One of the best ways you can get the word out about your company and its products is to enlist the help of the online community at large. The words of the public are worth a lot more than what people are fed through a more typical PR campaign. That’s where social media can be remarkably useful.
Just like any of your other marketing efforts, though, you shouldn’t go blindly into social media with a vague goal of “increasing brand presence” or “improving brand awareness.” Hard numbers and real metrics are of much greater value, so you have to determine the best way to track your so-called viral campaigns.
On Twitter, for instance, one of the best ways to do this is to encourage the use of hashtags. You can devise a specific hashtag for a contest, for example, and track the usage of that hashtag over time. Similarly, tags can be used on sites like Flickr and YouTube. Once again, you can gauge the relative popularity and success of your campaigns by keeping an eye on these tags.
In doing so, you have a much better idea of whether your contest is a success and you may be able to develop an even better marketing campaign moving forward.
