The ROI of a Social Media Portal

So you have a blog, a Facebook fan page and a customized corporate Twitter page. You even have a few videos posted to YouTube.

So where is the ROI?

The answer lies in the type of engagement you are fostering. If customers are not posting comments on your blog and they are not embedding links to your videos in their Facebook  wall and they are not even tagging your content with Facebook LIKES (thumbs up), the answer is: 

You have an engagement problem.

There could be several reasons your content is not engaging your audience. Assuming your content is interesting and compelling, you could have an issue with cross channel promotion. This can happen if you are conducting your social media programs in stovepipe channels.

Many companies treat each channel as an individual silo and they don’t think about the power of cross promoting messages and content between channels. This is a big mistake. Creating effective and engaging content is difficult, expensive and time consuming. Consequently, it’s vital that you cross promote your content on all the social media channels you have a presence on. This can be a done in a variety of ways ranging from RSS feeds to automated tools to manual posting of links and content between channels.

Cross-Pollination with a Social Media Portal

One of the most effective ways to make your customers aware of your multi-channel social media programs is with a social media portal. With a Social Media Portal you can:

1. Increase the probability your content will go viral due to cross-pollination of content across social channels.
2. Give visitors an opportunity to interact with your brand on a deeper and more engaged level.
3. Actively engage in the customer experience. Customers don’t have to search out or stumble upon your social media channels.
4. Increase the number of fans of your brand by informing them of your presence on prominent social media networks.
5. Increase the your brand's visibility in the search engines since the social content would be publicly exposed and ranked in search engines.
6. Increase your search page ranking by integrating YouTube video content. According to Forrester Research, an indexed video stands has a 50 times greater chance of ranking on the first page of results than any given textual page in the index.
7. Make your website stickier. Populating the portal with video, blog and photo content will give visitors a natural reason to return and engage with your brand.
8. Increase the number of people who follow your brand on Twitter. 80% of consumers stated that following a brand on Twitter results in referrals.
9. Increase sales by having more Twitter followers. Consumers are 67% more likely to buy from the brands they follow on Twitter.
10. Decrease your paid search costs.