ImpactWatch Blog

• Public Relations Measurement 2010: Five Things to Forget & Five Things to Learn – Metrics Man

Public relations measurement is at a crossroads. Old techniques are no longer sufficient. Old metrics are no longer applicable. Old thinking must be replaced by new. The need for accountability, and to prove the value of PR and social media programs, has never been greater. As we look to the next year, here are five things to forget and five things to learn about public relations measurement in 2010.

• Enough With ROI, Already - Dave Fleet

So, please – enough with “return on influence” and other variations on the term “ROI.” The fact that you’re not measuring ROI doesn’t mean you’re not measuring success or impact. In fact, it may just mean you’re measuring the right thing.

• The Importance of Social Media Audits – Web Strategist, Jeremiah Owyang

Just as brands conduct audits of inventory, employees, and budgets on an often annual basis, they should also survey the landscape to find out what customers, influencers, partners and employees are participating on the social web. Audits are key for identifying priorities, benchmarking previous efforts, and planning for future efforts; the same applies for social media.

• Measuring Social Media Campaigns: It Don’t Mean a Thing, if it Ain’t got Ker-Ching - iMedia Connection

Companies are now requesting and social media companies are delivering control-group studies to evaluate the impact of social media campaigns. They want to understand precisely how these campaigns make the cash register ring. Consider this example of a campaign we just completed on Gather.

• Time vs value of social media monitoring - Outside-In

The issue is the balance between the ‘information farming’ – simply sucking up mentions and comments – and ‘value hunting’ – using that information to advise clients and deliver actions that use it to deliver reputational or sales value.

• Social Media Metrics That Matter - Molstad Consulting

By now, most companies are aware that there is a discussion about their brand going on. They also know that they can track and monitor this discussion via a wide variety of tools such as Radian6, Techrigy’s SM2, Twitter Search, Twitalyzer, Social Mention, and many more. The question now is, “What should I pay attention to? Which metrics will actually tell me something about my business?”

• John’s Twitter Engagement Index - John Moore

Okay, I have shown you my sinister nature by revealing some of my goals. How do I measure how well I am doing in moving along the path to achieving these goals? I use John’s Twitter Engagement Index.

• Managing an Online Reputation - The New York Times

Your customers are talking about you — and the whole world is listening.

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Media Monitoring Tools Lists

• The Best Social Media Monitoring Tools Used by Today’s Top Creative Agencies & Brands - Jon Samsel
  
• Useful Social Media & Online Reputation Monitoring Tools- Lime Exchange
  
• Digital De-Tox: Collection of Lesser Known Tools for Help Gaining 2.0 Clarity- ScoopDog
  
• Social Media Monitoring Tools - Jon Chin

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Slides and Presentations

• Yes we can measure social media and transparency – KD Paine

• Social Media Monitoring for Business – Social Gumbo

• How To Measure ROI For Social Media – Vanina Delobelle

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Read Last Week’s Top Posts

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Lumaxart.

• Social Media R.O.I. – Part 9: From activity timelines to outcome timelines and Social Media R.O.I. – Part 8: An introduction to timelines The Brand Builder – Olivier Blanchard

Yesterday, we went over the need to create an activities timeline that basically plots every relevant action your company takes across all media. Press releases, product launches, blog posts, white papers, ad campaigns, Twitter engagement, etc. Today, we are going to look at creating outcome timelines. Same basic process, but actually easier based on what you choose to measure.

• How To Measure Your Web Presence – bMighty

Web Metrics Guru says it’s one thing to generate online buzz. It’s another to know how to use it. These tools can help.

• Measuring Social Media: The L.A.C.E. Method – MicroExplosion

I recently launched the LACE method you see below with a client and I’m beginning to implement it with other clients as well. I’m already finding it to be helpful in setting expectations and goals from the outset of a social media initiative.

• Start making sense: Mechanics under the tip of the social media monitoring iceberg – Far North

At the end of the day though, the victor or viable entrant at the very least will have to satisfy what I have come to define as the Five Precepts of Social Media Monitoring.

• The engagement metric, defined (part IV in a series) – Web Analytics Demystified

For those of you keeping track at home, this is the fourth in what will likely be a five-part series on calculating an “engagement metric”.

• Humans do it better – but do they scale?The Dirty Little Secret of Social Media Monitoring – Brendan Cooper

Meanwhile, socialmention is an unashamedly tech solution. But it’s claiming to do what humans do, and I just don’t believe that is the case. If they could, SpinVox would be using them, right?

• How much is sentiment analysis “Worth”? – Dirk Shaw

In summary I think today’s sentiment analysis can save money by replacing traditional methods of research. The larger opportunity exists when the results from sentiment analysis can be used to influence a consumer’s decision to buy.

• The Biggest Lie in Social Media Marketing – Practical Marketing Solutions

Over the next few days, we’ll continue our dialogue on marketing measurement with articles on calculating true ROI, the importance of non-financial indicators and that ever-so-tricky intangible, “brand equity.”

• Social media ROI and the mystery of brand equity – Practical Marketing Solutions

What are your thoughts on brand-building with social media tools? Do they carry as much clout as traditional media? Do you think they surpass traditional media when it comes to delivering on the elements outlined above?

• Monitor Your Personal Brand Using Search Engine Alerts – Web Worker Daily

You don’t need an expensive marketing firm, or even a friend who works in marketing, to manage your personal brand online. Some of the most powerful tools for monitoring your brand are the free email alert mechanisms available at your search engine of choice.

• How-To: Gathering Market Intelligence from Social Media – Marketing Vox

Gleaning data from social media resources is daunting, but not unfeasible. Much of it comes down to knowing what you’re looking for, how to search for it, and where to run the query.

• The Five-Minute Guide to Monitoring Twitter – Geek Girls Guide

A few days later, I tweeted about my lesson and was barraged with requests to post instructions. So, with that, here is my five-minute Twitter monitoring guide.

• just because… – Marginally Subversive

Analytics is far more than just charts, dashboards, indices, and conversion rates. Analytics is making sense of these numbers – the “what” – by asking deeper questions – the why’s, the how’s, the why-not’s, the what-if’s…

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Media Monitoring Tools Lists

None this week.

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Slides and Presentations

Official Rules Of Social Media Measurement – Matt Granfield

Bridge Conference: Social Media ROI: Mapping Metrics to Strategy – Beth Kanter

Measuring the “social” in social media – Dana Chinn

SMCSYD: Measuring Social Media – Switched On Media
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Read Last Week’s Top Posts

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Anne Nobel.

Lately all brands are trying to get into the social media game, but which ones are doing to the best job?  A new study by Charlene Li of Altimeter Group and Wetpaint ranks the top brands by social media engagement.  Below are the top social media mongers:

1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)

The brands are categorized from “mavens” (those with the best social media engagement) to “wallflowers” (those with the least).  The study claims that there is a correlation between a high ranking and revenue growth.  Erick Schonfeld disagrees, stating that the brands with the most revenue are likely to be the most socially engaged anyway.  Decide for yourself which way the circular logic turns by reading the full report.

• Is much of social media monitoring snake oil – or have I missed something? – Richard Stacy

I have recently had reason to focus on the area of monitoring of social media which has involved looking once more at the whole range of black box monitoring solutions that are out there.  This has caused me deep feelings of confusion and uncertainty.

• Barriers To An Effective Web Measurement Strategy [+ Solutions!] – Occam’s Razor

Yet the top ten barriers have absolutely no connection to features, and barely have any connection to tools. Its #11. An afterthought. I wonder why we are not writing / posting / talking / presenting on how to solve these non-tool problems, things that actually matter to companies and practitioners in the real world.

• Dirk Shaw: Sentiment analysis, How much is good enough? – Dirk Shaw

Each approach has their pro’s and cons. The argument against automated sentiment analysis is the lack of accuracy while manually tagging ensures 100% accuracy but it subjective and requires a significant amount of time.

• Social Media ROI: What Do You Measure? – Cisco

You’re probably thinking…”uhmmm… What?! How can you possibly measure a conversation?” Social media requires a tweak to the way we think about marketing measurement. We need to consider that indirect influence generated via social media can often lead to sales. It’s just a different sort of measurement.

• Social media: Pondering the corporate ROI – ZDNet

That said social networking can offload some of the strain on customer service and that has real returns. Bottom line: These enterprise 2.0 experiments are cheap enough to launch liberally. A $1.2 million investment isn’t chump change in a downturn, but let’s face it: Larger companies blow that on fancy consultants for projects that don’t pay off for years—if ever.

• The Dirty Little Secret of Social Media Monitoring – Ken Burbary

However, I’ve begun to notice inconsistencies in the data that different social media monitoring tools produce. The dirty little secret or so it seems, is they aren’t all working with the same data sources.

• Web Strategy: How to Measure your Social Media Program – Web Strategist

I’ve been meeting and interviewing some of the top thought and practice leaders in the Web Metrics and Social Media space. I’m seeing a trend, and want to document it in order to help others. I’ve also had to measure a blog program at my previous job, so I know the challenges.

• PayPal Case Study: Social Media Ignorance – Axel’s Blog

Paypal was one of the first online payment services and had a great start but over time lost the edge. The company seems to struggle with their internal administration and adjusting their business processes to meet customer needs.

• Damn It, Let’s Get Those Metrics Going! Bad Pitch Blog

Here’s one radical thought: Hold focus groups yourself. Traditionally considered domain of advertising, there is no reason that PR types can’t use focus groups to get feedback on messages and how they’re delivered.

• What’s Your Brand’s Social Score? – Ad Age

For many marketers, the Net Promoter Score has been an easy-to-understand, simple-to-measure metric of business health, used in everything from customer service to investor calls. Now, some wonder, can it be replicated in social media?

• How to measure (and use) content ROI for B-to-B social media marketing? – Next Gen CMO

“Content ROI” should reflect your business goals and the metrics should also be readily available. It is important to keep it simple and to avoid data overload, which can be expensive to collect and analyze. Since content in the social media age is so fleeting, metrics should provide a rapid feedback loop.

• Reputation Management Crises? 8 Crucial Priorities – Aim Clear

Ok, there’s quick work to be done. Here’s 8 crucial steps we suggest clients take immediately when reputation management disaster triage is called for.

• PR Industry Attacks News Biz Over New Scraping Regs – Paid Content

Though it was reported at the time as effectively taxing those who hyperlink to newspaper stories, the agency later confirmed to us that isn’t targeting bloggers, consumer services or the likes of Google (NSDQ: GOOG), but the “industrial-scale copying of articles from newspaper sites, for private commercial purposes”.

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Media Monitoring Tools Lists

Free Buzz Monitoring Tools – Psykoid

Top 10 Social Media Monitoring Tools and Social Media Monitoring Tools Review – Murray Newlands

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Slides and Presentations

Top 10 Social Media Presentations – Digital Buzz
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Read Last Week’s Top Posts

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Larsz.

On June 29th and 30th the ImpactWatch team and The Bivings Group had the pleasure of attending the 2009 Personal Democracy Forum Conference in New York City. One of the tools that we built for the conference was a Twitter aggregator called Twitterslurp so that everybody could keep track of the tweets about the conference on one web page.

Dave Witzel over at the Personal Democracy Forum has a great post up analyzing all of the data Twitterslurp collected to determine which people and topics got the most buzz on Twitter during the conference. These are the top five:

• danah boyd
• Micah Sifry
• Mark Pesce
• Andrew Rasiej
• Michael Wesch

Media monitoring and analysis is what we do over here at ImpactWatch, so we decided to see how online News and Blogs stacked up against the Twitter results. They tell somewhat of a different story.

Speakers

Looking at News and Blogs published between June 29th and July 8th the clear standouts were White House CIO Vivek Kundra and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Online News 6/29 – 7/9

Kundra’s announcement about usaspending.gov, an online “IT Dashboard” where citizens can go to look up how the government is spending their tax dollars on Information Technology was reported in over 54% of main stream news sites online. Bloomberg also announced five NYC government information technology initiatives including the NYC Big Apps contest asking developers to find creative ways to mash-up New York City’s data feeds so information could be better shared with the public. He garnered 17.3% of the media attention as a result.

Blogs 6/29-7/9

Comparatively, in blog posts, Kundra and Bloomberg again dominated the coverage with a combined 55% share from bloggers. The overall results, however, were closer to the trends that Dave Witzel found in Twitter. danah boyd and her presentation on class differences on Facebook and Myspace was the third most written about in 25 different blog posts. Anthropologist Michael Wesch’s session on the evolution of the phrase “whatever” managed to make a top five appearance with 19 blog posts, a tie with PDF co-founder Andrew Rasiej.

Themes

The overall topics again reflected the “Gov 2.0” initiatives by Kundra and Bloomberg, earning 53.9% of the total coverage. Other top trending topics were health care, being driven by Obama’s health care initiatives and the call for an open data format for health care data. Iran was still on a lot of people’s minds as a result of the recent elections. Again, danah boyd’s discussion of classes in social networks received a lot of press. Rounding out the top five themes was the debate over whether or not Broadband is a civil right.

Shift to Real-Time information

The following two graphs represent the volume from June 25th and the days leading up to the conference, to July 9th, nine days after the conference ended. If we take a look at the total volume of Tweets, News, and Blogs, the spikes look pretty similar, but there are two big differences that stand out.

The most obvious difference is the volume. 19324 total tweets versus 91 News articles and 194 blog posts during the same time frame. Twitter has clearly become the communication method of choice, at least at technically oriented conferences like PDF.

The other noticeable difference is when the spikes in volume occurred. The peak day for News with 41 articles and Blogs with 61 posts was the second day of the conference reflecting the coverage of the previous day’s events. Twitter however peaks on the first day of the conference with 9615 tweets and is almost as high on the second day with 7959. The audience’s value of the real-time nature of Twitter conversations is clearly evident.

Twitter Volume

• Defining Social Media ROI once and for all, and understanding the action-reactive-return narrative – The Brand Builder

Marketing professionals need to understand this: If the investment (the “I”) is $$$, then the return also has to be $$$. It can’t be eyeballs or impressions or clickthroughs. You have to tie your results to a $ amount. Anything short of that, and you’re not proving your value to your boss or client.

• How FriendFeed Could Become the Ultimate Social Media Tracking Service – ReadWriteWeb

Will FriendFeed take these steps though? That depends on whether it continues its Quixotic quest to capture more everyday consumer users for a cross-network, real-time conversation aggregator (!) or finds audiences that appreciate its value and starts building out features that they will pay for.

• “Free” Problems and Social Media Forensics using Radian6 and Blogpulse – Web Metrics Guru

I would try using Radian6 to find out if  Chris Anderson and/or his publisher, somehow, fomented  controversy, starting close to June 24th, around “Free” in order to  sell more copies of his book.

• Forget Social Media ROI, What About Marketing Accountability? – Jacob Morgan

There has been a lot of much needed discussion around social media ROI but I think this is just a small topic in the overall world of marketing accountability.

• 3+ Ways to Measure the Impact of Social Media on Search – Social Media Today

In this post, we’ll focus on how to measure the impact of Twitter, which reached about 22 million people in May.

• The next big thing in social media: Sentiment Analysis – STKI

In my opinion, organizations now starting to take advantage of the powerful content hidden in social networks will not only get a better “feel” their market in order to protect their brand images, but if applied with correct use, these tools can also help organizations take advantage of these conversations for the purpose of promoting customer centric innovation.

• 5 Steps for Successful Social Media Damage Control – Mashable

In the end, the issue is less about the mistake that was made, but the reaction that came after. So, here are some tips to follow if you find yourself in a damage control mode.

• Getting Back to Basics – Why Web Advertising Needs Traditional Media Metrics – Microsoft Advertising Blog

Trying to build a brand marketing campaign without traditional target reach and Gross Rating Points (GRP) estimates is like trying to diet without the concept of calories.

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Tools List/Reviews

• 6 Great Social Media Monitoring Tools – Blue Falcon Marketing

• 25 Social Media Monitoring Companies You Want to Know About – Ben Barren

• 3 Powerful Free Apps to Monitor Your Small Business in Social Media – StartupNation

• Twenty Free Buzz Monitoring Tools (Part 1/2) – Culture-Buzz.com

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Conferences and slides:

• New Strategies Require New Measurements – Helge Tennø

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See Last Week’s Top Posts

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.
Photo courtesy of Princess Theatre.

Personal Democracy Forum Session: Building The Social Economy: Craigbucks, Newmarks, and Making Whuffie
Panelists: Tara Hunt and Doughlas Rushkoff

Who are they?*

Douglas Rushkoff is an author and though-leader. His most recent book is Life Inc. He is best known as the originator of the terms media virus, social currency, and digital natives, as well as for applying open source principles to government, religion, and economics.

Tara Hunt is the author of The Whuffie Factor which focuses on the importance of social capital in B2C relationships and pinpoints the rise of online communities as the force that makes social capital unavoidable for businesses going forward. Her next book discusses the the psychology and economics of happiness as the basis of your successful business model.

What are they talking about?

The basic premise is that there is a social economy that exists alongside our currency-based economy. Each person has (or lacks) social currency in the same sense that people have (or don’t have) paper currency.

Tara Hunt, one of the speakers, refers (rather incessantly) to social currency or capital as “whuffie.”

What makes a social economy?

As explained by the speakers, a social economy is the exchange of goods and services among individuals, rather than between individuals and corporations.

Doug calls this “reclaiming commerce as a human activity” and points out that commercial does not mean corporate. He described the rise of the corporation as a system of exploitation and gives the social economy as an alternative to outsourcing trade to corporations and banks.

What is social capital?

It was kind of hard to pluck a definition from the session, but you could think of it as your worth to others in non-dollar terms. It’s what you have to offer to the community – your expertise and participation.

Some rules of social capital from Tara:

- The inability to save social capital encourages reinvestment.
- The value of social capital increases as it circulates.
- The law of suckage says that social capital will attract the sucky [plagarizing] element that tries to monetize and detract from the quality of the original contribution to the social economy.

Doug adds that in order to create social capital you must contribute first-hand to the social economy. For example, franchises do not add original value and therefore have no, um, whuffie.

How do I know how much social capital I have?

You don’t. According to Tara, the “good thing” about whuffie is that it means something different to everyone. So, you can’t measure whuffie. You can’t compare it. You can’t cheat it. Don’t even try inflating your whuffie. It won’t work (unless you’re a talentless celeb with a great PR team).

How do I increase my social capital?

I’m not really clear on this. I think we all understand the concept of being valuable to the community by being willing and able to contribute time and talent. And that value is qualitatively perceived by the community.

But both speakers agree that “personal branding” – defining yourself by your professional expertise – is “an oxymoron” because individuals are not corporations and should not impersonate them.

It would seem natural that to increase your social capital, you would increase your talent then let the community know so that they can take advantage of (and revalue) your contributions. If you’re not able to brand yourself according to your niche or expertise, or to promote your talents, I’m not sure how social valuations change.

The necessity to discover each and every other economy member’s value organically seems extremely inefficient. I think this would create an obstacle to the replacement of the currency-based economy with a social one, which seems to be the ultimate objective of the panelists.

How can I be successful in the social economy?

Tara gave some tips for interacting in the social economy which can be applied to your online customer engagement.

1. Turn the bullhorn around: Stop talking and start listening to your stakeholders.
2. Be part of the community you serve: Be a member of social platforms before conducting commerce there.
3. Create amazing customer experiences: Look for feedback and build ongoing relationships.
4. Embrace the chaos: You can’t control (or measure) the social economy.
5. Find your higher purpose: You get back what you give.

*Bios stolen from the PDF conference website.

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Brymo.

There were a LOT of great posts this week, so I’ve left the summaries out in an attempt to avoid making a huge mess of the post.

• Unveiling the New Influencers – PR 2.0

• Benchpoint Survey Says People Like Measurement, Are Doing It More – The Measurement Standard

• A 30,000-Foot View of Social Media Measurement – @donbart

• There is No Silver Bullet: It’s Time to Focus on the Simple Truths of PR Measurement – Bulldog Reporter

• Social Media Monitoring tools – an evaluation – Gianluigi Cuccureddu

• Measurement Strategies For 5 Social Media Goals – PR Communications

• Twittering Away Time And Money – MediaPost

• Measuring Social Media Marketing: It’s Easier than you Think! – Search Engine Journal

• Hybrid Cars – What’s the Social Media Buzz? – Resonance

• Two case studies from Radian 6: Molson: Meeting New Customer Expectations and Cirque du Soleil: Embracing Brand Ambassadors

• Tracking Online Discussion: Social Media Monitoring and Market Research – Pepper Digital

• Social Media Monitoring Tools for Asia – Thomas Crampton

• My (FREE) iGoogle Brand Monitoring Dashboard – Carie Lewis

• Getting a measure on social media metrics – SEO Scoop

• Measure the Impact of Blogger Outreach: 9 Key Metrics - Marketing Sherpa

• Brand Monitoring: Online Brand Monitoring – Brand Monitoring

• Social Media Analytics Part I – Web Analysis, Behavioral Targeting and Advertising

• 4 Of The Best – Free Social Media Monitoring Tools – Digital Marketing Lab

Slides and Conferences

Social Media Monitoring Tools – An Overview – Pier 314

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See Last Week’s Top Posts

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Airi’s Papa.

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For the second year in a row, non-profits have adopted social media at a faster rate than corporations or academic institutions.

A new research study, “Still Setting the Pace in Social Media: The First Longitudinal Study of Usage by the Largest US Charities” compares organizational adoption of social media in 2007 and 2008 by the nation’s top 200 largest charities.

The study was conducted by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Ph.D., Senior Fellow and Research Chair of the Society for New Communications Research and Chancellor Professor of Marketing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Eric Mattson, CEO of Financial Insite Inc., a Seattle-based research firm.

The study reveals that:

• 57% of charities have blogs, compared to colleges/universities at 41%, Inc 500 corporations at 39% and only 16% of Fortune 500 Co.s blogging.

• 90% of charities feel that their blog is successful.

• Use of at least one form of social media has increased from 75 to 89% of respondents.

• Usage increased for all social media tools studied: 79% of charities are using both social networking and video blogging, up 38 and 47% respectively over a year.

• 66% of charity respondents conduct online media monitoring, compared to 54% of academic institutions and 60% of the Inc 500.

• Over 80 percent feel that social media is at least “somewhat important” to their future strategy; 45 percent responded that social media is very important to their fundraising strategy.

“These organizations are demonstrating an acute, and still growing, awareness of the importance of Web 2.0 strategies in meeting their objectives,” said Barnes. “They have found a new and exciting way to win the hearts – and maybe even the dollars – of potential donors. For volunteers and donors looking to have a conversation online about particular aspects of the charity’s mission, this increased interaction can be significant. These nonprofits are clearly learning to use social media more effectively.”

A full copy of the new research report can be downloaded from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

This is the roundup from the week of 22 June.

• Do Social Media Marketers Dream Of Monitoring Tools? – Three Minds

• The Value of PR Measurement – Part 3 - Show me numbers
  

• The State Of Social Media Measurement (aka Brand Monitoring and Listening Platforms) – AttentionMax
  

• GoogleReader + SocialMention + PostRank = ORM for free ;-) – PhilGo20
  

• Social Media Measurement, Part 2: What I Really, Really Want - Media Bullseye
  

• Measure the Impact of Blogger Outreach: 9 Key Metrics – Marketing Sherpa
  

• Many PR Pros Are Using AVE’s. Why are we surprised? – Dix & Eaton

• Brand Monitoring: Social Media Monitoring – Why Monitor After All? – Brand Monitoring
  

• Social Media + You – Brand and Reputation Management = Disaster – JMG Galleries
  

• Social Media Research & Measurement Woes – Great Minds
  

• Live from OMMA Social: The State of Social Media Metrics – Search Marketing Sage
  

• Networked Insights makes sense of Internet chatter about brands – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
  

• Introducing Conversation Impact – Social Media Measurement for Marketers – Ogilvy

Slides and Conferences

It’s All In The Numbers – Social Media Measurement – The Agency Blog

Review: First European Summit on Measurement – Communication Controlling

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See Last Week’s Top Posts

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Photo Courtesy of Multiple Fragments of Tissue.