Can social media impact your bottom line?

It's very easy for Kent businesses to be swept along on the tidal wave of the social revolution which is impacting us all. But before you engage in any social marketing activity, ensure that it's aligned with your business goals.

For example, are your clients actually on Twitter, or do your hot prospects have a LinkedIn profile and page? Could you influence them via a discussion on a relevant LinkedIn group? Could you help retain clients via better engagement on a Facebook page?

To answer these questions, you need to know where to look. Many very helpful directories have been created for Twitter. One is TweetDeck's Directory www.tweetdeck.com/directory/ of Twitter users, where you can easily navigate through your fields of interest and pick those you want to connect with.

Searching hashtags, google searches and the search facility on LinkedIn and Facebook are other useful tools.

Remember though, that in order to make money with social media, you have to set up your campaigns to be measured. These metrics can be broken down into three different categories:

Quantitative Metrics: eg unique visits, page views, followers, demographics, frequency,† length of visit etc

Qualitative Metrics: for example, if 75 per cent of the people who mention your product online call it "cheap" and only 25 per cent call it "inexpensive," that's a qualitative metric that has an impact on your business.

ROI Metrics: The key is to track what percentage of people you converted from a prospect to a customer via social media activity. To continue this thread, follow me on Twitter: @katieeking

• Katie King is managing director of PR & Social Media agency Zoodikers, and a trainer at The Social Media Academy in London