Page 347 - Using MIS

Q5 How Do Organizations Develop an Effective SMIS? 315

Goal Metrics

Brand awareness Total Twitter followers, audience growth rate, brand mentions in SM,
Klout or Kred score
Conversion rates Click rate on your SM content, assisted social conversions

Web site trac Visitor frequency rate, referral trac from SM
Figure 8-9 User engagement Number of SM interactions, reshares of SM content
Common SM Metrics

Once you’ve identified your target audience, you need to find out which SM platforms they
use. Certain social media platforms attract certain audiences. For example, over 70 percent of
29
28
Pinterest users are women, 46 percent of Tumblr users are between 16 and 24, 90 percent of
30
31
Instagram users are under the age of 35, and 84 percent of LinkedIn users are over 25. Your
target audience will influence which SM platforms you use. Quantcast.com is a great source for
demographic information about users of various SM platforms.
Step 4: Define Your Value

After pinpointing your target audience, you’ll need to define the value you’ll provide your audi-
ence. Why should these users listen to you, go to your Web site, like your posts, or tweet about
your products? Are you providing news, entertainment, education, employee recruiting, or in-
formation? In essence, you need to define what you are going to give your audience in exchange
for making a connection with you.
Shopping is a good metaphor to explain how you can do this. When you go shopping, you
see something of value and you exchange your financial capital (money) with the business for
the item you value. The same is true of social media. Your audience members are constantly
browsing for things of value, and they have social capital to spend. They may eventually spend
financial capital at your Web site, but it’s the social capital that is most important. You need to
define what you’re going to offer users in exchange for their social capital.
Take LinkedIn as an example. It helps users find jobs, build a professional network, join
special interest groups, get introduced to prospective clients, and reconnect with past col-
leagues. From an organizational perspective, LinkedIn allows recruiters to quickly identify and
contact potential hires from a large pool of candidates. This lowers hiring costs and improves
the quality of new hires.
If you’re unsure how your organization could add value, start by performing a competitive
analysis to identify the strengths and weaknesses in your competitors’ use of social media. Look
at what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong.

Step 5: Make Personal Connections

The true value of social media can be achieved only when organizations use social media to
interact with customers, employees, and partners in a more personal, humane, relationship-
oriented way.

28 John McDermott, “Pinterest: The No-bro Zone,” Digiday.com, February 20, 2014, accessed July 7, 2014, http://
digiday.com/platforms/why-pinterest-is-still-a-predominantly-female-platform/. Access date August 2014.
29
Hilary Heino, “Social Media Demographics—Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest,” Agile Impact, March 13,
2014, accessed June 25, 2014, http://agileimpact.org/social-media-demographics-instagram-tumblr-and-
pinterest/.
30 Cooper Smith, “LinkedIn May Not Be the Coolest Social Network, but It’s Only Becoming More Valuable
to Businesses,” Business Insider, May 1, 2014, accessed June 25, 2014, www.businessinsider.com/demographic-
data-and-social-media-2014-2.
31 Quantcast, LinkedIn.com profile, accessed June 25, 2014, www.quantcast.com/linkedin.com.