Category Archives: Social Media Measurement

May 01 2012
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Social Media Measurement

Create a Social Media Strategy and Then Measure the S&*t Out of it.

 

At the end of the day, it all comes down to measurement. If your strategy is based upon anything, base it upon a relevant business objective that you can measure. In the last few months, I’ve really learned that at the end of the day whatever you do, you should contribute to the bottom line. Don’t get me wrong it doesn’t have to always be about money – but you should be thinking about money anyways. It makes you important, it makes you & what you do valuable.

Brand Awareness is a real objective… if you measure it correctly

Brand awareness is a real objective – let’s get that straight. It is absolutely the top of the funnel, it’s important, it’s measurable. The problem, I find, is that when people cite ‘brand awareness’ as a reason for ‘doing’ social media – they often have no intention of measuring it and will call any metric a success metric. Having tens of thousands or even millions of fans on Facebook does not equal brand awareness. You have to be top of mind for people to be aware, and usually that equates to the idea that people actually need to be talking about you. If you want to measure ‘Brand Awareness’ in social media, you should really be measuring Share of Voice (SOV). Share of voice determines where you stand in consumer conversations in relation to your industry. At a basic level, this is the # of conversations mentioning your brand, divided by the number of total industry conversations. That is a basic measurement, I’ll save the more advanced stuff for a later post.

Sales

Business, at the end of the day, is business. It’s about money (at least it is most of the time). Every company’s goals, to some degree, have some sort of revenue attached. There is obviously a lot of value in engaging people, and that serves as a loyalty and/or acquisition strategy.  But if you want to prove to your management that you can achieve ROI by investing in social media, you need to be able to back up what you say. It’s as easy to make a sale using social media as an outreach tool as it is to sit at a phone and cold call people all day (I know it’s not really easy, it takes a fair amount of determination and thick skin to do this job). Look for your leads, qualify your leads, and eventually turn a percentage of those qualified leads into sales. To measure it’s really quite simple: # of sales coming from social channels divided by # of total sales. What’s key in measuring sales is measuring the growth patterns of sales coming from social channels. Create a proper sales strategy, measure it, optimize it, and see success.

Too many measurements that mean nothing without context

My biggest problem with measuring social media marketing & sales efforts is that there is SO much data. There are so many metrics that can mean a lot, and so many metrics that mean nothing at all. I too, am guilty at times of creating a roundabout strategy – with no clear goals and no clear measurement. The best thing to do is stop yourself before you get to far into Narnia and tell your brain to stop chasing unicorns. It’s important to find the right measurements (even if they are not nearly as attractive as the vanity metrics out there). Understand what you want to use social media for and bring value (and moula) to your efforts.

Too many times I’ve had to restart my course, I don’t want to be a social media guru that promises pixie dust and happy children to the world. I want to contribute to the bottom line and earn my place as well as my strategy. We all have to work through these obstacles, just stick to it.

-m.

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Oct 25 2011
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Best Practices, Branding, Social Media, Social Media Content, Social Media Measurement

7 People You May Need to Have on Your Social Media Team:

Are you hiring a social media “specialist”, “guru”, or “manager”? There are a number of roadblocks most businesses run into when doing so – Team structure is #1 (at least I would hope).

I should start this off with a warning – No one person can do it alone, especially if you’re part of a medium to large sized business. There are so many different contribution points, that if you only have one person you will never be successful.  Trust me, I have been that lone ranger before, and I was over-stretched; so I could only do half-ass everything and not amazing anything.

So, in my honest opinion these are the positions that you should have:

  1. Listener/engager – People are talking about you, deal with it. You need someone who can use a listening platform to monitor mentions of your brand. This is necessary. You can create relationships even if people are saying negative things about you, and it gives you a way to let people know you’re there, you’re listening, and you care. This person should be the same person(s) who are engaging on behalf of your brand in social media.
  2. Content Curator – As we all know, content can be a female dog for some brands in social media. You need something to post on a daily or weekly basis, but where are you going to find that content? Having an entire person dedicated to this position will make your life a whole lot easier. It also gives a little more bandwidth on tracking & optimizing the content that you do post. They can coordinate the “content calendar” if you need one, come up with new themes and coordinate the creation of said content. Easy Peasy, right?
  3. Web Coder/Graphic Designer: This is pretty self-explanatory. You need to be able to get graphics done for microsites, Facebook tabs, WordPress themes, etc.
  4. Public Relations Coordinator – This is crucial as the reputations of brands are more at risk with the uprising of social media. This does not need to be a full-time person, but you need to have this person crafting your overall messaging and voice, as well as risk mitigation.
  5. Social Media Marketing Coordinator – Like any other channel, sales & marketing plays an important role in social media. Coming up with innovative ideas is mandatory, and you also need someone to run social advertising, promotions, and to track the ROE/ROR (Return-On-Engagement/Return-On-Relationship). It is also necessary to tie social media to overall business objectives (website traffic, etc.).
  6. Social Media Analytics Officer – Again, this does not need to be a full-time person. You must measure your social media efforts. Now, part of this job includes staying up to date on the forever changing metrics, tools, etc. Measuring impact and growth/decline of your mentions on any given month, and doing all the reporting. Crucial.
  7. Someone who oversees it all: This could be you. Or not. In any event you need someone to provide coordination and direction.

In conclusion, this seems like a resource-heavy list. However, it is important that all these roles are covered, and depending on the size of your business, each role could be more than one person. This structure is also not right for every business, but it definitely is a good place to start.

PS: Always hire people on contract, you never know with Social Media “Gurus” they could turn out not to know anything about anything. Don’t believe the hype.

What do you think a social media team should look like? Let me know in the comments.

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Jul 26 2011
2 Comments
Best Practices, Events, Social Media, Social Media Measurement

REPORT: The Comic-Con effect. #sdcc and Social Media.

Comic-Con International San Diego Logo

Image via Wikipedia

The more I learn about numbers, tracking, and analyzing social media stuff, the more I love it. Yesterday, I posted the analytics from a conference that I attended and was really humbled by the responses I got. Some, pointing out my errors, and others showing interest. I want to do the same thing but on a much bigger scale for one of the most popular conferences on the planet. San Diego Comic-Con International. This conference is HUGE, it sells out every year without fail and brings about the most interesting people, in full costume, might I add.

My colleague Lucas was doing some investigation into the event and the impact that it has on social media. When he started monitoring the event hashtags (#sdcc & #comiccon) on around July 5th, we were all blown away at the sheer mass of mentions on Twitter. There were 19,00 mentions in the previous 30 days which is massive. I think we both assumed that by the time the conference had actually begun, there would be close to 19,000 mentions per day.

Boy, were we wrong.

On the preview night alone there were just over 26,000 mentions of the #sdcc hashtag. Sheesh.

Here is a word cloud from the conversations that were happening on Day One.

Word cloud (Day One). The bigger the word, the more volume it has.

You can see by looking at the wordcloud that the most popular term was “#comiccon”. In combination with the #sdcc hashtag there were 14,855 mentions.  There was also a lot of mentions of the smash hit show Dexter (one of my favorite shows) on the first day. So it would be interesting to see what the themes of those conversations are:

What you do notice from digging deeper in the individual keywords is that you can actually learn what happened that day (sifting through the hundreds of thousands of Comic-Con tweets a week later would be no easy feat). There was about 2000 posts in relation to Dexter on day one – some announcing the season six trailer, some about Mos Def joining the cast, and others complaining about traffic and such. What greater way to market a new TV show, though? Holding off until Comic-Con for these announcements is a brilliant marketing strategy for Showtime to out in place, because they create so much social media buzz around the premiere of the show.

Moving on…

Still thinking about day one, wouldn’t it be interesting to estimate how many of those 80,000 tweets came from the event itself? The reason I ask this question is because I think it’s equally important to look at how many people are enjoying the conference from the comfort of their own home and the power of Twitter. I’ve split up the mentions of that day by region, to put it all in context:

Breakdown of Tweets on Day One by region

If you click on the chart above you can see that the majority of the tweets came from the United States (about 65,000). This does not mean that every person in the US who tweeted about Comic-Con was actually there, but it’s tricky to tell. Let’s look at a completely different area, Brazil. 2,714 of the posts on Day One came from Brazil. So what were they talking about? Take a look:

Now, I don’t read Portuguese, but I cam tell you that Twitter fans of Comic-Con in Brazil were living the event through Twitter – not through a magazine 3 days later (Note: the above feed is sorted by highest amount of Twitter followers).

The first day of Comic-con generated 81,677 mentions of the #sdcc hashtag. One of the clear big winners in terms of buzz at Comic-Con was definitely Twilight. I hate to admit it, but I am a devoted fan to the series, no matter how corny it might seem That is why it is of particular interest to me to dig a little deeper and understand what news and exclusives were released.

#sdcc vs. Twilight keyword group

During that first day, mentions of Twilight, Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Breaking Dawn were mentioned 7900 times out of the 82,000 tweets. That’s HUGE considering the other events that were going on that day. People were discussing the Twilight panel, Robert Pattinson’s hair, the Breaking Dawn trailer, all exciting things. What I find interesting, though, is that this panel is held every year at Comic-Con, pre-movie-release. Another excellent marketing strategy if you think about it. The two movies were filmed at the same time, but are releasing a year apart – in my opinion so that they can get another wildly successful panel at Comic-Con 2012.

Day two was filled with popular topics such as #trueblood (a cast-panel was held this day which generated 2476 mentions for the Trueblood hashtag). You can also combine this with the 169 RT’s of @TruebloodHBO’s tweet:

All in all, there were many topics covered at this year’s Comic-Con that I won’t get into for the sake of your eyes, but I just thought I would share a few more interesting insights:

Most ReTweeted Users at Comic-Con:

Conan O’Brien was the most retweeted Twitter user in relation to Comic-con saying things such as “I have arrived at @Comic_Con. The air is thick with the smell of Cheetos and celibacy #sdcc”

Summary of entire event:

Slide pictured above courtesy of @lucas_powell

The buzz was not isolated to Twitter, either. Comic-con also generated 912 blog posts (that included the keywords we had entered, I’m sure there was a LOT more), as well as various other media types.

Overall, Comic-Con International was a HUGE social media success, with over 400,000 tweets over the entire conference. As a marketer, I would suggest that if you can tie your product in ANY WAY to what happens at Comic-Con, you attend Comic-Con 2012 next year, and  be prepared to tweet… a lot.

What do you think of the impact of events like Comic-Con on social media?

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Jul 13 2011
2 Comments
Best Practices, Education, Social Media, Social Media Measurement

Social Media is about MORE than the tools

There are SO many tools out there that can help you manage, measure, and execute many of the functions that exist within social media. Just like you can have all the books in the world and not be the least bit intelligent; the same can be said of social media tools. You can have all of the listening tools – and still not hear anything. You can have all the management tools, and still be unorganized. You can have all the measurement tools, and still not understand. Even the venues like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are just tools. For people, for brands, they serve as the middleman between themselves and other people. Social media is about more than just the tools, it’s about being social by nature.

What I mean by that, is that some people instinctively get it – and thus they are successful. They can take to Twitter and Facebook the same way they take to a networking event. They can easily mingle, connect, and understand what they are doing and why – even if subconsciously. This is especially true for Gen Y. We grew up with the internet. When something new, or as different as Twitter was in the Facebook era comes out of the woodwork – we can use it without a second thought. We’ll spend 30 minutes playing with it and then we know more than some analysts do.

Do not take me out of context, I am not saying non-Gen Y’ers don’t instinctively get social media, because most of the superstars in the industry do not fall into the “millenial” range. A lot of people have years of experience in marketing, advertising, PR – and social media is a natural evolution for them. For others who have the same experience, social media may not be a natural evolution – they are not comfortable with it. In this instance, we should not force them to adapt – rather, we should let them learn at their own pace and evolve over time. Put the naturally social people on the front lines (regardless of their title or department) and put training in place to teach them not only about social media, but about the restrictions that they have in relation to the brand so that they understand.

What I am saying, though, is that you either get it – or you don’t. This is a problem that I see and deal with everyday. Sometimes I get frustrated when people don’t get what I’m talking about – or if I have to spend more time explaining something when it just seems like common sense in my head. What I have to remind myself is that this is not as easy for others as it can sometimes seem to me. Many brands are still battling the idea that social media is more than just a “nice to have” but is, instead, a need to have. Some brands are not, and will never be social by nature because the more traditional tools and strategies have worked for so long & they refuse to “fix what’s not broken”.

The word “social” by definition means:

so·cial/ˈsōSHəl/

Adjective: Needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities

  • - we are social beings as well as individuals
Companionship. Community. Those are hefty words with deep meanings. To be able to create friendships and bring people together around common interests, themes and goals is not a skill that comes naturally to just anyone. Just because you give someone a hammer does not mean they can build a house, so the tools mean nothing in comparison to the people and their abilities.
Social media is really about being social – more than the tools that so many claim make them qualified to be “gurus” :)
BTW I was lacking inspiration for a new blog post today, but thankfully someone gave me a little push in the right direction.
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Jul 11 2011
3 Comments
Best Practices, Social Media, Social Media Content, Social Media Measurement

What is social media content anyway?

Image via justmeans.com

 

This is the question that has a lot of marketers puzzled, to say the least. We’ve pretty much moved past the “if you build it they will come” mentality – and have instead moved into Content is king, and context is queen way of thinking. So where does the content come from?

Working in software, the first idea that comes to mind when we hear “content” is marketing & product content. This is readily available most of the time, and is the easiest way to publish something every working-day to our Facebook & twitter properties. After months of doing this, though, I realized this is not the best route. Our users are engaged, but could we do a better job? You can always do better, I tell myself.

When you search and crowdsource what others in the industry are doing, you will almost always get the same answers:

Start a blog then post your blog. You can leverage existing materials, customer testimonials, throw in the odd product announcement sprinkled with questions and don’t forget promos & contests – this is about ROI y’know.

Right. That makes sense. Start a blog (without having any particular platform, you’ll figure it out eventually). Take your testy marketing materials and push them out to the public that already sees them through other channels. When you launch a product or a patch – you should put that in there too, people are SO interested in that kind of stuff. Then, sometimes – to make the audience feel like you care; ask them a question. Don’t worry about the results though, you don’t have to do anything with those. Sell people stuff, people love it when you do that. Then buy their love with gifts – that about covers it.

If you didn’t catch it there, that was complete and utter sarcasm. These are my tips folks, pay attention:

Tell Stories: This is all you really have to do, and I know I have emphasized this in a lot of my blog posts. The most simple way to attract people to you, is to give them a reason to be attracted. People relate to people, not campaigns. Tell stories about your company, your employees, your customers, your non-customers, anyone! Be attractive to the single most powerful human instinct, emotion. It could even be little tweaks to the things you are already doing, for instance:

You can now buy triple absorbent pads for your Swiffer Sweeper. Available at Walmart, Target, and RiteAid in your city.

VS

Meet Amy, she loves Swiffer Sweeper, so we asked her for some feedback on the pads to see if we were getting the job done right. She told us that the pads weren’t absorbent enough – we listened. You can now get your triple absorbent pads at Wal-mart, RiteAid, or Target. Let us know what you think! [Insert smiling picture of Amy with her new Swiffer]

See what I did there? I turned everyday marketing babble into a story, a story that people can relate to. I put a human face to it. Ta-da. There’s only one catch with this – it has to be authentic. Amy can’t be some marketing persona you made up, you actually have to go find her.

Do stuff: Go to events, talk to people, network. Content will always come from these types of things. You also have a kick-butt way to actually meet your customers, or potentially, find new ones. Take pictures, videos, & build relationships offline that you can transfer into online relationships – then once you’ve done that, tell the story.

Ask questions and then do something with the answers: If there is one thing that could probably not be anymore annoying than it already is, it’s when brands ask their fans for feedback with no purpose. If you are interested in what people are telling you – ask questions. If you’re not interested – don’t ask questions. It really is that simple. If Clairol, for instance, asked me what my favorite hair-dye color was – I’d expect that my answer was not given in vain. Whether it’s producing a cool infographic, publishing the answers on your blog, or actually incorporating that feedback into product development or something of equal value – you must use this information. This is quasi-market-research here, and it is a lot more valuable then you think.

Last but not least, Put your users in the spotlight: With little exceptions, especially in big business, users create better content then you ever will. A tutorial that they create, a photo that they take of themselves using your products, vlogs, etc. are ten times more valuable than anything you will create. Why, you ask? Because they cared enough about you to do it. While they may not always be accurate (especially in technical cases), they are gold. Freekin’ gold. Stop using a push-focused “brand-cuffed” mentality and share user generated content at least three times more than you share your own.

In the social media age, you don’t control the message anymore. The message is completely in the hands of the consumer – so put them first and make it a positive one. Make it human, make it authentic.

What are your tips for social media content?


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Jul 07 2011
8 Comments
Education, Social Media, Social Media Measurement, Twitter Chats

Why you should attend a twitter chat

Emergency "Twitter was down so I wrote my...

Image via Wikipedia

Twitter chats have become a new favorite thing of mine. In recent weeks, I have been participating in two different chats, each once weekly.

For Personal Use

The first is on social media measurement titled #smmeasure. This was the first Twitter chat I first participated in while I was on vacation back in the beginning of June. It’s hosted by Sheldon Levine of Sysomos – who was one of my ‘25 people you must follow on Twitter‘. I thought I would participate just to see what these chats were all about, as I had seen them pop up in my timeline from time to time. The chat was easy enough to participate in: you follow the hashtag, wait for the questions to be asked, and then answer the questions with #smmeasure included in your tweet somewhere. What I really realized is how this was almost just as valuable as having an in-person focus group. You answer the questions to the best of your ability, and you can engage with others all answering the same question. You share thoughts, opinions, and sometimes disagree – but hey, that’s life. Every week I attend #smmeasure I learn something new, and am able to connect with more like-minded people – not based on their bio or how many followers they have, but based on their insights as well. There is an enormous amount of intellectual capital floating around the Twitterverse, it’s really unbelievable.

The second of these chats is #SMOchat and is hosted by Crowdbooster (which is also a pretty nifty service). There is something about #SMOchat that is different, though. Instead of being hosted ON the Twitter platform itself, it’s hosted through a chatroom-like service called Stanzr. The platform itself is actually quite a simple concept – a chat room. The cool part, though, is that what you type in the chatroom gets posted to twitter with the #SMOchat hashtag attached to your comment. No need to type it at the end of your thought because the platform does it for you. When people reply to your comments, you get a little notification on the side of the page. They also allow you to ‘Like’ other peoples posts to show that you agree, as well as retweet straight from the chat (oldschool style). While the content of the #SMOchat is amazing in itself, I was more impressed with the concept of a Twitter chat. I just like the overall workflow of the platform, and the founder himself moderates or takes part in almost all of the chats – pretty cool, right?

Here’s a peek of what the chat looks like:

& how it shows up in your timeline:

Now, here’s how to use this as a brand:

I think there is a lot of potential here for brands to really connect with their customers. Not only will they gain followers on Twitter, but more importantly – you can have real, meaningful conversations with people around a common theme. Crowdbooster is a social media company – so they chose social media optimization as a topic for their chat, brilliant. More importantly, they are able to show their own intellectual capital. They answer the questions they put out, and constantly give feedback & input on others comments. Brands can provide their fans with more than just product announcements & the occasional @ mention or retweet. They can seriously connect with them – get to know who these people are, what they think about a certain topic.

A major lesson for brands here is to realize that in social media, it doesn’t always have to be about you. There’s no way you can keep your fans engaged with you if you’re constantly promoting yourself – sometimes they like to be recognized, and more importantly heard. It’s great content that you can share on your other social media properties – posting insights, recognizing key contributors to the conversation, and crowd sourcing your questions for next week. It’s a relatively simple way to get closer to your customers and the branded world of social media really needs this.

Have you taken part in a Twitter chat? What did you think about it?

 

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Jun 27 2011
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Social Media Measurement

I have Klout

You know, I learn a lot about people based on their judgement of “hype”. Klout is one of these social media hype tools. People either like to qualify it or disqualify it as they see fit. The fact is, there is no magic number that tell you how influential someone is. This is not a problem with the tools, after all they are just an algorithm – scraping platforms like Twitter & Facebook for the number of times your content is acted upon. In short, Klout is almost like a popularity contest: some people just get it, and others have to try really hard.

I recently read this article explaining why Klout scores are bull – and while he makes some valid points, I disagree with some of his arguments.

His points were that Klout is a number that marketers can use to impress people – and that the Klout score is not a real measure of someones influence. Someone can manipulate their score and have no influence in the “real world“. I do agree with his point that Klout is really only for Twitter (especially since you can’t sync up your score with a page, rather, only with a personal Facebook account). It also is a little bit of an ego/Twitter self-importance thing, no one can argue that.

Now, while this can be true in some instances, there are also reasons why Klout can be extremely valuable. I don’t necessarily think “influence” is the right word, rather – it shows how active you are & how likely you are to generate conversations and put out sharable content.

Let’s go over what is of value here:

  • Network Influence: It is important to build a valuable community of like-minded people on Twitter. I think this is important because you should know who your followers are, and what value they can bring to you (& vice versa). The details are also important here: Unique mentioners & unique retweeters. These numbers show the “sharability” of content & also serves as a measurement of conversation.
  •  True Reach: I find this number extremely important. It lets you know how many of your followers actually remember that they follow you (or, subsequently are robots). The higher this number, the better.
  • Topics: With the introduction of +K (a human influence product), Klout has improved it’s topic influence tool by leaps & bounds. I will admit their algorithm was a bit off previously, because it just grabbed the most used words of the most retweeted tweets (tongue tied, anyone?). By adding an element of having people contribute – they have really improved the accuracy.
  • Klout Style: I think that the matrix they have created for “style” is in most cases very accurate, and valuable. Knowing where you stand in this matrix allows you to adjust the content that you post. For example; I am a “specialist”. Klout describes this as: “You may not be a celebrity, but within your area of expertise your opinion is second to none. Your content is likely focused around a specific topic or industry with a focused, highly-engaged audience”. I like to think this is true as my ‘community’ on Twitter is all focused around Social Media, Marketing, and Tech/mobile and this is the subject of almost everything I post.

While I am categorized as a specialist, key-note speakers/authors/all around cool people such as Scott Stratten (who is influential about unicorns – he uses that word a lot) & Guy Kawasaki  are “curators” – True. Scott has a Klout score of 81 and Guy has a score of 85.

Tech blogs/publishers/superheroes such as Mashable & TechCrunch are qualified as “celebrities”. This makes sense since they publish, but rarely acknowledge the little people. Mashable’s Klout score is an 88 and TechCrunch has a score of 85.

Now notice that the above mentioned “influencers” all have Klout scores that are similar in numbers, but they qualify under different quadrants in the Klout matrix. This is because while they may generate equal numbers of RT’s, @ mentions, etc. they publish very different content & are very different entities on Twitter. This is valuable to observe.

Overall, Klout can be kind of innacurate iffy at times. But any mathematical algorithm tasked at identifying human behaviors will never be 100% correct. And while it can be gamed (RT contests and the like) like any other form of measurement – there is truly some value for individuals and brands alike to pay attention.

Maybe you’re influential in “real-life” – you get free samples in the mail. However, us Twitter influencers, we get Klout perks and have slightly bloated social egos.

:)

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