If 1,000,000 people friended your brand on Facebook, how much money would you make? Is social media really worth it? On January 21 at the January Austin AMA Power Luncheon, our special guest speaker Brian Carter discussed strategy, ROI, and how to get more bang for your social media marketing buck. Brian is Director of Search Engine Marketing (PPC), SEO, and Social Media at Fuel Interactive, an interactive marketing agency in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Social media promises to be the new frontier for marketers (we’re pretty sure, anyway—as Brian demonstrated, there aren’t hard numbers for social media’s ROI yet), and we’re all eager to get online and just tweet/post/blog/tag ourselves blue in the face. But without a plan we can’t know if our efforts are worthwhile. In fact, without a plan, we can’t even pinpoint what we consider to be a worthwhile outcome. So in lieu of hard data, Brian recommended starting out with quantifiable goals and educated guesses. We can continually refine and optimize our plan by measuring and evaluating the results we get.

5 Steps to Ensure Social Media ROI

1. Identify your goal.
2. Establish a metric (quantify your goal).
3. Get real about your current situation: what’s working, what’s not, what are your capabilities, do you need help, what is your risk tolerance? Make educated guesses at this point.
4. Plan your strategy and resources before jumping in with both feet.
5. Let results guide progress: Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

4 Phases of Social Media Campaign Development

Most companies skip phase one of the four-phase campaign development process Brian outlined. By jumping into a social media presence without planning what you’re going to do once you’ve begun engaging your audience, you may wind up unable to keep their interest for long or turn that interest into action (and profit).

1. Strategy and brand planning. Project your brand into social media. Plan your viral campaigns—games, contests, hooks, attention grabbers, excitement builders.
2. Establishing a presence on social media sites/increasing brand awareness. Set up your social networking profiles.
3. Engaging customers/developing brand affinity. Monitor the conversation, including mentions of your brand, your competitors’ brands, and relevant topics. Reply with information, offers, friendliness, and humor.
4. Engaging customers/pushing offers for ROI. This is where not skipping phase one really comes in handy. You need a steady stream of attention-grabbing, compelling incentives to lead your audience down the path to purchase.

The Golden Ticket to Social Media Success: Keeping Customers Motivated

Every step of the way, you have to give your audience sufficient incentive to keep paying attention and moving to the next step of your marketing plan. The Golden Ticket campaign shows how to create irresistible motivations that turn into purchasing momentum.

To qualify, customers will book a vacation and fan the Visit Myrtle Beach Facebook page.

Then customers will post a message to their wall (“I booked a vacation at X hotel in Myrtle Beach because I want to win a Golden Ticket”) referencing their golden ticket number.

Five lucky winners will find a Golden Ticket in their hotel room upon arrival entitling them to free show passes, VISA gift cards, and other prizes.

Specific benefits are defined for each step in the contest. By requiring a purchase just to qualify, this campaign ensures cash revenue from the outset. The Facebook posts generate positive word of mouth advertising for the hotels. The campaign will also build contacts for future email campaigns.

What’s the Verdict?

Social media campaign planning is more labor-intensive and expensive than search or email marketing, and its benefits have not been established. Your best bet? To move forward with a plan, learning from your data as you continually get closer to your social media marketing sweet spot.

Other Tips and Takeaways

1. Don’t be a victim of brand theft. Use knowem.com to check for and secure your personal, brand, or product name on over 350 social media sites.
2. In addition to your “2.0” social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, etc, establish a presence on “3.0” aggregator sites such as Friendfeed and Tumblr to add assets automatically via RSS, thus building links for SEO.
3. Use tools like CoTweet and Whos Talkin? to monitor and reply to social media chatter.
4. Make sure that your marketing is not only getting attention but inciting action—what are you doing to motivate your audience to do something?