Welcome to Social Media Playground, a place to discuss all things related to word of mouth (WOM) and social media marketing. Brought to you by Affinitive, a word of mouth and social media marketing, technology and strategic solutions firm located in New York City and San Francisco.
This week brought with it some exciting news and stories in the area of social media measurement and, since I didn’t write any of them, I thought I would do my part to highlight some favorites. I’m not going to trust myself to say that I’ll do this every week, I probably won’t.
Here are a few recent nuggets of measurement metal you might find helpful or interesting:
1. Radian6’s Practical Social Media Measurement & Analysis – In the March issue of their Community eBook, Radian6 puts together a concise and insightful guide to measuring and analyzing the primary objectives of social marketing including Cost Savings, Leads, Conversions and Sales, and Awareness, Attention and Reach. Each section explains the process and includes example metrics you can use to analyze the performance of your programs and generate clear and visible results.
2. Dag Holmboe’s Social Media ROI App – Dag has posted a series of Social Media ROI explanations on his blog, and his most recent post demos his Social Media ROI Application, which plugs in specific metrics of your program and spits out some interesting insights into its ROI. You can demo the lite version of his app here.
3. Google Analytics on Facebook Pages – This helpful how-to made the rounds late last week, and piqued my interest as I have made it known my disappointment in the current iteration of Facebook Insights. I highly recommend this read and testing out Google Analytics on your Facebook page for further insights into referrals, visitor statistics, and more.
4. Omniture Partners with Facebook – AdWeek announced last week that Omniture will be adding Facebook advertising data to its dashboard, allowing for greater insights and comparisons against campaigns running on other networks like Google. This is great news; however, I tend to agree with KD Paine’s view that data may be incomplete. Some of the most successful ad campaigns on Facebook direct users to a Facebook fan page, or the CTA is not a click-through but to fan the page from the ad itself. Since the action is often not of direct sales, one must measure true success through the relationships developed by way of these conversions such as conversation volume, changes in sentiment, etc. which Omniture will not have. I’m interested to see where this goes.
If you have additional stories regarding social media measurement and analysis please leave them in the comments!
When marketers decide to use any marketing channel, they should always ladder back to the brand's objectives. This is hardly a novel concept and is part of any strategic process, such as the famed Forrester POST methodology, that many use to determine a Social Marketing plan of action.
When it comes to Social Marketing specifically, those objectives can often range from increasing brand site engagement and traffic to Public Relations and everything in between. Just like any other channel, it can be used as a funnel for a variety of types of messaging that is targeted at a varying set of objectives.
Enter an interesting little chart (embedded here).
Like many other marketers, I subscribe to Marketing Sherpa's Chart of the Week. These handy charts often give a snapshot on one element going on in the world of marketing that they've done a broader research initiative surrounding.
I thought this week's was particularly interesting. It measures the objectives, targeted and measured, by marketers within the social sphere. The big "aha" finding in this is that 3/4 of marketers claim that site traffic increase is one of their key objectives for deploying social tactics.
Marketing Sherpa's conclusion is the same one that I would come to - while an increase in time on site, overall site traffic, SEO optimization and other objectives within that zone are great secondary benefits of Social, there is a larger opportunity to leverage social in a scalable way to provide self service tools and information to consumers that can then, in turn, reduce overall brand cost that can be very heavy when dealing with and addressing customer needs.
There are several brands who actively leverage social platforms to reduce these customer support costs including:
JetBlue and Virgin America - who actively tweet and provide information about flight delays, schedule changes, weather alerts, and responses to specific customer inquiries
Best Buy's "Twelpforce" - integrated from Twitter all the way to in-store Point-of-Sale (POS), this massive program helps answer customer questions, provide product information, support, etc in a scalable way
That being said, I find it surprising that more brands aren't providing simple ways to allow their customers to share information offline.
One company that has it figured out is high-end audio manufacturer Bose. I've been a happy owner/early adopter of their QuietComfort noise-canceling headphones for a number of years (on my second pair, in fact, after leaving my last pair in a hotel room safe - Marriott, hope your cleaning staff who "didn't find them" is enjoying them!). When these headphones first came onto the scene, chances are if you were wearing them while on a crowded business flight or vacationing, someone would come up to you and ask about them. Now, seems like everyone is wearing these $300 headphones everywhere I go!
So, what's the ingenious thing that Bose has done? They have simply included informational pass-along cards right in the headphone case. That's right - for probably less than $0.10 in packaging, they've incorporated a offline referral tool right with the product.
When someone asks, regardless of whether or not I feel like talking about the headphones, how they work, etc., I can simply hand them a card which directs them to a website where they can get all of the information they need. (Note to Bose - why not direct these referrals to a special landing page that acknowledges they were referred by a friend, with reviews/testimonials, etc. as well as provide a way to better track the referrals? Drop me a line and we can talk more...)
Bose has made it easy to spread the word. How is your company making it easier for your happy customers to pass you along?
(Oh, and JetBlue and Enterprise, hope each of your cleaning crews are enjoying the two 32GB iPod Touches I also managed to leave behind over the past year... but that's a story for another day!)
To say the developers here at Affinitive (and around the world) are happy to see Microsoft's decade old web browser finally go away is a big understatement. Over the last several years there have been many people advocating for "death to Internet Explorer 6." But in the last couple of months, several things have come around to finally give IE6 the push out the door.
Security has long been an issue for IE6 that Microsoft has continually patched up over the years. The "Operation Aurora" attack on Google and other companies back in January used yet another unknown security hole in IE6, and seemed to lead much of the internet community to say "enough is enough" and expedite efforts to stop supporting the use of the old browser.
It has been long known that Microsoft will stop supporting IE6 in 2014. Not surprisingly, Google and Apple are among the leaders in making people upgrade as soon as possible. Apple's MobileMe has not supported it for a few years. Google Docs will no longer work in IE6 next week on March 1. YouTube will follow on March 13 and Gmail later in the year.
Security issues aside, the main problem is that IE6 is the product of the 90's and Web 1.0 methodologies. This was before there were many established standards for the web and when having features that only worked on your browser was a good idea. Check out the great "Life, Times (and Death?) of Internet Explorer 6" comic strip by Brad Colbow to brush up on your history.
So when new standards were introduced and Web2.0 came around, "hacks" had to be used to get these new great parts of the Web to work on IE6. Creating these hacks is quite costly in terms of developer time and often make the site slower. Web2.0 makes heavy use of javascript to make everything speedy and interactive, but even IE7 (the successor to IE6) is much slower at running javascript than other web browsers. So even though you spent tons of money to create the greatest web site, it's not going to seem so great to all the people that are still using IE6.
[via Facebook with language set to Pirate]
So rather than continue to create these hacks and make people think they don't need to upgrade, the best tactic is to serve up a simple alternate version of your site with a message informing users how to upgrade to somethingbetter for free. Spend your money implementing better new features than wasting your time making everything work in IE6.
Last week, we had our first official ok from a client to not support IE6. It made our day. IE6 is finally going away, you can feel it in the air, and I'm happy to join with thousands of web programmers and designers around the world in a collective "Huzzah!"
Like countless others, I've been glued to my TV for the past few days absorbing all of the Olympics action, from the opening ceremonies to the drama of the women's snowboard cross final. At first it was fun watching the Twitterverse provide funny side commentary via the #Olympics hashtag (even I’m guilty of posting a few tweets during the opening ceremonies, hoping that the Canadian band Rush would perform along with their laser show).
However, the opening ceremonies were the last thing I watched "live." Because I'm at work while many of the events are happening, I've made a habit of recording all Olympics coverage on my DVR, then camping out on my couch for a few hours each evening before bed to catch up on the day's happenings. In addition to skipping commercials, I'll skim through the less-exciting parts of events such as the biathlon (will skip most of the cross-country skiing sections, but will watch the shooting!).
But, for me, watching the Olympics has been somewhat bittersweet. No matter how much effort I make to avoid finding out any results in advance, I somehow keep getting spoilers, mainly because a good part of my workday is spent interacting online. It seems like just as I tune out one information spigot, another one leaks:
Twitter/Facebook: The usual suspects. It goes beyond just monitoring the #olympics hashtag.
News: I frequently access CNN and ESPN during the day to stay on top of the news, but when I see a headline on the homepage that says "Miller takes bronze in downhill," it's a bit of a buzzkill for the evening.
Mobile: Mostly related to international soccer matches we might get on delay here, but I’ve gotten text message spoilers from friends with game scores/congratulations/condolences. I’m a big fan of the official Olympics iPhone app (I've been using the app to check out the schedules), but the other day came across the real-time results of the men’s snowboard cross (another buzzkill).
It's forced me to take a self-imposed "Social Media Blackout" during the day (i.e., I'll only check in during the morning when I know there are no events in progress, or, only push out messages from my phone so I can avoid seeing any conversation).
There are several ways that a person will encounter programming in a time-shifted manner:
Consumer Time Shifting: People elect to manually record programming (DVR, VCR) to watch at a later time, at their convenience.
Network Tape Delay: TV network determines that certain content will air at a later time, e.g., moving the men's downhill finals to prime time.
Location: People in later time zones are forced to watch network time-shifted programming so it falls in prime time (e.g., can't air "Lost" at 5 p.m. PST).
While problem #1 is self-imposed by a person, they have no control over problems #2 or #3 (that's the fault of the TV networks).
Therein lies the paradox. We live in a time-shifted world, yet we are getting our information in an increasingly real-time manner.
The repercussions go well beyond the Olympics, as this essentially impacts *all* entertainment we watch on TV (awards shows, "Lost," sport events, etc.). In an effort to avoid spoilers, people will be forced to take self-imposed social media blackouts until they have watched their time-shifted entertainment. And for sports in particular, there will be repercussions to the networks, since the fact is, consumers will be less likely to tune in to something if they already know the result.
So, how can we prepare/deal with this problem? "Time delay" filters on Twitter and Facebook that will stagger tweets/posts from your east coast friends by three hours? "Hide results" options on sports news sites?
If you had asked me in 2005 what I'd be doing for a living in 2010, the answer would have never been social media strategy. The Internet, then, for me was a tool to gather information, not a tool by which I would interact with my friends, receive news and get through my day with. Five years later I can’t imagine how I would get my news, chat with friends and make new friends without Twitter and Facebook (both online and on my phone).
“Hello, My Name is Erica and I Am a Twitter and Facebook Junkie”
The key I have found for really understanding Twitter or Facebook (when to use it, how to use it and why to use it) as marketer is simple: You MUST be a fan and consumer of the medium.
In the hilarious article "Are You a ‘Twitter Quitter’" by Michelle Godall, she points out that "the fact remains that personal experimentation of social media is a key prerequisite to helping businesses understand, embrace and use social media effectively."
The best social media marketers are those that are able to understand it's workhorses, Twitter and Facebook, from more than a strategic research based perspective. To join in a conversation with your clients, brands and consumers you need to really understand the ways in which people interact in the social networking landscape from a practical standpoint. The nature Twitter and Facebook is dynamic and constantly changing; if you haven’t logged in to your Twitter or Facebook account in the past 60 days, you have missed out on how the changes you are simply reading about are affecting the very audience you are attempting to engage.
I have a few ideas for those marketers who want to be better about being advocates as well as consumers of Twitter and Facebook:
1. Why are you here?
Define why you are on Twitter/Facebook. What is it you want to accomplish? Are you looking for new friends or customers? Are you looking for a way to interact with current fans? Are you attempting to brand yourself? Once you define a clear reason for being in social media, it can better direct how you use it to accomplish your goals.
2. Be authentic.
Make sure you are who you say you are and what you represent. If you chose to use an alias make sure that the accurately represents who you ACTUALLY are and the goals you have already defined for yourself within the social media context.
3. Be timely.
Update and engage frequently. This means checking in to your accounts daily, and sometimes multiple times a day. Update your Twitter status frequently with information that is relevant to who you have defined yourself to be and the reasons why you are in the space. Remember, "you have to be in it to win it." If you aren't logging in to your social media accounts 3+ times a week you can't call yourself an expert, your are merely a passive user.
4. Join the conversation in a relevant way.
Interact with other users in a relevant way. Offer some unique perspective, don’t just rehash (or in the case of twitter re-tweet) news without some perspective attached to it. Share intellectually stimulating content. A good barometer of this is to share and interact on things which ignite a passion in you; this includes things that you’d discuss with your friends at the end of the day. The conversations you chose to join should be timely, authentic and true to the reasons for your existence in the space.
Still not sure what types of things will engage your audience? Take a look at the science behind the New York Times most e-mailed posts here.
5. Give back and give “props.”
Stop with the pitches and begging people to re-tweet your content. Social media is about getting things from people, but much more about what you give.
Are you a retailer? Give away discounts or coupons. Are you trying to develop your personal brand? Give away advice, inspiration or perspective on your industry. No one wants to follow someone or engage with a brand that is about one-way communication. If you are getting something out of the social media space, remember to give back as well. Give people something that will uplift, enlighten, cause them to think, or stimulate conversation.
Another way of giving back is to give “props.” Acknowledge those fans and experts that inspire you or have something relevant to say. If a piece of news or content comes your way make sure to give credit to the person or persons that inspired you.
Of course, there are many other ways to effectively engage the Twitter and Facebook landscape; these are simply a few ideas to initially get the savvy marketer on the bandwagon as not only an expert, but a fan. Join me in my addiction, become a fan, not just a spectator.
This week brought with it some exciting news and stories in the area of social media measurement and, since I didn’t write any of them, I thought I would do my part to highlight some favorites. I’m not going to trust myself to say that I’ll do this every week, I probably won’t.
One company that has it figured out is high-end audio manufacturer 
To say the developers here at Affinitive (and around the world) are happy to see Microsoft's decade old web browser finally go away is a big understatement. Over the last several years there have been many people advocating for "
However, the opening ceremonies were the last thing I watched "live." Because I'm at work while many of the events are happening, I've made a habit of recording all Olympics coverage on my DVR, then camping out on my couch for a few hours each evening before bed to catch up on the day's happenings. In addition to skipping commercials, I'll skim through the less-exciting parts of events such as the biathlon (will skip most of the cross-country skiing sections, but will watch the shooting!).
If you had asked me in 2005 what I'd be doing for a living in 2010, the answer would have never been social media strategy. The Internet, then, for me was a tool to gather information, not a tool by which I would interact with my friends, receive news and get through my day with. Five years later I can’t imagine how I would get my news, chat with friends and make new friends without Twitter and Facebook (both online and on my phone).
