What is more important: 5 Million Impressions or 5 Relationships?
June 23, 2008 11:02 am Social Media
During a panel at OMMA Social conference in New York, President of SocialVibe, Joe Marchese, asked a very important and relevant question to online marketers and Fortune 500 companies: Are impressions more important than relationships with social media users? Many of the branding and social media strategists raised their hands in agreement when asked if their motives were to build relationships.
Are online marketers really interested in relationships? Despite that response, Marchese calls “bullshit.” Online marketers want to have as many eyeballs as possible on a branded property. The number of impressions is a measure of success. Exposure to a branded campaign is a benefit to social media, but it shouldn’t be the only priority of a social media effort. Although brands want to have a high traffic rate to their Facebook profile, what’s the point if these users don’t convert?
Relationships are key for the development of a branded effort conducted online. Through establishing online relationships, a brand gains loyalty. Although impressions establish awareness, they don’t necessarily create a direct relationship with the brand. When expectations are set early, companies will know how to measure success for social media. The launch of a social media campaign might start slow, but if it gains traction it will establish more relationships.
During the panel, an important point was made about a need for a new measurement matrix. Some marketers and Fortune 500 companies rely on the traditional matrix, which simply does not work for social media. There is wider variety of considerations that need to be included when gauging the success of a social media campaign, like the context conversation and tone.
Marketers need to understand that users don’t want to be sold something. They are against branded messages being pushed on them. Users want to contribute and engage themselves in discussions about the brand. They want to invest in the development of products they are already passionate about. At the same time, impressions can help leverage key relationships that are necessary to build brand loyalty. This continues to prove the need for a new measurement and reporting method.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:26 am
I would tend to disagree with Marchese’s broad assumption that search marketers are not interested in conversions.
Particularly if we’re talking PPC management, where conversions can be measured much more effectively and easily.
I suppose each SEO/SEM campaign will have their own unique goals (and impressions could be one of them), but isn’t that the same for any marketing campaign?
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:32 am
I don’t think it’s that black and white. Depends on the quality of relationships as well as the quality of traffic.
If the option is between getting a million visitors from the Yahoo! main page versus befriending 5 people who are just going to use me, guess which one I will take
And I think the only people that think like this: “The number of impressions is a measure of success,” are the old media marketers or seos that are parading like social media specialists but don’t know their heads from their computer screens
Impressions is the worst possible way to measure roi. If anything you should be measuring where the traffic comes from, how long the average visitor stays, how many comments or other interactions you get, and how many links you get (and from what sources). Obviously you shouldn’t forget your conversion goals either, and these can be # of rss subscribers, # of affiliate sales, ad-clicks, and so on.
You might also find this interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversational_marketing
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:32 am
Great post! I am glad you picked up on the theme of 5 relationships versus 5 million impressions. That is something I have been going back on forth with Jaffe on!
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Very interesting post. I’m kinda in the middle on this one.
While traffic is definitely important to a site, I don’t think that should be the “Measure of Success” for Social Media. The important aspect of ’social media traffic’ is NOT how much traffic you get, but more what the average person does while they are on your site.
There can be MANY benefits from Social Media. Yes, the traffic is great! We all know what the digg effect is and can do to a site… But what really matters, and should be included in the ‘measurement of success’, is the amount of links you get back pointing back to your site, or the amount of Newsletter/RSS subscribers you get.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I think anyone not short sited would choose the relationship. It ends up being well worth more than a million page views long term.
June 23rd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Great post, Reem. Traffic floods are great but what is the bounce rate? How deep are visitors going into the content? I’d rather have 10 RSS subscribers who read several times a week than 100 new visitors who stay for 5 seconds and never return. When you have loyal readers and you build a genuine community, success will come of its own accord. (Or, rather, that IS success.
)
June 23rd, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Don’t get me wrong I would take 5 good relationships over impressions because in the long run you will benefit, but shouldn’t you be able to develop and foster some type of connection out of 5 million impressions? If not, you might have to rethink your strategy…something to think about.
June 24th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
“Although brands want to have a high traffic rate to their Facebook profile, what’s the point if these users don’t convert?”
But participation within Facebook (either a group/fan page or application) in the form of “becoming a fan”, “having a conversation” or just participating can be considered a conversion, no?
With Intel, it’s almost impossible to track a conversion directly from a facebook engagement; and I assume similar ingredient brands or high-involvement purchases (like a new home, rental property, maybe a sports car) have the same issue. And, maybe it’s not even an issue at all. There are tools today that can monitor “conversations” so if your goal is to increase awareness, I would argue that an increase in conversations achieves that goal (along with several other metrics/variables as well).
June 25th, 2008 at 1:53 am
[...] le dit encore une autre consultante, Reem Abeidoh, vaut-il mieux avoir 5 millions d’impressions de son document ou 5 millions d’amis ?. Assurément à l’heure du marketing relationnel, où les utilisateurs veulent discuter et [...]
June 26th, 2008 at 11:36 am
While I agree with the premise of this article, unless the 5 relationships are with social media whores like msaleem (<3), I’ll take 5 million legit impressions any day of the week. With that many impressions if you can’t create relationships, buzz, and conversions you need to rethink things.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:15 am
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October 20th, 2008 at 3:15 am
Great article. Social networking has evolved into such a huge commercial venture that it has overtaken the basic purpose for which it was built in the first place.
November 11th, 2008 at 7:06 am
You would think that 5 million impressions would potentially bring the opportunity to form some good relationships, if the visitors see something they like or that can benefit them.