One of the great appeals of Internet marketing is the ability to test, track and ultimately improve results. The Internet is a direct response marketer’s ‘dream marketing medium.’

But what about social media? Can you measure results across blogs… social networks such as Facebook and MySpace… micro-blogging sites such as Twitter… and other such media?

According to Dave Evans, author of “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day” and contributor to The ClickZ Network, the answer is emphatically YES. And there are a variety of tools - free and paid - to help you do so.

Before you do anything, though, it’s important to measure what’s happening NOW. Once you have a baseline, you can then monitor and evaluate the impact of various initiatives.

Evans points to a number of tools for measuring social content, i.e. the ‘conversations’ about you that are currently taking place across the Internet. Free tools include Google Alerts and my recent favorite, URLFan.

You can set up Google Alerts, for example, to send you emails notifying you of mentions of your brand, website, name, product, etc in Google. But don’t just let them come into your inbox. Dave Evans recommends tracking the results in a spreadsheet. That way you can monitor changes over time.

Paid tools such as Nielsen BuzzMetrics, TNS Cymfony and Umbria are ‘turnkey’ systems that remove the requirement for you to manually record and track alerts.

In between the free tools and the turnkey, paid options, are paid tools such as Techrigy’s SM2, Radian6, and KD Paine’s DIY Dashboard from KD Paine. These allow you to finetune your intelligence searches over time and largely automate the reporting process.

Evans, however, suggests starting with manually monitoring the conversations over a 30 day period. That way you can see what kinds of things are circulating about you, which in turn, can give you an indication of what you need to track and which tool may be best for that.

Once you begin tracking your ’social media impact’ you can also start to look for correlations, trends and patterns. In particular, you might start to see correlations between the level of social media conversations, your search engine rankings, and the level of traffic to your website.

And that’s just for starters. Once you have a system for tracking your social media impact, the next step is to use the insights gained from tracking to work out how to INFLUENCE that social media impact.

Source: Dave Evans, “Social Media: Why Measurement Is Key,” ClickZ, December 10, 2008

Internet marketing strategist Rich Schefren made a rather bold claim earlier this week. He said that Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama won the 2008 United States Presidential Election due to the Democrats’ masterful use of social media marketing.

While Rich put forth some persuasive statistics - and we have also published similar indicators that Obama dominated on the Internet - I’m not sure I agree. Sure, Obama campaigners may have harnessed social marketing better than McCain… but was that really the clincher?

And even if it was, doesn’t that beg the question of WHY? Why was Obama able to stir up such activity on the Internet? Weren’t their deeper reasons driving people to be so vocal?

In any case, if it IS true that the Democrats beat the Republicans online… the GOP is already taking steps to fight back and, in particular, make better use of social media marketing.

First big step: the launch of RepublicanForAReason.com.

Developed by the Republican National Committee (RNC), RepublicanForAReason.com has similar aspirations to the Democrats’ website Change.gov. The Republican site will be a platform for grass-roots supporters to share and discuss their views about the future direction of the GOP.

In the words of RNC Chairman Robert M. Duncan:

“we need to hear what our volunteers, activists, elected leaders, and party members think about the Republican Party as we rebuild, re-focus, and renew our bond with the American people.”

Sounds like a good use of social media to me. And just what the Republicans need to do in light of their election defeat.

But I’ll tell you one thing: poor choice of domain name. Too long and hard to type. And by the way who was the incompetent who forgot to register RepublicansForAReason.com?

Hmmm… I wonder how many people will type that in… and what will they see when they go to THAT site? Someone is set to make some good money from parked domain name revenues. Until the lawyers get involved of course…

Sources: Rich Schefren, “The Biggest Reason Why Barack Obama Won The Election”, Strategic Profits Blog, November 11, 2008, Richard MacManus, “Republicans Use Social Media Too”, ReadWriteWeb, November 12, 2008

Here’s a cool website - Go2Web20 – a directory of Web 2.0 applications.

Very nifty, whether you’re looking for standalone Web 2.0 applications or applications that integrate with, and enhance the use of, various social networking websites. In particular, if you’re looking for applications to allow you to tap into the social marketing or networking potential of Web 2.0 this may well be the place to start.

You can also suggest new applications to be added to the Go2Web20 directory… like, perhaps, your own (if you’re in that market!).

Click here to check it out: Go2Web20