How do you report social media success?

Thanks to everyone who shared comments on the last post about measurement. As I mentioned a key learning to increase executive commitment to social media was the need to move beyond reporting just social media metrics. We need to show how our activity is impacting business outcomes that matter to executives.

The chart below is an overview to show the tools we will use, types of activities we perform and ultimately why this all matters to the business.



For the monthly report I show dashboards for each business outcome. On these dashboards I track key metrics, insights and next steps. Some business outcomes like “Increase Brand Awareness” will have their own dashboard as we track awareness within key solution markets.

Example Dashboard “Increase Brand Awareness”


How do you report social media success to executives and how often?

Earn, Aggregate And Re-Use

Marketers are being challenged to leverage existing social networks to effectively reach audiences. The question many ask is, "How do we make the most of word of mouth marketing, especially when it resides on third-party sites in the form of tweets, comments and status updates?" One way is to aggregate this earned media and re-use it in the context of a purchase path.

First, I want to note that earned media is not always positive. Customer sentiment is shaped as a result of experiences with your products and services, and this is an essential part of the evolution of the corporate website. Simply creating a broadcast of product information with nothing but glowing reviews does not build the trust and credibility that is required to succeed in a world where transparency has become expected.

This is important to keep in mind as you begin to aggregate and re-use this media in a new context. A natural tendency would be to filter out negative comments and only display the positive ones. However, social media has created levels of transparency and immediacy that we have not had in the past. Within seconds of a customer experience, they can share it across hundreds of places with thousands of people.

For many brands, this negative feedback is a huge sticking point when considering how and where to integrate customer created content. A common fear is that a sales deal will be lost if a customer reads something other than a glowing review. Let's face it, the reviews are out there and everything can be found via search.

Instead of fearing negative comments, embrace them. Brands have the opportunity to build credibility by interacting with customers on tough issues and helping to solve problems. Establishing trust can begin by creating a blended experience of sponsored communities with what is happening on social networks. Rather than filtering the conversation, the goal is to facilitate conversations with your customers and the market as a whole.

Showing that you care goes a long way, and can even help increase the quantity and quality of earned media. Then, as if earning media is not challenging enough, the task of aggregating it can be just as difficult. Social media has created a proliferation of places where earned media resides. Literally dozens of formats have emerged, ranging from tweets, comments, status updates and reviews.

But there are solutions to help you manage this dispersed content. Emerging standards like Facebook Connect, OpenId and open programming interfaces are making it possible. Also, most companies already have invested in a content management system (CMS) to create and publish corporate content, and these tools usually have the capability to consume content from third party sources via RSS and XML. If you are tagging favorite tweets or bookmarking earned media, hooking this feed to your CMS is a good way to centralize comments while allowing marketers to re-purpose this media across several touch points.

However, simply aggregating and re-purposing earned media is not enough. Brands should go the extra step and become facilitators of conversations. Consider the placement of earned media that support learning or buying so that, when a customer is ready to engage, you have provided the opportunity for them to interact with the people who made these mentions.

There are several places it makes sense to repurpose earned media. If you are wondering where, think of the paths a customer takes on your site. Is a customer looking to learn about the experiences of others, seeking answers on a product they own or simply wanting to become part of a community?

If you have not clearly defined the various scenarios on your site, look at your web analytics application. This data will not only give you insight into click streams, but it will also indicate which pages are less sticky. Placing earned media on these pages can be a good way to keep them engaged.

The end result of this process is that you will have taken the first steps toward turning earned media into a managed asset that you can re-use and re-brand in many contexts. The inclusion of user-generated content into your corporate Web site harnesses the activities taking place all over the Web, creating a much more dynamic site for your visitors. In turn, your corporate Web site will be a more effective tool to help your organization serve its customers and build brand awareness in new markets.

This post was originally submitted as a guest contribution for Mediapost and is republished here.

Spam has never been good

Chris Brogan wrote a post this morning that struck a chord, " Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now". I could not agree more. Spam has never been good, not in a can, not in an email, not in a direct mail and certainly not in twitter.

Perhaps when spammers arrive means that Twitter has reached critical mass. Whatever the case this pollutes the experience. The variety of spammers that come into my stream range from those who can help you makes millions to someone who is lonley.

Twitter is ultimately a communications service provider and should follow suit of the email providers and work to eliminate the spam.

While we are on the topic of Spam, I will also lump all you people who seek to get 2k followers in a minute as part of the spamming problem. Earn your followers.

How much is sentiment analysis “Worth”?

In a recent post I asked the question “How much sentiment analysis is good enough?”.This sparked a great dialog with an insightful question from Adam Cohen “What is sentiment analysis “worth” and do companies gain more value if they tag 100% of mentions versus 80%.

The worth or value question is a really good one. Here are some ideas for thinking about its worth and how sentiment analysis should evolve.

The current model of tagging mentions with some attribute of sentiment is great for gaining insight across a variety of customer segments. Historically this might have been done thru a series of focus groups or surveys. You could potentially realize a cost savings from not have to conduct these as often.

Looking forward these tools need to open up and allow curated brand mentions to be pushed out into new context. Creating a two way pipe would give brands the opportunity to target mentions thru the entire purchase process.

According to the recent “Fluent” report published by Razorfish, close friends and family have heavy influence at each stage of the buying lifecycle. Brands should take a step beyond simple placement of a brand mention in the purchase path to using the social graph as a filter. This makes recommendations much more influential as they are coming from a trusted source which will increase the likely hood of purchase.

Tagging any less than 100% of brand mentions once the social graph is connected might result in a missing the linkage between a brand mention and an influencer. These missed connections could leave money on the table.

In summary I think today's sentiment analysis can save money by replacing traditional methods of research. The larger opportunity exists when the results from sentiment analysis can be used to influence a consumer’s decision to buy.

How do you place a value on sentiment analysis?

What’s the “I” in social media ROI

This week I was on a great panel hosted by Red Door Interactive. The topic, you guessed it social media. As with most discussion the conversations it started with what tools are being used.

However the most interesting part of the conversation happened when the topic of ROI came up. A person in the audience asked the question “If social media is free then what is the I in the ROI”. My response was that social media is not free. While many of tools are “free” it requires a person(s) to actively monitor and engage. Cost will grow once brands start integrating content from social web with corporate site and building application to engage in social networks.

The “R” or return of social media is dependent upon how it supports your business goals. This will vary brand to brand. What will be similar across brand’s is the “I” or investment. The table below is a snapshot of ways companies will have to invest when building a social media capability or using it to support campaigns.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all the cost associated with social media, rather it is meant to get you thinking about various components that will require investment. As you can see there is no such thing as “free” when it comes to integrating social media.

















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What are some additional areas of investment brands need to make to be successful with social media?

Sentiment analysis, How much is good enough?

There is tremendous value knowing if mentions of your brand are positive or negative and how many there are of each.

The Conversation Impact(TM) measurement model by OgilvyPR uses a sentiment index (% positive - % negative) as a measure of brand preference. However understanding sentiment is not just a matter of selecting a listening platform.

The social media monitoring tools I've used fall into 2 camps for sentiment analysis. Manual sentiment analysis, where you view each mention and apply the appropriate sentiment tag. This is the approach that Radian6 currently uses. Automated sentiment analysis, which uses a semantic processing engine to assign some level of sentiment based on key words. TechrigySM2 automates sentiment analysis.

Each approach has their pro’s and cons. The argument against automated sentiment analysis is the lack of accuracy while manually tagging ensures 100% accuracy but it subjective and requires a significant amount of time.

At the moment both approaches require a person(s) to review each mention and either tag or verify the automated tags for accuracy. I can tell you from my own experience manual tagging can take a significant amount of time to initially setup and then requires ongoing tuning to keep reports up to date. The time it takes to manually classify or refine automated tags should be factored in to understand the total cost for a corporate listening program.

To get an idea of the time required for sentiment analysis. Assuming each mention is reviewed and you have 5k mentions over a 30 day period. If it takes you an average of 30 seconds per record then you will need to factor in about 42 hours to tag each mention.

Given where technology is today and the lack of resources companies have to assign full time people as curators of brand sentiment. Is there a certain number of mentions that can be tagged to be statistically sound representation of brand sentiment? Or is there value in weeding thru and tagging every mention?

Social media is A tactic, not THE tactic.

As with anything new, much of conversation about social media has been focused on "how do I use it" more than "why do I need it". Brands have been flocking to social media in an effort to figure out how they can engage with and influence customers.

There is always a learning curve with new techniques but has this curve made us loose focus on what worked? And, if you did not execute and measure "traditional" marketing well then why would social media be different. It is not the proverbial silver bullet.

A recent Forrester report said that CMO’s were Cutting Ad Budgets: 67% Reduce Traditional while Increasing Social Media Spend by 47%. Does this imply that everything we have been doing up to this point has not worked?

What about simply doing some of the basics better.

Better targeting of offers based on behavior. The last three years as a season pass holder to a certain resort company I have received emails that are completely irrelevant to any of my patterns. It gets worse when you actually log in to the site, there nothing relevant.The lack of targeting creates a missed opportunity to drive incremental revenue from an existing customer.

Answering questions in a timely manner. A broadcast mentality can easily carry over to social media outlets. Another business I get useless emails from takes the same approach with Twitter. They tweeted a new product that "Just Arrived". Just so happens I had the previous model and needed some spare part for it. I replied to their tweet over a week ago and still nothing. There is nothing new about customer service. If you set up an account on Twitter be prepared to reply to customers questions.

Another interesting stat from this research was of those who responded, 51% said marketing has a key role in enhancing revenue while 41% agreed that marketing’s efforts are being watched at all levels of the company. This implies marketing spend must show measurable results. The irony is many organizations are still figuring out exactly how does social media impact revenue.

Does this mean CMO's feel more confident social media's ability to impact the top and bottom line or simply jumping on the bandwagon.

One positive sign is that we are finally getting around to asking the harder questions besides how do I use twitter or should I have a blog. The emphasis is now about how these places and tools can deliver measurable results. Brands are looking to do more than just experiment; they want results from their efforts.

It is great to see an increased investment in Social media, I do believe that when done well it can drive positive business outcomes. But it is only part of the overall marketing mix and before you ditch "traditional" tactics take a look at how well you are executing.

Provide context when aggregating conversations

There was a great discussion on how brands should effectively aggregate conversations from the social web and placing it on a corporate website. The recent launch of Crispin Porter’s Beta.cpggroup.com is a good example of purely aggregating conversations around a topic.

Aggregating conversations or mentions is a great first step towards evolving corporate websites however it can quickly become a stream of irrelevant content. Bryan Person made an excellent point when he said “Aggregating and displaying content that mentions your brand is the first step; giving some context to it and discussing/highlighting that content on the corporate website also needs to happen” I could not agree more.

Crispin Porter has taken a great step to aggregate conversations about their clients brands while demonstrating a new type of experience. However I am not sure how an experience like this help’s to simplify a customer experience to make a decision (Assuming this is a goal). The risk of aggregating without providing context is that is can be overwhelming. People who don't spend their time "in the stream" might not get what is going on and see this as a bunch of useless content. This is where content curation can help.

Curating does not mean only displaying positive mentions, rather as Bryan states curating means to provide better context about the conversation. If you have designed your site around certain key scenarios like checkout, share this or register now you might consider how to place a relevant twitter stream on that page. Planning how and where curated conversations are placed can help increase the usefulness to your customers.

Aggregation does not improve relevance but curating conversations and thinking about placement can.

photo credit:Eric Shiner, the first Milton Fine Curator of Art at The Andy Warhol Museum, stands in front of Warhol's "Skulls" at the museum. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette