Social Media: Whose Brand Is It? A Contrarian View

This week’s Fortune Magazine has a very interesting article in its career section titled “Building Your Brand (and keeping your job)” by Jost Hyatt. Are you a senior level marketer in an company that is moving quickly into social media? If so, this article should be on your critical reading list. Here’s why (excerpted from the article):

“When Monty joined Ford, he brought with him 3,500 Twitter followers; he now counts 41,000, conceding that many of those came with the big blue oval logo that now accompanies his tweets.”

“And he’s kept his Twitter handle as @scottmonty rather than adding the Ford brand. ‘I was Scott Monty before I came to Ford, and I’ll be Scott Monty after I leave Ford,’ he says.”

And he is absolutely correct… when he leaves Ford, he takes all the brand equity from his social media efforts with him. Well, maybe not all but certainly a lot.  This is not a criticism of Scott in any way, just a social media tactic that is going to back fire with a lot of companies as the economy gets better and people start changing companies again.

As we wrote in an earlier blog post, Walking Out the Door with the Twitter Password, organizations must have a plan for social media and turnover of employees. But we didn’t go in to the brand equity and ownership issue. So with the above article as an example, here are our thoughts.

Contrary to popular opinion that brands are owned by everyone in the world of social media and that organizations should give up control, we argue that this advice results in companies giving away valuable assets. The number one objective for using social media from a brand perspective should be to build the importance of the brand in the audience’s thoughts. That’s why marketers use advertising to build awareness, coupons to build trial use, and consistency in branding to build a relationship with consumers. In B2B terms, it’s still about awareness but the relationship factor becomes even more important. With all of the money spent by marketers to build their brands, enhance them, and promote them, why would they let the value slip away as someone walks out the door for a new position? But with the social media tactics promoted and utilized by so many, this is exactly what companies are doing.

“People forget that they are always representing their companies… If you send a tweet that says ‘My Boss sucks,’ you have to be aware of what could happen.” – Lucia Erwin, fomrerly H-P’s sr. director of strategic workforce planning

And here’s an example of how personal accounts acting as corporate accounts can back fire from the article:

“Amy D. was a social-networking expert at a marketing firm. She was just ‘letting out some frustration’ last year when she issued a tweet noting the irony that she was editing a presentation about social media for her boss who didn’t use it. She got fired shortly thereafter for violating a new communications policy.”

(Amy probably wasn’t a real social networking expert because that was such a rookie mistake. But that is another story about our industry all together…)

So what is a company to do? Well, for one rethink this tactic. Think about the number of cases where an employee has tweeted, added to their wall, or commented on a blog inappropriately or worse in a way critical of the brand. It’s easy to write these off as isolated instances, but it happens a lot. That’s why companies institute social media policies for their organizaiton’s employees to follow. It gives them recourse and a limited amount of protection should they fire someone (as also mentioned in the article above).

A better tactic is to use the brand as the leader, not an individual. The account(s) are owned by the company, not the individual. The passwords are the property of the company. If the individual leaves, the account remains in tact but with a new author. Does the author get some credit? Sure, in the profile section of the company brand’s account. For example, the account for your product could be titled “AcmeWidgets” with a profile that states “AcmeWidgets provides product information and company communications. Our account is written and managed by JoAnn Smith, an Acme employee with six years of experience in the Widget Industry.” (See our Twitter account profile as an example: @ImpactInteract.)

That way, the focus of your company’s social media efforts remains on the brand not on the personality of the employee. It also gives credit to your employee, but allows your company to switch out the author at any time without losing your audience. 

While some ‘gurus’ and social media ‘experts’ will argue about transparency or being authentic here, this tactic is transparent/authentic, it gives your company a social media voice, and it allows for a measure of protection of your most valuable asset…. your brand.

Sometimes, it pays to follow a contrarian idea and go against the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ especially if it involves maintaining your brand’s position and standing in an ever growing social world.

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Baseball and Social Media Success: It’s the Little Things

by Matthew Lees

Springtime seems finally to be reaching the northern hemisphere in actuality, not just in name. The April rains that crossed the US have caused their shares of headaches (or worse), but they should eventually bring May flowers; school children are sensing they’re on the home stretch toward summer vacation; and baseball season is underway.

As social media analyst and baseball fan – I met my wife at Doc Gooden’s no-hitter in 1996 – I’ve often observed several similarities between the two realms, the most relevant of which is the importance that baseball and social media place on doing the little things well.

Baseball
Baseball is ultimately about the small moments. A game may ultimately hinge on a grounder that just glances off the diving second baseman’s glove with two outs in the 6th inning, an alert runner on second tagging up and taking third on a foul ball the right fielder catches halfway in the stands, or a sacrifice bunt that moves a runner into scoring position.

Sure, a game-winning three-run homer in the bottom of the 10th is exciting. Effective, too. But these don’t happen every day. More often than not it’s the small play, the play that goes unnoticed at the time, that makes the difference. Add these up over the course of a 162-game season, and it’s the little things that separate the playoff contenders from the “We’ll get ‘em next year” crew.

(The importance of the little things is the reason why there aren’t many great baseball movies. Baseball is about holding the runner on third base when there’s a grounder to first, fouling off four pitches before drawing a walk, and bringing in a relief pitcher an inning earlier than planned to give the starter’s sore arm a little more rest. And most of the time during a baseball game is spent with ostensibly little going on, with the inactivity is broken by intense bursts when the ball is put into play. But producers of baseball movies tend to require high drama, the 3-2 pitch with two outs in the bottom of the ninth that the aging slugger hammers into the center field seats. The pace and unpredictability of real baseball doesn’t play well in the theaters.)

Social Media
As with baseball, it’s the little things that matter in social media. For every video that goes viral – the social media equivalent, perhaps, of a home run – there thousands of seemingly insignificant interactions with customers in branded communities and throughout the social Web: the reply to a question in an online forum, the blog post that gets retweeted, the Facebook post that announces an upcoming event. It’s the aggregate of these day-to-day interactions between you and your customers, readers, subscribers, users, and partners that have the biggest long-term impact.

How? None of these actions is big or brash or glamorous. But they’re part of the slow and steady relationship building that, though unheralded, gets long-term results. The question you answer in the community forum could solve a customer’s problem without the need for them to call your contact center (thereby saving your company money while saving your customer the time and effort); the blog post you write could generate a conversation that sparks a new product idea; and the Facebook post could draw someone who eventually becomes a new customer.

If your social media initiative hits word-of-mouth gold, that’s great. But focusing your strategy on home runs is like stacking your baseball line-up with power hitters. You’ll get some dramatic wins, but be in last place at the end of the year.

It’s spring time, when everything can begin anew. And it’s the little things that matter most. Play ball!

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Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge? (Part 1)

By Matthew Lees

Social technologies have had a big impact on the ways that companies do business, both inside and out. Organizations are using social tools – discussion forums, blogs, microblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, and more – to help employees be more productive and effective. They are also using the same types of tools to engage with those outside their organization, i.e., their customers (users, readers, members, etc.) and business partners.

Social media is helping to break down the walls that separate internal from external. Those traditionally outside the organization not only know more than ever before about what’s going on inside (thanks to blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), they also have more of an opportunity and ability to influence things within the company (for example, through crowdsourcing mechanisms). For the most part, it’s easy enough to set up a collaborative space for members of a customer advisory group, for example, to interact directly with a group of employees. And if you manage a customer community, you can – in fact, you should – have employees intimately involved. The lines between inside and outside are becoming increasingly blurred.

I’ve had a handful of recent conversations — with vendors and with practitioners at B2B, B2C, and employee communities — about this potential coming together of employee and customer communities. If social software and social media are at the heart of the shift towards increased interaction, collaboration, and transparency, perhaps there is an eventual convergence that can be supported by a single social technology system. Why can’t there be one technology platform and one set of resources supports (1) internal communication, collaboration, and learning, as well as (2) external collaboration, customer engagement, and peer-to-peer support?

After all, social is social, right?

Will Employee Communities and Customer Communities Converge?
Idealistic Answer: Yes
As someone who resonates with just about any customer-centric approach, I love the concept of an organization that values customer ideas and insight (and builds process around such input), and looks to connect employees working on specific initiatives to relevant and interested. A convergence of employee and customer communities would enable this to happen more painlessly and more frequently.

Employee/Internal and Customer/External communities have a great many similarities. Both types of communities…
•    look to enhance communication and collaboration among individuals and groups
•    leverage similar tools and technologies (e.g., wikis, forums, blogs, microblogs, etc.)
•    have, at their core, user profiles and directories
•    need to support both individual users and groups, all with granular permissioning to provide appropriate access
•    require underlying technology that can integrate with other data sets and applications (e.g., CRM systems, registration and authentication systems, etc.), extend , be secure, and scale as needed
•    depend upon authenticity and transparency
•    benefit from data analysis by someone for whom the success of the community is important, and who can make improvements based on the analysis

Leveraging these similarities would mean streamlined technology and centralized resources, which are certainly directly beneficial to organizations, and indirectly beneficial to customers.

So there’s a lot to like about the concept of a single technology platform that supports both employee and customer communities. It fits in philosophically with the direction in which many social media enthusiasts think organizations should be headed. But there’s this little thing called “business reality” that sometimes gets in the way …

Next: Part 2 – Pragmatism Rears its Ugly Head

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Social Media Management Tools – Are they Ready for the Enterprise?

by Matthew Lees

Over the past 6-12 months a lot of companies and technology platforms have entered the market purporting to make it easier for individuals and organizations to participate throughout the social Web. If you’ve got accounts at one or more social sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and LinkedIn, why, for example, should you have to log into each one? Wouldn’t it be much easier simply to log into one interface to organize, read, post, and search comments?

I’ve seen the phrase Social Media Management used as a catch-all for these types of tools. That sums things up as well as anything else.

To a basic degree, this is the idea behind Twitter-centric apps such as HootSuite, Seesmic, and TweetDeck. If you’re using Twitter on your own, these programs may meet your needs just fine. But the social Web stretches beyond Twitter and, if you’re responsible for social media at a large organization, you’ve got quite a few requirements beyond convenience. When the stakes are high, when there are more than one or two stakeholders involved, and when time – yours and your colleagues’ – is at a premium, many of these systems fall short.

What Makes Social Software Enterprise* Ready?
I see six main categories where enterprise social applications differentiate themselves from software that isn’t ready or appropriate for enterprise environments:

1. Security – We’ll start with what’s probably the most obvious item on the list. Enterprise social software adheres to high standards of security, both in terms of technology (i.e., secure protocols) and process (i.e., the ability to define access and keep audit trails; see below). How comfortable would you be sending your social security number to someone via a Twitter direct message?
2. Access, Accountability, and Auditing – These are the three As of enterprise social software. (Well, I just made that up…but it works well.) Social software for the enterprise lets system administrators set user permissions and access in a granular and effective way; it tracks activity and creates an audit trail, so you can determine who did what, when; and it allows for passwords to be recovered and/or changed as appropriate.
3. Content Management – Twitter is an example of a very rudimentary form of content management, which is pretty much based purely on a “push” model of publishing. Once you tweet, it’s out there…you can’t take it back and you can’t change it. Enterprise social software includes content management capabilities that let you save, undo, modify, and schedule for publishing at a later date. It also lets you adapt content to the particular channels you’re sending it to, and to choose which channels to send what (i.e., “I want this post to go to Twitter and Facebook, and I want that comment to go to our corporate blog).
4. Performance – This primarily encompasses speed, scalability, and reliability. For example, if Flickr or Facebook go down for a while, you’ve got little, if any, recourse. With enterprise social software, you should have support people to talk with and (usually) SLAs in place.
5. Integration Points – Enterprise social software will have hooks that allow for bi-directional integration, so data can come in from appropriate sources, and be sent out to other places (such as other applications, such as a CRM system, sites on the social Web, or your branded customer community). The architecture is important here, as ideally the platform’s engine is robust enough so that when the next new big social network crops up, it would be easy enough to configure its integration.
6. Analytics and Reporting – Social analytics providers are doing strong business helping organizations make sense of the social Web. Most social sites and tools provide woefully limited statistics. Of course, they weren’t designed with reporting in mind – particularly unified reporting, which lets you look at everything from one place — but if you’re using them for your business, you need to understand their effectiveness and impact. And that goes beyond counting how many Twitter followers and Facebook fans you have.

Note that many of these items translate into increased productivity. Social Management Tools, whether enterprise-ready or not, are largely, though not exclusively, about making it easier for individuals and organizations to do social media more efficiently and effectively.

Social Media Management Platforms
A few of the companies doing some interesting and promising things in the Social Media Management space are:
•    Socialize Your Stuff (Butterfly Publisher platform)
•    Regroup
•    Social Agency (Spredfast platform)
•    Spry Hive Industries

Community platform vendors are also thinking about how branded communities fit into all this, as well. On the leading edge of the trend toward connecting your customer communities to the social Web are:
•    Awareness
•    Lithium Technologies
•    LiveWorld
•    RightNow Technologies (Social Experience platform)
•    Pluck

Of course, the tools can only do so much. Technology platforms won’t get you where you want to go without a sound business strategy and a plan for engaging with your customers, members, readers, followers, prospects, etc.  But if you’re evaluating — or reevaluating – your social media strategy and presence, the six items above will play a central role.

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* What I Mean by “Enterprise”
“Enterprise” is one of those buzz words that means different things to different people. I’m using it here in a somewhat non-rigorous way to really mean a level of sophistication and maturity. Enterprise software is sturdy and full-featured, to meet the many and varied needs of professional organizations. In this way, it relates to the concept of enterprise architecture, particularly the definition from the MIT Center for Information Systems Research: “Enterprise architecture is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure reflecting the integration and standardization requirements of the firm’s operating model.”

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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.”

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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

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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?

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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