A Discovery-Based Approach to Maximizing Social Media ROI

Companies large and small are often criticized for acting like inexperienced children or sophomoric students in their approach to social media.  But I’d argue that in some cases, the former, child-like approach, may not actually be as foolish – or childish – as it sounds. In fact I’d argue it can be a pure stroke […] The post A Discovery-Based Approach to Maximizing Social Media ROI appeared first on VMR. A Discovery-Based Approach to Maximizing Social Media ROI was first posted on August 10, 2012 at 9:35 pm.©2015 "VMR". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me at hugh@vmrcommunications.com

Companies large and small are often criticized for acting like inexperienced children or sophomoric students in their approach to social media.  But I’d argue that in some cases, the former, child-like approach, may not actually be as foolish – or childish – as it sounds. In fact I’d argue it can be a pure stroke of genius when navigating the relatively uncharted world of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.

Allow me to explain.

As a child, pretty much the entire world is uncharted territory. And I’m sure I was not alone in being constantly reminded by my parents – the authorities – to brush my teeth and to avoid eating too many sweets.

But being a child, I never really learned and understood this lesson until I did the opposite of what they told me to do.  Then and only then did I evaluate, internalize and then take corrective action based on the results – a painful visit to the dentist’s office.

I think a similar discovery-based approach, painful as it can be, makes perfect sense when trying to assess the value of your company’s social media efforts. It’s a bit counter-intuitive, so again, please allow me to explain.

Let’s say you’re not sure whether your inbound marketing is paying off.

A discovery-based approach would enable you to stop doing it in order to better evaluate the value of doing it.

By analyzing the effects of not doing it, you can assess, for example, whether your business results were negatively impacted? And if so, which ones?

Or, take Facebook. Is your investment in Facebook advertising a waste of money or are you generating positive business results from those ads?

Perhaps the single most effective way to shed more light on that question is to stop advertising and see what happens.

This discovery – based planning approach is of course nothing new to the world of business. Harvard Business Review magazine featured an  article about it in its July 1995 issue  which I recommend you read if this topic is of interest to you.

All of this leads me to a conversation I initiated earlier today on Blog Talk Radio with Otto Pilot Media’s Alexandra Gibson on whether GM made a mistake in dropping all of its Facebook advertising earlier this year.

I asked Alexandra to comment on this because I had read her intelligently conceived and expressed opinion in an Op-Ed she posted to Otto Pilot Media’s blog. I recommend you read the full article here.

And you can listen to the Blog Talk Radio interview here  or by clicking on the play button below (if you have Flash enabled):

internet radio

Hugh Macken Live

I agree with Alexandra’s contention that (quoting from her Op-Ed) “GM needed to develop a way to convert ad viewers to leads, to pull them in to the GM community through great and fun content, and to measure how many converted even in that first step.”

But I also can’t help but wonder:

Might GM have pulled the ads as part of a discovery-based strategy that would incorporate intelligence gained by not doing what the “authorities” at Facebook told them to do?

Might GM be evaluating the ROI of not advertising on Facebook right now?

No pain…no gain?

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A Discovery-Based Approach to Maximizing Social Media ROI

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