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Source:Mashable!

As we watch the economy do what economies do - have growing pains and adjust to challenges - it becomes ever more apparent that doing things the old way just won’t work anymore. That is true of many of the old ways, especially when it comes to how companies advertise and grow their business.

It is my opinion that the return on investment (ROI) for traditional advertising will continue to shrink, even as companies using traditional advertising methods continue to throw money at ads in hopes that their company will survive these choppy financial seas. Instead of panicking and clinging to the deflating lifeboat of old ideas, now is the time to stand firm and innovate.

Evaluating the Situation

Before a company can find success in branding and marketing through non-traditional means like social media, companies and entrepreneurs need to reevaluate how they define ROI. Sure, there is always investment, but instead of thinking of this investment solely as monetary, also consider the investment you can make in time, staff, creativity, participation, and other less tangible resources. In this economy “investment” could be replaced by innovation, inspiration, involvement, or interaction for a different and fresh form of ROI.

Social media is often accused of taking a “touchy feely” approach to advertising, marketing and brand management. In a sense this is true. The ways of measuring ROI in a social media campaign are much more indirect than a cost based traditional model. In part this is because the cost of social media to grow your company is relatively low and consists mainly of intangible things like proper use of your time.

If the company is large enough, it may entail the cost of hiring someone to manage your social media efforts. If the company is a small to medium business or an entrepreneur or sole proprietor, most will find that after an initial training session with a good social media guide they can use existing staff to manage social media campaigns. This is a huge cost saver that can be carried over into a reduction in traditional advertising expenses as well.

Measuring ROI

One of the most tangible ways to measure ROI is site analytics. If you have a site that is starting a social media campaign, make sure to get a good analytics program installed, like Google Analytics. As you start each campaign, make sure to associate it with tags and key words you can track in your analytics program.

You can do the same for on-site CPM advertising, like the ever popular Google Adsense. By associating each ad block with key words and campaigns, it makes it easier to measure where the money and visitors are coming in from. Coupled with a great stats program like Mint or similar, there is no reason you can’t develop your own in-house ROI study as you embark on your first social media campaign.

Enhancing ROI

One of the many ways to enhance your ROI from social media campaigns is to consider transparency. Since it is very hard to hide behind an image these days (go ahead and Google your company name plus the word “sucks” or “stinks” or other negative connotations and see if anything comes back), the more transparent a company and its top level staff can be without giving away company secrets, the better.

A fantastic example of transparency helping a company’s numbers is that of BuzzAgent. They were so invested in the idea of changing how they approached their brand they did a 90 day experiment that showed measurable gains (and other interesting data) through openness and interaction.

Additional Benefits

If you aren’t sold on the idea of fully embracing social advertising, consider the intangible benefits of a brand campaign as well, including how social media can save you money indirectly. By becoming more involved with your brand and embracing both the negative and the positive (realize you no longer control the conversation about your company) you can stop problems before they start.

By giving your customers access to you through social media and using it to channel everything from customer support to sales and hiring, you will find that you are gaining income and stopping some tradition areas of corporate monetary hemorrhaging. All without spending vast amounts of extra money on ads no one stops to watch, listen to or read anyway outside of Superbowl Sunday. I’d say that’s pretty good indirect ROI, wouldn’t you?

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:appssavvy Releases New Tool to Link App Developers with AdvertisersAnother Cautious Report – Global Social Networking Ad Spend Estimates LoweredAustralian Ad It Last Comes To AmericaSave $100 off SWAT Summit on July 17th in San FranciscoSocial Media Marketing Summit is Almost HereWhat’s Next in Online Advertising?Drama 2.0 Predicts What Won’t Happen in 2008

Source:Mashable!

In another move towards earning more revenue from its huge audience, YouTube has started streaming full-length TV shows that will include advertising. The content, which includes Star Trek, The Young & The Restless, and Beverley Hills 90210 comes through a deal with CBS. Advertising will include familiar formats like pre, mid, and post-roll.

For YouTube, the deal certainly marks further indication that the company is not having a great deal of success in monetizing the user-generated video that dominates the site. While the current lineup of content from CBS may not be especially impressive – no offense Y&R fans – it’s likely just the first of many deals that YouTube will make to bring more professionally produced content to its site that can be more easily monetized.

For CBS, the deal might be seen as yet another sign of a lack of confidence in Joost, the professional video content site where CBS is an investor. Meanwhile, CBS already offers full-length versions of many of its popular shows like CSI on its own website. Ultimately, it would look like YouTube is simply being viewed as another place to distribute content for the media company. CBS also recently did a deal with Slide to distribute video content through Facebook applications.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:CBS Launches New Online Video InitiativecomScore Releases Video Streaming StudyFox Shows Coming To MySpace ProfilesYouTube Multi-File Upload is HereImeem Partners with Palm Pictures for Interactive Indie Film Access“Lost” and Other ABC Shows Coming to VeohNBC Streamed Nearly 333 Million Videos Online

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 3:32 pm and is filed under youtube, News, online video, cbs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.