Social Media World Forum: To evaluate social media, focus on business goals

Muhammad Karim, senior brand manager from Mars, gave his own clear perspective on how to get the most from social media at today’s Social Media World Forum.

From a major brand advertiser’s perspective, Karim argued that marketing communications need to start with an understanding of company strategy, objectives, priorities, and goals before specific media channels are considered.

Marketers should identify the right measures of effectiveness before choosing the tool to deliver them. There are hundreds of rival social media monitoring tools, both free and paid-for. As a general rule, the free tools offer weaker relevance and demand more time investment, so the decision on which to use shouldn’t just be based on cost. What marketers need from these tools is quality reporting of brand-relevant information, leading to something that the marketer can action. For example, you may have 5,000 mentions on Facebook, but what does that mean?

Lastly, good social media implementation and evaluation requires teamwork. Businesses would do well to exploit not just the expertise of social media professionals, but also their full portfolio of agencies, and their own employees. The effort cuts across all areas of the business and should be funded and staffed appropriately.

In the subsequent panel debate, Tom Nixon of Nixon McInnes took a position with the “traditional” marketers, arguing that they “don’t need to tear up their marketing strategy for social media despite what many social media companies would like to tell you”. He pointed out that Google Chrome had needed to resort to traditional media to launch among the majority who don’t really care what browser they use, rather then relying on the highly-engaged social media audience.

Mark Watts-Jones explained that his employer Orange UK no longer has a dedicated digital marketing team. Digital is now fully integrated, as it is in the lives of their customers.