Are You Wasting Time on Facebook?

This week Robert Strohmeyer of PC News warned readers to Beware the Social Media Charlatans.

Princeton defines a charlatan as a flamboyant deceiver; one who attracts customers with tricks or jokes. Indeed there are many slick video presentations and webinars on the internet inviting small business owners to hire their organization (for about $500 per month) to market their business to the social web.

Similar stories ran in The Wall Street Journal, Ad Age and Business Week on the heels of a research study released by Knowledge Networks that found even though 83% of internet users are involved in social networks, less than 5% of them turn to these social networks for "guidance on purchase decisions".

In another study released this week by Sage North America, it found that 51% of small businesses are using social media as a marketing tool.

“Small businesses are embracing social networking as an affordable, easy and effective way to reduce marketing and operational costs,” says Rob King, vice president of strategic marketing for Sage North America.

But is using social media to establish a business presence on Facebook, Twitter and the like actually leading to sales?

"Obviously, a lot of people are using social media, but they are not explicitly turning to it for marketing purposes, or for finding out what products to buy. It's really about connecting with friends, or connecting with other people," said Dave Tice, vice president at Knowledge Networks, via MediaPost.

Tice went on to say, "What we're seeing is that word-of-mouth is still the No. 1 most influential source, followed by TV.”

A lot of social media marketing specialists leaped on his statement regarding word-of-mouth. After all, what is the use of social media except to spread of news, ideas and recommendations?

Newbies to internet marketing are often left in a state of confusion about what if any benefit they are receiving from the amount of time they spend on Facebook, Twitter and other social sites.

Without a third party application, you can’t even follow the conversation on Twitter. Even using an app like Twitterfall, it is painfully obvious that most Twitter conversation involves talking at, not with, each other.

The reason for their confusion is obvious: they do not employ analytics on their site.

You need to know how many visitors arrive at your site, which links bring visitors to your site, and what they do after they arrive.

Google Analytics measures a variety of factors but be aware: ad filtering programs like OpenSource extension NoScript hides your visitor’s presence and behavior. My server, Site Build It, has some tracking built in. I know for instance which pages on my site are popular, whether visitors arriving at my site click away, etc., but it doesn’t tell me where those visitors came from.

Google Analytics lets you know whether your visitor got to your site by typing your URL into the search engine, whether they followed a link from another site, if they used keywords to locate you and what keywords they used, or if they found your site clicking on an AdWords ad.

To determine whether your social media marketing effort is bringing visitors to your site, use Google Analytics. It is free. It is copy-and-paste code, so anyone can use it.

For a complete overview of how Google Analytics can measure your social media marketing results read Luca Filigheddu’s excellent article How to Measure Your Success.

Actually you can determine ahead of time the likelihood of attracting customers through social media. I explain it all in my book Social Network Marketing, your complete reference for information, consumer research, best practices and Web. 2.0 resources.