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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Ten trees planted for every item purchased seems like an unobtainable goal selling clothes, but Tentree has made it their mission. At Tentree, their goal is to become the most environmentally progressive brand on the planet. They don’t want to just reduce the negative impact of the apparel industry, they want to use it as a vehicle for change. Their purpose is to revitalize our environment and inspire a generation to believe that they can do the same. Their current goal is to plant 1 billion trees by 2030. (Tentree.com, 2017) TenTree’s a socially oriented company, that is already on track to have over 17 million trees planted by the end of 2017. This significant achievement showcases the level of success that the company’s current high-cost business model enjoys. As a start-up business that is already making profits in the early stages of its life, TenTree’s is a great example of social entrepreneurs that employed a premium differentiation strategy and succeeded. In addition to this, TenTree’s has accomplished putting their products onto the shelves of 300 Canadian stores; doing so indicates the level of demand for their product in the market despite the high pricing. A last example of this is the company’s ability to garner strong internet sales; proving their marketing strategy’s impact in action is a force that can be relied on throughout its future. (Ho, 2017)

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.

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.

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.

Nowadays online video content is a big part of social media. According to Cisco Forecast video will represent 80% of all consumer-based Internet traffic by 2019. So there is no surprise that businesses spend more money on video advertisement. According to Business Insider video will account for 41% of total desktop display-related spending in 2020. The two top platforms for video advertisement are Youtube and Facebook. In January 2016, Facebook announced that people watch 100 million of hours of video a day. In February 2016, Google’s CEO reminded its investors that Youtube users watch hundreds of millions of hours of video a day. It was indirectly pointed out that Youtube users watch more videos than Facebook users. So what is the difference between Youtube and Facebook?

Social Media has played an important role in the growth of modern businesses. Due to the massive shift in global digitization, companies have been arming themselves with teams of people who monitor social channels, the performance of their brand and ROI of advertising dollars across channels such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinerest and more. With 700 million active daily users, Instagram alone, combined with the exponential growth of other social channels, continues to be a draw for consumers and businesses alike. Since social media channels provide this convergence of consumers and brands, it makes it quite easy for marketers to start to collect data on the habits of consumers and serve up relevant and engaging content. Sometimes referred to as KPI’s or Key Performance Indicators, this data has mostly been used for reactive purposes. This type of data can help marketers and product developers understand what specifically drives customer engagement. Questions frequently ask include, was it a picture that was shared and was it a piece of literature sharing key information that served an audience. Listening to what consumers want and serving them up when they want it is a great way to connect and build brand awareness and ultimately help grow the business. Monitoring the positives does not go without measuring the negatives or the “risks” to achieving business objectives. Social Media KRI’s can also be very helpful in understanding how to quickly adjust based on operational, financial, strategic, and regulatory risks. This significantly can improve how a business weathers a storm as well.  

The goals of any organization should be where the metrics for social media begin. Social media behaviour should contribute and align with these goals in order to achieve online success and ultimately drive sales. Tripcentral.ca is a hybrid brick-and-mortar/online travel agency based out of Hamilton, Ontario. While many agencies are trying to stay afloat, Tripcentral.ca is still growing. They just opened a new storefront location earlier this month! Their Mission statement is “to make the best planning, booking, and travel experience for our customers by matching their changing needs, providing advice, and saving them time.” They have spent a lot of time and money building proprietary software for their online presence so they can do just that. They have a regular blog with excellent advice and suggestions for improved travel experiences. They have a Facebook page with a 4.8 star review rating that they typically respond to within an hour. But how do they measure their online presence? How do they qualify the worth of their social media efforts?

On February 4, 2005, YouTube started a revolution by giving us a seemingly endless stream of content, on demand. You could watch videos by celebrities, tutorials by up-and-comers, or movie trailers released by studios. Over the years, videos continue to be released, creating new stars and streams of content from global contributors. But no more is YouTube the only major player in the game. With over a billion users generating billions of views and hundreds of thousands of hours of content watched, it is only natural that other players would want to capitalize on this captive and attentive audience. Social media giants Facebook and Twitter are getting in on the action by promoting real-time engagement video capability aimed at engaging the attention of global audiences.

As one filters through the literature on social media marketing, it becomes glaringly obvious that the rift between digital and traditional marketing has undergone some reverse tectonic movement. No one in any respectable marketing position will make the faux pas of comparing Facebook ads with print ads (unless they intend to elicit judgmental stares). Digital marketing in all its strategic glory is here to stay for the overnight cross continental long-haul.

DoSomething.org is one of the largest global organizations for young people and social change. They mobilize their members “to make the world suck less” by by participating in campaigns impacting causes from poverty to violence to the environment.

In 1912, Juliette Gordon Low, affectionately called Daisy, started a movement. This movement focused on learnings she had gained abroad, in the form of outdoor and educational programs. This became a program of female empowerment and the Girl Scouts became a place where girls could truly participate in life beyond the classroom and home. Girl Scouts served as a community of girls who wanted to change the world, and build lifelong bonds along the way. Many years later, the Girl Scouts organization is synonymous with uniforms and badges, charitable endeavours, and of course, cookies! But in the same way that retailers have had to understand how to engage consumers online, so have the Girl Scouts. Starting in 2015, Girl Scouts USA launched user-generated Facebook, Twitter and Instagram campaigns that created massive upticks in online engagement and product sales.

The Canada Science and Technology Museum opened in 1967 as part of Canada’s Centennial celebrations. The idea for the Canada Science and Technology Museum was born out of the Massey Commission. In 1951, the report recommended that the Canadian Government do more to support the arts and sciences in Canada; further emphasizing the need for a Canadian Museum of Science. Between the time the Massey Report was issued and Canada’s Centennial year, many proposals were submitted for this new national institution of science; many of which were costly in a very uncertain funding environment. Finally, at the beginning of 1967, Dr. David Baird was appointed as Director for this proposed national museum; set to open at the end of the Centennial year. Due to time constraints and funding uncertainty, Baird decided to house the Canada Science and Technology Museum in a former bakery and distribution centre in Ottawa. The bakery was meant to temporarily house the Museum; however it remained in the same location until 2014 when it was forced to close due to the discovery of mould. As unfortunate as this reality was for the museum, it finally received the funding it initially deserved. The Canada Science and Technology Museum’s facility will be renewed to ensure the continued education of ‘Canadian innovation and to inspire the next generation of great innovators’, as stated in their mission. The renewed Canada Science and Technology museum is slated to open in November of 2017; and appropriately so, as it is Canada’s Sesquicentennial year!

Before we are born, we are already getting measured. We enter this world with a measurement of weight and length. Through no decision of our own, we are thrust into a world where the measurement of virtually everything is embedded into the fabric of society. We measure blood sugar levels, job performance, life goals, height, intelligence, and so forth, and the list of possibilities is endless. In fact, I am even getting measured on the quality and content of this blog. “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts – for support rather than for illumination.” Andrew Lang, Scottish Writer Today’s business world provides a prime example in which our obsession with metrics is evident on a voluminous scale. As it relates to the business world, without analytics, a company is vulnerable. However, just owning analytics tools and methods of measure is not enough. While data in business is important, being able to identify the right data that correlates to your overall growth as a company is essential to achieving your longterm goals. This too can be said of the social media for business environment.  

The supply chain plays a pivotal role in the overall success of an organization, but even more so in the fresh food sector. Restaurants and other food related operations are always looking at ways to cut costs and maximize profits in the most effective and efficient methods possible. Whether it be healthcare, restaurant chains or even small mom and pop type restaurants, GFS understands that managing all those moving parts can be an overwhelming aspect of doing business. GFS is the largest family operated distributor in North America that has been running for over 115 years and services restaurants, universities, healthcare and a variety of other foodservice operations. Logistics and supply chain challenges have been at the core of the GFS company fabric since it’s establishment in 1897, but being able to manage the supply chain and its intricacies in 2017 is a different dynamic entirely. In addressing this fundamental concern, GFS developed “GFS Connect” with the goal of providing the customer total traceability and accountability anywhere, anytime in an easy and convenient way: “GFS Connect Mobile is the companion application to GFS Connect, offering you access to the same information on a mobile device. This one-of-a-kind tool lets you run your business on the go, anytime, anywhere. It’s the first and only mobile application available to food service operators throughout Canada – and it’s easy and convenient to use.”- GFS Canada Website

JustSaiyan Clothing is a company that specializes in manufacturing apparel that allows you to slip into the costume of your favourite cartoon characters. Catering to children and nostalgic adults, JustSaiyan features designs from popular television shows such as Dragon Ball Z, One Punch Man, and Naruto. JustSaiyan has built their entire business with the help of social media, and does not advertise traditionally. Active Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter pages allow the company to stay up to date on the opinions of its consumers, and Justsaiyan takes full advantage of their active fan base. Studying social media gives JustSaiyan great insight on how to improve their products, and more effectively market their gear.

Church leaders of all ministry types and sizes will likely agree that the task of numerically measuring progress, although sometimes tedious, can be one important means of gaining insight to a ministry’s health.  We measure congregational attendance and engagement to help gauge existing ministry connection and determine future programming, staffing and resource needs. We measure congregational giving both in the monetary sense and by way of volunteer hours, to help with our strategic planning and ongoing ministry mission. Many churches have broadened their mission field to include the online world. This includes utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and more to connect and network with people who may otherwise never engage with any aspect of the church.  According to Church Works, “Social media can be a brilliant way to reach users who may be entirely outside of your community…effective, generous engagement on social media can attract new followers who appreciate your message and identify with your mission.”  How then can we best measure our social media and digital reach?

One of the largest segments in the consumer spending industry is the Lifestyle segment. This segment basically focuses on the well-being of an individual and also gives importance to rest, relaxation with modern day flare. It encompasses such things such as art, home decor, fashion, health, education and of course, confectionery. The Modah store located in Mississauga, Ontario however, went further by tapping into a segment…of this segment. Modah focuses on being the largest Canadian lifestyle store catered to the people practicing the Islamic Faith or people who have an affinity towards Middle-Eastern design and flare. According to a report by Thomson Reuters, Muslim consumer spending on food and lifestyle products and services was estimated at $1.8 trillion (USD) globally in 2014 and is projected to reach $2.6tn in 2020. Major brands such as Mango and DKNY have begun to adapt to this audience by introducing more modest clothing ranges, but it has also inspired a raft of new start-ups from within the Muslim community. Just from this stat alone, many businesses are popping up especially in the Greater Toronto Area. The one issue they all face is how and where can they be able to showcase their products and generate sales? Back in 2012, Samir Aziz’s wife, Nafiza, possessed a small home-based business selling women’s clothing. As her success and publicity began to rise in the community, many other people who sold various other products always approached the couple to find ways in marketing their goods as well. From that, Samir & Nafiza had an idea to actually open a brick and mortar store not only selling the women’s clothing they initially ventured into, but also engage other fledgling entrepreneurs to take part by displaying their products to sell. The store needed to be in a prime location where Muslims frequent quite often and finally settled on a 4,500 sq ft unit in 2014 in the Dixie and Eglinton area of Mississauga where numerous other restaurants and various establishments currently reside. Due to the large space, just having their clothing business and one or two other branded products wasn’t enough to alleviate some of the overhead costs. So Samir and Nafiza had an idea and that was to beautify the store space to mimic the stylings of a Pier-1 Imports or a Homesense and invite vendors to be part of a business trade show at their grand opening. The… Read more »

Social Media Metrics can be used to benefit virtually any business, but are even more beneficial for small businesses and those in the early stages of growth and establishing themselves. Metrics help to illustrate and clarify which aspects of the business are gathering the best response and most traffic over various social media platforms. This allows marketers to select and focus more attention on the platforms that are getting the best response rate, to keep doing what’s working, and to improve upon what’s not.