Hootsuite and Webtrends Integration Helps Social Media Marketers Prove ROI
Hootsuite and Webtrends have integrated their products to give their users greater ability to track the effectiveness of social media campaigns. Messages broadcasted through Hootsuite can now be automatically analyzed by Webtrends to track the ROI of investments made in social media. This new integration can be used to justify social media investment and improve social media campaigns.
To justify any investment a manager must prove the benefit it brings to the firm. A simple and common way to do so is to find the financial return the company earns from the investment (the investment’s ROI). To be worthwhile the investment should provide a higher ROI than alternative investments, while achieving the same objectives. By using Hootsuite and Webtrends to track click-through and conversions rates marketers can calculate the revenue generated from each post, and in turn the profit and use this information to prove their worth to their organization.
By tracking the success of each post marketers also have the ability to test different messages, formats, and content to build a more effective social media presence. A marketer can now send several versions of a message to several social networks and track which message and network combination generates the most revenue. The marketer can then maximize revenue by focusing their resources on that message and network.
While tracking information of this type was possible before, this integration will save marketers a great deal of work. For example, later this month I will begin testing different messages on different networks for a client. We will run several experiments at once. This integration between Hootsuite and Webtrends would take care of setting up the tracking, and allow our team to focus on figuring out what the data means.
You can find more information about the new partnership on Hootsuite’s website.
Should you develop for iOS or Android? [1 of 3]
Mobile software marketers rarely have the luxury of having the time and/or money to develop a product or application for each mobile platform from the outset. This constraint forces them to choose to develop their product for either (largely) iOS or Android. And when talking about making that decision, I find that most often people look to market share as the deciding metric. They see that Android has taken the top spot for smart phone sales, and conclude that development should start there. But is market share the right consideration? No, it isn’t. At least in most cases.
I’m going to write a two post serious discussing Android and Apple’s product development strategy, and what that means for mobile software marketers choosing between them. The posts will focus on the strategy and motivations behind Apple’s and Google’s products. This is because mobile computing is changing every day, which makes keeping up with every development difficult. But by having an understanding of the motivations and strategy behind Google’s and Apple’s products, marketers gain a longer term understanding of each platform and can make informed decisions without careful study of every detail.
