Just picked up Social Media ROI by Olivier Blanchard which I’m liking, so far (read up through chapter 4); just supporting the community of writers and thought leaders (hoping for the same when my book comes out) and was curious, anyway, with what Oliver had to say about SM-ROI. I need to read the rest of the book but here are some thoughts I have so far. Olivier Blanchard has as way of organizing information that makes it easy to work with.
In his own way, Olivier frames Social Media Objectives, targets, KPI’s, performance indicators and other data, that is, ideally, what an Analyst ought to have right off the bat, but almost never does (page 33). I tried to put some of that in my book (or get it out the minds of those I knew had the information).
Case in point, there are several reports and decks I’ve worked on, most inherited, but sometimes started as well, where a client or stakeholder askes for a Social Media Analysis (brand/situation/competitors, etc) without supplying any of the objectives, targets, KPI’s or performance indicators. This happens so often that it’s almost comical. But keeping in line with what Blanchard is saying – I can’t imagine how an analysis of anyone’s situation could be done that well without the analyst knowing which they are almost NEVER given (weather by oversight or deliberately). No wonder most of the Social Media Reports I’ve seen (and at times had to maintain) are lacking.
And then, if we add the lack of two levels of segmentation needed for actionable reporting that Gary Angel talks about, it’s a wonder there’s anything actionable in anyone’s reports. But I digress. On Page 37 Olivier talks about measuring performance, which plays into the ROI subject; I like where the book is going but I also know the platforms really don’t support, out of the box, the kind of analysis needed to show Social Media ROI and he even says as much, that some of the data you need you’ll have to go out and ask for and try to sync it up with what you can collect. Looking forward to reading the rest of the book when I get a chance.
In the meantime, I’m also finding SearchMetrics is an very useful platform, especially if your analyzing SEO (which is what it is mainly designed for); I’m looking at the platform now and will be writing a review of it shortly. Also looking at Spiral16 and MutualMind and I’ll write reviews of both shortly. Like my review of Olivier’s book, I feel it unfair to write a long post on a book or platform I haven’t really lived with for a bit and I’m always regretful of writing off platforms too quickly, without really applying them to a real task that needs to be solved (and maybe several tasks) so I can visualize what the platforms do best. Finally, I’ve noticed mPACT has added several new features that are very useful and I’ll be writing about them shortly as well.
As far as what I’m reading about, the Web Journal part of this post, Sysomos has put out a very detailed post about their text analytics capabilities titled Sysomos Text Analytics Roundup: Making Sense of Data – definately worth a read.
A lot of people think Google is the ultimate abitrator of influence (at least, a few years ago more people actually thought about that and back in 2006 and 2007 several, including me, wrote about if “Google is God”) but now we know that Google often gets it wrong, especially with the future. See for yourself.
Well … it’s not like the Recorded Future (which I have written about a few times before – and Google actually owns a stake in Recorded Future – ha).
Also, new updates to Dropbox have vastly improved it and lots of people are wondering why Cisco had to kill The Flip, including me. On one hand, people are so worried about productivity and not whasting money, then Cisco goes out and kills a winner like the Flip (yes, I admit, my iPhone is a better video camera than the Flip … but I digress, again). And then, there’s Voxy, which TechCrunch wrote about a few days ago; Voxy uses your location to help you learn a new language.
The app uses the SimpleGeo platform to bring users context-based lessons for about 150 points of interest including barbershops, dentist’s offices, banks, grocery stores and more. Each lesson is built so a user can complete it in three minutes, so as not to detract from the actual experience of being in a restaurant or grocery store.
Intersating. Well that’s enough for now – still rubbing my eyes on being invited to go to the Royal Society in London next month for the Web Science Trust; I’d like the rest of my life to be like this. Getting there, yep, getting there, just wish it went a little faster.
