I’m in London all of this week doing a series of public and private speaking engagements beginning with Monitoring Social Media 2010 Monday and followed by a private event co-sponsored by Integrasco, a social media monitoring firm and platform headquartered in Oslo, Norway.   Here’s the presentations for both appearances.

For the first presentation I am focusing on the “soft” metrics around Social Media and how it’s going to be hard to plug them into a Return on Investment equation since their value is not set.   That got me thinking on how value for a object or service is often set by an market or trading service.   A razor, bottle of soda, sofa bed, bar of chocolate, these all have some value assigned to them that might fluctuate but is still possible to calculate with precision.

Friend, Re-Tweets, Likes?  What kind of financial numbers can you put against them?  Sure, there are people coming up with some figures, but there is no currency exchange, no market where one could or would want to exchange friends or ReTweets, for example.    It’s not clear to me if such metrics could really be plugged into any ROI equation unless someone assigns some monetary value to these things and be willing to pay for that value.

The other event (I’m actually speaking at a third event on Friday, November 26th at the CIPR for Glide Technologies in London  but don’t have the presentation ready for it yet) involves making the right technological choices.   Look, we are faced too often with decisions made that are disasters but affect our lives.

Perhaps,  I can help illuminate the choices that are made in monitoring out of ignorance of what is “out there”.   Most of all, I’m interested in streamlining work so we can all have a life.

Just found out today Alterian launched a new consolidated marketing and analytics platform dubbed Alterian Alchemy.   I had heard rumors of a new announcement coming from Alterian for a few weeks.  A webinar took place today (I missed it) that explained Alchemy.

• Practical solutions for multi-phase, multi-channel, interactive engagement
• A consistent approach for insight-driven online and offline engagement management
• Integrated analytics, including offline, web, email and social media
• Web and social content coordination optimization
• Distribution to accommodate all communication channels

Interesting.  I will need to see the consolidated platform in action before I can express an opinion on it.  I will say that much of this is, at least, at the presentation level, based on Microsoft Silverlight.   In theory that sounds good, in practice I found it hard to access Alterian/SM2 running on Silverlight on a few of my own computers.

And in another way, what Alterian is doing with Alchemy sounds a lot like SalesForce Chatter.    In any case, I see it as important that marketers want a consolidated solution that lets them listen across each channel (twitter, facebook, email, etc) and then respond via an Alchemy module (and all the modules talk to each other – at least, we should assume they do since Alchemy is a framework).

I’ll have more to share when I talk to Alterian next and get personally briefed.

I need Social Media Analytics Case Studies for the the book I’m writing and I put up a  page up on this blog (link in the upper right) where you can read and contact me if your interested in providing a case study that can go into the Social Media Analytics Book.  Here’s a link to the request form that you can download so that you have a hard copy.

Shortly (in a week or so) the Book Blog will be up but it’s not ready yet.

Don’t want to lose the time so here goes.  

I realize this form is quite long and not that easy to read; I’ve filled out enough forms of this type to appreciate the time and effort that goes into answering these questions and hope we’ll get several who will step up to the plate.   It may just involve rewording an existing case study in other cases, it’s an invitation to take data you already had, and turn it into a case study, using the structure provided.

And  there needs to be precision in what I’m asking for an which also makes it easier to compare case studies to each other and summarize the information.

If it were just a matter of collecting Case Studies, I could scour the internet and ask vendors to give me what they have, but they would be impossible to compare to each other and honestly,  I don’t see the value of repeating photo-ops and marketing-speak when people read my blog because it’s full of content, often content they can’t get anywhere else, along with my own opinion/synthesis on what the information means.   In my opinion that’s the value of this book, the information will be different than what you got or could get somewhere else.

IF 50% OF A BOOK DOESN’T HAVE UNIQUE CONTENT – I’D NOT BUY IT.  MOST OF THE BOOKS I’VE READ ON GOOGLE ANALYTICS, FOR EXAMPLE, ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME BOOK.  SIMILAR WITH SOCIAL MEDIA, ALOT OF THE BOOKS ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME CONTENT, DIFFERENT PRESENTATION.

MINE WILL HAVE AT LEAST THAT, HOPEFULLY MORE LIKE 75% WILL BE TOTALLY UNIQUE, USEFUL INFORMATION.

I need your case studies submitted within the next 30 days (by mid December 2010).

Read the information below and if you have something that will fit into what I’m asking for (in the format that I’m asking for it – meaning all the points and sub-points should be followed as much as possible), go ahead and contact me using the form at the end of this post.

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS: THE BOOK

A work in progress, by Marshall Sponder

Open Invitation for Social Media Analytics Case Studies for review and potentially for inclusion in the book.  To be published by McGraw-Hill in the spring of 2011, this is an open request to the Social Media Analytics and Data Gathering Vendor and Providers Community.

Analysis of Case Studies is useful for testing whether models, theories, or methods of analytical data gathering and interpretation can truly work in the real world. A case study gives the story behind the results by capturing what happened to bring it about, and can be a good opportunity to highlight a campaign’s or a project’s success.  It may also bring attention to challenges that arose, or to difficulties encountered in the course of the process.

The following is an outline of the data we seek, and a suggestion for a forum or template to use in submitting a Case Study.  But please note: additional input or discussion is welcomed, as are other methods of presentation.

1.       A brief synopsis of your company or service; the analytics it offers, a description of the data or end product.

2.       A short introduction to the Case Study: what was the project or campaign, and some detail regarding:

a.       Was a there a specific problem to be addressed or resolved?

b.       What inspired the project or campaign?

c.        Were there drivers for change, or to develop new information or ways to gather, analyze, or present new analytic details, factors or insights?

d.       What was the context for the work/project/campaign covered in this initiative or work product?

e.        What was the methodology used to generate the data or findings?

Include relevant key facts about the organization or the client, with brief details about any others involved, such as strategic partners, syndicated or publicly available data or streaming information

3.       A discussion of the Aims and Objectives of the project or campaign, including:

a.       Purpose: what was the client trying to achieve or learn?

b.       What benefits or end result was the study or clients or project’s objective?

c.        Description of the project long and short-term goals, including services or applications to be provided, measurement of success, and financial or expansion or strategic objectives, etc.

Note: We suggest the following goals and objectives be used if possible in the language of the case study:

• Goals: Awareness, Consideration, Try (trial), Referral (recommend), Advocacy (“Like” or “Share” or “Repurpose”/”Forward”/”extend”).

• Stakeholders: (who the work was done for): Branding, Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Retail, Customer Service, CRM, Communications or Other.

• Social Media or Outreach Channels: Email, Facebook, Twitter, Video, Flickr, LinkedIn, Foursquare (or other Geolocation services, Mobile, Viral Marketing, Word of Mouth, Coupons, Point of Sale systems, Paid Search, Organic Search.

• Industry Segment: (i.e.:  Retail, Banking, Non Profit, Aerospace, Automotive, etc)

• KPI’s used to gauge success (Key Performance Indicators) (can include Web Metrics, Engagement Metrics, Share of Voice, etc).

Note: If possible, reference the same points and sub points contained in this document when composing your case study; this will help us organize the material more effectively.

4.       Details of Approach, to include:

a.       Specification of requirements – what was specified?

b.       Description of planning process.

c.        Overview of project scope, timeline, execution process.

d.       Key Factors of Project Management, i.e., guidance, best practices and framework, project governance, Milepost reviews, communications and stakeholder management.

e.        Measurement or data analysis details, including analytical methodology of the data, method of data acquisition, timetable, cost basis.

f.        Comments or explanation of how and why this approach was adopted or relevant to the information needs of the client or the project itself.

g.        Process development, quality control measures, KPI’s, etc.

5.       Details of Challenges, to include

a.       Problems encountered in the process.

b.       Cultural, semantic, numeric, difficulties with, or adapting to, interoperable or cross-usable data.

c.        Staffing or communications challenges (internal or with client).

d.       How were these handled, and eventually overcome.

e.        What would you do differently, better, or with greater clarity next time around?

6.       Details of Successes and Outcomes, to include:

a.       Specific challenges to the work or project that were overcome.

b.       What were the contributors to these successes, and can they be put to use in future such projects?

c.        What variables arose that were of significance or value to the project?

d.       How did your service or method satisfy the information or data needs of the client or the project?

e.        How did the generated data (or summary of findings) solve a problem or shed light on a client (or project) area of concern or interest?

f.        How will revenue or actionable information result from the analytic data generated by your product or service?

g.        Summarize how the end result improved or enhanced client operations or sales or productivity.

7.       Conclusions, to include:

a.       What was achieved?

b.       Benefits that have been realized as a result of the analytics generated or presented as summary data.

c.        Future potential benefits.

d.       Lessons learned (b y the client, the vendor, or other stakeholders or partners).

e.        Future plans.

We understand that not every study falls into a neat box and Social Media Analytics is an emerging field and that new data streams and methods of analysis are part of this burgeoning arena.  The ecosystem and datasets and stores of information within the realm of Social Media will often follow a new paradigm of acquisition.  User generated data may require stages of review in advance of analysis; grooming of data and fields may also come into play.

Using the above as a guideline for Case Studies, we thank you in advance for participating in this book project, and welcome your comments and insights.  Please take care to note any confidential or proprietary Case Study data or client tactical or strategic or trade secrets that are not to be revealed, made public or to be put in the published content of the book or the book’s associated website.  Please note confidential Case Study content as, “not to be included in published case study”.  Confidentiality and proper codes of business standards and practices will be in effect as we gather information and write the chapters of the book.

Thank you!

Marshall Sponder

Note: You can contact me via twitter at @webmetricsguru   or you can fill out the form on the page in the upper right of the masthead of this blog (submit a case study).