Battling Goliath: How to Win as the Underdog

As my daughter was heading off to Copenhagen for a semester abroad five years ago, my “cheap dad” instincts went into high gear. With visions of thousands of dollars of long-distance cellular calls on my horizon, I suggested to her that we use a free messaging app that one of our client’s at the time had introduced. Her lightning response via SMS was, “Don’t worry dad, when all my friends went overseas they used WhatsApp and I’ve already installed it.” Of course, that settled the issue. We did use WhatsApp, helping her get through a long dark Scandinavian winter and saving me a kingdom of Krone.

That first hand encounter with messaging apps also shed light on what we could call the “community effect.” The adoption of mobile messaging apps typically happens in waves of users, community by community. And scale within a community matters since their value increases with the number of friends and family that also use the same app. This helps explain why one app could be very popular in one country and almost nonexistent in another. Most of these apps grew by word of mouth, spreading from friend to friend and in some cases, daughter to father.

The “community effect” creates a remarkable marketing challenge.  How do you generate community versus one by one adoption?  Can you accelerate word of mouth with a burst of advertising?  And how do you do all of that in the face of ginormous competitors like WeChat, Messenger and WhatsApp? Well enough of the hypothetical questions, join me as I interview Scott Nelson, the North American head of Viber, a five-year-old messaging app with over 750 million users worldwide.  As you will soon see, Scott learned a lot from his recent campaign that included a unique blend of traditional media, digital ads, content and influencer marketing and he was kind enough to share it to good effect with this community.

Drew: I read that Viber launched a marketing campaign in late 2015. Can you tell me what prompted this effort?

Scott: Up until probably a few years ago we had no marketing department. As we grew our base very quickly and learned more about our users, we realized that there was a very emotional connection with our product. Our first real campaign specifically here in the US was mainly to increase awareness around Viber. We have a really good global footprint, with users all around the world, but in the US people are not as familiar with the brand. So, number one was to increase US awareness around Viber. Then, number two was what I called a reappraisal for those people that knew of Viber but didn’t know that we had several different elements in the platform. We wanted to bring them up to speed on the services we offered.

Drew: Can you say a little more about the structure of your 2015 campaign? 

Scott: We launched an outdoor advertising campaign that included the more traditional marketing and then we went deeper with a digital partnership, bringing in several different influencers to help our overall public chat platform. We aligned ourselves with well-known artists, and the likes of the Barclays Center to create live experiences within the app. We did several different things from traditional advertising elements to deeply social campaigns, so it was a pretty robust effort from September into December of 2015.

Drew: Let’s talk about metrics. Did you have a tracking study in place for awareness?

Scott: We conducted a brand connectivity study with our Spotified partnership, so we were able to get tracking information. We worked with performance media so we had a couple of different forms of brand tracking involved.

Drew: What were some of your findings?

Scott: There are a couple of different kinds of things that we looked at like how number of downloads related to awareness of the brand. When we looked at average yearly growth, we saw that our downloads had doubled, meaning we did really well when it came to actually getting people interested in downloading the app. Next, we looked at the daily active users and the monthly active users, which we call our DAU-MAU. A lot of the content that we created, and a lot of the efforts of the campaign were meant to get people coming back to the app on a daily basis. We did well on that front also.

Drew: Did you look at social media in your metric analysis?

Scott: Yes, we found that we had increases to 700% in overall brand mentions of the Viber name throughout all of social media. We saw a 20% increase in overall positive brand sentiments around Viber. We also focused heavily social media which did many things for our brand, and it was a really good learning experience since we hadn’t done much in the social media space before this campaign.

Drew: What are some of the bigger lessons you learned from this campaign?

Scott: One of the things that we’ve learned is the importance of focus. We decided it was best to narrow down to two things and do them very well, as opposed to working at five or six different goals. Then, number two is creating the right content. You’re trying to get people to come back to the service on a daily basis so you have to figure out what that right content is. Then, you have to realize that the right content for the messaging app space is different than what you create for social media or offline partnerships. Understanding the category and helping our partners create the right content that again is relevant to our user in each space is crucial.

Drew: So after getting people to download and use your app, the next step is to monetization. How is this done over at Viber?

Scott: We have two forms of monetization. One is for our Sticker Market. So you know, we have a very large sticker marketplace, and some of these are paid stickers, which is one form of monetization. Number two is Viber Out, which is a calling feature where if you have Viber and you’re calling someone with a landline, you’re charged a reduced rate.

Drew: I’m guessing more than 90% of that base is international. Even though you were focused on the US, was there any ripple effect on a global basis?

Scott: Yes, definitely. We’ve been working to create programs here in the US that will have a ripple effect into some of our larger regions around the world, namely Russia, South East Asia, India, etc.

Drew: How does Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp inform your marketing strategy?

Scott: Again, the category is rapidly growing. It’s the hot sexy category to be in right now, and I’m thankful to be a part of it. WhatsApp is gigantic, Messenger is gigantic, WeChat in China is gigantic. For a US-based service like us, we don’t have as deep a penetration as an app like Messenger or WhatsApp. So then we have to consider, “What do we do and how do we act, and what do we bring to market that might be different and useful for our consumer?” Anyhow, we are constantly brainstorming how we can be better than our competition. But at the same time, it’s all about what Viber is doing, and how we can improve our service.

Drew: You mentioned earlier that your team incorporated influencer programs into your marketing strategy; these are often very challenging for marketers to implement. Can you tell me how influencers were integrated into Viber’s wider marketing initiatives?

Scott: I’ve been working with influencer programs throughout my career, and I think ecommerce is probably one of the best blueprints of how to work with an influencer in the most authentic way. During my time at Converse, I learned how to create the right influencer program there, and have kept those lessons with me throughout my career. For me, it’s all about authenticity. Finding the right people that are authentic to whatever you’re working on, your brand, your company, etc. Our influencers came to us because they saw it as a platform where they could develop their own brand globally within the mobile messaging app space. The next step was to determine how relevant they were in popular culture. If they’re not relevant, then we don’t want them on our platform. We are more interested in people who are up-and-coming. Thirdly, our influencers needed to have large groups following their lead. That doesn’t mean they have millions of followers on Instagram, but more that they have a rabid kind of audience that paying attention to what they do. 

Drew: Is there any individual that you would point to as a success story or prototype for Viber’s influencer program?

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. YesJulz is an entertainer down in Miami, South Beach. She came onto the scene probably two years ago because she started to do some really interesting things on Snapchat. She then became known as the Snapchat darling in South Florida, eventually making a name for herself in New York and LA. She was clearly very tech savvy so we got in talks with her about Viber. At the end, she understood the platform and really loved it. She then started her public chat, and now has well over 1.2 million followers. So, we basically took her from more of a local, US influencer to someone who is now getting calls from Berlin, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, and Rio. So, YesJulz is a great example of how utilizing the Viber platform in the right way can really enhance your personal brand.

Why the Future of Facebook is Bright (part 2)

If you happen to be Patrick Toland, your answer to the question “So Your Facebook Developer Isn’t “Strategic”. Does It Matter?” is likely to be “of course” since he is Chief Revenue Officer at Optimal, one of Facebook’s Strategic Preferred Marketing Developers.  That said, Patrick makes a strong case for why the future of Facebook is bright for just about everyone connected with THE social network in our interview below.  (And pardon the shameless plug but why not join us Feb 9-12 at the Social Media Insider Summit where we’ll be delving into this issue and many more while trying to ignore the sunshine of Captiva Island!)

Drew: Can you provide a brief description of what your company does and how Facebook fits in?
Optimal is the leading social ad buying and analytics platform.  We specialize in helping marketers effectively and efficiently reach audiences in real-time, AND we create tools that help companies evaluate their own social presence + their competitors’.

Drew: Some marketers are beginning to question the efficacy of Facebook.  Can you provide a (brief) recent success story on Facebook that you’ve executed?
Recently, we worked with a Fortune 100 Financial Services company, that wanted to find high-value fans / potential customers through social media.  Using a combination of our analytics products and Custom Audiences, we helped them refine their target demographics and increase their fanbase by 350%, while lowering costs by 60%.  Most importantly, we found them people, who were more likely to be customers.

Drew: How has being a Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer that helped your organization?
To become a PMD, an organization needs to meet a certain level of quality, service, and support.  It also means that we have experience working within the industry we are performing sales in.  Being a PMD has been helpful for us & the entire industry because it gives partners and potential customers the knowledge that we have met a certain level of qualifications.   AND, it gives Facebook a level of quality of control because, unlike the Ad Network space in the 2000’s, we have a set of credentials, and we’re ready to work with you.

Drew: As Facebook applications have proliferated and FB usage has moved to mobile devices that don’t support these apps, have you noticed a decline in the usage and/or effectiveness of FB apps?
The usage on mobile is only natural, and although the current trends might seem to the decline in usage for FB apps, this should only be temporary situation.  In the long run, the rest of the ecosystem should catch up.  As this happens, engagement should continue to rise and occur in real-time!

Drew: Are you bullish on the future of Facebook applications?  If so, why and how do you see them evolving?
Yes, of course.  As you mentioned above, FB usage is moving towards mobile devices, and that is something Facebook understands. Applications are being built to adapt to the environment over time, and the future should continue to be promising overall.

Drew: Can you share how you see Facebook advertising becoming more effective?
Of course – the opportunities on Facebook have always been very interesting given the ability to create targeted segments based on actual information that is updated in real-time.   Custom Audiences, Open Graph Targeting are couple great examples of recent developments.  This is much better than the survey based data making assumptions of what people are interested based on what they are viewing, and we feel that everything can only improve, with better ad units, and communication all around.

Pivot Preview: Social & Beauty

Let’s just start with the fact that Sephora has nearly 4 million fans on Facebook and over 700,000 followers on Twitter.  Clearly this is a company that is doing something right on social media and well worth a closer look.  Thanks to the kind folks at Pivot, I got the chance to interview Bridget Dolan, VP of Interactive Media at Sephora, prior to her presentation at the conference next week.  I am certain you will find her comments as enlightening as I did.

Drew: What role(s) does social media play in Sephora’s overall marketing strategy?  Do you assign different roles to different platforms?
Social media plays a major role in Sephora’s overall business strategy. We value the engagement and conversations we have with our customers through our multiple social channels and encourage this social engagement throughout the organization.  After seeing how successful the Sephora Facebook and Twitter pages have been, we implemented a Pinterest integration when we re-vamped Sephora.com in April 2012, and have also since created a Sephora Instagram account. Both have seen a lot of organic growth over the summer and we are always looking at new social platforms for other ways to engage with current and potential clients.

Facebook and Twitter allow us to hear from our clients real-time and react one-on-one; we respond to every single customer question and give our clients a voice. We then learn from our clients and use that information to inform our strategies throughout the organization.

Pinterest and Instagram allow us to react to micro-trends, like showing your spirit with Olympic nails.  We also provide Sephora fans a look behind the scenes of what it is like to work at Sephora, be at our shoots, and which products we are obsessed with. BeautyTalk allows us to foster a beauty community on our site, to get customer questions answered by Sephora experts and other beauty enthusiasts. Tumblr lets us tell our trend and brand stories from another angle – insights from our beauty editors.  YouTube lets us share our expertise and teach customers how to apply makeup and see the latest trends – which encourages them to shop, play and enjoy makeup.

Drew:  A recent Forrester study said social media drove less than 1% of sales for most companies.  Is Sephora performing above that average and if so, why do you think that is the case?
Sephora is a huge company, and driving 1% of overall sales is still a big piece of the pie. I do believe that social media is influencing a lot of sales that can never be tracked: watching a Sephora YouTube video, then shopping at the store on the weekend, or liking an Instagram post on your phone in the coffee line, and buying the products online when back you’re at your desk.

Drew: Have some social platforms proven to be better at driving Sephora sales than others?  If so, please explain.
Facebook is our largest social media platform, and is still driving the most sales for us by far.  But the velocity of Pinterest growth combined with its shopping-centric nature have made it a very promising sales channel since we launched on that platform 6 months ago.

Drew: Is driving sales the wrong metric for social and if so, what metrics do you use to rationalize your investment?
Whenever we can measure direct sales, we do, but it isn’t the only metric to consider – really social media is about engagement.  We are fostering a long-term relationship with our customers.  We want her to be inspired to try new things, find information through sources she trusts, find products that really get her excited, and help her to use the product to its fullest with confidence post-purchase.  Social media helps her with the entire purchase cycle, and keeps her engaged with our brand for all of her beauty needs.  If you can create a venue to engage your most valuable customers, and enlist them to be evangelists for your brand to all of their friends, plus they will answer all of your other customers’ beauty questions because they are just that passionate… it is priceless.

Drew:  A lot of brands would kill to get nearly 4 million fans on Facebook.  How have you been able to attract so many fans?  Media?  Promotions?  Both?
Bridget: Sephora has truly passionate fans that love beauty and love Sephora.  The beauty category is a natural fit for social – our customers have always talked amongst their friends about beauty products they loved, but Facebook makes it much easier to connect with other Sephora fanatics.  We have done a bit of advertising and a few promotions, like Fan Fridays, but we mostly view Facebook as a place to have fun with our customers, and I think they can tell how much we love talking to them.

Drew:  Is there one Sephora social program that you are particularly proud of?
I think BeautyTalk is one of the more innovative undertakings we’ve done in social media.  We created a robust community on our site where our clients can come to ask any beauty question or talk about beauty,  organized by category. This allows our customers to find really rich answers with multiple points of view, combined with real-time advice from our experts.

Drew:  How has Fan Fridays been working for you?
Fan Fridays has been a great program, and our customers love it.  When we have an early access product or really hot promotion, we can be out in as little as 20 minutes.  We keep trying to support the growth, but it can be hard to anticipate which Fan Fridays will go wild until your wall lights up and you realize you need even more for next week… again.

Drew:  You have over 100,000 followers on Pinterest which is way more than most brands.  What are you doing on Pinterest that is gaining so much traction?
Beauty is inherently a visual category, but right now things like nail art and gorgeous product shots are inspiring our customers to re-pin our images. We also have integrated Pinterest deeply in our site so every product and brand image is pinnable. We do all of our own photography in house, and that investment pays off in a place like Pinterest.

Drew:  Is there a brand out there that you think is just killing it in social?  If so, which one and why?
I think it is the “brand” that Eva Chen created for herself.  She is literally on every social media channel – trying innovative things, living the life, inspiring people every day with videos, pictures, products, quotes.  And she is creating a unique footprint in each venue that is relevant to that platform and her followers in each.

Note: If you like what you see, feel free to subscribe to TheDrewBlog.  

7 Crazy Ways to Increase Your Followers on Twitter

In the more-the-merrier world of Twitter, follower count is an obsession for some brands, whether personal or corporate.  Rightly or wrongly, increasing this count has become an industry in itself, with tools and gurus whistling new promises like the Pied Piper of olde.  There’s even a ranking of the most followed CMO’s that has become a coveted bio item, bestowing instant credibility in the new social order.

A recent survey (see highlights on Slideshare) among Twitter users reinforces the urgency behind the growing obsession with follower counts. Conducted by Renegade with the Business Development Institute, the study identified a huge gap between the have’s and have not’s, finding that over 85% of Twitter users have fewer than 5,000 followers.  While a whopping 75% expressed a desire to substantially increase their follower counts, less than half actually had a strategy in place to do just that.

Troubled by this situation especially in light of Charlie Sheen’s highly publicized Guinness Book of World Record setting achievement last week, it seems to me that we tweeters need to find new character in 140 characters and we need to have all those wonderful twits out there find us.  So yes indeed, now is the perfect time for this cynics guide to increasing your follower count.

1. Be a celebrity
Honestly, there really is no easier way to increase your follower count than to be famous and already have lots of obsessive fans.  Whether you’re Justin Beiber or Lady Gaga, Shaquille O’Neal or Ashton Kutcher, your minions will simply fall all over your every tweet.  Say something nearly clever or almost worth reading and millions more will find you in a click of a mouse.  Not famous, yet?  Well, keep reading.

2. Be a notorious celebrity
When Charlie Sheen added 1.3 million followers in just over 24 hours this was big news, and he suddenly had another place to share his miraculously self-destructive behavior that he describes as “winning.”  Lest you think he’s totally insane, with endorsement deals from Broguiere’s Dairy and Naked Juice hanging on his every tweet, Sheen indeed may end up having the last laugh on Twitter.

3. Buy your followers
If celebrity is out of the question, then maybe it is time to get out the cash and simply buy your friends.  The remarkably reputable GetMorePopular.com guarantees they can get you or your brand more followers in no time.  Want 10,000 more followers? This enterprising start-up will get them for you in 1-4 weeks for only $999.99.  And for just another 25%, they’ll even find you followers you would consider in your target!

4. Bribe them with prizes
Joel Comm, in his best-selling book Twitter Power, recommends among many other techniques, offering prizes or free gifts to attract new followers.  For example, one of his apostles, @fitbizwoman gave away a free ebook with 120 smoothie recipes to help increase her follower count from a few hundred to several thousand.  While this may seem a bit crass, worry not, if the shoe fitbizwoman, wear it!

5. Follow to be followed
If bribing seems a bit too primitive, then perhaps an aggressive follower campaign is in order.  Using power tools like TweetAdder and TweetBig, the idea is to identify likeminded tweeters who just might follow you back.  Searching their tweets, profiles and follow to follower ratios, you can suddenly follow hundreds of potential followers in a matter of minutes.  While testing TweetBig, without breaking a sweat, I myself added over 300 followers some of whom might actually care about what I have to say.

6. Unfollow the unfollowers
After you’ve aggressively followed hundreds if not thousands, you’ll then want to clean house, removing the ingrates who had the nerve not to reciprocate your follow. Again, by using tools like TweetAdder and TweetBig, unfollowing is as easy as following.  In fact, Tweetbig even has something called a “time bomb” that will auto-unfollow in a specified number of days. Since 75% of the surveyed Twitter users in our study said the follow/follower ratio was important to monitor, the “time bomb” feature should be an explosive hit!

7. Follow your new followers
During my same test of Tweetbig, while adding 300 new followers, I also lost 70 old ones.  Turns out, some of my old followers took it personally when I didn’t follow them back.  This led me to a tool called UnfollowMe, which helps assess why your sheep might leave the flock and hopefully fix the problem.  One thing is for certain, if you don’t want to take a follower for granted, follow them back post haste or risk their stealthy exit.

8. When all else fails, be interested and interesting!
Now comes the really hard part. Like chicks in the nest, your new followers will be hungry and must be fed.  A steady diet of highly digestible content should do the trick, although it wouldn’t hurt if you actually cared about the conversation at hand.  Try listening to relevant tweet streams and adding your POV with panache.  Turns out, just as in real life, it is as important to be interested as it is to be interesting in Twitterland.

Final note:
Despite my cynicism, try not to underestimate the value of a strong following on Twitter.  Reports Ted Rubin, Chief Social Marketing Officer at OpenSky, who has more than 43,000 followers, “Having thousands of followers has given me a broad audience of marketers, bloggers and social media enthusiasts.”  Rubin adds, “Follower counts are important [for brands] because that is what gives them access to the social graph of others and that is the true power of Twitter, the ability to spread a message. “  (For a deeper discussion on this same topic, join me at BDI’s The Social Consumer – Case Studies and Roundtables.)

How To Build an Effective Social Media Program

Given the rapidly changing nature of social media, it is not surprising that most marketers treated their 2010 activities like straw houses, unsophisticated structures with little hope of surviving much less gaining traction with consumers. Aghast at the resources consumed with limited impact, marketers are now seeking a more sophisticated if not durable approach. To address this challenge, here is Renegade’s Social Media Success Pyramid (see detailed illustration here), with guidance on how to build an effective and enduring program brick by brick. (Note 1: This article appeared on MediaPost early this week so you can stop here if you read that. Note 2: This is a topline overview with details on each section to be added soon enough.)

Establish your Foundation
Having a solid foundation that includes these five essential planning elements doesn’t guarantee success but it sure as heck increases the odds:

  • Audit: A comprehensive review of competitive activity, best practices, internal risk tolerance and input from all possible stakeholders. In addition to gathering critical data, the audit serves to engage management and foster cross-departmental consensus, both of which are essential to long-term success.
  • Brand voice: In all likelihood, your interns should not be the voice of your brand. Defining your brand voice takes the same strategic discipline as any other marketing effort and should result in not just identifying who can represent the brand but also establishing a clear and differentiated point-of-view.
  • Resources: Despite rumors to the contrary, social media is not free. It consumes mass quantities of time for listening, responding, creating, monitoring and reporting. Resources, whether internal and or external, need to be dedicated. Ideally these resources have experience getting things done across all the departments social can and does touch.
  • Product News: The old adage, “nothing kills a bad product faster than a great ad campaign” applies doubly to social media. If your product or service is not as good as it could be, either fix this first or make this the goal of your social activities. If your product is already highly competitive, then it will be still worth bringing something new to the party since social thrives around news.
  • Road Map: With all these other building blocks in place, you can now prepare a clear road map, defining overall social media goals, setting priorities by channel and establishing key performance indices. A good road map should also include test elements as well as potential risks along with a roll-out schedule for selected tactics.

Create the Blueprint
With the foundation in place, we move closer to execution by creating a strong blueprint including these four critical steps:

  • Design: Whether you are a billion dollar brand or an ambitious start-up, design never stops mattering. Even if it’s “just a Facebook page,” look for an aesthetic that is consistent, engaging and clearly your own.
  • Keyword Research: With the search engines now tracking Facebook and Twitter, the link between SEO performance and social activity is growing stronger by the day. Make sure you know the keywords that matter.
  • Editorial Calendar: Based on your keyword research, map out an “editorial calendar” that defines what content needs to be created, who will create it, where it will run first and how it will be amplified via social channels.
  • Disaster Plan: Since the fit just might hit the shan when you least expect it, do yourself a favor and outline a few what if scenarios and potential responses. Even if nothing bad ever happens, you’ll sleep a lot better.

Gather your Materials

Moving up the pyramid, its time to gather all your materials and execute with earnest.  In the process, you’ll want to focus on these three areas:

  • Analytics: With so many free and paid measurement tools available, measuring what matters is easier said than done.  You’ll need to work with pros to figure out what’s right for your situation.
  • Content: The center building block of a strong social program, content is indeed king.  Make sure your content is engaging, enlightening and or entertaining, representing your brand in all its glory.
  • Channels & Hub: Since context goes hand in hand with content, choose your channels carefully based on your target and the quality of your content.  Also, to optimize the SEO potential, archive your social content, especially Facebook and Twitter feeds on a “hub” within your website.

Measure your Progress

Since the goal of any business is to acquire and retain customers, to be taken seriously, social media must play a role in both of these areas.  Thus the penultimate building blocks of a successful social program are the following:

  • SEO Improvements: With the right content in the right places being shared by the right people, a comprehensive social program will yield improved SEO results over time as long as you remember to set benchmarks at the start.
  • Leads & Referrals:  While listening can yield leads and referrals can occur naturally, integrating social content into your CRM program will significantly enhance overall impact.  

Reap the Rewards

Ascending the social media pyramid is not an easy affair but it is certainly worth the trip.  Hard-earned consumer trust will be rewarded with increased loyalty, stronger word-of-mouth, higher value per customer, lower cost per acquisition and even lower churn rates.  You may even start measuring CPE or cost per engagement, given the relatively low cost of engaging fans once acquired on Facebook and Twitter.   Knowing that the original pyramids weren’t built in a day but have lasted 4,000 years, think about your social program as a permanent part of your go to market strategy and enjoy the view from the top.

Dear Social Media Santa, Here’s My Wish List

Wrapping up 2010 with relief, if not joy, good little marketers are looking at the year ahead with both optimism and trepidation. Even the marketers that triumphed this year know Santa’s lump of coal awaits those who misjudge the rapidly evolving communications landscape as an aberration instead of a permanent shift in power from brand to consumer. To ensure good tidings in 2011, here is a social media shopping list worth checking once — if not twice — to slay your competition.

1. Social Media Strategy

Although more than half of all large companies have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, fewer than 25% have a clearly defined social strategy. Tactical experimentation pleased some, but left many CEOs wondering whether social media like the mythical Rudolph could really drive results. Since yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a social strategy complete with CEO-pleasing metrics, put this on top of your shopping list — finding the expertise internally and externally to make it happen.

2. Dedicated Social Chair

In 2010, social media was treated by many marketers as a part-time affair, assigned to the junior staffers who just happened to have the most friends on Facebook. Unable to dedicate the time required, they also lacked the experience to put social media into the context of broader customer engagement, thus relegating social to a sexy but modest marketing experiment. Fixing this means assigning at least one dedicated professional who can champion social strategy internally, while coordinating execution across all the departments it can and should touch.

3. A Metric System

Given all the roles social media can play, from customer service to product development and WOM to lead gen, putting precise metrics in place is challenging even for those with well-defined strategies. That said, new tools are emerging that should make measuring results easier and well within the budgets of even the most cash-strapped operations. Startup ArgyleSocial, for example, links social media activity with “real business value,” for under $300/month.

4. An Aggregation Plan

One of the unexpected yet joyous benefits of a strong social program is its potential to significantly improve organic search results. But in order to turn social content into the gift that keeps on giving, brands need to aggregate and archive the content on their own Web sites. HubSpot, a software-as-a-service (Saas) platform, makes this process relatively easy for small business. Larger companies will seek out more robust solutions, including a surprisingly strong social offering from IBM.

5. Customer Feedback Loop

While listening to the customer has long been an important business credo, it is only lately that marketers are turning to online tools like Get Satisfaction that truly enable and track instantaneous feedback. In 2011, offering customers the ability to engage with fellow customers right on the company website will become more the rule than the exception, especially as companies come to realize that a few negative comments increase credibility and ultimately increase online sales. These conversations also enhance search results by creating tag-able content.

6. Social Business Enlightenment

In the brave new world of social business enlightenment, all businesses are social and all social is business. Even large companies will want to present all their employees, not just those in customer service and marketing, with unfettered, yet guided, access to social media tools. These employees will begin to see what the fuss is all about, quickly realizing that social isn’t just something their kids do but rather a way that generates leads, captures sales, services customers, and advocates new product development well beyond this holiday season.

If you’d like to add to this social media shopping list, just send me an email, preferably not addressed to the North Pole.