John Mulligan, SEO-PR, interviews Liana Li Evans of Serengeti Communications about managing social media conversations at SES San Jose 2009. Li says you need to do your research (ie where your audience is and what they are doing) to get effective results when using social media tools. Li says with the proper research, you then plan your company’s strategy, define what will be measured (both success and failure) and constantly monitor and measure. With social media, you’re measuring influency, intimacy, interaction. You can measure these attributes by observing such actions as whether comments are being left on your YouTube video, or putting reviews out via blogs about your product. Li says it’s about branding and building relationships when using social media and not necessarily about registering a click to purchase. Li adds how important it is when building social media relationships to make potential users of your product “brand evangelists.” Managing social media effectively revolves around building a strategy, says Li, and its all about the relationships you build. For more information about SES, please visit: www.searchenginestrategies.com

Katie Paine talks to Alexa Clark of OneDegree.ca at eMetrics Toronto 2009 about Social Media Metrics. Katie shares tips on the integration of web and social media analytics as well as the types of conversations marketers should be paying attention to.