Comments on: Making a Case for Social Media – are we doing a poor job of Marketing Social Media?

By: Noise and Metrics | VibeMetrix Blog

Noise and Metrics | VibeMetrix Blog — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:33:09 +0000

[...] example, Marshall of WebMetricsGuru writes: Unless you can tell people how that campaign really impacted sales – well … why would you [...]

By: Americans Now Expect Companies to Have Social Media Presence - Scott Clark

Americans Now Expect Companies to Have Social Media Presence - Scott Clark — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:04:10 +0000

[...] often shunted to the I.T. department along with the company website. I admit, I’m still looking for the right approach to the conversation about the huge potential it offers while noting the risk of ignoring [...]

By: Chel

Chel — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:24:47 +0000

I’ve found that different numbers matter to different companies seeking to learn more about social media. Some want to monitor the social media space to find out what’s going on because it’s shiny and new. There’s value in listening to what people are saying about you and responding in a thoughtful way. Often we here, “But wait, there’s no numbers to show me this works!” No there aren’t a lot of numbers yet, but you can ask Comcast or Zappos about the value that social media and blog monitoring has brought to them. Listening does matter.

By: Steve Dodd

Steve Dodd — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:34:49 +0000

You both have raised the million (or billion) $ question. How to justify investment. I totally agree that tools must be tied to tangible results. At the same time, listening is not enough. Deep analysis of context and meaning provides much more “usable” value when results are known. When both are connected, companies can then truly gain value by knowing a lot more about who reacts to what and why so that this information can be leveraged.

Have a look at http://www.sysomos.com and let’s talk more. We are well underway to delivering exactly what you are describing.

By: Connie Bensen

Connie Bensen — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 04:12:58 +0000

You raise some very interesting points (and many of them too!). I won’t ponder the politics.

Some questions occur to me:
What is the value of a brand? Can it be measured?
But how does an organization feel about a positive brand presence & word of mouth? or a negative brand presence?

If one has a negative brand presence in the public’s perception is it better to not know about it? (ie: ignorance is bliss? sorry, couldn’t resist! )

Moving on – what is the value of building brand using a brand monitoring tool? Granted it’s hard to measure the ROI, but is it something an entity wants/needs?

We also have the question of the ROI of a community. Companies are investing (a lot). That’s not a ‘campaign’. And I bring up community because I think a community manager is the person that should be responsible for using the brand monitoring tool, interpreting the results & responding. At present PR & marketing agencies are using it for their clients, but I think we’ll shift to having comm mgrs doing so.
another question – should it be humans interpreting sentiment about the brand? Or can the attribution be executed well enough?

I’m really hesitant to use the word ‘campaign’ for brand building also. Like community building it’s a long term effort. I think that marketing will be getting away from ‘campaigns’ too as they incorporate communtiies.

Finally, I think that at the moment these tools are excellent for brand reparation efforts. I’ve used Google alerts since 2006 & realize how valuable they can be for building brand. My thought is that it’s going to take some time for companies to embrace listening, talking with their customers & building community because as you point out – where’s the ROI? Those things are reliant on human interaction so corporate culture is going to need to change as will the internal architecture of the marketing department in particular. It’s a hard shift moving from campaigns to focusing on the customer in a long term manner.

I don’t think we need to market social media. I think we need to educate on how to use the tools to shift/increase brand awareness & build community. That’s the key step.