.

How to spread social media usage through an organization?

There is no general answer to who, within the company, that should be the user, it depends on your purpose. Tentatively, the marketers should remain in the background and just act as educators, not as senders.

A social media policy should contain thing like any other policy:

• What are we allowed to talk about, and what are we not allowed to talk about?
• What do we do if something goes wrong?
• Who is responsible for what?
• Which channels do we use for a certain purpose?

How has social media changed the relationship between customers and companies?

Social media differs from traditional marketing in that it creates relations. Through a direct channel it is possible to talk with your consumers. Everybody know that consumers listens to their friends, and when social media usage increases it is important for every company to be present to promote your brand.

Social media has changed the possibility for companies to easily hide mistakes, they have to be transparent or somebody else will tell the truth, consumer power has increased. Using social media today creates real brands that represents what they stand for, instead of form ac color.