Performance Marketing with Google™ Analytics: Practical Strategies for Maximizing Online ROI

Chapter 12. Social Media Marketing

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Social Media Defined

• Social Media Marketing Basics

• Measuring Social Media Activities and Campaigns

• Analyzing Site Traffic from Social Media

• Measuring Social Media Tools on Your Site

Social technologies, ranging from social networks to forums to blogs, have given customers a powerful voice to educate one another directly on the products they buy and the services they use. For marketers, this shift to direct consumer-to-consumer communication has created a new sense of urgency to deliver on promises of satisfaction.

To win in this landscape, businesses must encourage others to spread their message. Through reviews, ratings, and recommendations, past customers inform future ones of what to expect. This chapter explores the basics of how to engage with customers in this channel as well as how to tap into the growing number of conversations to generate customer insight and increase customer satisfaction.

Social Media Defined

In trying to put a label on this nebulous channel, we thought we'd take a page from Dave Evans, author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, who defines social media as "the shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers ... transforming people from content readers into content publishers." Taking this a step further, Evans breaks down social media into three important components: social platforms, social content, and social interactions. These three ...