360DigitalInfluence

image by John Moore a.k.a. @BrandAutopsy

On a panel last week for a WOMMA event at Chicago’s Social Media Week, I had the pleasure of sitting with Keller Fay’s Ed Keller, Brains on Fire’s Robbin Phillips, and Social Media Today’s Robin Carey to discuss social media measurement under the heading of “Is WOM worth it?”.  In the context of that discussion, I talked about the siren song of social media counting (vs. measurement) and the trap that we too-frequently see: social media “cases” that end by rattling off 20 different social media metrics that do not track to a meaningful business metric.  To illustrate, I mentioned that no CEO is not banging the table looking for more tweets (which BrandAutopsy riffed into the above), he’s looking for shareholder value - sales, market share, preference, purchase intent and a legion of other measures that can not be ripped off the back of Facebook insights.

So, with that in mind and the voices of my esteemed co-presenters in my head, I put together a list of 4 potential measurement pitfalls that can kill your social media measurement program before the horses have left the stable:

1) Setting the wrong objectives.  This sounds silly, but often an activity or “client brief” will be mis-translated as an objective.  For example, “run a high-impact event” is an activity, but “increase consideration and share of voice among X audience” attending that event is an objective.  TEST: Can it be measured?  If the answer is no, it isn’t an objective.

2) Determine the meaningful (vs. diagnostic) KPIs before you begin:  Chances are, meaningful KPI’s will require measurement techniques beyond simple, spoon-fed social media metrics like likes and shares.  Take a walk through our Conversation Impact(TM) white paper to determine how to craft meaningful Reach, Preference, or Action KPIs.

3) Find where your audience is interacting on a relevant topic: Yes, Facebook has 800 million people and likely some of them are in your desired “audience” but they may not be on Facebook to discuss their mother’s prescriptions or whatever topic that you may have value to add.  The important second step to “going where the party” is already happening is not just determining where your audience is, but how they are using social media for different things - where do they share recipes vs. look for snowboot recommendations?  While they could light up for FB, Twitter, Flickr, etc it will be critical to understand the relevance of those platforms to their lives to put together a measurable strategy.

4) Plan to measure: If you put together a measurement plan after you’ve already begun, you have lost your chance at a baseline and being able to know the true impact of your efforts.  Ed Keller admitted that he often gets calls halfway through campaigns at which point, there are limitations on the types of measurements that can be taken.  The baseline is going to be the key to your “winning” metric such as “Increased purchase consideration by 45%”.  That is the type of metric that CEOs do care about and will keep your social media efforts on strategy and in budget in 2012.

I see posts on lots of social media blogs with weekly updates on the most successful Facebook Pages or types of Facebook Pages (example below) and they always include the same metric: number of fans (now called “Connections”). Likely this is because that number is the most public metric to compare but a little digging into the engagement on a Page came tell you a lot about its success.

You would never measure the success of a retailer by how many people entered the store or the success of a services company by how many people visit the website so why do people get to lazy with Facebook? Here are the metrics that really matter in a successful strategy and while fan count is one of them it may not be your most important. continue reading

Last week was chock full of announcements that changed the landscape in the ever-evolving partnership between brands, social networks, and game developers.
A few of the more intriguing story lines were:

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When I first read about a new work-around to add Google Analytics to Facebook Pages I was set to geek out and asked recent FBML experts Mike Mangi and Jay Marrow to help me set it up.  I added it to our 360 DI Facebook Page and let it run for about five days.

Verdict: Nice to have but not need to have. Not worth the trouble for basic Pages but an easy lift to add to a custom Tab for campaign tracking. Details after the jump. continue reading

Please join us at an 8 am - 12 noon “unconference” on Friday, August 21st, in Atlanta - PR Camp Atlanta - organized by Dan Greenfield of Bernaise Source Media.

This event will be a fast-paced interactive learning experience free of panels and Powerpoint.   Learn and exchange ideas about social media relevance to senior executives, new approaches to measurement and effective sharing of knowledge.

We”ll be co-leading a session on measurement.  Here’s the full list of who’s helping guide the sessions:

- James Andrews, Managing Partner, Everywhere
- Melanie Babcock, SVP, Digital Strategy & Services, Manning Selvage & Lee
- Debbie Curtis-Magley, Public Relations Manager, UPS
- Bert Dumars, VP, E-Business & Interactive Marketing, Newell Rubbermaid
- Peter Fasano, Principal/Lead Catalyst, mass+logic
- Carol Flammer, Managing Partner, mRELEVANCE, LLC
- Christopher Jones, Digital Strategist, Ketchum PR
- Irfan Kamal, Vice President, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence
- Katie Mingo, Senior Marketing Associate, Delta Airlines
- Marilynn Mobley, SVP, Strategic Counsel, Edelman PR
- Shirley Powell, SVP, Corporate Communications, Turner Broadcasting System
- Jenny Schmitt, President and Director of Client Strategy, CloudSpark

Register here.

Updated with slight correction from Chris Pan at Facebook.

More from The Word of Mouth Marketing Association University (WOMMA-U, Twitter #WOMMA).

Day 2 kicks off with a panel that is very much top-of-mind for many social media marketers … MySpace vs. Facebook (or both).  Empowered by a healthy dose of morning caffeine I will attempt to live-blog the panel (as such, please pardon my grammar).

The panelists are Heidi Browning, SVP, Insight & Planning, MySpace and Chris Pan, Head of Brand Solutions, Faceboook.  The panel is moderated by David Berkowitz, 360i.

Audiences:

• MySpace: 18-34 is sweet-spot.  125 million worldwide users
• Facebook: 60 million active users in US; 200 million (thanks, Chris Pan of Facebook for the correction) 100 active globally (active = have logged in the past 3 days)

Best practices for working with MySpace and Facebook:

• Know your audience.  Bring your challenge to MySpace and Facebook and they will help you understand your audience’s behavior on the network and how to reach them.
• Brands should strive to be entertaining, engaging or offer some kind of utility.
• Convenience is key.  Users are busy -  make it easy for them to find, consume and share your content.
• Make your profile picture interesting and captivating (see Aflac or Cheetos for good examples).
• Beta mentality … your page doesn’t have to be perfect at launch.  It’s a continuous process, not a one-time event.
• Use their resources:  MySpace created their ad platform to give musicians and small businesses a self-promotion tool.  It’s simple to use, but MySpace also has service representatives to help monitor a brand’s presence on MySpace if the brand doesn’t have the bandwidth.  Facebook also has a sales team that can help brands plus-up their presence with different products and consultation on best practices.
• Yes, marketers should look at social networks as a continuum, but shouldn’t get too caught up in the semantics of campaign vs. conversation.  Use the community tools to create dialogue in between key announcements and product releases.

Measurement

• MySpace looks at the momentum effect …  the value of WOM.  Using a combination of behavioral and survey technology to measure the effect.
• Facebook provides a lot of tools to track engagement - comments on posts, page ratings, etc.

Mistakes marketers make working with Social networks

• Thinking of a your page/presence as something static
• Too consumed with making it perfect right off the bat - be in perpetual beta
• Using canned ads in social networks when these communities offer such rich user targeting data

Other panel notes:

• Vitamin Water distributed 24 million bottles of water with caps that drove to MySpace for access to music and other musical content.  This promotion is being supported by above-the-line tactics.  Music is a big driver of MySpace activity.
• Chris showed Vitamin Water’s presence on Facebook.  The brand used a Kobe vs. Lebron theme, which Chris says was very well received.  Currently 334,000 fans (Facebook estimates that about half those fans would be on Facebook on any given day).
• Chris pointed out that when social data is added to ad content on Facebook (e.g. Your friend Bob likes this video) it’s more well received.
• Chris compared a microsite to a “farm” (a place you visit occasionally); a Facebook page as a “convenience store;” and Facebooks ads as the “delivery service.”
• Jack Bauer has more Facebook fans than “24.” “Gossip Girl” more than the CW.
• Social networks can be used for B2B marketing.  You can target by industry, geography, function, etc.
• Marketers can go here and here to see what other marketers are doing on these networks
• Both MySpace and Facebook will collaborate with brands to maximize their presence.

I’m at the Word of Mouth Marketing Associations WOMM-U event for the next day – and while there promises to be a wealth of content published here and through our team’s various twitter handles (@jbell99, @virginiamiracle, @iansohn, @tanyachadha) I’m going to focus my blog updates on measurement stories generated by the great brands in attendance.
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One of the most useful free tools out there is Google Trends and I’m continually surprised by the innovative ways I see it used by my colleagues. Beyond the obvious function in SEM and SEO campaigns, the half of all internet users who are starting their session with a good Google must be giving use some other useful information. Google showcased this recently with their Flu Trends project and it got me thinking about other ways to bring the line graphs to life. Here are some of my favorite examples (including Quail Man) of interesting Google Trends and I ask you to add your own ideas and provide links in the comments.

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