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08 December 2009

Words vs. Deeds

What matters more: what people say or what they do?

It's not just an adage to live by - I'm thinking about how this applies to managing a social business.

Over the past few years, the brand monitoring market has been steadily growing and maturing, with hundreds of companies adopting solutions like Scout Labs, Nielsen Online, and Radian6. Not surprisingly, the first step in any strategy - social or otherwise - is to "listen first," i.e. research and understand the landscape.

This gets us a sense for what people are saying and necessitates short-term response. In the long-term, these insights supposedly can be used for insights, planning, and setting business direction.

But should companies really be listening to these people who are telling the world their opinions? Status updates are carefully crafted to create a particular image, perhaps with the intent of getting a new job, settling an old score, or selling social media advertising. Is this really unbiased, valuable data?

Maybe companies should also step up their efforts to pay more attention to people's behaviors and predictive models of the outcomes. In some ways, that which isn't said - but rather demonstrated by applying personal resources, whether time, money, energy, or all the above - might be exponentially more valuable than just chatter.

Perhaps the answer isn't either/or, but both. However, solutions for the latter aren't in abundance today as far as I can tell - feel free to leave suggestions I should investigate in the comments below. Jeremiah calls this "The Intention Web" - what do you think? As we enter 2010, I see the potential for a new cliche to come to life: "an action is worth a thousand words."

Posted by Peter Kim at 12:08 AM in Social Business | Permalink

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Words vs. Deeds

What matters more: what people say or what they do?

It's not just an adage to live by - I'm thinking about how this applies to managing a social business.

Over the past few years, the brand monitoring market has been steadily growing and maturing, with hundreds of companies adopting solutions like Scout Labs, Nielsen Online, and Radian6. Not surprisingly, the first step in any strategy - social or otherwise - is to "listen first," i.e. research and understand the landscape.

This gets us a sense for what people are saying and necessitates short-term response. In the long-term, these insights supposedly can be used for insights, planning, and setting business direction.

But should companies really be listening to these people who are telling the world their opinions? Status updates are carefully crafted to create a particular image, perhaps with the intent of getting a new job, settling an old score, or selling social media advertising. Is this really unbiased, valuable data?

Maybe companies should also step up their efforts to pay more attention to people's behaviors and predictive models of the outcomes. In some ways, that which isn't said - but rather demonstrated by applying personal resources, whether time, money, energy, or all the above - might be exponentially more valuable than just chatter.

Perhaps the answer isn't either/or, but both. However, solutions for the latter aren't in abundance today as far as I can tell - feel free to leave suggestions I should investigate in the comments below. Jeremiah calls this "The Intention Web" - what do you think? As we enter 2010, I see the potential for a new cliche to come to life: "an action is worth a thousand words."

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The Biggest Lie In Social Media

Posted on Dec 5, 2009 by Adam in Marketing & Advertising |

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How many times have you heard so-called “social media experts” preach, “don’t focus on the numbers?” That phrase is generally followed up with “social media is all about engagement and relationship building…just add value, the numbers don’t matter.” I have to admit, even I’ve been guilty to saying things similar to the above. I can understand the spirit of the argument. With social we have the opportunity to connect with people on a true 1 to 1 basis. And, while technology (e.g. twitter) facilitates that interaction it’s ultimately humans that need to make the time and effort to make the connection successful and meaningful.

Focusing on adding value and not the numbers is a nice sentiment. But, it’s a lie. Numbers do matter. The number of followers you have matters. Heck, the number of followers matters more than what you say to those followers. Don’t believe me? Ok, let’s look at a combination of the traditional marketing funnel (awareness, trial, purchase, etc.) and the concept of creating a groundswell. Guess what you need in both situations? You need a mass of people. Yeap. 5 people unfortunately is not a groundswell. But, 5 people who have massive reach can generate a groundswell. This is why companies try so hard to get an endorsement from Oprah. Oprah’s reach is so large and her influence so great that her endorsement can change the course of direction for a brand or product. That’s just a fact.

Again, I can understand the spirit of focusing on adding value. If you help 1 person, that 1 person might recommend you to another person, who you help, who recommends you to another, etc., etc., etc. But, think about that for just a second. The goal of adding value to one person is to get the word of mouth recommendation that ultimately does what? Increases the number of people you can reach. In other words, adding value is a precursor to generating a mass number of connections/followers.

Weather we want to believe it or not, investing in social media takes time, money, and resources. Companies and people need to have a means for evaluating their investment in social against other areas of focus. When the bean counters and CMOs are weighing their options, I can guarantee you an argument of “the numbers don’t matter” won’t hold water and will have you laughed out of the room.

Let’s look at this from another angle; specifically conversions. Now, the term conversion can be loose. It can mean an eMail sign up, a sale, a review, or something else entirely. But, the underlying foundation of “conversion” is getting someone to do something you find desirable. Conversions are measurable. When Dell talks about the $3 million in incremental sales they’ve generated from twitter, they’re talking about conversions. They converted X number of people on twitter to purchase Y amount of goods that translated into $3 million in sales. That’s simple math right? Ok, well guess what, companies look at conversion percentages. There are baselines and benchmarks for the percent of people that will convert. When we think about growing the number of conversions there’s really only two ways to do it.

1. Increase your conversion percentage – if you’re talking to the same number of potential converts, but your success ration increases, you win.
2. Increase the number of people who might convert – if the conversion percentage holds true, but the number of potential converts increases, you win.

This isn’t a new concept. It’s been around for years. People and companies spend millions on optimizing the funnel. They want the conversion percentage to increase because it drives the bottom line. But, guess what? It’s easier to grow the top of the funnel that it is to optimize the funnel. Hell, in a lot of instances, it’s even cheaper. So, if it’s easier to grow the top of the funnel then don’t the numbers matter? If you have 100,000 twitter followers isn’t your potential influence to drive a conversion greater than someone who has 10 followers? Of course it is, and that’s why the numbers matter.

Let’s stop lying to ourselves. Let’s stop trying to sound preachy and altruistic. Let’s just be honest. In a world that’s driven by the bottom line, numbers matter…even in the real of social media.

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Blue state vs. Red state eating habits. Exactly what you would think.

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11 November 2009

FourSquare and Social Business Design

Judging from the number of invites I'm getting for FourSquare these days, its slope of new users must be getting more vertical every day. (If you're not familiar with the service, read their overview.) After using FourSquare for a while, I've been thinking about its implications for business - and they're deeper than you might think, extending far beyond happy hours and local advertising opportunities.

At initial consideration, this may seem ridiculous. I'm not going to tell you that FourSquare is the next Twitter - it's not. It's different. But just like so many people were initially dismissive of Twitter, the same can be said for FourSquare. After all, the driving concept behind the application is "a leaderboard for Saturday night." The second time I heard about FourSquare, I was told that it was popular among New York moms and nannies for setting up impromptu playdates. Not exactly the FriendFeed crowd...I signed up immediately.

To understand FourSquare's emergent business value, you've got to think of it as a social business application, the backbone of which is measurement. Even more than other social apps, game mechanics drive the FourSquare experience. Based on the single activity of "checking in," all five elements exist:

1. Collecting badges and mayorships.
2. Earning points throughout the week.
3. Feedback though the leaderboard and a personal stats page.
4. Value exchanges from keeping tabs on your connections.
5. Customization of your profile and check-in messages. Anyone who uses the app knows all this.

When I consider FourSquare through the lens of Social Business Design, the value jumps off the page. The service:

• Relies on content generated by personal profiles and places, which come together in time-sensitive relationships. It also utilizes emerging technologies reaching critical mass. We call this an ecosystem.
• Motivates participants to broadcast their whereabouts with an implicit invitation to meet up. You become part of a relevant community based on geographic check-ins. This is hivemindedness.
• Allows users to send implicit messages about their status - on multiple levels - based on time and location. Others can respond in kind. These are dynamic signals.
• Permits control of messaging to personal preferences. Where and when a person checks in has meaning; some people check in "off the grid"/in private, whereas users can mute pings from others who are found to be irrelevant. This is a metafilter.

Think about these characteristics applied as a white-labeled enterprise application. Twitter : Yammer :: FourSquare : [a new "GrandCentral"?]

• Connects employees of distributed organizations when in geographic proximity.
• Lowers cost of coordination, handled today by many fragmented applications.
• Increases content production. Game mechanics spur participation and encourage collaboration.
• Allows colleagues to vet locations and set alerts for one another.

Applying these ideas in a marketing context address three hot B2C interests: mobile, social, and local. However, I think brands will find that scalability ends quickly. There are much bigger opportunities in the B2B context.

Are you seeing it? Or do you still think FourSquare just a waste of time?

Posted by Peter Kim at 11:11 AM | Permalink

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FourSquare and Social Business Design

Judging from the number of invites I'm getting for FourSquare these days, its slope of new users must be getting more vertical every day. (If you're not familiar with the service, read their overview.) After using FourSquare for a while, I've been thinking about its implications for business - and they're deeper than you might think, extending far beyond happy hours and local advertising opportunities.

At initial consideration, this may seem ridiculous. I'm not going to tell you that FourSquare is the next Twitter - it's not. It's different. But just like so many people were initially dismissive of Twitter, the same can be said for FourSquare. After all, the driving concept behind the application is "a leaderboard for Saturday night." The second time I heard about FourSquare, I was told that it was popular among New York moms and nannies for setting up impromptu playdates. Not exactly the FriendFeed crowd...I signed up immediately.

To understand FourSquare's emergent business value, you've got to think of it as a social business application, the backbone of which is measurement. Even more than other social apps, game mechanics drive the FourSquare experience. Based on the single activity of "checking in," all five elements exist:

1. Collecting badges and mayorships.
2. Earning points throughout the week.
3. Feedback though the leaderboard and a personal stats page.
4. Value exchanges from keeping tabs on your connections.
5. Customization of your profile and check-in messages. Anyone who uses the app knows all this.

When I consider FourSquare through the lens of Social Business Design, the value jumps off the page. The service:

• Relies on content generated by personal profiles and places, which come together in time-sensitive relationships. It also utilizes emerging technologies reaching critical mass. We call this an ecosystem.
• Motivates participants to broadcast their whereabouts with an implicit invitation to meet up. You become part of a relevant community based on geographic check-ins. This is hivemindedness.
• Allows users to send implicit messages about their status - on multiple levels - based on time and location. Others can respond in kind. These are dynamic signals.
• Permits control of messaging to personal preferences. Where and when a person checks in has meaning; some people check in "off the grid"/in private, whereas users can mute pings from others who are found to be irrelevant. This is a metafilter.

Think about these characteristics applied as a white-labeled enterprise application. Twitter : Yammer :: FourSquare : [a new "GrandCentral"?]

• Connects employees of distributed organizations when in geographic proximity.
• Lowers cost of coordination, handled today by many fragmented applications.
• Increases content production. Game mechanics spur participation and encourage collaboration.
• Allows colleagues to vet locations and set alerts for one another.

Applying these ideas in a marketing context address three hot B2C interests: mobile, social, and local. However, I think brands will find that scalability ends quickly. There are much bigger opportunities in the B2B context.

Are you seeing it? Or do you still think FourSquare just a waste of time?

View the entire comment thread.

PRSA09: Social Media Measurement – Katie Paine on Establishing ROI

View commentsComments | Posted by Jolina on Nov 9th, 2009 in Online Marketing, Online PR, PR Conferences, Public Relations, Social Media

The first day of the 2009 PRSA International Conference in San Diego kicked off general sessions today.

One session I’ve really been looking forward to was the one on social media measurement featuring Katie Paine of KDPaine & Partners. She started the audience off with some numbers, that we all might find useful:

• 48% of respondents to a PRWeek study said that they were moving money from advertising to social media – only 18% said they were taking money from PR
• 78% of people trust peer recommendations, 14% trust advertising
• 91% of Inc 500 companies are using social media
• 38% aren’t monitoring their brand, product or reputation in social media

Next, the audience had to grapple with the idea (read truth) that it’s the end of measurement as we know it. Here are ten supporting facts:

1. Procter & Gamble is now paying for engagement, not eyeballs
2. Sodexo cut 300K out of its recruitment budget using Twitter
3. Comcast avoided government regs and improved customer service via Twitter
4. Immunize BC used social media to boost awareness and increase percentage of population immunized
5. BMC Software measures communications effectiveness based on contribution to EPS (earnings per share)
6. HSUS (Humane Society) generated $650,000 in new donations from an on-line photo contest on Flickr
7. Red Cross judges success in terms of property saved and loss averted
8. IMB receives more leads, sales and exposure from a $500 podcast that it does from a $40,000 advertising program
9. Wal-Mart credits Q109 profits to 11 Moms
10. Stanford University calculates ROI from Facebook based on applications and retention

So, if you are measuring success with any of the following, you might be labeled Old School (and need to keep reading).

• AVE (ad value equivalency)
• Eyeballs
• Hits
• Couch Potatoes
• # of Twitter Followers
• # of Facebook Friends/Fans

Paine explains that the above measurement methods are in fact Old School and the incorrect way to measure the effectiveness of any campaign. Eyeballs aren’t a measurement of success anymore because those eyeballs likely avert your advertisement. Hits aren’t an objective of a website, inquiries and conversions are.

The measurement of success isn’t the creation of a Facebook page or even the number of friends/followers the page has. Rather, success is in the engagement with a particular audience and how that engagement has the potential to impact a preset objective.

So why don’t more professionals update the way they approach measurement? Paine says it’s fear. She adresses many fears that this (or any other) audience may have when it comes to social media and defining metrics.
1. Afraid metrics will reveal the program isn’t working.

• If it’s not working, why keep doing it?

2. Afraid of what you will hear.

• If you’re deaf to the conversation, only your enemies will hear it.

3. Afraid I won’t be able to justify my program/existence.

• It’s not about justifying; it’s about improving

4. Afraid I’ll be fired for not showing the right numbers.

• You should be fired for not showing any.

Social Media renders everything you know about measurement obsolete. The definition of timely has changed, the definition of reach has changed, the definition of success had changed.

The answer isn’t in how many you’ve reached, but how those you’ve reached have responded

Once you have reached the audience, take a look at how they engage and make decisions as it may have changed.

OLD:  Awareness > Consideration > Preference > Trial > Purchase
NEW:  Find > Observe > Participate > Engagement > Purchase/Act/Link/WOM

To get started, set goals for Social Media. Examples of goals are:

1. Marketing/leads/sales
2. Mission/safety/civic engagement
3. Relationship/reputation/positioning

To reach those goals, what do you need to measure?  Paine recommends following the 7 Steps to Social Media ROI:

1. Define the ‘R’ – what are expected results
2. Define the ‘I’ – what’s the investment
3. Understand your audiences and what motivates them
4. Define the metrics (what you want to become)
5. Define your benchmarks
6. Obey the Rules
7. Analysis

In what ways are you measuring social media? What have you found to be the most compelling metrics for getting management and/or client buy-in?

           

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Tags:PRSA 2009, Public Relations, Social Media, social-media-measurement

Related Posts You May Enjoy Reading:

• PR Measurement Interview with Katie Delahaye Paine
• PRSA 2008: True Tales of Social Media Measurement & Analytics
• Tweetpoll Results on Social Media Monitoring and Measurement
• SES NY: 3 Approaches to Social Media
• ComcastCares Social Media Interview with Frank Eliason

Loring Barnes

Great summary! Can you please expand on #6 "Obey the Rules." This was great for those of us PRSAers who couldn't get to this year's conference. Now what is the book or website we can give to CLIENTS/EMPLOYERS to educate them about what results look like when they aren't ad equivalencies! Would appreciate suggestions!

Marc Meyer

Standard ROI measurements do not compute when measuring the effectiveness of social media and its impact to an organization. Those days are over. i.e. Red Cross judges success in terms of property saved and loss averted, success is in the engagement with a particular audience and how that engagement has the potential to impact a preset objective....amen.

seodenver

Wicked Cool Stats!
Metrics are all about measuring real results. These statistics outline some new ways to think about what actually are 'real results.'

Thanks very much for sharing all these figures.
MAS

montaznehise

Great article on brands leveraging social media to drive a positive ROI.

Lynn Anne Miller

Yes! What KD is saying here is profound, and she's explained it better than anyone else to-date. (No surprise here). Some further thoughts:

1.Re the engagement metric, minutes spent and return visits on blogs will become increasingly sought after metrics. I never quite understood the old "hits" metrics anyway. Who cares if a huge number of people visit your blog, if they're only spending 10 sec there? You need quality of engagement - over 2 minutes - I believe - before the visits are meaningful. And certainly before anyone has time to click to an ad. How many visitors are spending greater than 15 minutes? 45? Those are the new gold standard metrics. And what about return visitation? Those are your fans / fanatics.

2. I think we're going to see this year even more of a push to separate B2B and B2C rules of engagement for social media. The environment is MUCH more challenging in B2B than B2C.

3.Frankly, I'm surprised Walmart credited their profitability that directly to the Walmart 11 Moms. Lots of questions from some of the Moms and others about how they were treated - everyone made bucks off those women except themselves.

Justin Parks

The ROI issue in social media is still a pretty heated debate with both camps swinging between It can or it cannot be measured effectively. Personally I think its a specific question. What do you want or need to achieve. ROI is not always a sale and can be considered so much more now and via a completely different process.

OLD: Awareness > Consideration > Preference > Trial > Purchase
NEW: Find > Observe > Participate > Engagement > Purchase/Act/Link/WOM

This in particular has got me thinking about a range of different processes.

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09 November 2009

Using Twitter at scale

In three short years, we've witnessed the evolution of Twitter from a way to exchange "inconsequential information between friends" to a business communication tool with a US$1 billion valuation.

As Twitter's user base has grown into the millions, companies have followed their consumers onto the service and started participating in conversations. You're already familiar with companies like Comcast, JetBlue, and Best Buy, among the hundreds of companies with corporate Twitter accounts.

But many of these companies are starting to face the scalability issue; a single person can manage the communication channel to prove the concept, but moving beyond one person/purpose can be difficult. Companies, unlike individuals, need to think through participation strategies for channel migration, which requires process, culture, and technology support.

To that end, Dachis Group is pleased to be a part of CoTweet's Enterprise Innovators Program. We will be working with forward-thinking brands to help capture value from their Twitter activity. These companies have started moving beyond the proof of concept stage and are starting to measure their efforts to better manage outcomes. If you are interested in participating, you can request an invite.

Some of the experience we'll be bringing to the program comes from a project that we completed recently for a well-known B2C brand. The company has been using a combination of personal and corporate Twitter accounts on an ad-hoc basis for customer support, but needed to step back and formulate a strategy for making their efforts work at scale. In our research, we found that most businesses are still using home-grown approaches, which are near if not already at their limits. If your company could use some help with this issue, let me know.

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Posted by Peter Kim at 11:45 AM in Customer Service, Social Business | Permalink

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Using Twitter at scale

In three short years, we've witnessed the evolution of Twitter from a way to exchange "inconsequential information between friends" to a business communication tool with a US$1 billion valuation.

As Twitter's user base has grown into the millions, companies have followed their consumers onto the service and started participating in conversations. You're already familiar with companies like Comcast, JetBlue, and Best Buy, among the hundreds of companies with corporate Twitter accounts.

But many of these companies are starting to face the scalability issue; a single person can manage the communication channel to prove the concept, but moving beyond one person/purpose can be difficult. Companies, unlike individuals, need to think through participation strategies for channel migration, which requires process, culture, and technology support.

To that end, Dachis Group is pleased to be a part of CoTweet's Enterprise Innovators Program. We will be working with forward-thinking brands to help capture value from their Twitter activity. These companies have started moving beyond the proof of concept stage and are starting to measure their efforts to better manage outcomes. If you are interested in participating, you can request an invite.

Some of the experience we'll be bringing to the program comes from a project that we completed recently for a well-known B2C brand. The company has been using a combination of personal and corporate Twitter accounts on an ad-hoc basis for customer support, but needed to step back and formulate a strategy for making their efforts work at scale. In our research, we found that most businesses are still using home-grown approaches, which are near if not already at their limits. If your company could use some help with this issue, let me know.

View the entire comment thread.