Experiment ideas social media optimizely by dmarkconsulting

A Guide To

Creating Provable ROI in Social Media

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The Value Question: What is Social Media Worth? If you have ever tweeted from your company’s Twitter handle, or posted an update to your Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+ page, you are probably sick and tired of thinking about this question, “what is the return on investment from that post?” With words like data-driven, metrics, ROI, measurement, it’s clear that there is a lot of impetus to attribute revenue and conversions directly to all marketing functions—not just social media. Measuring many other marketing activities is more

“Social media is great for building trust and getting attention from your target audience. Once you have their attention and trust, it’s time to move them away from the social media platform and over to your website where you can call the shots and design an awesome conversion experience.”

established and straightforward. For example, if you ask, “How much return did we get for our investment in a paid

Michael Aagaard

search marketing campaign?” you can run a report on ad

Conversion Optimization Expert

spend and quickly calculate costs-per specific activities important to you. If email marketing comes under question, you can list off a number of ways to quantify its value. You can correlate email open/click activity with revenue or engagement, or compare the value of a customer who is included in an email campaign versus one who isn’t. When the question comes to social media, the answer—as you are aware—tends to get fuzzy. Of course there are times when updates to social media channels lead directly to conversions but there are also times—perhaps many times—when social media updates lead to less monetizable events. What’s the value of a like on LinkedIn? A retweet on Twitter? A share on Facebook?

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What we do know is that social media is (and for the foreseeable future, will be) an integral part of marketing. Common sense says it’s a no brainer—investing in expanding your business’s ecosystem through social just makes sense because your customers, your prospective customers, and your competitors are on social media. No business is saying, “Oh, no I won’t get on [insert popular social network here] because that wouldn’t help achieve my business goals.” What they are saying is what impact does Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest have for me and how do I prove it? Opinions are mixed on this question. Some say measure conversions. Others say measure net promoter score, and there are those that say followers are the main metric to optimize. Others are just on the bandwagon, investing time and money in social media because they know it’s important but can’t say how effective it is. A 2014 study by Social Media Examiner reported that 87% of marketers surveyed don’t know how to measure their return on investment from social media. What’s clear is that there is not a silver bullet solution to calculate return on investment from social media. This can cause skepticism. In such a data-driven era of marketing, managers, and CEOs want clarity and quantitative proof of the ROI of social media in order to make decisions.

In August 2013, The CMO Survey reported that 66% of respondents said their companies are putting more pressure on measuring social ROI. The problem: the majority of marketers do not know how. This guide will walk you through one of the practices you can do as a social media manager or marketer to collect more quantitative feedback on your investment in social media, increase how often your content gets shared, and how often visitors from social media turn into customers for your business. This practice is optimization.

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Enter Experience Optimization Experience optimization means proactively bringing data to the core of your business to create high performing user experiences that increase conversions, engagement, and revenue. Experimentation and testing are at the core of experience optimization. The goal is to apply these practices to social media strategy to quantify the value of social media and uncover helpful answers about where you should spend more or less time and resource.

MEASURE

DEFINE

RESULTS

GOALS

The experience optimization loop helps break the looming question, “what is the value of social media?”

EXPERIENCE OPTIMIZATION

into smaller, more measurable parts.

• Which social channel does my

is an

ESSENTIAL PART

RUN TESTS

DETERMINE OPTIMIZATION POINTS

of any

audience spend the most time on?

• What kind of content are they most compelled to share?

MARKETING STRATEGY

• What time of day are they most likely to interact on different channels?

CREATE VARIATIONS

HYPOTHESIZE IMPROVEMENTS

By asking specific questions about individual channels, you can reach conclusions about larger questions like: • How much does social media impact my business? • How does social media impact consumer spending and decision making? • What are key drivers of success on social media? • How much money and time should I be investing in social media?

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10 Experiments That Can Help You Increase Value From Social Media Here are 10 different experiment ideas and the questions theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll help you answer about your social media investment.

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01 Test location of share buttons The physical location of a button is a factor in a visitor’s decision to share. Think about placement on the page as well as which pages have options to share.

These type of tests can help you determine where on the page people are most likely to click, as well as the places on your site that stir emotion—a main motivating factor in sharing. On article pages, test placing share buttons at the end of the article vs. the beginning vs. both places. Mashable has a share header and only shows Facebook and Twitter with an option to expand.

CNN uses a sticky share bar that scrolls with you down the page.

Sephora has share buttons on the product pages. Are people more likely to share something after they’ve decided to buy it or during decision making?

MEASURE SUCCESS

Track which variations increase engagement on share buttons.

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02 Experiment with the time you publish

to different channels Traffic generation is part of the value social media adds to your business. Test when you post to your various social channels to find peak times of the day and days of the week for click throughs.

There is no consensus in the world of social media about the time of day or day of the week a post will reach maximum exposure. Your audience is unique compared to another brand so you should test it.

Dan Zarella, social media scientist of Hubspot, did a study that found afternoon Tweets had higher clickthrough-rates. Another study by Dan Zarella found that the best time to Tweet for retweets is at 5pm.

Many social media measurement softwares like Sprout Social and Buffer will track timing for you. If you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t use one, then you can use unique URLs based on the time of day. Track which unique URL generated the most traffic in your site analytics.

MEASURE SUCCESS

Measure which posts generate the most traffic.

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03 Try different offers incentivizing

people to share A study found that recommendations—especially shared online—are more influential on a person’s buying decision than brand or price. Test the way you incentivize people to share or review your product or service.

When thinking of incentives, put yourself in your customers’ shoes. If you ask people to share or write a recommendation ask, “What’s in it for me?” In email, Lyft offers a credit for referring friends to sign up on different social networks.

Warby Parker strongly urges sharing on its order confirmation pages.

Tip: Try pre-populating a form with share text. People may need a nudge or inspiration to decide what to write.

MEASURE SUCCESS

Track which offers generate the most shares. You can offer different referral codes for incentives and measure which codes are used most.

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04 Experiment with personalized

calls to action on landing pages Traffic coming from different channels to your website may not all be responsive to the same call to action. Test the ask you make of people based on which social channel they came from. This can help you learn about the actions that visitors from different social channels are most likely to take.

LIKE OUR PAGE

YOUR LANDING PAGE SHARE AN ARTICLE CALL TO ACTION

MAKE A PURCHASE

SUBSCRIBE FOR UPDATES

Maybe traffic from LinkedIn is more likely to sign up for a service, traffic from Twitter might be more prone to share an article, and visitors from Facebook are inclined to like a page? Test showing different call to actions on traffic from different referral sources.

has found that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best to show different share buttons on articles based on the type of content and how the visitor reached the site. This is a great test to run if a large percentage of your traffic comes from social.

MEASURE SUCCESS

Track which call to action converts best for each segment of social traffic

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05 Test calls to action in social updates

Language and length are two factors that go into crafting a call to action in a social post. Testing how you position an action is a way to gauge what your audience is interested in.

On Facebook, Target doesn’t directly tell people to buy the product, but uses other promotional language to engage people to

Direct appeals in social media updates may not lead to conversions. Your audience might engage more with informational posts.

click the link. KISSmetrics tells people directly to “learn more”. The arrows to the link add emphasis on the link.

On LinkedIn, Salesforce.com shares information without a direct appeal to click or read the article.

MEASURE SUCCESS

Run a controlled campaign for a few weeks on each of your main channels and track how usage of direct CTAs vs. absence of CTAs impacts engagement.

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06 Test the design of your share buttons Share buttons come in all shapes and sizes these days. Button designs that used to be homogenous across the web are becoming highly customized. Simply testing what your buttons look like can lead to a significant increase in shares.

Test a single share buttons versus multi-site share buttons. Forbes has a sticky share icon that expands when you hover over it.

Veggietales found that adding counters to the share buttons on their homepage increased revenue per visitor by 36.8%.

There are many questions to test on a share button: â&#x20AC;˘Do you include a share counter? â&#x20AC;˘Do you include who shared it? Depending on what type of share it is, knowing On their blog, Marketo shows aggregate shares with a heart symbol.

who else shared it could be a very compelling reason to buy or share. For e-commerce sites, seeing who bought an item could be more compelling than a star rating.

MEASURE SUCCESS

Which button design generates the most clicks. Also keep track of which channel is most popular. If you see shares to one channel outshine the rest then you can focus more time and effort there.

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Test one-click sign up with social media buttons Reducing the steps and time necessary to login or signup to your service can increase engagement and usage. Any way to reduce friction can be positive for your company. Social login is one way do this. Try using social login on your website to see if it increases sign up rate or product usage.

Since a Google account is required to use the product, KISSmetrics uses Google sign in.

Goodreads offers many different social logins in addition to a signup form.

Apply insights from other tests to determine which social network your customers or users spend most time on and test offering that as a login method. If you already have social login, test the size and position of the button relative to the form. Try assuring people that you wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t post to their feed if they sign up. MEASURE SUCCESS

Track sign up conversions or logins with and without the social login.

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08 Experiment with the types

of images you share Using images in social posts has the power to significantly increase engagement. Twitter states that they see 2x engagement on posts with images. Test whether a specific type of image create more engagement over another.

YOUR LANDING PAGE This Product is Fast!

GET IT NOW!

YOUR LANDING PAGE This Product is Fast!

GET IT NOW!

Instead of specific images, test out the impact of different image types, like images with people versus no people. Models versus just product. Test the impact different images have on different social networks. What drives shares and likes on Facebook may not perform as well on LinkedIn.

MEASURE SUCCESS

Come up with a way to categorize the types of images you post and track how the different image categories impact your key metrics. Share This

09 Test how you position

recommended content Giving readers recommended articles to read next is a proven way to increase pageviews on your content. The exact design and positioning of the articles is something you can test.

Test adding social share numbers next to recommended articles. If the articles with the highest number of shares are the most clicked in the recommended content module, then you have proof on the return value of social media. Upworthy tested the design of the module they use to recommend content and found a variation that increased social shares by 27%. Forbes recommends content receiving high page views or trending on social networks on its top navigation.

TechCrunch has thumbnails at the end of articles recommending content.

MEASURE SUCCESS

Track clicks on recommended articles with social proof support. Share This

Recommended Content Meets Social Sharing: An Example From Upworthy

was difficult to find additional content after landing on a particular video or graphic. “Our users wanted to dig deeper, but there was no obvious way to get to a second piece of content,” says Peter. Peter’s goal was

“

to increase sitewide engagement, while maintaining the share-optimized user experience.

We’re maybe as good as a coin-flip at guessing what’s going to work best for our users. We rely on testing to just make better decisions. People are really fascinating and interesting…and weird! It’s really hard to guess their behaviors accurately. Peter Koechley Co-founder, Upworthy

Hypothesis

Peter believed that adding a recommended content module would decrease the number of social shares for each article on average. “We had already done a lot of testing and found that when we added distractions, user sharing went down,” Peter said. It’s the classic paradox of choice concept. The team decided to run a series of A/B tests to find a variation of a recommended content module that would maximize sharing and clicks on new content. 1st Round of Test Variations

“In the earliest days of Upworthy, our goal was to find

The original article page had no recommended

people on social media and grab their attention and

content links, so they started from scratch in terms

then get them to share back out to social media as

of wireframes and design.

well,” says Peter Koechley, co-founder of Upworthy. “We wanted to optimize that loop.” As Upworthy’s

First, the team experimented with placement of the

audience grew, the team realized that the desired

recommended content box on the page. Continue to

loop was not so tight. Engagement was growing and

the next page to see the variations they tested.

people were spending more time on the site–but it

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They tested recommended content above the article.

They tried it to the left of the article.

2nd Round of Test Variations

Then they honed in on design trying a number of different aesthetics and wording for the recommended content. Was it “Watch these next”, “Some of our best”, or“Best of Upworthy” that attracted more clicks and shares?

WINNER

They tested different color treatments.

“

We want people on our site to really enjoy a piece of content and share it in huge numbers. Part of this is about curation great content, but it’s also about taking time to optimize every part of the experience for maximum shareability and satisfaction. Peter Koechley Co-founder, Upworthy Share This

The box to the right of the article titled “Best of Upworthy” increased social shares on recommended content by 28%!

Click to view the full story of Upworthy’s tests.

10 Experiment with targeting

for paid social promotions Paid updates can be a very effective way to reach new audiences, but which audiences perform best for your brand and what kind of promotion you do is something to experiment with. Test promoting updates to different audience segments.

When testing paid social placements the first step is deciding on your goal. Is your goal likes/follows on your company page or shares on a high value piece of content? Your goal will help you determine the type of advertising campaign to run. Then, it’s all about picking your audience.

This is what audience selection looks like on LinkedIn. You can see how wide your net is as you add more specific filters.

Tip: Beyond targeting, test different ad variations (images and ad text) as well. On social platforms, click through rate can be heavily influenced by images. Test different/ contrasting colors, people vs. products, male vs. female image. Tip: Make sure your audience experimentation is controlled. Change one filter at a time to see if/how that difference in audience impacts success of your campaign.

MEASURE SUCCESS

Keep track of which audience segments turn into conversions. Share This

Here’s an example of a promoted Tweet from Lincoln Motor Company that is targeted to people searching for “Audi”.

So Where do I Start? Start with one of these ideas we covered:

01. Test location of share buttons 02. Experiment with the time you publish to different channels 03. Try different offers incentivizing people to share 04. Experiment with personalized calls to action on landing pages 05. Test calls to action in social updates 06. Experiment with the design of your share buttons 07. Test one-click sign up with social media buttons 08. Experiment on the types of images you share 09. Test how you position recommend content 10. Experiment with targeting for paid social promotions If one of them hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t jumped out at you to run immediately already, then start by defining a goal you are trying to achieve with social media. How do you define goals? If nothing is jumping out at you, then ask, why do we have [Insert popular social media site]? What will happen if we stop posting there? Work backwards from there. Do flex your creativity muscles. Continue to brainstorm brilliant, never-before-seen ways to stand out through the cacophony of an average personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social feed. And definitely do make it a priority to measure the impact of your work on metrics that really matter for your business so you can prove the value to your boss or bossâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s boss. Then start testing!

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