ImpactWatch Blog

I am always passively on the prowl for better interfaces when it comes to getting things done and interacting with social media in an efficient way. Announced over the last few days at Google I/O, Google Wave purports to combine e-mail, IM, Twitter, Facebook, etc. – all in semi-real time. This is definitely Google’s response to Twitter (and the transition to real-time internet in general).

Wave steps real time up to a whole new level – as you type an instant message, for example, it broadcasts the message character by character as it is typed. This is of course a toggle, as in many cases you’ll want to carefully craft a response that might be held against you. However, for everyday communication (like between co-workers), it allows for more efficient communication – I can begin crafting my response before the sender is done authoring their instant message.

I skipped around the conference video introducing Google Wave (it is an hour and twenty minutes in length), but it has definitely hooked my interests. My previous prediction about all of these messaging services coming together into one gooey mess of communication, one feed, is finally becoming a reality.

For those users who struggle to keep up with their social networking initiatives or goals, Google Wave might make it easier to handle everything – e-mail to Twitter – in one attractive interface. I’d definitely give the conference video a gander; when Google does things on a large implementive scale, masses tend to adopt.

• Metrica’s 6 Part Review of ROI Techniques

This is part one of a six part series about measuring the return on investment of public relations.

• What Is The NPV Of Social Media? – MediaPitch

The potential value added by using social media right is significant for both today and tomorrow. It all depends on how you measure the IRR, NPV and CLTV of relationships. Do you want a wider reach, a deeper connection and a greater return? Create better relationships and do the math. Get it?

• Social Media and ROI – The Green Market

In this article you will find tips, technology, and important questions to help you measure social media’s ROI for your business.

• Hurry up, the customer has a complaint – The Boston Globe

As blogs expand the reach of a single voice, firms monitor the Internet looking for the dissatisfied.

• Real Social Media R.O.I. – Part 4: FRY Metrics – The Brand Builder

Originally, F.R.Y. (Frequency/Reach/Yield) wasn’t meant to be applied to Social Media (or any media, for that matter). But as it turns out, it adapts super well to just about anything…

• The ROI of Social Media – FrogLoop

I had the honor of participating on the ROI (Return on Investment) of Social Media panel at the Women Who Tech TeleSummit with Monique Eldwell of Conversify and Cheryl Contee of Fission Strategies where we laid out some key metrics and useful case studies.

• Getting engaged: are we making a difference? – Strategic Social Media

Setting an objective that has community and organization equally in mind is at the heart of a comprehensive campaign strategy to measure how well you are engaging with your online community…

• Meaningful Media Measurement and the Tao of “G.I. Joe” – Vital Communications

Recall the familiar, episode-closing exhortation of G.I. Joe: “Knowing is half the battle.”  With media changing so quickly, G.I. Joe’s wisdom today is, if anything, an understatement.

• Monitoring the Conversation – The Drew Blog (Tool List)

To help me participate in this particular conversation, our digital director put together this mini-directory of online resources that I figured some of you might find helpful as well…

• 20 Free Buzz Monitoring Tools – eConsultancy (Tool List)

As the recession continues, so do cutbacks. So, we’ve listed 20 of the better (and free) online reputation monitoring tools in order to help you engage with the onslaught of social media.

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Photo courtesy of: Valerie Everett

Believe it or not, the 2k+ year old Vatican doesn’t shy away from new trends in technology. The Holy See’s website was developed 14 years ago and impresses both for its meticulous organization and for its incorporation of multimedia elements.

But this year the Vatican has lapped even some major corporations in its implementation of new technologies, especially social media, to communicate with its constituents.

Pope2You

Last week, the Vatican launched a new site called Pope2You which serves as a communications portal – featuring links to the Pope’s Facebook and iPhone apps, the Vatican on YouTube and Wikicath, a small quasi-wiki outlining the key points of the Pope’s message on World Communications Day. The site received almost half a million visits in the first day.

Facebook

Sadly, you won’t be friending the Pontiff anytime soon – the Vatican eschewed the classic Facebook profile and fanpage in favor of a custom application on what the Vatican calls ” the most important social network of the world.”

“The Pope meets you on Facebook” allows you to send the text of Pope Benedict’s Message for the 43rd World Day of Communications and a selection of 21 electronic postcards to your Facebook friends.

Although limited in features, the application garnered 10k uses in first day.

YouTube

Vatican Radio was launched in 1931 and the Vatican Television Center in 1983 (though they had been televising events for nearly 50 years). A few months ago, the video clips from these services were used to create a YouTube channel.

With 208 videos currently available, the Vatican aims to present the Church’s position on major issues through providing coverage of the Pope’s news conferences, speeches and other Vatican-related events.

Fr. Lombardi, the director of Vatican media, said in a press conference that the channel will offer a number of interactivity options: the possibility of sharing videos with friends, receiving new videos via i-google and a chance to send comments to the Vatican press office.

iPhone App

H2Onews, in collaboration with the Vatican Television Center and Vatican Radio, is offering a Papal video news service for iPhone and iPod Touch.

The application offers updates on the travels and speeches of Benedict XVI, as well as on key international ecclesiastical events by optimizing videos from the Vatican’s YouTube channel.

Each video is accompanied by a transcript and the application offers feeds in eight languages: Italian, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, and Chinese.

Reasons to Reach Out

Rev. Claudio Celli, president of the pontifical council for social communications, told the press conference that it had been suggested that the Pope was “lowering” himself by appearing on YouTube. Celli’s response: “The Pope doesn’t lower himself by going on Google. It’s a question of having a strategic vision. This is a first small step towards becoming a church that enters into dialogue with today’s world.”

Even an institution as rooted in tradition as the Vatican can see the opportunity to use social media to:

-Increase and engage its audience
-Disseminate information and control brand identity
-Keep up with new communications and technology developments

But so far, the Holy See is using these outlets as broadcast-only. While an understandable start, considering not only the volume of information that such a large fan base could generate but also the controversy that surrounds some of the Church’s positions, there is a definite opportunity for the Vatican to use social media as a conversational tool.

What else do you think the Vatican could do to engage people online? Should they allow user feedback through commenting? Forums? Twitter?

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A Geek Chart is a web badge that displays your activity on social media sites as an interactive pie chart.

The process is extremely simple, just enter your username for each of the sites you use – Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, your blog (with RSS available), Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Last.fm.

After a little processing, a pie graph is generated which represents your activity in the last 30 days. Each slice links to your profile on the corresponding site and displays the percentage of your activity on mouseover.

Hcdelp’s Geek Chart

Mine is a pretty boring pie because I waste away my days on Twitter and our blog. The “Explore” section of the Geek Chart site shows a sampling of charts made by other users. As you can see, everyone has a different mix of site usage, but Twitter dominates most people’s social media time.

Geek Chart automatically saves your profile information, so you can log on anytime to see your updated chart.

You’ll also want to avoid the site at the bottom of the hour when Twitter’s API limit turns 3rd party platforms into pumpkins.

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Make your own Geek Chart.

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Follow me on Twitter – I’m on there 67% of the time.

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• Social Media Measurement, Part One: What I Want, What I Really, Really Want – Media Bullseye

There are two types of horrendous monitoring, one worse than the other. The first is a “clips report” simply regurgitating a bunch of stories without providing any frame of reference to what it all means. Lame.

• Simple Ways to Measure Your Social Media Efforts – Social Media Exchange

Here are so­­me easy­ (and­ free) way­s to­­ help­ d­etermi­ne whether y­o­­u­r so­­ci­al med­i­a effo­­rts are si­zzli­ng–o­­r fi­zzli­ng.

• Measure Time In Social Media To Determine Engagement Results – PR Communications

Time is the critical factor in social media, the more time you spend on reading, commenting and building a relationship with a colleague the greater the chances that something will happen. You can measure the time it takes to interact with a community member and the results.

• 13 Essential Social-Media ‘Listening Tools’ – MarketingProfs

• Online Reputation Management: 16 Free Tools – SitePoint

• Digital Media and Traditional Media: Will it Blend? – Chief Marketer

Agencies must continue to innovate to develop more powerful measurement tools, whether that is a tag that can track a single consumer’s behavior across channels or a holistic solution that displays all marketing in one place, along with easy-to-understand graphics and actionable insights.

• Can you measure PR in hits? – Speed Communications

So, here’s the big idea. If the media were to share website analytics such as the number of unique hits each article gained and  how long those visitors had spent reading each page,  PR’s could provide their clients with an accurate number of views for each piece of online coverage.

• How Do you Really Calculate Social Media ROI? – Bella Web Design

Our conversation on The Bella Buzz podcast today is a very important one for business owners, marketing managers, or anyone who is interested in determining how to measure the Return on Investment (ROI) that can be achieved via social media strategies.

• The Web’s Dirty Little Secret: Flawed Measurement – The Media Biz

Nine million or 42 million????? That’s like saying the circulation of the New York Times might be 800,000 or 4 million? You’d think you might pay a different price for advertising, depending on which one it was!

• How To Measure The Effectiveness Of Your PR Program – Evan Carmichael

Here are eight things that smart public relations managers and consultants have learned about the use of external measurement to demonstrate the value of their programs in this environment.

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Photo courtesy of Peasap.

Last week, when Twitter decided to remove then partially reinstate @reply visibility, I basically ignored the entire conversation.

I could not have cared less that Twitter would be hiding messages from one Twitter user to another. I had my user settings safely set to “No @replies”. I didn’t want to see other people’s conversations. If they wanted my opinion, they would have asked for it.

Which is why I was dumbfounded, days later, to discover @replies in my Twitterstream.

Here’s what happened.

There were originally three options for @replies in Notice settings:

All @replies allowed you to see all messages from everyone you follow. You then had the option to reduce visible @replies to only those directed TO the people you follow. So, you could see what your friends were saying to mutual friends. Then there was the option to see no messages that began with @username.

Based on a variety of issues, Twitter decided to completely remove @replies from everyone’s twitterstream – great for me, not so much for the thousands of people who complained via blogs and twitter.

Twitter says that only 3% of users had ever modified this setting from the default – which was to include @replies to followed – but not surprisingly, those 3% were the most engaged (and vocal) of Twitter’s user base. And all of them (except me) wanted to stay in the loop.

To compromise, Twitter has decided to reinstate @replies that are not created using the “reply” function in twitter (little backwards curving arrow button).

So, now all of us get to see @replies to people whose usernames are easy to memorize? Who are responding to a tweet in a platform where there’s no direct reply button? Twitter claims it is trying to reduce confusion regarding how @replies work. I’m not so confident that they have achieved that.

Twitter is now working on a user-specific setting. No details yet, but I’m really looking forward to individually setting @replies for the 2,800 people I follow. Good times.

Am I the only anti-social tweeter who doesn’t want to see @replies?

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The International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) and the Institute for Public Relations are sponsoring a study of communications practitioners to benchmark Best Practices in the field of PR measurement and management.

It is part of a research project for The First European Summit on Measurement, to be held in Berlin June 10-12th, 2009. Results will be compared to a previous global study conducted 5-years ago. The results will be presented at the European Summit on Measurement and provided to all attendees.

Collaborators on the study include:

• Donald K. Wright,Ph.D. -Professor of Public Relations, Boston University, USA

• Richard Gaunt MCIPR–CEO Benchpoint Ltd, London, England

• Mike Daniels- CEO Report International and AMEC board member, London England

• Barry Leggetter – Executive director, AMEC, London, England

• Ansgar Zerfass, Dr- Professor of Communication Management, University of Leipzig, Germany

Barry Leggetter, Executive Director of AMEC, said: “During a recession the role of measurement in public relations practice has taken on a new sense of importance in order to demonstrate proof of performance. We therefore hope ICCO members will take a few minutes to complete the study.   We are working with other international trade bodies as well to give the study international scale and substance.”

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The 6-12 minute survey is available in French, German, English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Please click here to participate!

Thank you for your support!

• Dilbert on the Accuracy of Metrics

• How to Use Social Media Metrics – SEO.com

“Social media marketing doesn’t quite lend itself to such metrics. After all, in a world of anonymity, like an online community, how can you really measure engagement or influence? Is there a way to glean useful, objective data?”

• The AVE debate: Measuring the value of PR – Brand Republic

Will this recession finally sound the death knell for the use of ‘advertising value equivalent’ and will other monitoring techniques take its place, asks Cathy Wallace.

• Beyond Clicks And CPMs: A Look At ‘Engagement’-Based Ad Deals – PaidContent.org

CPMs are the default standard for buying display, and paid search ads get measured in clicks. But when it comes to valuing a social-media sponsorship, “advertorial” content on a magazine site or even a virtual-world campaign, there’s a growing consensus that neither of those metrics is good enough.

• A New Formula for Measuring PR Success – Convince & Convert

A conversion rate methodology would put the final stake in the heart of the batch and blast press release era, which emphasizes building media lists, not media relationships.

• Social Media Metrics: Measuring your Campaign – Off Madison Ave

Therefore the real problem becomes how you go about measuring success if not through direct ROI? Answer: By measuring everything else.

• ROI in Social Media: A Look at the Arguments – eModeration

With the publication this month of the Internet Advertising Bureau’s ‘Social Media Ad Metrics Definitions’, it seemed a good moment for me to write about the thorny subject, and have a look at some of the controversy around the measurement of ROI in social media.

• Measuring Social Media ROI: A Case Study (Plus: Tweet to Beat Winners) – @tferriss – 4 Hour Workweek

In this post, we’ll look at some real numbers (total capital, conversions, redemptions, etc.) from my latest educational non-profit campaign, the Twitter-based Tweet to Beat.

• The Dating Game: How Do I Pick a Vendor? – The Social Analyst

So let’s say your organization is already on board with this whole social media thing and has given you budget to start monitoring this stuff. Congratulations! but now there is a new challenge, who do you get to do this for you?

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Photo courtesy of Philo.

Hypothesis:

IF bacon is great THEN it will rule social media.

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Experiment:

Bacon in the Social Media News

1. Bacon explosion – a heart-warming (burning?) recipe involving 2 pounds of bacon wrapped around 2 pounds of sausage. Needless to say, this innovation warranted a write up in the New York Times and won the creators quite a traffic spike – over 16k inbound links and more than 1.5 million blog visitors.

2. Bacon Salt – A weapon in the “never-ending quest to make everything taste like bacon.” Bacon Salt has profiles on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the founders were interviewed on Oprah.

3. Bacon AK-47 – The gents at ThisIsFreakingRidiculous.com made a full scale AK-47 assault rifle…out of bacon. It’s freaking ridiculous. Other bacon effigies include the Bacon Man, Bacon Suitcase and Bacon Bra (nice try, google it yourself).

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Bacon Blogs

There are nearly 3 million search results for Bacon in Google Blogs, 57k with Bacon in the title of the blog (both excluding results containing the word Kevin).

Some awesome blogs I discovered while “working” on this post:

- Bacon UnWrapped – A four-year-old site founded because 1) everyone loves bacon and 2) there aren’t nearly enough websites dedicated to the topic of bacon. Founder Heather Lauer has also created a bacon community and is releasing a book about bacon in a few days.

- Mr. BaconPants – Obviously the bacon blog with the best title, this repository of bacon news and reviews includes a weekly video podcast on bacon and bacon-related items.

- Bacon Today – Daily news about “sweet, sweet bacon.” The site’s uses its exclusive Smaste TM rating system for smell+taste-testing bacon-related products – a rating system that’s “as arbitrary as it is inaccurate.”

- The Bacon Show – A delicious new bacon recipe posted every day.

- Bacon Haikus – Lyrical links to bacon (news) bits.

- Royal Bacon Society – The Ultimate Resource for all things bacon – including a bacon store and bacon downloads.

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Bacon on Social Media Sites

Twitter -

TweetVolume says there have been 1.69 million tweets containing the word bacon in the history of Twitter.

BaconTwits tracks the word bacon on Twitter while @BaconFeed aggregates the #bacon hashtag (2,950 updates so far).

Apparently 48,367 people have added themselves to the WeFollow directory under the tag “bacon” . Truly mind-boggling.

Facebook – The top 5 bacon fan pages have a fanbase of more than 650k. There are over 3,000 members in just the top 20 bacon groups.

MySpace – Bacon doesn’t have as impressive of a presence on MySpace. Or maybe it does. I was distracted by all the glitter.

Flickr – 146,763 photos have titles or descriptions that mention Bacon -Kevin, 49,511 photos are tagged with Bacon -Kevin.

YouTube – 28,600 videos refer to Bacon -Kevin.

Delicious/Digg – Bacon is gaining steam on Digg, where story volume has been steadily climbing since 2006. There are 3,662 bacon stories on Digg – 34 of which have received over 1k diggs. 16,904 bookmarks on Delicious are tagged for bacon.

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Other Bacon bits:

- Pocket Bacon – Pretend to cook bacon whenever the mood strikes with this handy iPhone app.

- The Baconcyclopedia – The Ultimate Bacon Reference of Baconic Proportions

- Bacolicio.us – Add bacon to any website. Seriously. Do it.

Don’t think for a minute that Bacon has come to rule social media without a fight. Some PR challenges for Bacon:

- Swine Flu – The much-ignored CDC says that pork is safe, but that didn’t stop bunches* of concerned netizens from broadcasting their fear of bacon and its breathren

- Trichinosis – Bacon won’t give you #hamthrax, but being infested with worms is also pretty gross.

- Heart Disease – Bacon is fatty.

- PETA – Bacon is made of previously living animals.

- The pro-veg lobby – Bacon is meat.

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Conclusion:

While this study is not *perfectly* scientific, I’m pretty sure that excluding all Kevins cancelled out any illegitimate Bacon mentions. And, as you can see, Bacon is kicking Sausage’s ass on Twitter. So, I’m declaring victory for bacon in social media.

*A bunch is an official social media measurement term indicating “a lot”.

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Bacon vs Sausage chart via Twist.
Bacon slice photo by SuperFantastic

Twitter has completely changed the ease by which viewers can quickly review a movie.  It only takes 140 characters to type “This movie was awesome!” or “This movie was an abomination of film!”  Many Twitter users even talk about the film while they are watching it, curtly ignoring the friendly reminders to turn off their cell phones before the film begins.

I decided to do a quick analysis of tweets from this weekend concerning the new Star Trek flick.  I haven’t seen the film yet, but the positive reviews and hype surrounding it have definitely peaked my interest.  After taking a gander at the tweets, I’m nearly raving to go see it.

I took a look at 500 tweets from Saturday, May 9, a day after the movie had premiered in theaters.  Below is a pie chart with the breakdown.

180 of the tweets were people telling the world that they were going to see the movie, in the middle of seeing the movie, or just leaving from seeing the movie.  155 tweets described the movie in some positive manner, with one-word compliments ranging from ‘wicked’ to ‘brilliant’.  15 tweets cited negative things about the film, from complaints about canon changes to bad acting.  If a tweet said something about seeing the film but included a positive or negative review, the tweet was classified as ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ and not in the ‘going’ category.

Of the remaining tweets, 35 of them were links to reviews or news articles about high box office sales.  10 talked about how the film was not for “just fans” of the series.  The remaining 55 out of 500 didn’t fall into any of these categories.

In addition to the above categorical analysis, 50 of the 500 tweets contained @replies to someone, showing the conversation emerging.  Only one included the hash tag #startrek, while another one contained the hilarious #whyidonthaveagirlfriend.  Also, seven mentioned the Burger King collectable glasses sold in conjunction with the film’s release.

There were far more than 500 tweets on Saturday about the movie, and if this sample is any indication, the Twitter world highly recommends the film.  While I certainly don’t approve of people using their cell phones in the theater, it’s pretty amazing to think that you can immediately know your friends’ impressions of a movie before seeing it yourself.

Perhaps films should use Twitter to help promote their movies?  Specifically assigned Twittering employees of the production could answer question about the film as well as promote it online.  Several TV shows like Eureka are already going similar things so it’d definitely be worth looking into.