I’m very strict about spamming on twitter. Despite working for Thinktank, I don’t retweet stuff unless I feel my friends can get something from it. I don’t work on that campaign anymore but I still love what they do and will talk about them occasionally because they are rocking it.

I think part of the reason for their success though is that they were so switched on. Ali in particular lapped up new information. I think this is one of the reasons that we can show the campaign is working. Like me, she is in the trenches getting a feel of what people like. This stuff is really hard to measure and probably isn’t scalable.

Luke – thanks for your reply. Will definitely be keeping a keen eye on what you guys are doing

What a great name…there’s a brand just there…move over ‘Hello Kitty’

Sorry? You’re ‘Sorry’ to write so much?…Gasp, gag, stagger, stagger…crash! (Insert wall here!)

Good grief! Can you promise me something? Never EVER say that again? Ok?

Not only do you write really well, but if that’s not all that is ever necessary for any enterprise to know about how to sanely, humanely & sustainably augment their enterprise through improved communication technology I don’t know what is!

I also love Iggy’s piece. The only bit I take issue with Iggy is this – it’s not ’2 cents worth’ mate…it’s ’2 Bobs worth’…

You remind me of a mate of mine Iggy…he’s even older than me too ;-P He just loves to hover over a conversation, chiming in at the end with a grand 2 paragraph summary of what everyone else has said…Hehe! Just kiddin’ mate. Bluddy brilliant…just like my mate. His name is Malcolm. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you are him…the shapes of your thoughts and writing styles are very similar…bluddy awesome.

Speaking of people that should be apologising for waffling on…here am I acting like this is my blog when all I intended to do was pop in and leave a couple of links.

But damn! They’re just such great comments…all of ‘em…I reckon ya gotta be pretty chuffed Sam…Congrats on inspiring a great conversation and thanks for allowing me to be part of it…

So here’s the links:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html

This one enscapsulates, far better than I can, the damage our over-reliance on measuring, policies and rules may be doing. And no, I’m not advocating that we don’t measure stuff…nor am I advocating ‘Balance’…I hate ‘Balance’. You mix that with our incessant attempts to control everything and it becomes static. You don’t find that in nature, or even in a market place do you? I just reckon that we can afford to rely more on our human faculties and relationships than rigid things that stop us thinking, that make us creatively lazy and inhuman. That we need to rely more on the ‘unmeasured’…as Ali so well illustrated and Iggy so well articulated…we need to rely more on what our need to control has been systematically suffocating… we need to rely more on the little unmeasured things that may hopefully lead to a renaissance of ‘common sense’ and our long lost ‘wisdom’, resulting in an increase in random acts of kindness; which brings me to the next link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jonathan_zittrain_the_web_is_a_random_act_of_kindness.html

Ok! I’m shutting up now

Cheers

Stephen G

Well done to all involved, a marketing campaign using social media that has been very successful in my 50+ yo mind!

Our Facebook Page and Twitter Accounts have had a steady increase in followers daily, and we’ve developed a community of followers who are also connecting with each other as well as with our business. From a branding perspective, this activity has contributed to the number of people finding us online by using our company name has increasing by over 40% since we’ve began utilising social media networks.

Our newest staff member applied for her job after seeing it posted on Facebook. ROI on that? Well, a small amount of effort involved to mention a position vacant has lead to us finding the right person for the job who will hopefully be working with us for quite a while yet.

ROI through Social Media may not be as easy to measure as other more traditional forms of marketing. However for us, it seems to complete the puzzle of how we can reach our potential customers, as it’s enabled us to get our small business noticed on a much more far-reaching scale than we’ve ever had before. Like Renee commented, it has also become the perfect way for us to show our personalities and ‘humanise’ our brand by building relationships with others. I love that anyone can log onto any one of our social media pages and get a feel for the type of people who are running the business by viewing comments or posts and seeing how we interact with people.

I also agree with Monika that it’s near impossible to measure ROI on information sharing. Connections we’ve made with other hotels throughout the world has helped us in our other forms of marketing. Finding new ideas and information via Twitter has also assisted in motivating our team to try new customer service techniques, or marketing ideas. How do you measure ROI on staff motivation? Social media use has empowered the team to seek new information out that will both benefit our business and their own personal development.

Social Media will never replace the value of meeting a client/customer in the flesh, as someone’s body language can tell you a lot about how well things are going. Social Media will not replace our constant phone interactions with our key clients either. Both of these forms of communication/ marketing are probably far more effective than social media is in terms of ROI. However social media has given “word of mouth” advertising some ‘legs’ – for a small business, getting your name out there and known is so important for success.

Sorry to write so much, but you did throw me that line Sam, and I had to take the bait Cheers for a great discussion – Ali (Caroline Serviced Apartments).

I worked in the corporate world for 22 years and still speak to many large, medium and small businesses. In that time, I’ve never met a CEO, MD, Director or business owner who was not willing to consider an investment that involved retaining their current customers and acquiring prospects by engaging them in a cost effective way.

This is the way social media needs to be pitched to business owners and managers. It’s the platform for individuals and communities who are prepared to connect with a brand to create opportunities through interaction. When you look at Australian adoption rates and how pervasive this technology is becoming, a business leader worth their salt must at least review whether to leverage the technology or not. ROI then becomes a factor, not the be and end all.

Social media is not the answer to every business challenge but it should definitely be a consideration for any business that wants to connect with its target market.

Iggy