Ok, I see this post by Dawn Foster at Social Media Today (where some of my posts are also published) asking the question if  More Companies Turning to Social Media in this Economy?

I like questions I can answer, and this one, I can answer - used Comscore Media Metrix because it already categorizes sites and has a Conversational Media Category in the Core Products.  The problem is that I can’t tell the difference between normal growth and accelerated growth due to the Econony using this approach.

Given the problems with the Economy began to unravel in the fall of 2007 and really excelerated this Spring - there doesn’t seem to be any evidence Social Media is being used more, just now, because of The Economy.   Too bad - but hey, that’s what the data shows.

Image via Wikipedia

I was thinking about my own issues about a Board I’m currently on and this post by K.D. Paine on The value of transparency.

Besides K.D. Paine’s story of her friend Nick Ashooh, I’ve read about the Yahoo! Board of Directors care of Carl Icahn, who is on Yahoo!’s Board, and the Board Politics are all too familiar.   Though I haven’t been on but one Board in my entire life - I must say,  is there any instance where a Board, any Board, embraced transparency?  Lip service, yes, transparency, no.

I expressed my own feelings in my post on Difficult days for Social Media a few days ago, which was also picked up by Social Media Today, as I hope this one is, as well.

I know in Business, and life, in general, your expected to be putting your best foot forward - that is the conventional wisdom - on an interview, for example, you present the “best you” even as the interviewer tries to find out what your not saying - kicking the tires, as need be.

In Business, due to all kinds of legal stuff and the need to raise money - the image that’s presented to the world is often not what’s really going on behind the scenes - and, we might not really want to know all the gorey details, anyway.

However, Boards have a more fundamental issue because the fragmentation of responsibilities magnifies inefficiencies and reinforces a need to be nontransparent.  And then, there are even cases of Boards that are renegade, that nay sometimes act against the interests of the organizations they manage, and that certainly seems the to be the case with Yahoo!.  Now that Jerry Yang is stepping down, - see Yang: ‘Time is right’ for new leader on CNET let’s hope their Board get’s it right, ongoing.

In fact, according to the Guardian - Microsoft-Yahoo could be back on cards now that Yang has stepped down.

But getting back to this idea of Transparency, and why Boards don’t seem to be able to be transparent, even when they try to be - it gets even worse when your talking about Non-Profits.

Actually, I’d be interested to know how K.D. Paine measures the “Trust” level of Corporations and the Boards that help run them, as well as the non-profits; here’s what she says about the AIG Board and how they got it wrong:

“…In reality, companies ultimately have no choice but to be more transparent if they have a prayer of restoring the public’s trust in their institutions. It’s not just that AIG was idiotic in trying to cover up its role in the conference, its that in doing so, AIG further compromised whatever trust the public, and its elected officials, may have had in the organization.
I haven’t done a formal measurement of their trust level, but I’m guessing from the comments I’m reading that its dropped even faster than AIG’s stock price. So my question is: When will the C-suite wake up and realize that people will only regain trust in these institutions if they are utterly open and transparent. (I know, only when they fire all the lawyers) But seriously, do the math. The cost in reputation, failed relationships, lower trust, and now, government support, far outweighs whatever perceived cost that transparency may entail.”

I think it takes courage and leadership to be transparent - it may be both are lacking on many Boards; but more often I think Board Directors are trying to do the right thing and they just don’t know how, or can’t - they’re too worried about losing control.

Fast Forward to my last post on YouTube Video Search gradually replacing Textual Search? and add the rapid growth of user generated content, especially video and audio content, on just about any subject, much of it interesting, and we come to the death of privacy - there is no room for opaqueness in life ,or the Board Room - but the Board Room hasn’t realized it yet; because transparency means sharing control, and Boards don’t like sharing control, I’ve observed.

Today, people automatically equate non-transparency with having something to hide.  If you have nothing to hide, then you can afford to be transparent.  In the past, before Social Media, hiding stuff was pretty common, the Government did it, Business did it, people did it - but now …… it’s different - times have changed.

I do think we need to be our own “curators” much as Brands need to be curated - but that’s more a function of moderation, not hiding things.

In fact, the new Branding does involve having Brand Managers act as curators and that has come up many times over the last two years at the conferences I’ve attended since YouTube, Facebook and MySpace have become some commonly used.  I would say the same thing holds true in the Board Room  - instead of trying to hide the dealings, we ought to act more like curators - making sure the information appears in the best context, but not hold back - to the extent that’s possible.

One more factor was brought up by K.D. Paine, who I’ve met several times, and that is Speed - Speed of the transmission of information - it’s so fast that transparancy within 24 hours or less, when a major issue comes up is a necessity - and that’s something almost no Board can handle - they simple can’t respond quickly enough.

Corporate has Public Relations people for that function - but Non-Profits probably don’t respond quick enough, and the Board of a Non-Profit might be clueless for weeks - though usually, there is a silver lining - a Non-Profit probably is not engaged in anything scandalous - but then again. .. you never know.

At any rate, what all this tells me is that we need to think differently about what we do - what is actually required of us might not be the same things we think are required - but that’s for another post.

You know, my friend, Sebastian Wenzel, told me just the other day, how helpful Gary Vaynerchuk has been for him, moving him to make better decisions, and I think Gary has helped me a lot too.   Having met him two weeks ago, he’s exactly, in person, what you see in his videos.

Executing on your DNA - being who you are and backing it up with Content and Results - Networking in whatever way works for you - what Gary says, well ….. it stuff the Heart knows, but the way he says it …. touches just the right note.  Watch Yelling vs. Whispering. Introvert or Extrovert.

Some people just “are” in a state of being “inspiring” - almost doesn’t matter what Gary Vaynerchuk is going to say, maybe he doesn’t even know half the things he’s going to say when he talks, but what comes out of his mouth, the way he conveys it - we get it - the message.

I want to say that I’m going through a difficult decision with a professional organization I’m part of - and it’s tempting to think that if I just were “different” and didn’t make waves, that everthing would be better.

But like Gary Vaynerchuk, who accepts his DNA, I need to accept mine - perhaps my role is to give the some of the organizations I belong to,  some soul searching ….. and what Gary teaches me, is to accept it - don’t try to please what someone else wants you to be - be yourself.

I guess that is what much of what Gary Vaynerchuk says, boils down to.  Yet … just like eating Chicken or drinking Wine, is more or less the same thing - there’s thousands of recipes for roasted Chicken and thousands and thousands of brands of Wine (gee.. Gary knows all about the Wine part).

Anyway, Being You is all about Content and Results.

I’ve been hearing about the Social Media Storm Spreads as Motrin Ad Angers Moms, that Social Media Campaigns for well established Brands, like Motrin, should always  be run by someone who knows the Brand very well AND knows  how  Social Media functions, well - and, evidently, that didn’t happen, as referenced by B.L. Ochman.

This Motrin ad about moms who wear their babies in a variety of slings has set off a fire-storm on Twitter, where #motrinmoms quickly became the topic of thousands of angry tweets, and in blogs from mothers and lots of others, like me, who find the ad condescending. A Facebook group of moms who find the ad offensive quickly followed.

Clearly, nobody at Motrin, or its agency, was paying attention today, Sunday. And by Monday, you can bet that you’ll hear about this on the evening news and in dead tree media. Sure, Motrin will respond, or take the ad down, withdraw it from its rotation, etc. But the damage to the brand, among the very large and vocal niche they were targeting, is done.

Lesson to Motrin: any company that wants to participate in social media and use the tools better know how to walk the walk.

Sounds like the Social Media Ad that got lots of Mom’s in pain protest was just another Ad Agency “manufactured” Social Media plug, that didn’t work - people see right though that kind of stuff now.

“…I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: an ad agency the last place a company should go when it wants to use the tools of social media. Before you venture into social media, hire creative talent that has already created successful social media marketing campaigns for major brands. Everyone and her dog says they’re a social media guru. That’s just not true. Don’t believe the hype. Look at the track record instead.”

But this goes back to another idea that I wrote about today, but in an entirely different context, at The Analytics Guru - about Detroit’s Dilemma and lack of support from Republicans due to their relience on, what I called, the Reptilian Brain - I wrote about the Reptilan Brain a while back in Power of Pervasive Subliminal Advertising.

Why does Social Media require transparency?  Think…..   In order to process peer to peer community information, genuine feelings, there require more complex brain functions that can’t be faked - where as primitive, two dimensional thinking can be faked and gamed -and often has been.

Just going and hiring an Ad Agency to do your Social Media for your is a mistake - they’re just hired contractors, doesn’t matter if they’re experienced by virture of creating other campaigns - they aren’t you - they can’t be genuine because the agency is just a hired contractor - perhaps a partner, but still, not you.

In order to be genuine, and to be worthy of trust, you have to real, open and transparent, and that’s something you almost will never get by just going out and hiring an agency.

By the way, the Reptilian Brain, is both the problem and solution to a lot of different things we’re facing - and I brought it in to this context because Motrin, took a passive role, it appears, by just hiring an agency to do their work for them instead of making it something more grass roots.

Honestly, with all the people that legitimately use Motrin and find it works, including Moms, you’d think they could have gone out and found real grassroots support for a Social Media Campaign.

By the way, I haven’t even talked about the measurement of this Motrin campaign - which would have been a whole different post.

Just a thought on this Sunday, at dusk.

Sometimes, on difficult days, like today, or was it yesterday, now, I just feel like throwing in the towel, on Social Media.

I haven’t given up, won’t. Still, there’s a lot of obstacles to overcome, and can be difficult.

Even as Barack Obama begins the first YouTube Presidency, you’d think there would be recognition of the vital role of Social Media within professional, member driven organizations. Particularly, in Web Analytics, because it’s the Web Analysts, who, by nature of our tools and focus on online and marketing data analytics, are best suited to evaluate the success of Social.

Yet, for all the potential, before us, the path to it, is too often, blocked, by ignorance.

Where would Barack Obama be, today, if he believed, and those around him believed, that social media wasn’t important? Vital.

You’d think that now, especially just now, would be the perfect time to ramp up on social media as it’s one of the least expensive and most effective ways of reaching people.

But some people don’t see it that way; it’s like, they are not on the same page.

You know, I was speaking to a friend recently about the most effective source of traffic to her site; she used Google Analytics custom segmentation and found out that Stumbleupon was 1500% more effective than any other other source of referral traffic …and it’s a well known site that gets several million visits a month.

And yet …. You’ll find plenty of organizations who believe Social Media is not particularly important. I bet John McCain did not think much about Social Media, and look where he is, today.

Actually, I’m glad McCain and Palin didn’t focus on Social Media; I didn’t want them to win.

But in other cases, you’d be surprised; I know, I was.

Recently, I asked Eric T. Peterson, author of Web Analytics Demystified, what he thinks Analytics Organizations ought to focus on.

Peterson said, an Analytics Organization, in this case, The Web Analytics Association (my question to Eric was what did he think the WAA ought to focus on regarding Social Media); in that context, Eric mentioned the WAA should focus on Social Media Metrics (which, we actually, are, and will be publishing social media standards next year).

Eric asked me to make this correction, and I am glad I did, since I left out, from my earlier writing, on this post, the WAA’s work on drafting standards, the beginnings of which, started through my efforts via the Social Media Committee, which I built, from scratch. Social Media is now the largest committee of the WAA, with 76 members, by the way , about 8% if the entire WAA membership.

I also asked him if Special Interest Groups, or SIGs, would be useful for this purpose.

By the way, I noticed the recent EMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit that I attended, in Alexandria, VA, had an entire Tract (3 solid days of Social Media sessions) dedicated to Social Media Metrics.

That had never happened before at a Web Analytics Conference; found this encourging, and the speakers were great.

Too bad that focus isn’t actually carried into the organizational level more often.

I would imagine, and suspect, Social Media, really needs more of a focus in most organizations than it gets. Perhaps, that is also true of Online Marketing and Analytics Associations.

In fact, some of the best uses of Social Media, and some of the best presentations this year on Social Media, came from Panalists who worked for or with Non-Profits.

It turns Non-Profits tend to be willing to try things they think work and won’t cost much money.

Anyway, this is a long, rambling post, written entirely on my IPhone, hense, no hyperlinks or grammer, spellchecks.

I’ll be at MobileBarCamp, over at Microsoft Headquarters, in New York City, on Saturday, along with Sebastian Wenzel, WebAnalyticsBook.com; it will be a welcome change, attending this Mobile Analytics grassroots gathering, with Sebastian, who also happens to be part of the Web Analytics Association, the same one whose Board I currently sit on.

On the other hand, this Friday, for me, was a tough but interesting, intense day; Bryan Eisenberg of FutureNowInc and Grokdotcom.com, Jared Freedman of Code4Software.com, Eric T. Peterson of Web Analytics Demystified Inc, and Jesse Harriot of Monster Worldwide, are some of the best people I connected with and spoke with, today, and Bryan, Jared, Eric and Jesse really helped me to make up for misguided individuals who also cross my path. These individuals acted like the Egyptian God, Osiris, banishing another, Seth, associated with the Underworld in Egyptian lore.

Often Myths have their basis in some fundamental truth the myth symbolizes.

And, my conversation with Bryan Eisenberg, who talked me into running for the WAA Board 2 years ago, Bryan has been particularly helpful today and he was sick as a dog, with a bad cold, yet he spoke to me, and shared wisdom and insight. Thanks Bryan!

Again, I’m actually hearing, in my mind, the lore about an Egyptian God, Seth, Replaced, by another, Osiris. One could say ….back in the day.

Perhaps, the mythology of how Seth, God of the Underworld or Nearherworld, gets removed, replaced by Osiris, relates to the month of April Where Spring begins.

What we nead is renewal and the right focus. And maybe, we need to drill for that focus, or Oil, in Texas (ops! Solar Panels and Green, Renewable energy, please).

We really nead is Wisdom focused on Social Media and Web Analytics, and, too often, it has not happened.

Yeah, Seth, God of the Underworld being replaced by Osiris, of light and renewal, in April; God Willing, the sooner, the better.

Ok, time for bed, this has been a long, long day.

Really enjoyed Tuesday night’s event - Gary Vaynerchuk Videos from Motivational Meetup - 11-5-05; it’s the first time I got to meet Gary in person but I’ve been following him for a while online - and he was exactly in person what you see in his videos.

Now, I had heard “rumblings” recently that Howard Stern “attacked” Social Media, but I haven’t followed Howard Stern for a while, and while I used to find him funny 20 years ago, he seems to have
“not gotten it”.   Sometimes, people, however “innovative” and “cutting edge” they once were, will tend to become the “establishment” if they survive long enough and stay in place.   I think that’s what happened to Howard Stern and his brand - I’ll do some analytics to investigate that Howard Stern is “losing it”, by becoming, less and less “relevant” - watch

A reaction to Howard Sterns thought on Social networks, Social media and blogs.

Besides what Gary Vaynerchuk said, above, what would lend substance that Howard Sterns “Brand” is on the decline?   Let’s draw on what Web Analytics we can, here.

Loosely speaking,  searches for “Howard Stern” are down based on Google Insights for Search to less than half, on average, from what they were in 2004 - the earliest year that Google is providing Google Insight data for.

True, we don’t know the real volume of searches, but it’s fair to say, whatever it is, it’s less than half what it was 4 years ago.

As far as the rest of what is said above, I agree with.

I was at Gary Vaynerchuk’s Park Avenue Motivational Discussion tonight and took my own footage (I also appear in several frames in the video, below) which is being updated to YouTube right now - along with some additional video I hope you’ll enjoy - but for now, here’s CenterNetwork’s footage.

I think I’ll be ready to post my movies of this event on Thursday, at some point.

While viewing the NYC Marathon in Williamsburg, yesterday, and listening to Nikki Shannon and her band play, while waves of runners past, I had a glimpse of an idea, not sure if this has been done yet, but parts of it already exist.

To begin, many artists, of all types, have lousy websites that aren’t found easily in search engines. Even worse, manyof those same sites have lousy usability issues, and, there’s little if any web analytics tracking.

There are a few web services such as Pandora, Genius from Apple, I believe, iLike; these services a built to figure out music you like, play more if it, and hope you buy some of it.

Also, services like Upcoming, Yelp, to some extent Facebook, MySpace and other Social networks connecting events and friends. Social Networks like Going.com and Meetup.com want to figure out what you like and match you up with a group or event, Going is more focused on event promoters than on you while Meetup is becoming annoying in it’s attempts to sell me on every new meetup that meets what it thinks I’m interested in.

But what connects up a group like Nikki Shannon, who a friend of mine said sounded to her like Sheryl Crow, and a Pandora preference for that kind of music?

Maybe I missed it, but I don’t see anything that does that.

So, let’s say that I have Pandora (if it doesn’t go out of business, first), it knows what I like, knows where I live or am at the moment, knows what I am prepared to pay, has clips of the artists and information about the venue.

Most of this stuff exists, but it lives all over the web, not in one service, and even if it did, not well.

My point is, in this era of economic contraction, innovation may come not so much, from inventing new things, as much as making what we already have done, work well ….. Connecting the Dots.

I’ll also stay in the same room for the last session of the day on expanding your Online Community. I know Laura Lee Dooley, who joined the Social Media Committee I started at the WAA and read Beth Kanter’s blog which is an excellent resource for Non-Profits who wish to leverage Social Media (and honestly, a lot of what Beth Kanter writes about could be applied to for profit businesses just as well as non-profits).

“..S04 Tuesday, 5:10 - 6:00

Followers, Friends, and Fans: Expanding Your Online Community

Jonathon D. Colman, The Nature Conservancy
Laura Lee Dooley, World Resources Institute
Beth Kanter, How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

If you aren’t on facebook, twitter, friendfeed, technorati, and delicious, should you be? And once you jump into social media, how do you track and measure success? Tips, tools and stories from the trenches from three people who focus on online engagement and have more links, friends and followers than some small countries have citizens.

Laura Lee on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Anyway, here’s my notes on Beth Kantor’s presentation. She looks at AideRss and the statistics and see’s what posts do best.

Also Beth looks at Technorati and noted her ranking goes up and down and says she says she’s noted when her rankings go up or down and what triggers it.

Btw, Beth raised 215k for Cambodian refugees as non profit. Beth goes and friends a lot of people who follow alerts on her name, or “Cambodia”.

Laura Ann - she uses Twitter a lot and suggests we all create Twitter accounts.

But….But… Most companies are not prepared to handle interactive feedback. That’s a major roadblock.

Ambient Awareness - Listening Post Exhibition. Post Ratio: 1 : 12 (once about yourself and 12 times about others)

Laura handles two Twitter accounts
She used several metrics including twitter clickthrough and posts.

Xefer and Twitter Grader.

Is twitter multiple relationships or a single one to Twitter?

A lot of concerns about Twitter downtime but the service continues to grow.

laura points out the person who has the Twitter account for your company needs to be a senior person who knows the Brand well. No Interns, that’s not a good idea for several reason.

Nature Conservatory Case study using DIGG

One thing to note was the Digg traffic wasn’t worth much though they got a lot of that traffic.

Digg is good if you want to reach new people but it can lead to other things that are valuable.

Results of Social News Campaign on Digg. Normally they get 20,000 visits a day but 76,000 visits for the day when a Digg story ran on Digg homepage.

But ….. Our goal was to spur conversations about the enviornment plus tons of links, which in turn drove new visits of higher quality plus SEO juice.

How much time required? A few years to become a crediable source on Digg, or whatever large Social Networks.

The ad itself, took a few hours to set up. But Digg helped reach people we normally would not be able to contact.

Nature Conservatory also uses Radian6 to listen to the conversation.

My take is that social media is a lot of work, learning to leverage relationships.

Many organizations are too stoggy to adopt Social Media but once they see the results you usually get but it’s a culture change.

Digg changes make it harder to get a story on the first page but many top Diggers have interests in causes.

Fact is that Digg has been gamed so much the top keyword in Google for a search on Digg is “gamed”.

I’m covering yet another session on Social Media Metrics by Jason Burby and Ryan Turner, both of ZAAZ.

Social Media Metrics

Jason Burby, ZAAZ
Ryan Turner, ZAAZ

I captured the tail end of Jason’s session.

Monitoring response and creating policies to respond. Plugging in ratings and reviews, intergrated social tools and internal communications.

How to handle authentication and user identities. Targeting popularity engines with your content.

Jason cited the case of a Sony camera with a review on CNET, and the feedback is mixed, you can respond in a fair way.

ZAAZ Web Analytics and ZAAZ Social Media approach are the same, defining what success is.

To be honest, so far, I am not hearing anything different on this talk then what I already know.

But here’s what I make at of this perception - Social Media Marketing is essentially web analytics, but with different inputs and outputs.

ZAAZ has a Social Media Conversion Calculator which is available on it’s site
-not a big deal, but you can fill in your own actions and related prices.

Both brand perception and shopping have always had a social context. Three years ago we accessed the opinions of 5 friends in the consideration process, today we can access the opinions of 5 million fellow customers. Measurement on the social web presents analysts with new challenges: How do you measure word of mouth? Can you model the relationships between online research and offline purchase? What is the value of a comment on a blog post? A connection in a social network? A question in a support forum? A tag on YouTube? How does engagement affect lifetime customer value? Jason Burby and Ryan Turner of ZAAZ will present some insights from their experiences grappling with these issues, and they’ll put forward some ideas about where businesses need to focus as the social web grows in importance over the coming years.