I read two things today that affected me and are figuring in to my predictions for 2009 (but I haven’t published the Web Analytics / Social Media predictions yet) - first, a post on Online Presence Affects Company Valueby Sally Falkow over at Social Media Today that might be used as a back door to justifying Social Media in corporations, especially in 2009:
“…one key finding is that more than half (59 percent) of Americans believe they can judge a company’s values by its online presence (versus 45 percent in the U.K.)”
If ~60% of Americans think they can judge what a company is all about by looking at it’s online presense - why aren’t they investing more into enhancing their online presence? I don’t think the answer has hit, yet. I bet it will, more and more, in 2009.
To me, part of “online presence” is finding out what people are saying about your Brand and answering - within 24 hours if possible - having a dialog with anyone and everyone; that series of conversations, unfortunately, isn’t happening enough. That’s the 60% - that’s what can be influenced … but it’s time consuming - still, it’s worth it - because, as mentioned in BrandWeek - the study by MS&L, conducted in partnership with GfK Roper, examined some of the corporate values consumers today find most important and the effects of such perceptions on maintaining long-term business.
But, while collecting the “Buzz” to respond to (you can get it for free by using a Freenimum account in SM2 Techrigy the time to respond and build brand is not inconsquential. Even more, and I get into this in my iMediaConnection draft - which was just sent out today - on Getting Started with Web Analytics and Social Media - I found there are, at least, 2 problems – right off the bat, and probably a few more I haven’t thought of or mentioned:
1) Responding to Internet Buzz in 24 hours is often not possible when you add successive layers of Legal/HR/PR/Marketing/Communications Personnel that often want to vet each response.
2) Data needed to answer questions might not be in the possession of Legal/HR/PR/Marketing or Communications personnel – so even if they wanted to respond quickly, often they can’t.
As a result - building realistic online presence might need some kind of restructuring from Corporate, to happen, at all.
The second thing I read today, at Micro Persuasion was Living without Email - One Man’s Story. Are you Next? where Steve Rubel noted about Luis Suarez from IBM.:
“….By pushing more of his communication into social networks and wikis - both internal and external and relying more on IM. Luis is an inspiration. So do you think this is part of a broader trend? Is your email down this year? I think mine is down slightly and I am wondering if we’re all starting to live like Luis and what the broader ramifications might be for internal communications.”
Let’s personalize here - while my business email has not declined, at all, my personal email HAS, quite a lot. I don’t think many businesses get it yet - but there’s many cases now where asyncronous, real time information is happening via Twitter or Facebook where it could have happened before using email or phone.
Consider then, that much of the “online repuration” and “Brand Values” you need to monitor, start dialogs about, maintain - is happening online, and not in email -but where others can see it (Twitter/Friendfeed/Facebook) and it’s clear that as time goes on, companies need to engage more actively, transparently and in real time - online - where they haven’t, for a large part, wanted to go.
Sometimes, I’m sad just seeing how many missed opportunities are passed up - where someone was reaching out the the Brand for help - and there was no one there to listen, no one that even has a concept to what that means - and we’re not talking about small companies (that are actually more likely to use Social Media) - I’m talking about large, multinational brands.
I will probably meet with Chase McMichael later this month when he visits NYC - but recently he reached out to me via email and Facebook to listen to his Webcast and share ideas about Social Media tracking.
I missed the Webcast earlier this week - here it is - and I just listened to it.
While Chase’s presentation seems more focused on find a way to engage and capitalize on the relationship - it seems to me the presentation more tailored to finding Brand Advocates and starting the conversation than measurement, per se.
However, the nice thing about Finding Passion Points & Creating a Sustainable Social Interaction Model is how their methodology can work for a typical Brand. Often, ideas on how to derive value for Social Media draws a blank (ie: who are the Super Influencers - ha, it used to be Super Affliates, now, it’s Super Influencers).
IN this case, it wasn’t just identifying Super Influencers - it’s also giving them a Viral Widget - and tracked the distribution of that Widget. It appears a Super Influener is based on the idea is someone who has the right demographics for your brand AND a lot of friends - hoping that if you convert that Super Influencer - they’ll distribute it out to their Social Networks.
I’m assuming their platform measures the distribution and Brand Lift that comes from all of this (who shared the widget with whom, number of referrals, media downloads and streams as listed in slide 14) - this is methodology to track depth and breadth.
There are about 20 companies that do Social Media “Seeding” programs - and provide “Turn Key Solutions and the metrics results from a compaign they ran are listed in slide 19.
I think what is presented on Slide 20 is a useful basis to see how far your firm is from the mark of being able to employ and measure Social Media. For example:
Do you know your target customers? Do you know where they’re located, what are their demographics and what do they like to do (affinities)?
Do you know where these customers are in Social Networks - which one’s what are their account names and who actually exerts influence on those people?
Do you have something to give to the influencers you’ve identified and can you track the distribution of it?
Do you want a two way conversation with your audience are you able to empower and enable that conversation as well as learn from it?
I doubt many companies are even able to figure out who the customers are and where they are, much less have a conversaton or track the viral distribution of anything they’re providing influencer - or qualify what that means.
Having said that - What Unbound Technologies provide is a way to help a Brand do this - when they’re clueless on how to go forward and need help with it - personally, I think that’s what most of the companies do - though what Chase McMichael provided seems an easy sell to Brands that are ready to move forward.
Yesterday (or today) I wrote about Spending time with Social Media on Thanksgiving - Does Social Media act as a “co-enzyme” or precursor to action? and I’ve been noticing that I really need to interact more with comments, feeds, etc - and I did, especially yesterday and today.
But then I came across an excellent post by Kevin Hillstrom on his MindThatData blog titled Measuring Paid Search, E-Mail, And Social Media Influence Via Matchbacks Kevin makes an excellent and very true point that….
” ….we don’t attribute orders to the emerging channels — we simply don’t have business rules to do this, so we attribute orders to the most established channels. But if we focus on influenced sales, we notice that channels like e-mail and paid search and social media play a bigger role, helping cause an order to happen.”
Got it - that’s one of the problems we have to overcome - we simply don’t have the Business Rules set up for MatchBack Attribution where Online Activity, perhaps, precursors (or Co-Enzyme’s according to me) are given credit - because the Business Rules aren’t yet developed to measure those things and assign a value to it.
If you follow the examples in Kevin’s post - and use attribution that he applies in this example - what we get is this:
Each quarter, we produce a table that illustrates, for each channel, direct attributed sales, and influenced sales.
Influenced sales make a huge difference in viewing a “mutlichannel strategy”. In the illustration above, e-mail, paid search and social media are key influencers. They do not get direct ROI attribution, but are clearly used by the customer as part of the purchase process. From a strategic standpoint, these channels should receive strategic attention. Or maybe catalog marketing should not receive direct credit for all orders!
|
Direct Sales |
Influenced Sales |
Index |
| Catalog Marketing |
$10,000,000 |
$1,200,000 |
0.12 |
| E-Mail Marketing |
$1,000,000 |
$4,000,000 |
4.00 |
| Paid Search |
$2,000,000 |
$4,000,000 |
2.00 |
| Other Online Marketing |
$1,000,000 |
$1,000,000 |
1.00 |
| Social Media |
$100,000 |
$3,000,000 |
30.00 |
| Mobile Marketing |
$100,000 |
$1,000,000 |
10.00 |
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