ImpactWatch Blog

• The most discouraging news of the week for PR – Katie Paine  and PR Measurement Principle Three: What Counts? – Intelitecht

• 7 Reasons Social Media Is Bad for Marketing – Hubspot

• Crafting a Social Media Plan – Even If It Is Off Target – Marketing Vox

• SMART Social Media ROI: Show me the Money! – Search Engine Watch

• Successful social media analytics requires commitment, experimentation – SearchCRM.com

This week was the first meeting of the #smmeasure chat on Twitter to discuss social media monitoring and measurement. I think it takes time to build a community for these discussions (hey, that sounds like marketing advice) so with about 80 participants, #smmeasure is off to a good start.

Although it can be difficult to join week after week, I think that Twitter chats are really quite brilliant. They enable topical discussions with no travel, no tickets, no credentials. Unlike an industry conference where the few speak to the many, Twitter chats gives novices, students and consumers the ability to jump right and voice their opinions to the experts. It can often be an unparalleled opportunity to learn from people you would rarely get a chance to speak with otherwise.

I’ve enjoyed the weekly #socialmedia chat (Tuesdays, 12pm EST) for some time. The topic can be almost anything related to professional social media use and the guest moderators are usually pretty awesome. The new #smmeasure chat will be Thursdays at 12pm EST (doesn’t anyone eat lunch anymore?). There is also a bi-weekly #measurepr chat for the intersection of PR and social media which takes place every other Tuesday. Yes, also at 12pm EST.

Are there any other twitter chats that discuss social media monitoring and measurement? I still have a few lunch hours free. (SMMM, delicious!)

Hannah

-Photo: Marc Smith

• Social Media Shell Game: What Do Those Followers, Fan Numbers Really Mean? – Marketing Vox

• How savvy firms monitor customers’ online chatter – Computerworld

• Social media monitoring: time to say ‘sod it’? – Econsultancy

• Just Say No to AVEs – Katie Paine

• Vendors push social media analytics, but some question the technology’s readiness – SearchCRM

• 6 Crucial Social Media Tips for Traditional Media – Mashable

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SEE LAST WEEKS TOP POSTS

A few goodies for the week:

• Social Media Monitoring Tools – How to Pick The Right One – Convince & Convert

• Social Media Monitoring software is a commodity – CustomerThink

• 12 Critical Keywords Every Company Should Monitor in Social Media – Trackur

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SEE LAST WEEK’S TOP POSTS

• Top Five Social Media Marketing Mistakes – BusinessWeek

• How to Audit Your Social Media Efforts: 20+ Questions to Ask Yourself – Sociatic

• Social Media Monitoring Tools Exposed – The Viral Muse

• If you only do one thing in Social Media, it ought to be SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING. – PR Squared

• Matrix: Brand Monitoring, Social Analytics, Social Insights – Jeremiah Owyang

• Manage Your Online Reputation—Before Someone Else Does - Wall Street Journal

• My Feelings About Sentiment Analysis – Intelligent Enterprise

• European PR measurement summit – really? – Liberate Media

• Measuring Social Media’s Impact on the Bottom Line – Winning Business

• Crack isn’t just a waste of time. It’s bad for you too – BrandNet  I thought this headline was funny and went to check it out. Turns out it was actually relevant.

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SEE LAST WEEK’S TOP POSTS OF THE WEEK

Slow week, but I’m working on the Top Posts of the Year from the past 52 Top Posts of the Week lists. Please add a comment with anything that I missed. Also, Dear Mark Evans, please stop cranking out amazing blog posts every day. It is making the rest of us look bad :)

• How Much Does Social Media Cost? – Sysomos

• The Barcelona Prinicples of Measurement – Katie Paine

• First global standard of proving value of PR created at European Summit on Measurement – PR Week

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• Three ways to act on your social media monitoring – Social Media Today

• 52 Questions To Ask When Hiring A Social Media Company – Outspoken Media

• Six real ways to measure social media – Meme Burn

• How ‘BT Sarah’ spies on your Facebook account – Daily Mail. [The Daily Mail is often silly-bazilly but this is clearly meant to alarm readers who are less web-savvy. I propose higher webucation.]

• Revolutionizing Corporate Communication: 6 Tips for Integrating Social Media – Huffington Post

• What if Social Media Isn’t Working? Then What? – Sysomos

• 5 Questions You Need to Ask Yourself When Creating a Social Media Report Template – Lauren Fernandez

• PR measurement was never meant to be an exclusive club – Rebecca Denison

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Photo: Bluedharma

The Daily Mail has stirred the pot again by suggesting that companies are spying on customers who post negative comments on social media sites.

I work for a media monitoring company and I have for a really, really long time. So it makes sense that I would be in favor of…well…monitoring media. But I think in this situation, most customers understand and even appreciate what companies are trying to do by engaging them through social media. The real problem seems to be the subset of customers who are misinformed about the nature of social media.

The thing about posting information publicly is that the information is then PUBLIC. That means anyone can read it. If you sign up for an interactive forum, like Twitter, that means that you are making yourself available to be contacted by the very public that is reading your publicly available posts.

So I think the issue here is one of education. People need to know what they are agreeing to when they use social media sites and what their options are for limiting contact with the public. For instance, they could set their Facebook profiles to block everyone but friends. This way they are not posting publicly nor inviting contact from the public. If it’s one way communication they are looking for, blogs can be set-up to disallow commenting. Or if they really want to vent privately to friends, email works well.

There are a lot of different broadcasting and interaction options available online and I think the internet needs to do a better job of educating users on what those are. Maybe a mandatory mini-tutorial when you sign up for Facebook or a new blog account. Maybe Twitter can change the “What’s Happening?” box to the “What’s Happening That You Want the Whole Freaking World to Know About?” box. Subtle AND effective.

And to companies – for goodness sake, don’t abuse the privilege. You are so lucky to have this opportunity to see into the hearts and minds of your customers. By all means, ask if you can help. Offer a coupon or discount when someone compliments your product. Do not contact customers who do not mention your company by name or ask specifically for the service you provide. “I like jellybeans” does not mean “please contact me jellybean-makers.” You will ruin it for everyone, I promise.

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Photo: Samuel Mann

Obviously social media has been steadily growing in popularity these past few years so it’s hardly shocking that companies taking notice. But a survey of 600 companies found that 73% are using a tool to measure their social media activity and reputations. That’s pretty good.

27% of the companies admit to doing no measuring whatsoever, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t monitoring (Guys? Please tell me you’re monitoring.) A little over half of the companies have paid for media planning and competitor analysis services.

Companies are also shifting resources from technology to staff. Internal staff now accounts for 53% of web analytics budget, compared to 42% last year, while technology spend has dropped 8% to 30% of total budget. Hopefully this shows that companies are finding effective tools that put the right data in the hands of employees who can act on it… and it doesn’t mean that companies need additional employees to sift through a bunch of unfiltered data (Guys? Please tell me you’re filtering).

Either way, companies are no longer shelling out for analytics that pile up without being analyzed or implemented in business planning. These numbers also show that media monitoring is being recognized as essential and included in the overall analytics budget and strategy.
-Stuff the researchers pointed out:

-) Two-thirds of companies (65%) have paid for online survey technology, while just over half (51%) have paid for media planning and competitor analysis services. Despite the increased importance of the mobile channel, only 12% of companies are paying for mobile analytics tools.

-) A quarter of companies (26%) are using multivariate testing (MVT) and optimisation tools, and this is the best-performing business tool from a return on investment perspective. Two thirds of companies (66%) using MVT report a definite bottom-line improvement to business performance.

-) Lack of budget and resources is the most significant barrier to an effective online measurement strategy, according to 57% of companies surveyed. This is now more of a problem than last year, increasing by 12% from 45% in 2009. The biggest factor cited as a barrier by agencies is still the lack of understanding by clients, although this is now less widely seen as a problem compared to last year.

Econsultancy and Lynchpin 2010 Online Measurement and Strategy Report
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• 46% of B2B Marketers View Social Media Engagement as Irrelevant - Hubspot

• 13 Truths About Social Media Measurement – Altitude Branding

• Outsourcing Customer Response: Transactions vs. Relationships – Radian6

• Social media monitoring review 2010 – the final report from Fresh Networks  and a review of the report by Marshal Sponder who has also done tool comparisons – Some thoughts about Turning conversations into insights: A comparison of Social Media Monitoring Tools by FreshNetworks

• Automated sentiment analysis gives poor showing in accuracy test – Research Magazine

• Human Analysis in Social Media Monitoring: 5 Simple Steps to Navigate a Sea of Records – Social Conversations

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