Who would have thought that social media would be used for business purposes in reaching a company’s goals and objectives? As social media started to become popular around 2005, people from around the world had a platform where they could share life events with one another. As various platforms came into existence such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, communication between individuals increased and it became a thing to do with much more ease. During this time, as social media was still developing in today’s modern world, organizations saw an opportunity to connect with its consumers and create brand awareness. Considering Facebook, if you recall, there was a point in time where organizations would share posts in regards to advertising their business just a normal Facebook user. Social media metrics were developed not too long ago by social media platforms as it gave benefits to both the users (companies), and the social media platforms themselves as it enabled both to increase profits and gain more insight in regards to specific posts. Adidas had been taking advantage of Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp to engage with its customers. They used these platforms to measure engagement rates, view-through rates, and how many views are generated.  

Looking for a house used to begin by circling classifieds in the house section of the newspaper but now, buyers are looking on social media to help them on their search. In fact, according to one study, 94% of millennials and 84% baby boomers are looking online for their future homes.  It’s without a doubt that realtors need to have an online presence to succeed. One-way realtors can succeed at social media is paying attention to their metrics. According to Forbes, measuring social media metrics is one of the top ten marketing musts for realtors. By checking and understanding some simple metrics they can learn what is working and what isn’t working for their audience. This will guide their activity to better improve their performance.

Adam and Hannie Van Bergeijk were first farmers and cheesemakers in The Netherlands, and purchased their dairy farm just outside New Hamburg, Ontario in 1996, with a dream to return to cheesemaking. They started making Mountainoak Cheese in 2012 when dairy farmers were now permitted to handcraft artisan cheese. On their land, they grow, feed, care for, and milk their herd of over 200 dairy cows. They turn 4,000 litres of high-quality milk into each batch of delicious artisanal Mountainoak cheese, and they try to make cheese 2-3 times each week! In today’s fast-paced world, even farmers need to be on social media. It’s become a key tool for marketing and communicating with customers; social media gives farmers a platform to tell their story to consumers. In Mountainoak Cheese’s case, for showing how the cheese is made, sharing excitement about competitions, and keeping customers informed of their weekly specials and new retail partners where their cheese can be found.

“I wish every outfit I liked on Instagram would magically appear in my closet.” This popular meme from 2014 is almost a reality now with the LIKEtoKNOW.it app. Nowadays, pretty much anybody and everybody can be an influencer of some level and make money through social media. Top influencers are making 7-figures income (yes, $1M – you read that right) and are growing their brands from blogging to fashion line, online retail, home décor, modeling and much more. In 2011, Amber Venz Box, President and Co-Founder of rewardSTYLE & LIKEtoKNOW.it created her company as a way to make money through her own blog. Now, bloggers’ influence on their followers is very tangible through online sales.

The owners of Bocas Group are 3 Venezuelans with a passion for food. Levin, Cesar and Mauricio each bring their own experiences to the group. From culinary excellence, marketing expertise and a passion to grow enable this group to have started in 2014 with the first Bocas Grill and currently waiting to open their 7th location in el Doral this year. The success they have had is fueled by the incredible digital marketing efforts of the brand. They have mastered the concept of “food porn” in their multiple Instagram posts. Both the bocas grill (478,000 followers) and bocas house (273,000 followers) brands have their own Instagram accounts, which feature their patrons celebrating fun occasions, new menu additions and the most liked the showing of “seasonal” crazy milkshakes.

FabFitFun was founded in 2010, has approximately 50 employees and is based out of Los Angeles, California. FabFitFun is a lifestyle brand inspiring women to lead a happier, healthier life.  The company sends a monthly selection of curated, full-size products across lifestyle categories including beauty, health, fitness, technology, and home. Members can go online and choose to sign up for one box or the subscription which gets them a box every season; four times a year in March, June, September and December. FabFitFun has shipped millions of boxes to women across the US and Canada and also offers online content about various products including tutorials. Being a subscription you sign up for there is no physical store, everything is done online and because of social media being so prominent in today’s society companies like this are thriving.

As a brand or business, it’s not enough for you to simply “be online”. Companies of all shapes and sizes need to be on various marketing channels and utilize them effectively.  Just like radio and television, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn are now genuine marketing channels, and they require serious attention to drive real business success. Learning how to use and read metrics that are available to businesses through social media, can have a profound impact on a business’s level of success.

In a world where social media is becoming increasingly important to a company’s success, organizations are realizing that it is vitally important to have the appropriate tools to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. This is where social media metrics come into play. Social media metrics are specific tools that reveal how a social media tactic is having an impact on any given organization. Whether a company uses these measures to calculate its number of fans, or to determine the demographic of target audiences engaged with their social channels, it is these metrics which help an organization understand how a specific strategy effects the productivity of their business.  

About Wholesome Culture The brand was founded almost a year ago and has been making waves since then with its message of living life in balanced harmony with nature.  Wholesome culture is a fashion brand that is aimed at people who live a plant-based lifestyle. Their mission is to make cruelty-free clothing while encouraging the adoption of vegan lifestyle to help environment and save the animals. As written on their website, At Wholesome Culture, we want make sure our clothing is made in condition where people are safe and well-treated. Most of the clothing we use is made in Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP) certified factories.  

Hertz is one of the world’s leading rental car brands and the second largest in the United States measured by sales, fleet size and locations. It is also the largest worldwide in terms of airport locations with over 2,900 locations internationally. Top notch customer service is imperative to creating repeat customers, and the @Hertz Twitter handle has almost 60K followers. Hertz uses this as a joint marketing/customer service site. https://twitter.com/Hertz?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Being responsible for product launching for a Global company I have seen first hand over the years how important it is for attendee engagement. In the past we measured success of a corporate event by the number of attendees along with feedback from a post conference survey. Today attendee engagement is measured at every contact point from registration, pre-conference event, and conference day and post conference and experiential is critical in ensuring an engaged attendee.

Understanding the benefits associated with establishing a strong social media strategy for your business is a little more complex then simply looking at “likes and comments.” As the importance of social media in our lives has changed from a want to a “must have,” the most successful companies are the ones who are using this massive traffic increase to help benefit their business. How companies use social media to engage their customers, product users and community in this day and age can be make or break. So how do business’s know how the masses are using their social media? This is where social media metrics comes in.

TVibes saw the glut of video sharing/storing/streaming sites and decided they wanted to create a new way for users to share their video. In addition to giving users unlimited video storage, TVibes, lets users create, what amounts to, their own TV channels. Users can upload their videos to a controlled audience, which can include family members and friends for personal videos, or the general public for anything else they’d rather share.

Marriott International is a successful global Hotel Industry that has over 5000 hotels around the world. Just in the United States there are over 1000 different Marriott locations. With so many locations and customers, Marriott is always being talked about so they started tracking the conversations. Marriott uses social media for business performance in many ways. One major way Marriott uses social media for business performance is by software programs the track online activity. A software program that has been beneficial for Marriott is called HYP3R, a geo-social marketing platform.

Nestled in Waterloo’s tech park, surrounded by beautiful nature lies one of Canada’s biggest software companies – opentext. It  started with three University students in 1991 – and has now transformed into a multibillion $ corporation with offices worldwide. It is no surprise that opentext, a company driven by commitment to technological innovations, jumped on the social media train right after the invention of Facebook in 2004. And with the growing access to WIFI and social networking services, the social media landscape of opentext just became broader. A massive website, accounts with Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest – you name it, the company surely has a presence. None of those accounts created millions of followers, but considering that the social media approach is specifically about enterprise information and content management, opentext is doing quite well to get their message out. When the company discovered the power of social media for promoting their services and products to the world, it didn’t take long to find out that it can also be used to motivate and engage employees. With the goal to make it as easy as possible to connect with team members, who potentially work in three different countries across the globe and need to solve problems quickly, even when one just started his day when it’s almost bedtime for the other, opentext encouraged employees to use traditional social media outlets before implementing internal equivalents.   While opentext’s social media team conveys the company’s messages to external audiences, the corporate employee communicators look after the internal audience. This includes writing emails to announce company news, employee stories and the management of the company’s Intranet, internal blogs and of course, social media channels.

When you have the warmth of a beautiful day, the soft sand between your toes and the stunning shores of Lake Huron, you have the perfect location and attraction to promote tourism. There is nothing better than walking on the boardwalk in Goderich, enjoying the beauty of the marina in Bayfield, touring around local food producers purchasing fresh Ontario grown food, eating at the amazing restaurants, and enjoying all the craft breweries and wineries that are scattered around Ontario’s West Coast. The Ontario’s West Coast (OWC) tourism brand represents Huron County, along the shore of Lake Huron. The County of Huron has a population of 60,000, which soars to 800,000 in the summer months. Beautiful cottages, B&B’s, motels, hotels and campgrounds are spread throughout the shores of the West Coast. Luckily for Ontario’s West Coast they knew enough to engage in social media and add metrics to their programming and promotion of tourism many years ago. If they weren’t using social media and tracking their metrics, they would be walking blind through the process of tourism. Huron County is home to approximately 60,000 people and a visitor destination to approximately 800,000 people a year.1 SOURCE: The County Planning and Development Department, “County of Huron Annual Tourism Report” (May 2012), 4.

Over 3.5 million photos were shared every minute in 2016 (Deloitte). Visual conversations are happening all around us. Our social feeds are filled with personal stories told through pictures on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. Within our pictures are gems of information such as brand logos, locations, activities, information on gender and age. Specific information such as how we are using products, when, where, with whom, and in which environment. In a more visual environment and with increased visual conversations, brands can no longer rely on text mentions alone for social media metrics, image analysis must be included.

Domino’s is one of the largest pizza delivery chains in North America. After having success with their “tweet-to-eat” campaign, the company has created a way to have pizza anywhere and anytime. Domino’s Anyware ordering system now lets customers order a pizza through any app as quickly as humanly and technologically possible (Perez, S. (2016, April).With the new integrated system, customers can order through Google Home, Amazon Alexa, office chat app Slack, Facebook Messenger, text, in-car systems, smart TVs, smart watch, Tweet, voice, or Domino’s proproetary Zero Click app. And if that weren’t enough already, Domino’s also promises more avenues for ordering in the future (Haar, J. (2017, November).  The ordering system is a great innovation system that creates customer engagement and gives the availability for sales at anytime and anyplace.

Building a business starts with a mission, an idea, a desire to bring a product or service to a wanting market. But what if you alone are the product, the marketer, the designer, and the administrator, a one-woman business band? How can you maximize your reach, market yourself, and cultivate your business in an effective, timely way? Luckily, social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Google analytics, Twitter) and their measurement systems have provided a relief in this entrepreneurial scenario, giving easy insights into potential target markets, post performance, reach, follower growth, and more. This technological milestone in marketing has allowed small business owners to reach a wider audience, gauge the success or failure of digital campaigns, and have a wide-angle view of potential consumers. The ease and availability of social metrics in these realms have also made it possible for individuals to pursue their areas of interest, making careers out of things they love to do. Nancy Silverman, a Toronto-based yoga instructor and Kombucha expert, did just that.

Worldwide, many people were shocked by the outcome of the U.S. presidential election of 2016. It’s been just over one full year since Trump’s electoral win and, although the race between Trump and Clinton was close, many of the electoral polls forecasted Clinton as the likely winner of the 2016 election (Perez, 2016). While the outcome of said election left many data scientists confused, many social media analytics firms are claiming that their measurements would have been a much better predictor (Perez, 2016).

Understanding the ways social media works for a business is so much more complex than simply considering a post’s “likes” or clicks. As the importance of social media in our lives becomes increasingly clear, it’s no secret that the most successful companies out there are the ones that properly align their business objectives with their social media tactics. The influence social media has on customers is endless, from impacting sales to increased customer satisfaction, so it’s no wonder, then, that those companies who fail to include social media metrics as part of their objectives find themselves falling behind.

Graduate business school recruiting is a high-stakes game, considering students may easily pay $100,000+ for an executive MBA program. And with 6,000 business programs around the world vying for top candidates, higher ed marketers need every advantage to reach prospects. Until fairly recently, marketers have concentrated on email campaigns to generate leads among known prospects – a hit-and-miss strategy since many prospects either don’t share their email address or don’t open the messages they receive. Social media has provided business schools with new ways to reach potential candidates. According to GMAC’s 2016 mba.com Prospective Students Survey Report, 96% of prospective students use social media and 67% use it to learn about graduate education opportunities. LinkedIn is proving to be marketers’ digital platform of choice for reaching high-quality candidates. With its emphasis on professional connections and career advancement, it’s a natural gathering place for those who might be most interested in prestigious business programs. In addition, a recent study showed that for half of the respondents “friends, family and peers were most influential when considering further education — second only to the institution’s website. And professional networks were twice as influential as personal social networks.” And as candidates look to their LinkedIn connections for guidance, marketers are able to engage prospective students through relevant content and gradually encourage them to move through the enrolment funnel.

Sun Life Financial runs many social media campaigns and uses many different methods to track their efficacy with social media metrics. The purposes of their campaigns ranges from creating brand awareness, having people consider one of Sun Life’s products or services, or conversion. Conversion would mean that a client has taken an action such as: set up a meeting with an advisor or downloaded an app. (A. Guselle, personal communication, November 13, 2017) By using the tools at their disposal, such as the analytics that are available within the social media platforms, Sun Life is able to demonstrate how the social media team is reaching their goals.

The hashtag is not a new trend on social media anymore. However, if you’re new to the social world hashtags are something to get familiar with. You may think the pound sign (#) is only meant to be used when you check your voicemail, but it actually has a completely different meaning when it comes to social media: meet the hashtag. (MacDonald, 2017) Hashtags play a crucial role in developing interest in your social media accounts and are used on a number of social media platforms, most commonly, Twitter and Instagram. Including a hashtag with your posts helps to categorize content for your audience. From a user perspective, hashtags allow people to find posts that are relevant to their interests and interact with other social media users who share those interests by joining the conversation about hashtag XY. From a business perspective, it is your chance to be noticed in such conversation and establish your company as a voice for certain topics. Knowing where, why, and how to hashtag can change your social media game and presence tremendously. (MacDonald, 2017) Using a third party platform called Keyhole can do just that.

It has been through world wars and countless other global conflicts, and survived depressions and recessions along the way. Through it all, the Globe and Mail has faithfully delivered the news to Canadians since 1844. But with the advent of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, traditional newspapers like the Globe suddenly faced the prospect of a world of information they didn’t directly control. Instead, it was now the readers who began to choose how, where and when they consumed the news. And it became clear fairly quickly that readers were shunning print-based publications for news served up on a digital platter. In fact, between 2000 and 2015 alone, print newspaper advertising revenue fell from about $60 billion to about $20 billion, wiping out the gains of the previous 50 years. The digitization of the news threatened the very existence of venerable newspapers around the world, including the Globe. While not without its digital scars, the Globe today is enjoying a resurgence of sorts. It is thriving with its online content delivery and it’s using the rich data provided by social media metrics to help shape its content and brand strategies.