Ricky Gervais (Unintentionally and Eloquently) on Facebook vs. Customer Communities

by Matthew Lees

While driving yesterday to pick up my sister at the airport, I listened to a delightful interview on the radio with Ricky Gervais. He was on the NPR program Fresh Air, talking with David Bianculli — nope, it wasn’t Terry Gross, but veteran TV critic Bianculli is very good, too — about his new animated series on HBO, “The Ricky Gervais Show.”

I’m a fan of Gervais’s, despite the fact that I haven’t watched many episodes of either the US or UK version of “The Office.” (Steve Carell stars in the US version, which is based on the original UK program, created by and starring Gervais.) Through his other shows, his stand-up routines, and his podcasts, you can tell he’s a funny, clever, candid, and amiably self-deprecating guy.

About halfway through the NPR interview, Gervais gives his take on making big-budget shows that aim for mass appeal versus smaller shows that may find only a relatively small, but more interested and passionate audience. He says:

“But, I think I’d rather do stuff that makes a big connection with a few people than a small connection with loads. I’d rather this be a few people’s favorite show, than, you know, millions and millions of people’s 10th favorite show. Because what’s the point otherwise?”

There you have, in a nutshell, the essential difference between a Facebook community and a branded customer community.

Big Connections with a Few vs. Small Connections with “Loads”

You can potentially and relatively easily build up a Facebook fan base that’s much larger than your own branded customer community. With just a single click, people can “Become a Fan” of your organization (or TV show); there couldn’t be a much lower barrier to entry. And marketers tend to love volume.

But the strength of these “Fan” connections isn’t particularly great. Most fans probably never return to the organization’s Facebook page again, and the conversations in the Discussions area tend to be superficial.

In a community that you sponsor and manage, though, you’re building much closer relationships, with stronger connections to your organization and the products and services you offer. (You’re also enabling stronger connections between community members, too.) You members are discussing topics and issues of interest and concern; they’re asking questions and giving answers; and they’re bringing up problems and providing solutions.

Strong and Weak Ties

Network theorists and sociologists call these different types of connections strong ties and weak ties.

(Contrary to how Gervais phrases it, though, there are indeed benefits to weak ties. There is indeed an answer to his rhetorical question “…what’s the point otherwise?”, as good things certainly can come out of being the 10th favorite show of millions and millions of people, especially if you’re an advertiser or an actor, writer, or producer on the show.)

But the main point that Gervais encapsulates is that it’s not always about reaching the most people you can. Big connections (i.e., strong ties) can be more meaningful than small connections, at least to some people and organizations. Marketers (and others in your organization) love deep relationships with people, too.

Your social media strategy should ideally include programs that leverage what both strong- and weak-tie connections have to offer.

Of course, you may not want to base your entire strategy on Gervais’s musings. He’s also the man who said (via David Brent, his Office persona), “If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence that you tried.”

——–

For Further Reading
A lot of interesting and useful information is available on the types and degrees of online social connections. Some is academic in nature and some discusses real-world ramifications and practical aspects of these connections. Here are a few sites with good stuff on ties…
•  Karrie Karahalios: Strong and Weak Ties in Social Media, by David Weinberger (March 3, 2010)
•  40 Years On: The History & Evolution of Social Media, by Jenny Ambrozek (November 4, 2009)
•  Weak Ties Build Strong Networks, by Adrian Scholes (May 21, 2009)
•  Design Your Own Custom Ties on Zazzle

Walking out the Door with the Twitter Password: A Few Words on Social Media Maturity

by Matthew Lees

Mathematical Maturity
My high school calculus teacher often talked about “mathematical maturity.” It became a phrase we dreaded hearing, because, when he used it – usually in the negative (i.e., that someone wasn’t being mathematically mature) – it meant that person had tackled a math problem like an amateur; that they weren’t using all the information or tools at their disposal; that they were doing things the way a child would. Ouch.

But if you demonstrated your mathematical maturity, it meant you didn’t complain if a problem was particularly knotty; that you pulled different techniques out of your mathematical toolkit; and that you took things seriously.

Who’s Got the Twitter Password?
In three unrelated instances over the past few weeks, I heard three different people pose more or less the same question: “If the person at your company who manages your Twitter and Facebook accounts leaves the company, what do you do if they forgot to tell you the passwords?”

If you’re the one tasked with setting things straight, you’re definitely facing a challenge. Who wants to track down and call up a former colleague to recover a password? Sure, most people would be helpful (if, in fact, they actually remember the passwords). But there’s also the possibility for ex-employees to cause mischief.

The real problem, though, arose before the employee left the firm. The organizations in the scenario above never should have let it get to this point.

So why did it happen?

Largely, I think, because we’re still in the early stages of the social media phenomenon, and things are still being done on an ad hoc basis. Many organizations are seemingly OK with people setting up Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other accounts on their own. And they’re not thinking through the ramifications.

Social Media Maturity
To me, social media maturity means having the systems, processes, resources, and organizational mindset to get the most out of what social media has to offer. It means thinking things through and being prepared for different eventualities. More specifically, it means:

1. Knowing your business goals – There’s a lot already written about business goals and determining ROI (including several posts on this blog, including this one), so I won’t delve into it here, other than to say this should be the starting point in any social media or online community initiative.

2. Clearly defining roles and responsibilities – It’s essential to set expectations and know who’s responsible for what (including passwords).

3. Creating sensible and effective processes – Here’s where the organizations above really dropped the ball. IT departments know how to set up new network and email accounts when an employee is hired, and they know what to do when someone leaves. They also know how to manage network access, and how to recover and/or reset passwords as warranted. You should have similar procedures in place for all social sites.

Don’t Forget Consultants and Agencies
Everyone on your team and in your project sphere should walk the social media walk. So if you work with consulting firms, agencies, and others on your social media programs, you’ll want to be confident that they’re not going to walk out the door with any passwords, either. Make sure they bring and display a high degree of social media maturity, too.

Do you know who’s got your organization’s Twitter password?

Social Media – The Global Story

The world is adopting social media at higher and higher levels according to a recent Neilsen Report.  According to the research by Neilsen, global time spent on social media sites increased by 82% in December 2009 when compared with December 2008. Pretty large increase especially if you look into the footnotes and understand that this research is based upon only U.S., U.K., Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy. No China, no India, no Russia, nor are there any Nordic countries listed.

But this growth coincides with what we’re seeing here at Impact Interactions. We’ve helped develop and launch multiple communities in countries such as China, Russia, Italy, France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Poland, and elsewhere over the past several years. And while clients are still interested in their communities in the U.S. their focus is shifting. We are seeing more interest in companies asking us to help them launch communities and social media plans in countries ranging from Japan to Russia to Brazil to Mexico.

The growth in third party applications such as Twitter and Facebook have helped companies to understand the potential reach of the medium, but it is the local language social networks like StudiVZ (German) which have helped in-country marketing teams decide that they must be engaged with their customers using social tools. So even as Facebook moves past these local social media/networks, the smart marketer understands that it’s not the tool so much as it’s the growth that matters in deciding whether social media is a good tactic in a particular market.

In our experience leading a social media workshop in Innsbruck, Austria at the prestigious Management Center of Innsbruck it was clear that our non-US audience were more engaged on local language social media tools including blogs and social networks than on the U.S. offerings. (In fact, it was there that I learned more about StudiVZ and other offerings.)

That doesn’t mean that non-U.S. members are not on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. But it does mean that for the savvy global marketer the research and identification of which sites or applications to use is a bit more difficult. While the strategy remains the same, each Internet culture requires a clear focus on localized tactics. That means a cookie cutter approach using the same tools like Twitter, Facebook, or other application across multiple markets will not deliver the results you desire.

Watch the growth, it’s here to stay. But also look for the smaller sites that can deliever more value to your organization when using social media globally. As the old adage goes “All marketing is local.” The same applies to social media.

-Mike Rowland, President

Misleading Indicators – Followers & Friends

Saw this on my twitter feed yesterday:

What immediately struck me was the implied assumption that the number of followers you have infers a level of influence. In our opinion that’s a risky assumption to make especially if you are going to make a business decision using this as a key metric.

Here is what I sent back to Jeremiah via DM:

Let me translate my Twitterese….

The number of followers is not a direct measure of influence. Too many ‘experts’ in the social media field believe that it is and continue to sell this notion. I can quickly and easily increase the number of my followers using hashtags and keywords that are popular. Yet that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am a stronger influencer than I was with a lower number of followers.

Those folks with a larger number of followers should not necessarily receive special treatment from brands. The number of followers or friends a person has on Twitter or Facebook really has minimal bearing on their actual influence. (I know that’s a bit heretical, but I’ll get to the why in a little bit.)

• How many people have used the various advertised services to build their followers rather than organically growing their followers by posting relevant content and ideas?
• How many people send an invite/friend request/twitter follow to every email address they have expecting the ‘polite’ return linking/friending/following behavior?
• How many of the top people in terms of followers have a large brand behind them, providing follower building support? (Example, if you only tweet about HP or Oreo Cookies you’ll develop following due to the power of the brand not necessarily because you are a thought leader in the space.)

Because these numbers can be manipulated, they are not to be trusted as a direct metrics proxy for influence.

The example that I use in our social media workshops uses a metric that everyone thought was a useful metric way back when in 2000-2003: Hits. The logic at the time was that the more hits there were in a given period of time, the better the site was in meeting its goals. But alas, this metric could be easily manipulated. Want more hits? Add more banner ads, objects, photos, etc. to the page. Voila! Higher counts so more success, right? Well, not really.

Follower counts are the same as hit counts. Look at some of the top people on Twitter with 5,000+ followers. If they are focused on a single topic, they probably do have influence. But most people are not that focused, tweeting about business, sports teams, their family, current events, pets, politics, etc. Do these folks really have a sphere of influence that marketers can embrace and attempt to cultivate through the Twitter Celebrity? Hard to tell.

The idea of identifying influencers in an easy to understand and quick manner has been a search for the holy grail since online communities started becoming more popular in 2000. At Participate.com, we hired smart people to analyze metrics and activities to develop relevant networked connections that indicated a level of influence within the community.  We used the new techniques of social mapping as well as relationship metrics of interactions. The work was never easy and it never gave a true understanding of influence. What did give some insight into influence, was looking to see how others interacted with the individual, not how many individuals read his or her content.

For marketers, a better way to measure influence is to analyze the content being added on Twitter in conjunction with analyzing who the person’s followers are. This is a tough, manual project. But in the end, you’ll have a much better understanding of whether or not a particular individual with a high following is actually an influencer.

As much as we want one, sometimes there is no holy grail. Using simple metrics as proxies is not a substitute for the hard work that data analysis takes to prove a hypothesis. Don’t fall for the trap of taking the easy way out.

Have a different opinion? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments’ section.

Social Media Monitoring Software – Welcome to the Emerald City

After four weeks of evaluating social media software vendors, we’ve come to some conclusions about the reality of these tools versus the hype that we heard along the way. Let’s just say that the parallels to the Wizard of Oz are pretty interesting…

Ever since I played the Wizard in third grade at Grant School,  I’ve really loved this movie, the books, and all things Oz in general. In fact, the head janitor at my town’s high school (Westfield HS in NJ) was one of the flying monkeys in the movie! But I digress…

Impact Interactions provides multiple types of social media services to our clients including consulting, moderation, and reporting. We’ve also been doing social media monitoring for several years for a couple of clients (although it was first called Brand Defense, then Reputation Management, and now Social Media Monitoring). It was a natural extension for our trained moderation teams to help clients. We’ve been looking for a good tool for our monitoring projects rather than relying on manual means of collection. We’ve spent several weeks talking with prospective clients for this service (and yes, it’s a service but more on that later). We’ve also been socializing ideas at conferences with other social media and online community folks to build our business case for adding this service.  So with all of that background, here is how the Wizard of Oz fits in…

I Am The Great And Powerful Oz!

In listening to people speak about social media monitoring tools, they believe that they are an all powerful tool for learning where all active conversations about their brand are being held online. The content is fresh, vibrant, and oh so relevant to their business objectives. Many believe that they’ll be able to manage the flow of information with this great tool, driving insights into their organizations effectively through the export of reports from these all powerful tools. Blogs- check. Twitter- check. Article comments- check. Communities- check. Sentiment analysis- check.

Unfortunately some of the hype around these tools has put vendors in the position of trying to meet these expectations with tools that look great, work smoothly, and export reports in a single click.

Ignore That Man Behind The Curtain!

Just as the Wizard was discovered to be a mere mortal, many customers are discovering that they had expectations that were far too high for the tools. What they are finding is that the tools take someone to work with them daily to review the delivered content, decide which nuggets of information are relevant, build the trends in content sentiment, and create the report.  Just as Dorothy and friends put all their faith in the wizard only to be disappointed when Toto pulled the curtain back, many companies are finding out that Social Media Monitoring requires more than a tool… it requires a team to review the content and deliver what is relevant.

I’m Not A Bad Person, Really.

The software vendors on the other hand must shake their heads when they hear the expectations for their tools. In our discussions with many of the top vendors (and some start ups too), we found them refreshingly honest about the capabilities of their tools. This was especially the case when the hot topics of Sentiment Analysis,  Twitter, and Online Community searches came up.

Sentiment analysis is an art form, not an absolute according to every single vendor we spoke with. The range of accuracy claimed by the vendors we spoke to ranged from a low of 30% to a high of 55%. In our B2B and B2C report testing, that range seems about right. Since most if not all vendors use a similar algorithm to categorize content, that would make sense.

In essence these tools work by analysing the 2-3 words prior and after the associated keyword to determine sentiment. As we can demonstrate, there are many false positives and negatives. To counter that, most allow the end user to rate or assign sentiment to content they find with the idea of strengthening the algorithm for future searches.

Twitter is another interesting discussion. Since Twitter is the social media du jour, everyone is interested in their Twitter buzz. The issue is that these tools use the Twitter search functionality rather than getting a full read into the Twitter Database of Tweets. (Say that five times fast!) So even the top tools are not much better than doing a Twitter search on your own. But as we were told, everyone of the vendors is working on this. According to Microsoft, Bing will have this capability soon. (Kara Swisher broke the news on this one.)

When the subject of online community content was discussed we received the same honest answers from everyone.  If the community has an RSS feed, they can get the information. If it doesn’t you are out of luck. We also learned that several vendors are working on a new tact to obtain the deepest of relationship content. One of those vendors is Boardreader. They are a company to watch if your interest is in content from communities.

The Good News – The Wizard Can Help!

Just as the Wizard offered to help Dorothy return to Kansas, many of the vendors in this space will offer to help clients to structure the searches for their project. But in the end, Toto runs off and Dorothy is still stuck in Oz. All the best intentions cannot overcome the single point that organizations need someone to run and make sense of the volumes of data these tools provide.

How Do We Get Back to Kansas Now?

Sometimes despite visiting a Wizard and killing a Witch or two along the way, you still need help to get where you want to go. That’s where we come in. At Impact Interactions, we recognize that Social Media Monitoring is a service. The choice of tools is important without a doubt, but it takes a person to effectively use the tool and report the results. We offer Social Media Monitoring as a service for clients.

Impact Interactions - A One Stop Shop for Social Media Monitoring

Impact Interactions has a great social media team using a top notch tool to provide social media insight reports for our clients. We understand that you are interested in seeing where the conversations are happening, but don’t have the time to review 1,000 blog posts, 400 tweets, and 500 comments each day. By hiring Impact Interactions, you can concentrate on your strategy while our team provides your Ruby Slippers. And you don’t even have to drop a house on us to get them.

But we don’t stop there! Our team’s experience in online communities is deep. Our social media associates can help you respond to bloggers, commenters, and Twitterers too. We believe that a social media monitoring project should be integrated into your communication efforts. Our team can help you execute that strategy at a reasonable cost.

Want to learn more? Please contact us or give us a call at (410) 604-3304 to discuss how your organization and team can get the most out of social media monitoring services.

Welcome to our new site!

I’d like to welcome you to Impact Interactions’ new web site. Please take a tour around our site and let us know what you think. We’ve consolidated our blog and company information for clients, prospects, and visitors (frenemies too!) trying to learn more about Social Media and/or Online Communities.

We’ve added a new section Social Media Resources to give you quick access to our presentations from conferences and meetings. You’ll find our presentations from Community Unconferences, Business Forums, Internet Strategy Forum Meetings, as well as presentations we’ve delivered to companies wanting to learn more about using Social Media to excel.

We’re also adding a link to our Twitter Account(@ImpactInteract) for those who want to follow our Social Media and Online Community ideas and work issues. For those of you who have been following me at MRowland602 on Twitter, that account will now become my personal account rather than the voice of Impact Interactions. So please consider following @ImpactInteract instead to stay up to date with us.

We’ve also added a link to our facebook account where we’ll add interesting photos from our office and employees as well as additional commentary that runs more to the fun side of running online communities and social networks.

As part of the change, our Blogger account will no longer be updated. All content from our previous blog going all the way back to 2004 has been moved to our blog here. We’ve categorized and tagged the content to make it easier for you to find the information you’re looking for.

Of course, we also have our marketing information as well. If you are looking for an experienced firm with the credentials to make your project (and you) successful, please contact us to continue on your path to success!

Thanks again for visiting, we hope you like the site.

Mike Rowland, President & Founder

Will Social Media Survive the Recession?

What constitutes a bubble? What constitutes a true business tool?

This was the type of question that those of us running Web 1.0 businesses in 2001-2003 were asking ourselves as we evaluated our prospects for the not to distant future. In our case, it was all about online communities and their ability to help both B2B and B2C companies increase sales, build brand loyalty, and market their products and services more efficiently. We had case studies that showed that online community members on average purchased more frequently, bought more items, and generated more profits than non-community members. We proved that online community could produce a return on investment of more than 100% (in some cases higher than 200%).

Yet for all the research and our expertise, many companies pulled the plug on their communities. The list is long: Transora (Multiple CPG companies), OurHouse (Ace Hardware), MuniGroup (Goldman Sachs), Quote.com, SoapCity (Sony), and many others.

Each company had its own reasons, but in the autopsies we performed several issues came out over and over. They were:

1. Budget taken away from community projects due to over staffing on the client side
2. Executive sponsorship changed due to layoffs
3. Software company providing hosting and platform went out of business
4. Movement of marketing dollars to “proven” traditional marketing methods like direct mail

Remember this was back in the day when for chat clients used eShare or iChat, for message boards they used Web Crossing or eShare, blogs were not widely accepted, wikis were non-existent, video was not used online except for B2B, and most community members were using dial-up connections. The overall conclusion that came back time and time again was that while communities were cool, they were a ’soft’ application in the eyes of senior executives. These executives did not see value in kids chatting about irrelevant issues or fans cheering on their favorite television show or prospects engaging with customers independently.

Now shift to today.

Look at our social media space. We have seen blogs go mainstream, social networks competing with online communities (yes they are very different), broadband adoption bringing video and photos to the masses. Yet we also have the feeling of a bubble again as the world enters another recession. The movement towards cool applications like Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace & Facebook widgets, and others are viewed as fun to use. However, in practical terms they are all in danger of the same fate that hit many online communities in 2002-2003.

As budgets tighten, will money dry up for experimenting with social media? It’s possible. Remember that many of the same decision makers who turned off communities are still in the position to do so again. If you are running a community or social network, you need to start building a case for why your project must remain funded.

In a member survey completed in June of 2008, the online community research network published that 57% of all respondents stated that their communities contributed no revenues, less than 2% of revenues, or did not know how much the community contributed. 33% of respondents had budgets for community projects in excess of $100,000 per year (18% over $500,000). The average number of staff working on the community was 6.6 FTEs! But here is the astonishing fact from the report: 67% reported that they had no strategy for their online communities.

Will these communities survive a budget cut? Probably not. The respondents did not know how to prove the value as Alan Warms used to preach. The issue of ROI becomes much more important as the economy gets tighter. While we all know that intuitively communities help the hosting organization, intuition doesn’t get funded.

Community and social network management teams must get comfortable with metrics and with building an ROI Case for their project. Hard data is difficult to deny… soft data of conversations is easy to dismiss…

Want to learn more about how to prove the value of your community or social network? Learn more about our consulting services, experience, and then contact us with your questions. Or leave us a comment.

Live From the Online Community Business Forum

I’m in Santa Fe attending the OCBF today and tomorrow and will blog on interesting issues that we discuss.

We’ve just finished the introductions this morning. In listening to the attendees, not only do we have a nice mix of very experienced community people, but also several folks new to the community world. What I found interesting was that even the existing, experienced communities are facing similar issues across the board. Issues raised by attendees in the introduction time were:

• How do I measure ROI?
• How can I build more loyalty among my members?
• Our growth has flattened, how do we get it going again?
• How can we get our executives to move away from looking at page views and into the engagement and conversion ratios that I prepare?
• How do we extend the community beyond the U.S.?

So, it’s going to be interesting to see if we will get to some of these issues. I’m always surprised that these questions remain as there is a wealth of knowledge available on various web sites that can help. But it’s good to get these out in the open and hopefully we can help.

Do these questions exist for your community or organization? We can help. Please contact us to find out how…

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same…Research on Online Community ROI Techniques

As part of our industry leadership role, we belong to the Online Community Research Network. We’ve been mildly intrigued with the research surveys the network has performed over the past several months, but the most recent survey based report “Online Community ROI: Models and Reports” surprised us. Call it a case of “The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same” syndrome.

Here are some of the report’s findings:

1. Only 31% of respondents have a comprehensive online community strategy in place (53% are developing their strategy as they go!)
2. 59% of respondents say their goals are closely aligned with their organization’s corporate goals.

We find this response interesting as if only 31% of respondents have a strategy in place, how can 59% have closely aligned goals?

Additional findings:

1. Metrics are still confusing people in terms of how to use them for ROI. The top ranking metrics be noted as critical for ROI are listed as traffic patterns and statistics (visitors, visits, page views, etc.).
2. Cost savings for Customer Service/Tech Support, Trial Downloads of products, both scored the lowest as critical metrics for ROI. Yet, these two metrics are the easiest to use to demonstrate a base level of support for an ROI case.

Community Managers who responded to the initial survey ranked Membership Growth as the number one success or performance indicator they report on regularly. The most important data that they report upward include (in ranked order): number of members, basic metrics (whatever that means), online content, number of visitors, number of posts, and other meaningless metrics.

More shocking than this is the response to the level of satisfaction/believability of the data with your executives and how satisfied the executives are with the reports they are receiving. A whopping 23% responded very satisfied with 19% responding satisfied. The executive teams we deal with want clear, concise and relevant reporting. That doesn’t sound like what the respondents are delivering to us.

Think there might be a correlation between the lack of a cohesive online community strategy that closely aligns with corporate goals and the lack of sophisticated measurement and reporting? We do.

Many of the respondents (and members of the OCRN) are still confused when it comes to demonstrating the value of their communities to management. With the lack of refinement comes the claim that online community is a soft application that doesn’t deliver results. During budgeting, how can your online community efforts get the funding you need if your team cannot prove its value to management?

Based upon the responses, we wonder how many of the vendors in the Online Community space don’t understand measurement and reporting issues. With budgets tightening, it is clear to us that this has to be a key issue for the industry. Yet in our opinion, the methodology and understanding regressed to pre-2000 levels. That’s a shame, because our ROI analysis does deliver an easy to understand measurement of how the community is delivering on organizational goals.

We help our clients understand exactly how their communities can help with organizational goals and how to measure their success. We start with targeted audience attraction through PPC efforts and sponsored content efforts, then follow these members through the online community value chain to demonstrate the ROI and value that online communities bring to an organization.

Want to learn more about this topic? Leave us a comment or contact us.

Help Wanted: Metric Reporting Analyst

Impact Interactions is a market leader in strategic consulting & moderation services for organizations using online communities and social networks to drive specific, real world, business results. We also help clients to understand and report on their web metrics as an outsourced analytics reporting service. Our clients include AARP, Cisco, Intel, and SAP among others. For all of our client engagements, we provide scheduled reports covering all interactive touch points with site visitors.

Due to our recent growth, we are looking to add the right person to our team here in Maryland. Specifically, we are looking for an individual who wants to learn our business while helping our clients to understand the way that visitors use their site. The selected candidate will have the following responsibilities:

1. Prepare daily, weekly, and monthly reports for our clients in Wordand Powerpoint
2. Stay current on metric trends and techniques by attending seminars,webinars, and reading white papers published by the major analytics vendors
3. Interact with client teams to resolve reporting issues and topresent reports (requires some overnight travel)
4. Learn about online communities, user generated content, and socialnetworks (including moderation) in order to understand their impact on business goals
5. Update client ROI analysis on a quarterly basis

To be considered for this position, you should have the following qualifications:

• A degree in a mathematical or business related discipline(Statistics and Marketing preferred)
• Strong proficiency in all Microsoft Office Products
• Familiarity with Omniture, WebTrends, Site Intelligence, HitBox, or other analytic tools
• Basic understanding of PPC, SEM, Conversion techniques, and Engagement measures
• Strong writing skills
• A sense of humor!

Impact Interactions is located on beautiful Kent Island on the Chesapeake Bay across from Annapolis. Our benefits include subsidized health insurance, gym membership, a casual work environment, PTO, and a quarterly bonus plan. You can learn more about us by visiting our website. We are an equal opportunity employer.

If you’ve read all the way to here and are still interested, please send your resume and a cover letter to JOBS at Impactinteractions.com for consideration. No phone calls please. We will contact all qualified candidates to schedule an initial telephone interview.