ROI for my Dandelion

To my faithful readers, this may be my final post. This blog ends my semester and academia at American University. Usually when I finish a class, I'm thrilled because its one less thing on my list to worry about. But not for this class. I enjoyed your companionship and feedback. However, there must be an ending to every beginning. With that being said, I bid you farewell.

But before I part with you, I would like to share my final thoughts with you. I read "Social Media FAQ #3: How Do I Measure ROI?" and "How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business". If you haven't noticed, the theme focuses on Return on Investment (ROI). And after reading these articles, I felt like sharing something a bit more practical from my experience.

I was faced with a challenge to promote an ebook. But not only promote, I also had to measure ROI for my Dandelion project. So I did the following:

1. Based on what I was trying to market and promote, I chose specific online social media to assist me.
2. I'm aware that people love to support anything that's for a good cause, so I created a cause that made them feel like they were actively contributing towards that cause.
3. I interacted frequently by updating status, posting and directly answering their questions. And sometimes, engaging in dialogue with my supporters (just to maintain their interests and their support).
4. Regularly, I checked my analytic reports to measure how many fans, clicks, unique visits etc. or simply ROI I had accomplished.

Based on the articles and my experience, is there anything you would do differently and why?

Predictions & Trends for Social Media

For this week, I read the following articles: "Six Social Media Trends for 2010" and "5 Predictions on The Future of Social Media". Based on the second article, "social media is in its infancy", and thus made the following predictions:

1) Ratings will become an expectation
2) Content aggregation will boom
3) New tools will replace some of the first movers
4) Social networks become portable
5) Virtual worlds gain traction

According to this first article, "In 2009 we saw exponential growth of social media... In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive." Hence, the article listed six trends as follows:

1. Social media begins to look less social
2. Corporations look to scale
3. Social business becomes serious play
4. Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced)
5. Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
6. Sharing no longer means e-mail

In my opinion, I think that numbers 2 and 3 (second list)go hand-in-hand and it ultimately leads to number 4. And I also think that number 4 is on a rapid increase. Based on the lists, what do you think? Is there anything else you can add to the list? Or have you experienced any variances?

SEO - why so late?

This week's reading I focused on "What is search engine optimization (SEO)?" and "Anatomy of a Blog Post Well Received". I felt like these articles and videos were very helpful. The articles gave a lot of tips and ideas of how to promote your blog ,as well as, how to generate traffic to your blog. And most of all, how to analyze the traffic your blog is attracting. However, I felt that if they were introduced earlier in the semester, they would have been even more helpful. What do you guys think ?