Leveraging Social Media to Build Your Business

Online Exclusive — April 2009

Do you Facebook and Tweet? What’s LinkedIn all about? Why is a blog important?

When I work with tax and accounting professionals, they are constantly asking
me to explain what social media is, what it can do for their practice, and most
importantly, how to determine ROI. I’m not surprised. After all, accountants
are logical, numbers-oriented people, so it makes perfect sense for them to
want to talk about what kind of return they expect to get through their investment
in time spent doing social networking.

If quantifiable results can help a tax and accounting professional determine
if he or she should put up a Facebook page, why is the “getting to the
results” such a mystery?

Let’s go back to Marketing 101. In traditional marketing, we deal with
what’s called the “Four Ps” — Product, Price, Place
and Promotion — with each “P” analyzed, assessed and thoroughly
thought out for just about any project or activity. Any marketing program worth
its salt will have built-in measurements for each of the four Ps. Traditional
measurements include, for example, the number of products sold or the number
of new clients gained.

Social media efforts, as in any solid marketing program, should also have
built-in measurements, but the end result in having a Facebook page or a corporate
Twitter account isn’t nearly as tangible as the numerical equivalent associated
with clients and products.

What we measure, instead, is social media’s effect on our brand, not
the company itself. Your brand is your image and reputation as a provider of
accounting, consulting and financial services. It’s not the number of
tax returns completed and certainly not the number of times your website was
accessed during any period of time.

In marketing, our brand is our most important asset. It’s why clients
provide us burning-hot referrals. It’s our reputation as experts. It’s
the crucial differentiation between our organization and the one down the street,
which leads to the question at hand: How do you measure social media’s
impact on your brand?

Very easily, in fact, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Above
all else, did participating in social media and social networking help change
someone’s perception of you and your practice?

Let’s say, for example, you decide to start a blog. Naturally, you must
first determine what makes your blog different from other blogs written by tax
and accounting professionals. Could they find this information elsewhere? Maybe,
maybe not.

Now, fast forward to determining results. Consider these three ways to measure
your blog’s effect on your brand:

1. Most obvious: Did a client, prospect of friend of the firm mention the
   blog, either in passing or through email? If so, you’ve just realized
   ROI! Someone noticed, and the blog reinforces your brand identity. You are
   now more likely to receive a qualified referral.
2. Less obvious and harder to determine: Did the blog help someone, somewhere
   in some kind of capacity? Now you see why this is harder to determine. But
   if you can figure this out, it only goes to support your role as a trusted
   advisor.
3. Sounds hard to get, but great for exposure: Does your blog help a media
   source with a story or research? If so, you’ve just improved your reputation
   through unsolicited, unbiased reporting. After all, your blog is searchable
   online, so if your blog addressed QuickBooks, and the reporter was writing
   a story about QuickBooks, you’ve just gotten some great attention.

Results aren’t limited to just blogs; any social media can be measured.
And in reality, many of these tools and sites seem different but are really
similar. Blogs are certainly different than pages on Facebook, but aren’t
that much different than Tweets on Twitter, a.k.a., a “micro-blog”
because you only have 140 characters to provide updates. Consequently, Facebook
is similar to LinkedIn because both sites help build and reinforce relationships.

Social media can be an engaging way to build your brand, but you must create
and monitor measurable results. It takes a different mindset. My advice is to
spend some time brainstorming on measurement techniques with your staff or colleagues.
It’s well worth the time.

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Scott H. Cytron, ABC, is president of Cytron and Company, known for helping companies and organizations improve their bottom line through strategic public relations, communications, marketing programs and top-notch client service. An accredited consultant, Scott works with companies, organizations and individuals in professional services (medical, legal, accounting, engineering), high-tech and B2B/B2C product/service sales.