All posts in “Sysomos”

The Evolution of Social Media Measurement

As a child growing up, I was often told that aside from reading and writing, the other skill that will come in handy in life was to being able to count. My mother specifically emphasized “count your money”, “count your change”, “make a record of what is in your piggy bank”, and so I emptied my piggy bank every so often to count all the ten Kenyan cents (no longer in circulation as they are of no value) to ensure that none of my siblings had helped themselves to my hard “earned” pennies – more like begged and collected from the floor / ground. All to say, I realized the value of counting early, and we humans like to count where it matters – how much money do / will I make? What will it cost? How many calories are in this meal? How many friends can I count on? What will be my return on investment? and so on. We are counting, consciously and subconsciously, trying to measure the value of our ‘investments’ whatever shape or form they take.

The same is especially true for companies; they are interested in understanding “What is in it for our brand / company?”  What is the value behind every dollar spent? So it’s rather natural that this question is asked of social media campaigns and executions.  So let’s take a look at the social media measurement journey for brands.

1. Counting the Number of Fans and Followers and Comments or Retweets

There were days not so long ago, when marketers would pop champagne after hitting their 1,000 fans or followers milestone, they added the ‘#winning’ to every post and settled in fan bliss world (I exaggerate). Really, the marketing teams in most companies were excited to see customers connecting with them but often wondered, what does this mean? What can be done with this? Where do we go from here?

2. Social Media Measurement Tools to measure overall brand mentions across platforms

Using proprietary tools such as Radian6, Sysomos, Netbase just to name a few, brands have been able to do what we call here at Social Media Group a conversation scan or a social media brand audit. Using the most appropriate social media tools, this requires a deep dive into not only volumes of mentions, but also social media types / platforms used, sentiment analysis, top influencers on social media channels, share of voice (if looking at your brand in comparison to key competitors) or even sub-categorizing data to cover key themes or topics and campaigns over an established period of time. This continues to be very useful, but companies are still wondering – so now what? Using these tools they know what, who and where conversations about their brand are taking place and hopefully leveraging this to find innovative ways to engage with their customers. However, the question is, How is this all impacting companies’ bottom line? In other words “Show me the money from my social media investment”.

3. Then came, “Wait a minute! How do we get our fans/followers on our website?”

So companies started to engage with users by providing links with answers to questions from fans, promoting products and services that would link back to their websites. This was and is still helpful for companies in analysing their web traffic using tools such as Google Analytics to evaluate where their traffic is coming from e.g., Facebook, Wikipedia – again, counting!

4. Integrating Social Media Measurement with CRM

According to a report by Michael A. Stelzner on the Social Media Marketing Industry (2011) one-third of all social media marketers want to know how to monitor and measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media and integrate their social media activities. This is what company executives have been fussing about; they want to understand the implication of social media investments in relation to sales, revenue and cost.  The term for integrating Social Media with CRM is Social CRM. In a nutshell, it involves managing your communications, building relationships with the online community and measuring the results that reflect the bottom line – leads and sales. Social Media Examiner has provided a robust list of metrics that will help marketers get their executive team on board with social media. Further, the social customer has provided 10 steps to integrate CRM and Social Media.

5 Categories of Social Media Measurement

Source: Full Frontal ROI

Every part of the social media measurement evolution journey has brought value to evaluating the impact of Social on Leads and Sales. Moreover, every measurement remains important but should not be represented on its own; they all fit together like a jig-saw puzzle and provide input necessary to expand and grow engagement and lead generation opportunities.

 

Social Media Roundup for January 14, 2011

We Love Our Facebook

OnlineSchools.org released a great infographic this week, detailing the ways that people use (or sometimes over-use?) Facebook.

It’s interesting to note, but not too surprising, just how far Facebook’s reach extends: 1 in every 13 people on Earth are active on Facebook.

The one statistic to which I turn a crooked eyebrow is that “57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life.”  Saying “in real life” when meaning “offline” is a popular turn of phrase, but a misguided one. Online communication and activity is just as “real” and can be equally as meaningful as what we do offline. I’d also be interested to see how this factor was measured – is real life just face to face? Where do phone conversations fall?

Nonetheless, there’s no denying the remarkable impact and reach of this platform. Do the statistics outlined here indicate “obsession?” Or just that people like to communicate with one another, and this is the popular tool du jour?

Social Media Trends for 2011

The folks over at Focus Research have published their 2011 Trends Report on Social Media Marketing. This is a targeted, concise guide to what experts like Jay BaerStephanie Marx, and our own Maggie Fox predict for the year ahead. Be sure to check it out!

Surprise! Your Airline Wants to Do Something Nice For You!

This week, four members of the SMG staff got stranded in various airports around the U.S., thanks to the wintry weather, myself included. As we can attest first-hand, waiting for a flight can be a stressful, long and incredibly boring process.  KLM Royal Dutch Airlines wanted to make it a little more fun for a few of its passengers. Using their checkins on FourSquare and mentions on Twitter, KLM identified a few select passengers to receive small gifts, personalized to them (based on information available in their public profiles). Check out the results!

Social Media Monitoring Platforms – How to Choose?

There are a lot of social media monitoring platforms to pick from out there, and it can be hard to cut through the clutter and pick one that’s right for you and your business. This week, J.D. Lascia and Kim Bale at Socialmedia.biz put out a great resource to help you compare and contrast all the different choices, including tools like Radian6 and Sysomos.

Cat Face – He’s Got a Big Cat Face

And finally, the video we can’t get out of our heads this week: Cat Face.

In terrible news for my productivity both at work and at home, it seems that there are 23 more Cat Face videos. I will be watching them all.

Social Media Roundup for October 16, 2009

Well, they say good ideas never die, they just become retro.  And in that spirit, we’re resurrecting the Social Media Roundup.  We haven’t done one of these since well before I was hired here at SMG, but how hard could it be?

*cue ominous music and thunderclap*

Right. So here’s the goods; all the stuff that we found interesting in the last week or so.

Social Media Intelligence, Socialized
Social Signal celebrated its fourth anniversary in the social media consulting space by committing to open-sourcing all of the intellectual material they’ve built up since their founding.  Their goal? ‘To build a field, and not just a business.’  A formidable task, but certainly a money-where-your-mouth-is move.  Kudos!

The Beginning of the End for the Digital Divide?
Finland has become the first country to establish broadband internet as a legal right for all citizens, with a goal of 150Mbit access by 2015.  Please direct future correspondence with Social Media Group to our Helsinki office.

The Most Talked About Brands
With an eye to a different take on Interbrand’s Best Global Brands, Sysomos ranked the Top 100 by Social Media mentions over the past month, putting Google, Apple, and Microsoft in the top 3.  While this raw data is interesting, I can’t help but side with commenters who mused about a ranking based on interactivity and participation, rather than the passive ‘mentions’ provided.

#Pepsifail
Pepsi was the latest victim of #[insertbrand]fail over the weekend, over their Amp app for the iPhone, Before you Score. The app was lambasted for its poor portrayal of women, and its encouragement to share your ‘scores’ online. Pepsi was quick with the mea culpa, and even appended the #pepsifail hashtag to their apology post, ensuring widespread eyeballs.

Why the Twitter Firehose May Not Be Worth It
After news that both Google and Microsoft may be vying for access to Twitter’s firehose, unfiltered, Marshall Kirkpatrick over at RRW broke down the reasons the real-time engine may not be worth the big bucks.

How to Comply With the FTC in 140 Characters or Less
With the release of the FTC’s updated advertising disclosure guides last week, discussion ranged from ‘the sky is falling’ to ‘it’s about time’ to ‘weren’t we doing that anyway?’  Shel Holtz, meanwhile put his backing behind a standard for disclosure on twitter, where 140 characters may be a bit slim to get all your conflicts out in one post, and still get a message across.