social media measurement « Direct Marketing Observations

Archive for the 'social media measurement' Category

Seriously, What’s “A Like” Worth on Facebook?

A good friend who is the SVP of marketing for a very large Fortune 500 company recently asked me via email the following question(s)

Do you believe in the Klout score? If you were to set a KPI for success in social, would it be FB likes? and if not, what would you recommend? My view on this is that FB likes is not the right metric, but I am not sure what is….

Great Question isn’t it?

Here was my protracted, elongated and expanded version of the original answer…

You’re views on the right metric are dead on. I’m surprised that there are still marketers out there hanging their hat on a metric based on total numbers only, but there are. Lots of marketers have tried to peg the value of a Facebook fan/like in fact I recently read that when a Ticketmaster user posts a specific event they are attending, or may want to attend, to Facebook, it generates $5.30 of direct ticket sales

Another company called Vitrue, figures that bringing a customer on as a fan was worth between 44 cents and $3.60 in increased sales from the engagement that Facebook encourages.

The best KPI in social should be attracted to what you want to achieve. i.e. We’re going to use social to drive sales, for lead gen, for referrals, for bookings, for awareness through brand mentions etc. etc.. I don’t gauge success in social on an arbitrary growth metric of total likes, followers etc.. Initially marketers and myself included a number of years ago, thought that social success was reflected in growth of followers and likes but sadly though, you can’t. But it’s easy to get caught up in that.

Look at a Starbucks, who became early on, the darlings of social media and engagement because of the fact they grew to a million Twitter followers rather quickly. So it was assumed that a) Starbucks had mastered “social media” and b) Their “campaign” was successful because of their explosive growth in followers. But what was that growth based on? In other words, what did Starbucks do to get the million followers? A massive push? Killer engagement? No. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was really because they are the brand, Starbucks. It just happened, but tons of pundits/people and social media consultants were looking at that million follower mark as social nirvana. As if SBucks had just rewritten the books on how to engage- when at the end of the day, they didn’t do anything other than just set up a Twitter account early on. It was just a number.

The question then becomes larger-What are you doing with the million plus followers? I think SBucks does a great job now of engagement but initially they were just as guilty as every other brand back then feeling their way around social. Push style engagement focused on growing fans, followers and likes.
I’m with you though- growing FB likes and patting yourself on the back for growth, doesn’t cut it. Now if marketers can tell us because of those likes we were able to convert them into x amount of bookings or sales, well now we’re getting somewhere. I know, there’s still that whole social branding for awareness thing that in a sense could be tied to the growth of likes, but then let’s measure it appropriately right? Let’s understand that we’re leveraging FB for specific and measurable purposes and work off of that notion.

While Facebook can provide real names of people who “like” a product, it doesn’t provide data to us on what sites are sending traffic to a fan page, how long your visitors are spending there and how they’re moving around inside the pages. No additional analytics services can be installed on Facebook pages thus we’re absolutely at the disposal of Facebook regarding these metrics.

I believe in what Klout is trying to do, maybe just not in the metrics they are using to measure influence. But right now the space is so nascent, what else is there right? A lot of brands are starting to attach themselves to Klout because they want to engage with those “uber” champions in their respective fields identified by Klout’s social metrics algo. Klout is breaking new ground in this space and I anticipate it getting better in identifying people who can move the needle for a brand.

Hope this helps

Marc

Three Plateaus in Social Media

Published June 21, 2011 social media , social media measurement , social media monitoring Leave a Comment
Tags: social media progression, stages of social media

For those of you who are new to the social space, this post does not entirely apply to you, though it perhaps eventually will. So you can keep reading to see what will might happen to you.

Plateau #1

You’ve created half assed personas in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linkedin
You’ve added and perhaps bought followers, fans, likes, subscribers and contacts
You’ve created a blog and have added a few posts
You have pushed out some weak, self serving content on all of them
You had no strategy
You quit because, you see nothing gained and you claim that social media does not work

Plateau #2

You have done everything in Plateau #1 and…
You have added/bought thousands of people to your networks
You push out content on all of your networks but it’s over the top and self serving
You monitor all of your networks…sort of
You have engaged with people somewhat
Your activities have tailed off because it takes too much work and you’re not seeing the results and you’re not convinced that social media works. Pretty soon, it dies a slow death.

Plateau #3

You have identified and created personas in the right networks that fit your needs
You understand that it’s a marathon and not a sprint
You manage and grow all of your networks thoughtfully and effectively
You measure all of your efforts effectively
You create and meet all of your existing KPI’s
You adapt and you create new KPI’s
You create, adjust, and redefine your strategy accordingly
You thrive

As you can see, the 3 plateaus are fairly well defined and quite different. Most of you have done all or parts of each. Those that can get to the third plateau can certainly speak to the other two. Those that have quit after one or two, certainly know why they did. What’s your smell test?

Social Media Conundrum #12: Justin Bieber is popular, but he’s not influential?

Published February 18, 2011 social media , social media influence , social media measurement 4 Comments
Tags: influence, justin bieber, popularity, social media, social media measurement

I can’t believe I’m going to weigh in on this, but I saw a tweet from a notable social media analytics consultant in which the following was stated for the umteenth time.

Popularity does not equal influence…

I immediately thought, “Could Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga sell product”? Isn’t that influence?I then had to go look up a quick definition of influence.

in·flu·ence

ˈɪnfluəns/ [in-floo-uhns] noun, verb, -enced, -enc·ing.

the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others

First I wanted to check something on Twitaholic: The top 15 people being followed on Twitter.

This is a list of the top 15 most “popular” people on Twitter. Let’s look and see who could sell or who does sell product. Let’s pare the list down first.

We have Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Kim Kardashian, Ashton Kutcher, Ellen, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Oprah, 50Cent, Ashley Tisdale and Selena Gomez. 12 Celebrities from the world of entertainment. Immensely popular. But are they influential? Can they produce a compelling action on someone to buy product? Could they change behaviors and opinions? Can they influence people to buy stuff?

Lady Gaga sells video sunglasses for Polaroid, headphones for Beats by Dre, phones for VirginMobile, and a host of items and services via product placement in her videos. All this adds up to roughly $5-$10 million per year.

Rather than quote the whole article from Guy Kawasaki, read about Guy’s experience at a Justin Bieber concert and the machine behind his persona.

Britney has deals with Elizabeth Arden and Candies. Taylor Swift has deals with Sony and CoverGirl. 50 Cent has deals with Reebok, Vitamin Water, Right Guard, PlayStation, and Steiner Sports.

We could easily go through each celebrity on this list and view the products that they sell. They sell the products because they can influence buyer behavior based on their celebrity, based on their popularity. Am I wrong? I know sales are one thing and fame is fleeting, but because of their celebrity and popularity they can influence buyer behavior right now. Right?

How can you possibly say no? Isn’t that influence? What am I missing here? Help me out.

November 10th #Socialmedia topic-Social Media’s Impact on Business and ROI

Published November 9, 2009 social media , social media measurement Leave a Comment
Tags: hashtag social media, jason breed, marc meyer, social media

Social Media’s Impact on Business (and ROI)

Feeling like stirring the pot a bit this week so we thought a discussion on ROI should do it.

ROI certainly can stir the pot.  But, saying that most of everyone’s conversations on this topic are not actually ROI, rather Impact on Business (IOB), takes the act of stirring and turns it into a blender. Ahh, much better!

So let’s start by saying that just because it’s “social” does not mean it should be held up to standards typically defined by financial returns whether in business, government or non-profits. Someone can start a blog or join twitter simply to better understand the tools or to connect with associates they just met at a conference. This becomes truly social and may at some point have an impact on your business whether financially or some other measure but does not need to be tied into sales goals just because an employee wants to post office pictures so other offices can see how they decorated for the holiday party. That’s a beginners first step into social computing but not what we are interested for this discussion.

What we are looking for here is to better define and understand what we sometimes mean when we refer to ROI as a verb instead of referring to ROI as a financial metric. The real definition of Return on Investment (ROI) is: gain from investment minus cost of investment, then divided by cost of investment. Business books are written, classes are taught, and undergrad studies are derived from this very straightforward metric.  When I talk about ROI, I try to dumb it down a bit into either: 1) increase revenues, 2) decrease costs, or 3) increase in shareholder value and that assumes a financial investment of course. So why then, does the term ROI get thrown around so much in the context of social media when no financial gain or costs saved are referenced?

Impact on Business (IOB) is the actual term that should be used when discussing things like: # of followers, brand awareness, mentions, impact, conversations and what ever else you can think of that is not related to a financial calculation. The impact of an employee being nice on twitter is great. The fact that the customer decides to continue service (Retention) as an indirect effect does not make the time that employee spent on Twitter an actual case for ROI. It is however, IOB. Olivier Blanchard actually was the first that I know of to begin this discussion a few months ago here. Companies all over are using social media to have an impact on their business like Kodak measuring Smiles or any company promoting their Facebook fan page.

Many industries discuss IOB like fast food, IT, or big box retailing and it affects every company’s business in some way or another. You can even consider different departments of a company and the impact of HR, Payroll, PR, Sustainability, Operations play in a company. Although often not connected directly to revenue, a company would have a difficult time without those departments. Impact is easier to measure if you don’t have to tie it back somehow to ROI and ROI is much easier to measure if you don’t try to include calculations of impact. To lead our discussion this week is Jacob Morgan, a principal at Chess Media Group, who focuses on Social Media ROI. Jacob is well versed in this type of discussion and brings a lot of expertise to the table. The questions will attempt to progress the discussion from ROI as a catch all phrase to the differences between Impact and ROI for businesses and how to align them. They are:

1. Whether Impact or ROI, what “Investments” could be measured to prove out value in Social Media?

2.   How can you prove value from Impact or ROI to executives to continue or try Social Media?

3. What are some examples of businesses attaining true ROI from Social Media?

Plan on joining in this discussion Tuesday 11/10 at noon EST. To join either follow #sm33 on Twitter or follow our LIVE site.

via hashtagsocialmedia.com

The Depth of Your Social Media Growth

Published October 29, 2009 social media , social media influence , social media measurement 3 Comments
Tags: digital response marketing group, marc meyer, social media, Social Media marketing

If you were to look at the following image, what would you say the expanse of your social media exposure, involvement or engagement would be?

Let’s assume that we all start off as seedlings in social media, and as we learn more, we grow. As the tree grows, so does our comfort level. Eventually we branch out and we all go in different directions, yet we all come from the same seed. We all have the same background and the same foundation.

It should all start with listening, learning, lurking and laboring. Lurking? Yes, lurking. Call it passive participation, but we all have done it. We watch the conversations, wondering where we can insert ourselves into them. If we don’t we lurk, we hover if you will.

Laboring? Even passive participation takes work. It takes effort and you have to put forth effort.

As we progress and grow, we become more comfortable in our need and desire and ability to contribute to the conversations around us. It’s a natural progression. But to make the leap to creating content is a bit more longer and takes a little bit more growth.

On the surface and by the looks of the tree, it almost seems that we all should or could be part of the yellow on this tree. However even those that are most comfortable with social media right now are not part of the yellow.Yet the desired or expected outcome from participation and creation lies in the blue areas of the tree.

Yett if we look at Forrester’s Social Technographics results, surveys show that when it comes to social content 21% of online US consumers are Creators, 37% are Critics (those who react to content created by others), and 69% are Spectators, meaning that the majority of people in Forrester’s survey would find themselves more at the root level of the social media tree.

Look at Jake Mckee’s model. The 90-9-1 Principle where 90% of users are the “audience”, or lurkers. These people tend to read or observe, but don’t actively contribute.

9% of users are “editors”, sometimes modifying content or adding to an existing thread, but rarely create content from scratch. and 1% of users are “creators”, driving large amounts of the social group’s activity and driving a vast percentage of the site’s new content, threads, and activity.

If we look at it from that standpoint then the tree will be inverted, where it’s all about how “rooted” you are and how deep your social media penetration is. The deeper, more involved you are, the more rich the experience is.

So which version of the tree are you? Where do you see yourself? Should the tree be a 100 year oak or a common weed?

Latest tweet

To me summer starts on June 1at and ends on September 30th. Sp guess what? 32 minutes ago
Twitter is great for when your waiting for people in a bar and you don't know a soul. 41 minutes ago
What an odd but good retrospective on Latrell Spreewell from @newyorker newyorker.com/online/blogs/c… 2 hours ago
It's Bubbleboy-Video Analysis of Bubble Wrap Jumps-Does he survive? wired.com/wiredscience/2… 2 hours ago
This is funny but good: Klout Is Evil, But It Can Be Saved newyorker.com/online/blogs/c… #klout #influence 3 hours ago