Moving beyond social media metrics to business outcomes

Recently I noticed my reports are beginning to morph into something an executive can actually sink their teeth into. The first couple of reports to Sr. Management were mostly social media activities, which looked more like how I was spending my time versus what is being contributed to the bottom line.

The aha moment came after sharing a deck created a couple of months ago with Jeremiah Owyang. His comment was that we were not measuring business goals. instead it was all 'social media metrics' which are mostly meaningless.

The two in my mind are not mutually exclusive, it is important to understand what activities attributed to business outcomes. This allows you to optimize your activities and focus only on the things delivering the highest value. But, the point hit home and made me re-think how I measure.

What has changed based on this feedback? Initially we were measuring 5 goals and aligning activities to each. The activities were very much as Jeremiah pointed out, social media oriented and not business goals.

Old measurements.(See slides: External Social Media Metrics)

• Shape perception of company and engage with thought leaders.
• Increase social media relevance of Vignette.
• Increase traffic to vignette.com.
• Contribute to community by sharing insights and serving customers.
• Internally, serve as a social media evangelist and cultural change agent

Moving forward when reporting to Sr. Management the details on the "how" will be left out, most of the activities only make sense to those of us who are in the trenches. I will still continue to track social media metrics but will now focus on these business goals.

• Generating new leads
• Building brand awareness in new markets
• Managing brand perception
• Providing customer service and support

The only conclusion I can arrive at on why early reports were merely social media metrics with loose ties to business goals, was that early on it was not clear how to get from one to the other. In other words, would social media actually do anything for our business.

We have been able to generate leads and build brand awareness in new markets thru social media. These results have allowed us to begin building a business case to expand the organizational commitment to social media.

So my question to you all is:

Do most companies start by measuring social media activity alone(eg. #followers, Retweets etc), then as they mature begin to optimize activities and align with business outcomes (Leads generated, sales made etc)?

How to inspire & engage consumers in down times

According to Hitwise online users are spending less time shopping online. This should be no surprise given the state of the global economy. This does not mean people are not online. In fact internet use continues to grow and online video and social networking are leading the way.

HitWise also reports that online retailers are seeing a significant increase in traffic from social media, in the UK internet traffic to video sites has grown to 40.7% in a year. One example is the BBC Iplayer, they increase traffic by 151% compared to last year.

According to Forrester’s Consumer Technographics® data, 64% of US online consumers watch online video on any subject at least monthly, and they’re not just watching Sandra from Britain who’s Youtube video has been watched over 100million times. Forrester says that consumers use videos to make purchasing decisions, from furniture (PotteryBarn.com) to salons (Citysearch.com) to cars (Cars. com) and even medicine (WebMD.com).

This creates an opportunity for online retailers to deliver content that keeps people engaged and connected, even when they are not in the mindset to purchase. Keeping customers engaged will allow you to be top of mind when spending begins to increase, therefore securing future revenue and creating a stronger affinity towards your brand.

Before doing anything, think about the experience you are trying to create and ask yourself:

• How will we inspire someone to buy?
  
• How can we move them to purchase?
  
• How do we make it easy for them to influence others?
  

Lets think about these questions in the context of a typical customer life cycle. Inspire me> Buy it now > Share my experience.

Inspire: The first step is top make it easy for people to see themselves using your product. If you are a hotel or a travel destination give people a high definition video tour of the resort with links to user generated content such as reviews, photos and videos.

Rich content does not guarantee people will frequently come back. This means you need to develop a content distribution strategy. Some simple ways to encourage repeat traffic are making RSS feeds available or by allowing visitors to create widgets they can place on personal start pages, blogs or social networks.

Buy: “Buy now” is much more than simply placing an item in a cart and letting people buy. The larger questions around “Buy now” focus on top-level metrics, how can I increase average order value, reduce abandonment and drive more traffic. In order to effectively measure how well new tactics are supporting these make sure to establish baselines up front.

After establishing baselines online retailers should begin using tools for experience optimization. Multivariate testing, behavioral targeting and content recommendations are a few of the areas that have emerged for creating a highly targeted and relevant user experience in real time.

Multivariate testing allow's online retailers to test offers, various forms of creative and navigation in order to inspire visitors to complete their transaction. While content recommendations displays personalized content like, others also viewed this product, most popular and top rated. Amazon reportedly said that 35% of their product sales result from their recommendation engine. Behavioral targeting is usually driven by either implicit or explicit actions of a visitor. The goal of each of these tactics is to personalize the site experience and filter out irrelevant content.

Share: There is no question about the level of trust and influence placed in a word of mouth recommendation. While not always possible to orchestrate something becoming viral you can help the word travel farther, faster by connecting interactions on your site with existing social networks.

In order to tap existing social networks, online retailers must give users the ability to share comments about products or a video they uploaded across sites like FaceBook and Twitter. Call this your word of mouth architecture.

Online retailers who do not inspire and engage customers in down times will miss the opportunity to be top of mind when spending begins to increase..

B2B social media, how different is it?

The phrase B2b has always puzzled me; it implies that two businesses or logos are conducting a transaction. When in reality it is people who are making the decision. According to a recent study by Forrester B2B is the "most active groups of people I've ever seen when it comes to social participation -- buyers in the business-to-business sector."

Since social media is about people, does it matter if your company markets products or services to businesses as opposed to consumers directly? Has social media made it easier to connect with buyers in a b2b market?

This was a question I asked on LinkedIn and got a great answer from Michael Leis, “I think the strategy is the same. It must answer the same questions: Is it valuable? Where can I take it with me? Will it strengthen my relationships by sharing? Will it help me gain or solidify status in my peer group?."

I totally agree. The challenge we faced getting our social media efforts going was the lack of case studies for b2b to “prove” it works. Many of the case studies commonly circulated simply did not resonate with executives who were not familiar with this space.

We did was exactly as Michael points out to communicate the benefits. We changed the story from social media tools to business outcomes. Do you think social media for b2b is different?

LinkedIn Group for Social Media Strategist

After digging around LinkedIn for a while I could not find a group dedicated to the social media strategist role in a corporate environment. So I decided to set up a place to connect and share ideas about integrating making social media successful in their organization.

The goal is to create a dialog on the challenges of shifting the traditional organizational mindset and building more social businesses.

It is important to have multiple perspectives when it comes to solving problems in many cases might not have a “best practice”. Which is why this group will be a blend of the brightest people leading social media on behalf of their company, providing strategy services or developing tools that deliver a social experience.

We will follow a similar approach to accepting members as Jeremiah Owyang uses with his people on the move post. We want to make sure "you’re really living and breathing in the social media world –this is not a small aspect of your role."

One caveat, this group is a pitch free zone. Lets not interrupt the conversations with commercial’s.

As with any new community it will only grow with participation. So please contribute articles of interest, start a discussion or invite people you think would add value.

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=1891982&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Don't work flow the voice out of blog post and comments

The beauty of participating in social media is that it does not have to go thru the corporate watering down process. This is why guidelines are set,to encourage employees to share their opinion on a topic without interference from legal, marketing etc.

A mindset that every blog post or comment has to be reviewed as if it were official communications dilute's the voice and tone of the person contributing. This is a cultural shift. People who are used to "controlling" messaging and communications feel uncomfortable setting employees free, but it is the world we live in. Embrace employees who have the courage and desire to contribute on behalf of your company. Don't throw up obstacles, remove them.

In the case of an edgy post where someone's tone is not in support of your brand, but their facts are not 100% correct you may debate whether you want comment and the key counterpoints. This is fine as long you are gathering insight, but not asking for a group writing exercise.

A good friend of mine always says, "When you have to many cooks in the kitchen you end up with stew". Stew in this context translates to corporate jargon that will quickly be sniffed out as such.