A Metrics Driven Approach

First, it was pagerank and now its edgerank. Edgerank is given by facebook based on your community and engagement as well as timeline and user interaction. It is an element that you need to watch.

Before we consider targeting metrics to goals, there are some elements that every business must watch just to be agile and nimble. In the age of connected, social world you need to be able to respond to negative sentiments and so sentiment analysis and awareness is critical for survival of all businesses today. The following table outlines the necessary non-goal related metrics that you need to be watching continuously. It’s really about the Good, the Bad and the Ugly – important thing being “do not ignore the ugly” it wont go away. Here are some basics that we are all considering
• Number of Followers
• Number of Interactions
• Positive
• Negative
• Key themes or topics

Watching these will give you a sense for any specific things in the outside space that you might need to react to. The space is very volatile and having your pointers and feelers out there is critical. Then based on the goals you have established, you would want to track associated metrics. For instance if you were looking to improve customer satisfaction and run campaigns to make sure that all customer service calls are rated by facebook interactions, you could measure that clearly and add it to the dashboard. Similarly, if your goal is to reduce local markdowns and improve merchandising, you can watch quarterly merchandising and inventory levels that you have stocked based on user interactions to get the impact and results. Measurement and monitoring can help you use the interactions with geographic campaigns and improve on the same. If your goal is marketing and brand awareness, you can measure the growth of fan base as well as user interaction.
Which Social Metrics to Track
In the social media analytics world, there are several key metrics that provide value when tracked regularly:
• Traffic data – Number of visits/visitors driven by social media to our sites
• Fan/follower data – Number of people in the various networks and growth patterns of the same
• Social interaction data – Interaction between people (sharing and re-sharing our content) on social networks
• Social content performance – Performance of the content produced on social sites
Getting the right metrics to answer these questions requires segmenting by network. Not every question will have direct answers in the data, so we may need to make assumptions or inferences.
Facebook
Facebook offers a relative wealth of data about nearly all the metrics we care about through their built-in product for brand pages, Facebook Insights:

Here you can track key metrics over time, including the size of your fanbase, the reach and effectiveness of your content, the quantity of likes and shares of your content, demographics of your fans and more.
Insights also has a very unique and powerful feature - integration on your website. Using a small bit of Javascript code, you can embed the Facebook Insights functionality on your site and receive information about all the users visiting your pages that are logged into Facebook. It is the most robust of the built-in, social platform analytics tools available today by far.

Twitter
Twitter and Facebook are likely to be the largest two social networks for referring traffic to most sites. While Facebook has relatively sophisticated analytics built into their platform, Twitter does not. This means tracking growth of metrics over time requires third-party tools (or a lot of time collecting data manually), which we will cover in a section below.

In the next post we will look at the key metrics most organizations care about on Twitter.

Until then.... Enjoy!

Setting Goals and Expectations: Strategic Thinking

It is imperative that you understand the reasons for embarking on this Social media journey so you can set expectations and align your goals with organizational commitment and results achieved. The program can appear daunting but like any other program – keep it simple, start small, measure and continuously improve and evolve. If you stick to these simple rules, success will be yours.

When setting your goals, Be Strategic thinkers and think beyond just the brand presence and community base. The power of social media is that you can create engaging communities and leverage people to drive various aspects of your business from product development, product enhancement and packaging to customer service and sales. Typical value drivers for most organizations fall in one or more of the following 4 categories:
• Revenue Growth
• Customer Relationship
• Cost Savings
• Operational Efficiency

The traditional approach and business objectives apply to the social world too. You are a business and at the end, you do want to leverage social media as a tool to improve your business. Smart and Savvy Social Media is all about using the tools and tricks of social media to apply to age old business best practices and use it to your advantage.




Some considerations for the 4 top of mind categories are listed in the chart above. Lets’ now look at some example case studies
Capture User Information and Establish Repeat Cycles to Up-sell and Cross-sell



“ovenfresh” offered a $1 coupon to watch the video and vote on two different types of dinners in the grocery aisle. Not only did they engage with their community, they understood the facebook user-base preferences as well as generated revenue driving people who may otherwise not have purchased their product. They also used this opportunity to capture the user information such as email, first name, last name and zipcode for future up-sell and cross sell opportunities.

Another great way to use facebook interactions is by “collecting” data on your “champions”. By running a referral campaign, the company below was able to see how many of their facebook fans would “refer” their product/service offering to their friends. Identifying “Champs” helps you use these advocates as an asset to your business.

You could use your followings on facebook and twitter to better understand which geographies and markets would be better fits for trials of new products or even tailor products based on user interaction. A large bookstore we talked to is stocking books based on user interaction in different geographies. Local Merchandising is a big element of today’s retail industry social marketing strategies.

Improve Decisions related to Introducing New Products
The example in Chapter 1 that was used by Smirnhoff to introduce the flavor based on user interaction is a great example of this.

Improve Packaging Types

By setting clear goals and targets upfront, you can work towards these goals and ensure the teams are all aligned with these goals. Measurement is a critical element of the program so by setting goals upfront, metrics can also be defined and articulated clearly. Communication is always easier with numbers that show results. Numbers that cannot be questioned! Numbers speak for themselves!

Social Media Quotient - What's your SMQ

Social Media Quotient is a great place to start your social media efforts. It helps you identify where you are in the social chain. It helps establish a baseline and you can track progress from here – trending upwards, of course!

We believe, businesses today fall in the following areas of the social maturity curve
a. Initial
b. Managed
c. Defined
d. Leader


This Maturity Model is patterned on the Software Engineering Institute’s (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM). The CMM is a methodology used to develop and refine an organization’s software development process. The CMM describes a multi level graduated path that provides a framework for prioritizing actions, a starting point, a common language and a method to measure progress.



The model provides the framework for assessing and evaluating. Having an assessment of where you currently are within each category provides a framework for determining where you want to be. The goals and structure of an organization will drive which category to attack first and to what maturity level they choose to achieve. It is not necessary to address all categories at the same time nor is it necessary to achieve the same level of maturity within each category. All measurements are made at a category level, not across the board. Where you are, and where you want to be, is the choice of your organization.

Most businesses start form initial and strive to get to a managed state. It is important to establish a baseline and at a minimum have a managed social media program. Once you are at managed state, you can work to harvest and leverage the community and engagement to get desired outcomes leading to states 3 and 4.

There is a ... Method to the Madness

Think big, Start small.
Strategize. Engage. Interact. Analyze.
Cha Ching!!!

In every aspect of the social media arena, you can excel and grow exponentially. Each of the four areas need to be considered separately and when combined, the results are astounding.

But remember, a Social media program is continuous and ongoing.

Like a life-cycle, your social media program needs to focus on the following valuable, key steps to continuously evolve and improve
• Strategize:
Social media is more than a channel -- it's a world unto itself. Consider your business goals, then survey the social landscape for you. Create a road map that articulates strategies for you to win in this competitive landscape. Set goals and targets so you can tie everything back to your key performance indicators - each time, every time.

• Engage
Get Engaged, Engaged, Engaged .... and then some .... with Your Customers!
Remember that when it comes to social media, there is only so much talking you can do about yourself. What you want is other people/and their friends talking about you .... and good things too so keep an eye on the twitter chatter. Create targeted content, hand out megaphones to your supporters, then help them turn up the volume for everyone to hear! Use the Klout influence to measure. Identify your Key Influencers!! This is critical!

• Interact
Be Creative to the Core!! Truly successful social campaigns are cut from the new fabric of social media, no using last years leftover designs and styles. You are the Chief Designer and creativity should inspire people to want to "touch, feel", "meet your brand", then "invite their friends into your home". Thou shalt be rewarded!

• Analyze
Always keep analysis as top if mind because the one thing that numbers give you is a reality check as they don't lie! Create a crystal clear image of your brand's social web status. Try to listen and unlock the truth in "twitter" chatter, this can be a unique and powerful tool to support you in your social business endeavors.

Quick step-by-step
• Understand your Social media IQ.
• Set Goals, Expectations and articulate target audience
• Ensure Executive Sponsorship
• Establish Metrics to measure progress
• Create outreach program(s) to meet your goal(s)
• Grow the Engagement and Community
• Measure results
• Apply lessons learned and Evolve CONTINUOUSLY

Most importantly, This is NOT Rocket Science. Its pure business and people sense.

Here is a little visual that helps articulate the key steps. Note that some of these steps are considered mandatory while others may be deemed important but not necessarily critical. The color coded legend (version TBA) differentiates between the critical and important steps.


It is important to establish a social presence first. Statistics below demonstrate that there is an audience that you can target and leverage.

Praying to the Google God - Just Not Enough ... Anymore!!

Gone are the days when you could just focus on page-rank and first page positioning on search engines such as google for targeted keywords. No more praying to the google god or rather, now you have multiple gods you have to pray to - google and facebook being the “main” ones, with smaller offerings to twitter and the newest pinterest god as well as a variety of others. If social media keeps evolving at this rate, we may be praying to a million gods soon and understand what Hinduism is all about ….. karmas!

So, let’s all try to attain the ultimate Nirvana and create the brand and business that we deserve to be!

Social media optimization is a big part of today and an even bigger part of the tomorrow of online marketing. It lends itself to helping you build an online reputation, and done right, it is a great way to build presence and status. The caveat, of course, being that it is also a great way to ruin your reputation, have other users cast you as a spammer and force some very bad press onto your brand. Regardless, the important thing to remember is that you are dealing with “real people” here and not search algorithms! Real people are interacting with you in their “social” time - so you will have to get accustomed to relating with the personalities, their opinions and their likes and dislikes that will be shared with the world and for all to see. Gulp, as you can imagine, this can be quite daunting. The key therefore, is that you should get used to dealing with their personalities, their tastes and their uncensored opinions.

Rule Number 1: Keep it honest, and absolutely transparent. Transparency is critical in this era of online marketing with social media.



Facebook has a staggering 750 million users today (as of August 2011). The number is definitely jaw dropping. To leverage facebook’s population to improve your brand, and create a presence is not just for online marketing. It has become a vital part of the business world today. An interesting topic of discussion is the value of acquiring a new “facebook” user. For all practical purposes, the value is determined by you, the brand. But, in reality, if you do not have facebook user following on your fan page, the risk of the non-presence on facebook can be extremely harmful and detrimental to your brand image and business overall. This fear is what is driving all/most businesses to jump on the bandwagon with no-business-left-behind scenario. What’s more, there are desperate measures being applied by businesses out there using companies such as buybulkfacebookfans or similar that help you acquire “seemingly real” fans to drive the number of fans up, for as little as $50 (500 fans). We question the value of acquiring these fans. We believe that you should focus on acquiring “genuine” fans interested in your brand. Fans that interact with you because they are truly interested in you and your brand. Fans that give you insights and help you drive your business. Fans that have longevity and will help you leverage facebook to acquire more fans.

We recently discussed quantifying the “value” of a facebook fan, with a large bookstore. This bookstore is using their facebook fan page in, what we consider, an extremely savvy and interesting way. Primarily used to draw insights into what their facebook fans want to read with specific emphasis on authors and titles in specific locations/geographies. This is followed by stocking books based on demographics/geography in the local bookstores. The value of a facebook fan to them is quite high. Their goal is to reach a million facebook fans quickly and at their headquarters, a ticker, similar to a stock ticker, at reception greets all staff displaying the number of facebook fans “today”. The stock ticker symbol from the dotcom boom has been replaced with the facebook acquired fan number(s). Go figure. Now, there is a customer case study for you.

Another retail business is using facebook to ensure stocking levels of inventory such as clothes, make-up and shoes is driven by the fan based inputs in specific under-performing locations/geographies. The belief is that by stocking the appropriate and desired inventory levels, the sales and markdowns would be highly reduced thereby improving profitability. There are countless case studies of businesses leveraging facebook pages to gain insights into consumer behavior.

Incenting People to follow you on facebook is like a no-brainer. Most businesses are doing it today with freebies and “value” adds to drive followership. Here is an example of one such brand



A European brand of an alcoholic beverage, ran a facebook campaign, to gauge their audience’s reaction to two options for the proposed packaging of a new beverage being launched. They created a contest where their fans could vote on their favorite packaging. With a deadline and some winning prizes thrown in to entice fans to interact, the contest was a huge success. The “winning” number of votes was used to determine the packaging that was used for bringing the new product to market. This is a great example of the collective power of the 750 million+ facebook users. Brands can really leverage the medium to draw insights to product development, product initiation and launch amongst a variety of other things.

An interesting case study is Smirnoff. They ran a “battle of the bottles” contest to determine which flavor to bring to market.



As you can see, engagement like the above can really get fans talking and not just to you but also to each other. In this case, Smirnoff Watermelon won the “battle”.