ImpactWatch Blog

In a medium that changes every day, best practices from a year ago aren’t going to cut it. So it’s a good thing that new books on social media are rolling out all the time. Here are 5 to catch you up for the school year.

Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment (New Rules Social Media Series) – Jim Sterne and David Meerman Scott
While other books explain why social media is critical and how to go about participating, Social Media Metrics focuses on measuring the success of your social media marketing efforts. Success metrics in business are based on business goals where fame does not always equate to fortune… Knowing what works and what doesn’t is terrific, but only in a constant and unchanging world. Social Media Metrics is loaded with specific examples of specific metrics you can use to guide your social media marketing efforts as new means of communication.

Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web – Brian Solis
Engagement is shaped by the interpretation of its intentions. In order for social media to mutually benefit you and your customers, you must engage them in meaningful and advantageous conversations, empowering them as true participants in your marketing and service efforts… There are thousands of customers waiting to hear from you about your business and vision. It’s the minimum ante to create a vibrant and loyal online community. When you engage, you will build an authoritative social network that increases your visibility, relevance, influence, and profitability. It’s time to Engage!

Preorder these next three and they’ll arrive by the time you get through Solis & Sterne.

The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success – Lon Safko
The Social Media Bible, Second Edition (www.TSMB2.com) is the most comprehensive resource that transforms the way corporate, small business, and non-profit companies use social media to reach their desired audiences with power messages and efficiency. In this Second Edition, each of the three parts – Tactics, Tools, and Strategies – have been updated to reflect the most current social media trends.

Social Media ROI: Managing and measuring social media efforts in your organization – Olivier Blanchard
No abstract available yet for this book, but Olivier is well known for his no-nonsense advice on ROI calculation. I’m sure the book will be a valuable resource for businesses that want to know exactly what they are getting out of their social media efforts.

The Social Media Management Handbook: Everything You Need To Know To Get Social Media Working In Your Business – Robert Wollan and Nick Smith
The Social Media Management Handbook provides a complete toolbox for defining and practicing a coherent social media strategy. It is a comprehensive resource for bringing together such disparate areas as IT, customer service, sales, communications, and more to meet social media goals. Wollan and Smith and their Accenture team explain policies, procedures, roles and responsibilities, metrics, strategies, incentives, and legal issues that may arise.

Alternatively, you could follow David Meerman Scott around and take notes…it all ends up in a book eventually.

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photo: RLHyde
*Book abstracts via Amazon.

ImpactWatch now displays a real-time feed of custom filtered tweets right on your dashboard.

Based on Slurp140 technology, the new Twitter stream updates automatically to display new tweets, a leaderboard of most frequent tweeters, and stats on your tweets over time.

Best of all, you can instantly reply to or retweet any mention right from your tweet stream!

The new Twitter tool complements ImpactWatch’s existing range of feed sources which includes print, online or broadcast news, and social media sources. Depending on your monitoring and measurement needs we can customize your platform with the sources that are important to you.

Graphs and statistics also update in real-time on the Dashboard page, so you can see the who, when and what of your Twitter coverage.

We have a lot of features on the way in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for more. Sign up for a Demo Account now to check it out!

Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream has announced that they will be transitioning from email marketing to contacting customers almost exclusively via social media outlets. It’s an interesting decision in that major companies usually have the resources to hit consumers from all angles…so they do. I’m sure that sending updates via Facebook is cheaper than maintaining a multi-million contact email list, but I also wonder how many people will be lost in the transition.

B&J’s has 1.3 million Facebook fans. That’s a lot but likely still smaller than the email list that I’m sure has been a cultivated over a decade. And while it’s true that you can always delete a marketing email without reading it, it’s also very easy to miss FB and twitter updates if you keep your habit even remotely under control.

Apparently, customers indicated that they weren’t fans of the monthly email newsletter and preferred to be contacted via social media. I first wonder how they came to this conclusion. Were these spontaneous complaints? Did they do a poll on Facebook? Is this a case of the vocal minority on SM changing the rules for all? I hope the decision wasn’t that simple. I know my 17-year old cousin voted that she would rather be contacted via social media, but she’s not reading your updates, guys – she’s too busy texting.

This still begs the question of why the company didn’t make efforts to improve the newsletter, decrease its frequency or simply shift focus to SM if they felt customer contact was more successful through that channel. They would reach email-only customers while strengthening relationships with those who are active on SM. The real intrigue is why they didn’t take these intermediate steps and transition from the listserv gradually (or never).

So, I don’t know if hordes of people were unsubscribing from the listserv or what, but it will be interesting to see if other companies follow suit…and how this affects Free Cone Day.

Photo: Technicolor76

Going back to the eavesdropping vs customer service argument from a few weeks ago, eMarketer has released some very interesting new stats on how consumers in a variety of countries actually feel about social media monitoring and outreach.

So while not all consumers are convinced that companies intend to fix their issues, a minority are actually concerned about the underlying issue of being monitored and contacted through social media. As I’ve mentioned previously, I think this is in large part a public education issue. Consumers need to better understand the levels of privacy provided by each social media outlet so they properly control the information they release in that format.

I don’t mean to let companies off the hook. There are many that are more focused on shotgun marketing than the customer service opportunity this provides. I believe this is also an educational issue and that companies will quickly learn with experience what type of customer contact is appropriate.

For now, public opinion is on our side.

(cross posted from The Bivings Report)

Last Friday I was fortunate to spend 30 minutes talking with Jack Dorsey, who in addition to co-founding Twitter recently launched a product & service called Square. As an electronic device, Square is a mobile credit card reader that plugs into the audio port of compatible smart phones and laptops. As a service, Square is a downloadable application that verifies sellers and provides buyers a measure of security about the transaction itself. From small businesses to political campaigns, the potential applications for Square are virtually unlimited.

A few highlights and then the interview after the jump. Also strongly recommended: Friday Coffee with Square on Ustream

1. Why we were better off without Twitter on September 11th 2001: “One thing I was really inspired by after 9/11, especially in NYC is how people gathered and really sought each other out face to face…. My concern with relying on the technology would be that it would potentially abstract some of that humanness, and make it a little bit easier not to go out in the streets and not to go out meet your neighbors and really support each other.”
2. What Wired.com Got Wrong: No PayPal v. Square Deathmatch: “We want to be completely payment network agnostic, so if you’re really comfortable using PayPal and you want to pay (or receive) with it… but you still want the Square front end experience, that is something we would be interested in implementing and maintaining.”
   
   
3. Top Politicos on Twitter: Barham Salih, Cory Booker,  Mike Bloomberg, Francis Slay.
4. Why ‘Social Media Experts’ using Auto-Follow Services Have No Souls: While Jack was more diplomatic in his phrasing, if you’re doing something against the “fundamental spirit of the technology,” for me, that is red flag. That is not to say paid advertising of an organizations account is a bad idea, but the whole idea of paying for followers / friends is somewhat repugnant: “I think any sort of automation or any sort of aspect like that really takes away from the spirit of the technology which is to really share what you think, what your experiencing, what is happening around you. I think there is a lot of people in the social media space that are trying to consult against that, and I am fully supportive or that.”
5. Advice for Entrepreneurs: Communicate, Build Something People Need: In response to a question about production delays and software issues, Jack said his biggest challenge since starting Square has been: “Communicating in the right way what is actually out there today, what works and what still needs some work” In regards to supply problems with Square, I asked Jack if he had considered domestic supplies  “The only reason we picked China is because we could not find anyone in the U.S. to do it…”

Q1: Can you tell us about inspiration for starting Square- Biggest challenge or unexpected surprise?

“The whole thing has been rather challenging because it is a new industry, something we are learning, and not just learning but learning how to simplify. That has been the biggest challenge. There is a lot of complexity in this industry and when we remove a bit of it, some more just pops up. Our focus is to build an experience that hides all that complexity or does away with it in some way. That has been a challenge to first of all recognize (the complexity)  where it is and then get rid of it. There has not been any one particular thing that has really been challenging, it has been all of it.”

Q2: Square is available for Apple and Android Devices. Is there something the mobile phone services providers or manufactures could do to make things easier for developers?

“It seems all the platforms are doing their best to make it easy, in particular Windows and Blackberry. They are right in the middle of a transition, they’re reworking their API, their SDK to make it easy to address all their hardware platforms instead of having to program for each one. I think it will take some time to get there, but it is something we are definitely excited to participate in once they do get there.”

Q3: You outsourced the manufacturing of Square, if you had to do it again, would a domestic supplier been able to meet demand for the cost and what you needed, or was China still the best way to go?

“The only reason we picked China is because we could not find anyone in the U.S. to do it. There are very few people who make things anymore in this country, especially small electronics like that. We actually went out and tried for many months to find people in the United States to do it. Not really even considering the cost aspect, but we couldn’t find it. If we do find it, we would still love to turn that on in the U.S. We just could not find anyone who could meet the demands. “

Q4: You recently sent email to Square users apologizing and explaining the delays in hardware and transaction limits. What has been the overall tone of the response been like?

“It has actually been really constructive. We do have a lot of people who are frustrated with the amount of time it has taken. And I think a lot of that is just our fault in terms of communicating in the right way what is actually out there today, what works and what still needs some work. So that’s definitely been a challenge, but I think what we learn in all these things is that as long as you are talking to people, it minimizes a lot of the frustrations and the issues. So were just intending to do a lot more talking to people and making sure that everyone has a sense of where we are with our application and with the service and what that means for everyone.”

Q5: PayPal recently introduced an updated application allowing iPhone users to fist bump payments. Can you talk about what sets Square apart from that as well as past and future mobile credit card processing tools?

“In order to do the bump technology with PayPal, it does require a PayPal account, and there are a number of people who have PayPal accounts and that is definitely a clever way to go about transferring money, but it is just not our focus. Our focus is really speaking to that 90% of what people are using, they’re using plastic cards. Our intention is to turn on that other side and really enable those face to face transactions with devices that everyone has in their pocket. So we see ourselves a little bit differently in that light because we do not require any sort of account to actually pay someone. You just use the plastic card in your pocket. And that is really our focus. At the same time, we want to be completely payment network agnostic, so if your really comfortable using PayPal and you want to pay with it, or you want to receive payments through PayPal, but you still want the Square front end experience, that is something we would be interested in implementing and maintaining.”

Q6:  Act Blue allows you to donate to their candidates with a specifically phrased Tweet. There is a Facebook application called “SquareUp with PayPal” that is geared for collecting money for Facebook events. Any plans for integrating Square with Facebook, Twitter or YouTube?

“Right now were focused purely on the face to face interactions. Once you start getting more into the Internet and virtual interactions you start to lose more identity. We want to make sure that we get the face to face stuff right, because 90% of commerce is still offline, only 10% of it has moved online and we want to address that 90%. There are definitely models on how to extend that to the online and there are obvious integration points, but we are talking this bit first.”

Q7: What are your thoughts on politicians use of Twitter? Is it something that is more effective on the state or local level where the representatives themselves actually respond and engage or is there a politician you know who is doing it very well?

“I am really fascinated by this usage, and I love to see it. I went over to Baghdad with the State Department in March of last year and we managed to get the Deputy Prime Minister (Barham Salih) on Twitter and his usage of it was really, really inspiring. It was very frank, it was very direct and it was very transparent and it was him directly. I think in terms of other politicians in the U.S., I am most impressed with three Mayors: Cory Booker of Newark, who has really taken to all these technologies, including Twitter to talk about the issues that his city is facing. He is a champion, he is out at 3am on police beats, walking the streets, reporting. And most importantly, he is replying to people, and he is replying to people in real time that communicate with him… He has been awesome. Mayor Mike Bloomberg has also gotten into it a lot more. He used it very heavily during his campaign run and has started back up in using it during in day to day, which I am really excited to see. For a city like New York it just creates a lot more transparency and connection to, someone who is often removed from the normal citizen’s particular day to day, so now he is a lot more approachable and accessible. In my hometown of St. Louis Missouri, Mayor Slay has been using the technology extremely effectively. He has really funny and clever Tweets, but he also really engages the St. Louis community and replies real time. (He is) using it as a way to point out very interesting things about St. Louis that normally people might look over.

Q8: Earlier this month at the Personal Democracy Forum, there was some speculation about the impact of Twitter if it had been around on September 11th. I recall you mentioning that there might be some instances where instant communication like that might be a negative, so I was wondering if you had any follow up thoughts.

“It’s a really good question, and I honestly don’t know what effect Twitter would have in that situation, if any. My particular worry, is that the one thing I was really inspired by after 9/11, especially in NYC is how people gathered and really sought each other out face to face. People were just walking the streets and it really united the city in a way no other event has ever done. My concern with relying on the technology would be that it would potentially abstract some of that humanness, and kind of make it a little bit easier not to go out in the streets and not to go out meet your neighbors and really support each other. I think that was a defining moment for NY, New Yorkers and thereby rest of the nation. That would be my only concern in introducing a technology like that…. Certainly technologies were used at that time, IM was huge, and we definitely had cell phones, but I think the most important thing in that situation is that people left their technologies and really focused on their face to face interaction.”

Q9: Is there a particularly surprising or innovative use of Twitter you have seen? Any thoughts on self described ‘gurus’ or social networking ‘experts’ using automated tools to follow tons of people?

“I am surprised everyday on how people use Twitter. There is a different account that springs to my attention on a daily basis. I have a rotating set of favorites but on the latter point, I think any sort of automation or any sort of aspect like that really takes away from the spirit of the technology which is to really share what you think, what your experiencing, what is happening around you, and when we get into more and more automation we get back to these abstractions that Twitter effectively removes. So I don’t really appreciate that sort of automation. I think there is a lot of people in the social media space that are trying to consult against that, and I am fully supportive or that. And being more of an effective communicator, using the technology, using the constraints, but it changes on a daily basis.

Q10: What is the best Twitter analytics tool for tracking reach or ranking users?

“I think it is wide open right now, I can’t say I have spent a lot of time looking at firms doing that just yet, I think there is something there and it needs to be done. I don’t know who is the strongest at the moment or even what they are looking at, I think it is one of the most fascinating things of Twitter is getting an understanding of reach. There is a lot of work there and it is going to be coming from a lot of different folks. Not just one in particular, so I am excited to see what people come up with.”

Head over to The Bivings Report to download or listen to the interview

• Social Media ROI? Traditional Is Still More Accepted – Social Media Explorer

• Why Social Media ROI Is The Most Over Debated & Misunderstood Topic? – Social Media Marketing in India

• 5 Ways Sentiment Analysis is Ramping Up in 2009 – Read Write Web

• Mining the Web for Feelings, Not Facts – The New York Times

• Sentiment Analysis Takes the Pulse of the Internet – ken Burbary

• Why Sentiment Analysis is About as Reliable as a Canary in a Coal Mine – Marketing Pilgrim

• Web 2.0 Rule #7: Social media programs are a choice, social media monitoring is NOT – CK’s Blog

• The Single PR Metric and Flying Pigs – Measurement Standard

• You are Crazy not to Measure the ROI of Social Media! – Tac Anderson

• Why Measure ROI of Social Media? – Regular Geek

• Are we too worried with finding the ROI of social media? – Mack Collier

• How To Measure Your Social Media ROI: Don’t – Social Media Today

Tools Lists

• Social Media Monitoring Tools: 26 Free Online Reputation Tools – Dan LaRusso

Presentations

• Olivier Blanchard Basics Of Social Media Roi – The Brand Builder

Photo courtesy of Lara604 on flickr / CC BY 2.0

• Social Media Metrics: What We Need to Track Sales – Left the Box

• Social Media Monitoring: Why You Must & Its Value – Techrigy

• Make Sure Social Media Metrics Are Meaningful – IT Business Edge

• The Truth About Measuring Social Media – Nation Ranch

• Scaling Social Media – Web Trends

• Can computers take the place of the personal touch in media evaluation - Corp Comms Magazine

• Social-Media ROI Elusive: MarketingProfs Poll – Marketing Profs

• Meeting the New Media Challenge with ROI – TalentZoo

• Why Your Small Business Needs to Measure Its Return on Social Media Investments – Content Marketing Today

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.

Cross posted from The Bivings Report

Anyone that has been to a tech conference the last few years knows that there is a huge amount of back channel communication that occurs on Twitter.   People provide live coverage of the talks they go to.  People organize dinner plans.  People stage revolts against panelists.  The conversation is constant, unfiltered and takes place in real time.

The preeminent poli-tech conference, Personal Democracy Forum, takes place next Monday and Tuesday in New York City.  Since we are a sponsor and partner of the Personal Democracy Forum, we decided to launch a tool that will aggregate conversation around the conference.  Check out Twitterslurp for #pdf2009.

We are finishing up details, but here is a list of Twitterslurp’s key features:

• The site will ingest any posts tagged as “#pdf09″, “#pdf2009″ or “Personal Democracy Forum” onto our main page in real time.  We can expand the words we track if other phrases/tags are used.  This will allow us to ingest the entire conversation, and not limit us to only pulling in mentions of a single hashtag.
• Twitterslurp features a leaderboard listing the top Twitter users at the conference based on volume.  Later today, we are going to expand this to feature a fuller leaderboard.  Our hope is that this directory of people tweeting about the conference will make it easy for people to make connections with others at the conference.
• Twitterslurp features a stats page that analyzes the volume of tweets that are coming in.
• We’ll be able to use our backend system to filter out spammers.  At the end of the conference, we’ll also have a database of all the relevant tweets which will allow us to do a full analysis of the conversation post-conference.

Most importantly, we’ll be releasing the code behind Twitterslurp to the open source community next so that other conferences/organizations can use the tool.

Check out Twitterslurp, and follow @bivings for the latest about the release of the tool.

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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Follow Hannah on Twitter.