Before people could actively “participate” on the Web (i.e. Web 1.0) it was still relatively easy to control the corporate message. Not anymore. At best, a company can “manage” the message, it cannot control it. Today, each audience outside paying and prospective customers, adds increased value because they can become “influencers” and the more influence they carry, the more value they add or detract, from a company’s brand and possibly sales and stock value. A negative blogger for example, can influence analysts and shareholders, resulting in a PR nightmare, a massive headache for the Investor Relations team and a potential drop in share price and lost sales by potential customers reading negative comments during the purchase cycle. This can also lower morale as sales people see sales opportunities disappear. And today, even the folks in the mailroom can read a negative blog at home.

Conversely, a positive blogger with wide influence, can send stock prices higher, help a salesperson close a deal and make the mail room guys feel they might have a chance at the corner office one day. A company therefore, should attempt to understand the “added value” of these audiences and the influence value they might hold over a company. This means managing the online reputation and truly understanding and defining your audience. It may take some work to get there, but in the end, a business can better manage its overall reputation and brand.

Before you can really begin to “measure” Social Media, and let’s be clear, this is a whole new element of measuring. The metrics for measuring remain unclear to begin with. First though, an organization must “listen” to the market and to it’s key audiences. By acknowledging that you need to monitor Social Media (blogs, social networks etc.) there is a recognition that something important is going on there. So first is to listen, and a monitoring tool can help you to listen. Certainly if an organization plans on engaging in Social Media activities.

Once you’ve listened, you can begin to determine what are important measurements. These vary by your corporate objective. If you’re only interested in measuring product discussion, then those measurements are different than for monitoring analyst and market opinions about the company as a whole. Since a company is impacted beyond just product campaigns, we believe monitoring as a whole is better.

The types of measurements a company might consider tracking are;

Demographics: Who in terms of a vertical, professionals, regionality, economic, socioeconomic, age and gender segments.

Influential Ideas (memes): A “meme” is a single idea that gets turned into a discussion and commentary. Here you might look for what we term “Igniters” or “Key Influencers” who spark an idea or discussion and move from there to generate attention. Another part of this metric is seeing how memes evolve from your original communication to the social media stratum. This can help later in product positioning and messaging.

Velocity: How fast is the story you, or a Key Influencer has seeded, spreading? How fast is it spreading across various media? This ties into Media Segmentation. Speed can give an idea of uptake and infer a larger audience interest.

Media Segmentation: Many well established news organizations also have blogs, or cite blogs in their mainstream coverage. If your story started in mainstream news media, did it spread to Social Media in the non-professional category. This then ties into “memes” and how the story evolved and what it became as you look at opinion. Key in this measurement is understanding where the “spark point” was – did it cross from traditional media (i.e. a print magazine article) and go online or was it from a conference or trade show?

Particpants & Converters: Who are the “Influencers” and are they getting others to then act upon their discussion to turn into conversions by engaging with your product or service.

Reach: This measurement needs to be clearly defined as to what depth of reach you want. You may only need or want to reach 50 people, but those 50 people could be your entire market. Reaching beyond this may be for more consumer focused products.

Network Connectivity: If you’re reaching those Key Influencers or Igniters, then how deeply or how well are they connected? Some of these Igniters may be more broad in their audience, while others stay very focused. This measurement combines with Reach.

Depth of Relevance: Just how relevant is the overall coverage? This is a crucial, yet difficult measurement to gather, and one that means analysing the story, then looking at Reach, Network Connectivity and Media Segmentation to help determine relevance.

Sentiment: It’s one thing to know your message is being hear, and responded to, it’s another understand the tone in which it is being received. This is 3 main categories; Positive, Negative, Neutral

All of these only become measurable to any degree if the content is desired in the first place. If your content isn’t any good, no one will pick it up to begin with. Each measurement is dependent on the other in order to obtain the Big Picture.

Once this picture is obtained, which may take time, then you can start to formulate broader strategies and tactics to influence messages and communications activities. You can’t control the message, you can only manage it. Social Media metrics can then be tied into analytics as a whole, and that is another discussion.

The Google Buzz has definitely created a buzz, and is acclaimed to be one of the smart moves by Google. Buzz is not a competitor to Twitter, Facebook or other social platforms, but rather a gateway, something to aggregate your social existence in one space and further share with the web.

Giving this some more thought, how many companies will start to take into consideration the business side of things, there’s more to it – Google Buzz and the inclusion into search results as Twitter is, can greatly affect ones presence on the net and how we do business. Google is the source for info, phone numbers, feedback, reviews etc … Buzz is going to add to the pile, further generate more info for people to take into consideration when determining a purchase or decision and affect or influence customers further.

Basically upon performing a search for businesses in Google Maps, you can find the “Buzz about this place” option. Now, this turns out to be more or less like a Facebook community or Twitter group for the specific business, as you have the choice to Buzz about a business you like or the one you don’t. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Buzz has the ability to be seen by more people, the conversations are public and distributed by the most popular site on the net.

So, Google Buzz polls about a business will turn out to be much more than a review? Well, sure thing, you’ll enjoy the positive buzz about your business and increase in the business (if you’re lucky enough to get only positive Buzz). On the contrary, if you get lot of negative Buzz about your business or a particular product, you’ll have to essentially interact with the ‘dissatisfied customers’ and help them in resolving their issues as with any social channel.

Well then, it looks like Google is all set to pull more to the party, to participate in Social Media activities and engage them to keeping talking with the new Google Buzz! If you’re not too happy with the Buzz, then you can opt out (This option is based in the footer on Gmail). While I wouldn’t encourage opting out, if you are going to I would suggest you monitor it.

Prepare for the challenge and see how Buzz morphs over the coming months, where it appears and how it is used. The social web is growing, channels are appearing daily and the conversation will continue. Take part and enjoy.

Over time, the concept of social networking evolved, and in the present day scenario, Social Media has become equivalent to an open lottery ticket to boost up the popularity of your online business, blog or website.

This is why people are crazy about tweeting continuously on Twitter, forming communities on Facebook, and running multiple blogs to promote their businesses.

Social Media versus Search Engine Traffic

Sure thing, search engine traffic may be enough to achieve very high conversion rate theoretically, but when you consider practically, the search engine traffic isn’t too focused and doesn’t necessarily result in good conversion rate. For instance, if a person searches for “Apple iPods” and lands on your site after clicking on your advertisement on Google, he/she may not be necessarily interested in buying Apple iPods. There are good chances that such a visitor may have been looking for history of Apple iPods, or features of iPods to compare them with Zune. And, after looking at the info of interest, such a visitor may hit the back button, go to Amazon and buy a Zune! What a waste of your ad click and loss of business, isn’t it?

But, on the other hand, let us consider the traffic from Social Media like a Facebook group dedicated to Apple iPods as well as iPhone. Any visitor from such a Facebook group may definitely give you some business (at least there are higher chances as opposed to search engine traffic), even if it is purchase of a small iPod accessory.

More importantly, such visitors become frequent visitors and give you repeat business, while the search engine traffic is highly unpredictable and disoriented. A person who clicked on Google, landed on your site, bought a black 4GB Apple iPod nano, may not necessarily remember your site. And, next time around when such visitors need to purchase an iPhone, they may not bother to search your site on Google again.

Why Tweet Everyday?

You must have noticed even the best in business tweet everyday – what’s the big idea you ask! Well, tweeting daily has not just become a habit but also the preferred way to give constant updates to the potential customers, and maintain good business relationship with the existing customer-base. Every time when Google comes out with an update, AdSense Blog, AdWords blog and their corresponding Twitter pages are filled up with info, as they’re the best way to convey the info to the public rather than sending out millions of emails daily.

The Bottom-Line

So, if you want high conversion rate and boost up the profitability of your online business, you better realize the importance of social media and try to create your brand on Social Media. Form faithful Facebook groups, Tweet daily, blog daily and get more business – it is now as simple as that!

I’ve encountered reputation issues both positive and negative. I’ve also found both positive and negative commentaries across ALL industries and sectors. Even a plumbing supply company that suffered. Some companies have very positive coverage and end up with brand evangelists. So what can you do? How do you address this issue?

It’s important to note that most issues surrounding online reputation management fall out of social media sites on the Web (blogs, video blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace etc.) and rarely come from traditional media. PR agencies are well geared to deal with traditional media, but few understand how to work with social media, since the pshychology of people participating in social media applications takes a strange twist from the “real world.” My experience has shown that your marketing and communications people should be monitoring the Web and have a plan for response. Similar to how a company will have a Crisis Management plan in place for negative media coverage.

Dealing with negative information on the Web however, is a little more different. It is also more permanent in nature. A careful line has to be drawn with how much you push to manage the message. You can no longer control the message, but you can manage it. You should have a plan in place to have a response team or find an agency that has not just real-world PR experience, but Web communications experience and vice versa.

You can monitor yourself through tag cloud engines and by checking regular bloggers you know cover you, but a more effective route is to engage a company that has a software application to do broader and deeper searches. Make sure this company also has the ability to help you manage situations, otherwise you’ve only solved half the problem.