Different departments of an organisation can use social media for different purposes, and apply different measures. Here’s a partial list. Have we missed anything?

Marketing

• Increase web traffic
  • in order to increase ad revenue
  • in order to increase sales
  • in order to increase paid membership
  • in order to increase site membership and engagemen
• Increase word of mouth marketing
  • in order to cut marketing spend
  • in order to create authentic, grassroots community -> co-create products, services

• Grow database
  • in order to build long term customers

Sales

• Increasing sales through all channels
• Leveraging salespeoples’ personal brands

HR

• Recruitment
• Employer brand positioning
• Revealing internal culture for recruitment
• Education – explaining company’s role
• Headhunting through social network sites
• Training
• Increasing engagement
• Culture change
  • Opening up communications channels/dialogue
  • Breaking down silos

PR

• Telling your side of the story
• Crisis management
• Blogger relations
• Media relations

Customer Service

• Reducing customer support costs
• Increasing customer service quality

Market Research

• Generating consumer insights -> innovations
• Brand sentiment monitoring

Events

• Get more attendance
• Make event more interactive

Branding

• Humanise the brand (thanks to Mr K for the suggestion)

Operations

• Virtual teams/collaboration

What’s missing?

Feb 19: The Great Word of Mouth Experiment – Jaffe, Sernovitz

It starts in just 18 days with the Great Word of Mouth Experiment . Details here , but you won’t find registration details. This is an invitation-only event to map the marketing social networks of New Zealand (and, no doubt, further afield).

Speakers for the event are Joseph Jaffe , author of Join the Conversation , and Andy Sernovitz , author of Word of Mouth Marketing .

March 11-12: 2nd Digital Media Summit – Hopkins, Horne and more

In March there’s the 2nd Digital Media Summit , chaired by Australia’s top Social Media bloke Lee Hopkins , and featuring MySpace’s Rebekah Horne. Not to be outdone by the Aussies, there are also some pretty good kiwi speakers and panelists, including Jake Pearce , Helen Baxter and Ben Young .

The conference also features an unconference session, where the passive audience becomes an active contributor to the conversation.

April 15-16 Marketing Now – Brogan, Scott and more

The excitement doesn’t stop, it just gets better. On April 15th and 16th Marketing Now hits Wellington, featuring social media superstar Chris Brogan and David Meerman Scott , author of the The New Rules of Marketing and PR .

This conference has been organised by Siobhan Bulfin , an extraordinary person we met on our recent Wellington trip. She’s been learning social media for a year and already she’s put this conference together. Great skills!

There’s a Twitter-only special for Marketing Now , which is a significant discount , but available only if you’re on Twitter.

Interested?

Sign up for Twitter , and follow me , Marie or Siobhan (all or any of us). And, using an @ reply, or a direct message, ask us about the Twitter-only special.