By Laura Morris
Susan Wassel, PR Manager at Sharpie, launched a social media campaign with the help of a single fellow employee and now manages the project singlehandedly – with a $2,000 budget. Her work exemplifies how your team can move forward even if you lack the resources necessary to bring on external support.
Video: Social Media on a Shoestring
Slidedeck: Social Media on a Shoestring
“Sharpie Susan’s” goal was increase brand loyalty by leveraging brand advocates they termed “bold expressionmakers,” who are Sharpie uber-users that gravitate toward new media. To achieve this objective, Sharpie decided to showcase content from these “bold expressionmakers” that demonstrated creative ways to use Sharpie pens in daily life.
Investment:
- $1,000 for Blog Masthead
- $20 for Blog Theme
- $895 for eLancer
- Free: monitoring tools to listen for brand mentions
Measurement:
At the time of Susan’s presentation, Sharpie measured Total Visits, RSS Subscribers, Blog Links, Google Friends, and Comments.
Here’s what Sharpie would like to measure moving forward:
| Benefit | Metric | Value |
| Blog traffic | Number of unique visitors, page views | Cost of advertising in similar content channel |
| Press mentions | Number of blog-driven stories by offline press, web media, or high-profile bloggers | Cost of advertising in same publication |
| Search engine positioning | Percentage of search results landing in the first three search pages driven by blog | Cost of search engine optimization to improve rankings. Cost of paid search for blog driven keywords. |
| Word of mouth | Number of blog posts in a Technorati search. Number of people commenting on blog | Cost of hiring a buzz agent |
| Savings on customer insight | Number of times per year that blog comments provide useful business insight | Cost of a focus group or other market research tactic |
| Reduced impact from negative user-generated content | Number of press stories than mention NUGC. Change in Net Promoter Score or other attitude metric post-UGC. | Historical change in sales associated with change in Net Promoter-type metirc |
| Increased sales efficiency | Number of prospects who read the blog, number of salespeople who read the blog | Decrease in cost of sales |
Related posts:
Commenting Guidelines
We hope conversations will be energetic, constructive, and provocative. All posts will be reviewed by our editors and may be edited for clarity, length, and relevance.
We ask that you adhere to the following guidelines.
1. No selling of products or services.
2. No ad hominem attacks. These are conversations in which we debate ideas. Criticize ideas, not the people behind them.