Talking yourself into participating in social media wasn’t too bad, now you’re trying to talk everyone else into it. You should be prepared with some good responses for objections…there will be objections. I already touched on a few protests, so we will continue in Part 2 to discuss how to respond when someone anti-social media raises doubts.
How do you quantify exposure?
Facebook provides its fans pages with insights that allow you to track page views, fan growth, and quality of posts. It also shows demographics of your fans that help you target your facebook campaign. It really is a neat tool to look at when you are developing your social media campaign. For example, you can look back and see that on a certain date you had a huge increase in fan views. I would recommend looking at what you posted that day or what special you were announcing, etc. This was obviously something that your fans liked and you should continue to execute meaningful posts like that one. The same goes for reversed responses. When you see that your page views fall dramatically or your unsubscribed fan numbers are growing, take a look and see what was happening that day and see to it that does not happen again.
There are also sites that provide Twitter statistics, providing insight into tweet impressions. You can see exactly how many people saw a specific tweet as well as your growth of followers.
Your website’s analytics can track exactly where your viewers are coming from. This means you will know when visitors are being sent from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or your blog. This can provide you with trending and performance information on customers referred by your social sites.
The same analytics that you have set for your website can be set for your blog. This means that you can see how many views it is getting, how often it is referring visitors to your site, as well as how they are finding your blog. Using blog and website analytics in conjunction can provide you with insight into user interaction with your blog posts, as well as the information they are most interested in.

We want people to come to our store, not our site.
Social media sites do drive a ton of traffic to your site, but that does not mean it isn’t doing what any other form of advertising does. With facebook posts and blogs you are still letting your customers know why they should get off the computer and get into your store. There are different ways of executing this. Its a great idea to give employees the opportunity to become administrators of your social media efforts. Let your individual stores or managers post and tweet about the specials they have going on. Let a passionate salesman tell his story in a blog about why he loves the industry he is in. Encourage employees to be in the YouTube videos that show why your products are the best. Provide your fans with exclusive benefits like coupons to be used in your store. As you can see, advertising done through social media allows for a more casual environment and lets customers feel comfortable and part of your community. Done properly, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogging, and web pages can be very beneficial to store traffic as well as online sales.

Remember these objections and answers when you are discussing social media with decision makers. Please feel free to post any concerns or questions in our comments section. We would love to hear your feedback about social media.