Being Peter Kim

A framework for measuring social media

Do you think it's tough to measure social media?  It might be simpler than you think.

I've blogged before about how game mechanics describe social media participation. Games have scores.  Scores track progress, which results in success or failure.

Although social media channels seem to be mostly qualitative in nature, user activities can be easily quantified.  Although users interact with channels in different ways, four common factors quantify social media success:  Attention, Participation, Authority, and Influence.

Here's a framework for measuring social media:

1. Attention.  The amount of traffic to your content for a given period of time.  Similar to the standard web metrics of site visits and page/video views.
2. Participation.  The extent to which users engage with your content in a channel.  Think blog comments, Facebook wall posts, YouTube ratings, or widget interactions.
3. Authority.  Ala Technorati, the inbound links to your content - like trackbacks and inbound links to a blog post or sites linking to a YouTube video.
4. Influence.  The size of the user base subscribed to your content.  For blogs, feed or email subscribers; followers on Twitter or Friendfeed; or fans of your Facebook page.

There's an "x-factor" that comes into play well:  sentiment.  The spirit driving user participation matters.  The net result of these adds up to a score for social media engagement.

So what's the monetary value of a visit, comment, link, or friend?  Well, the only honest answer is "it depends."  Only you know how much these interactions matter to your brand, regardless of industry, channel, or competitive results.

Now...was that so tough?

CGM: You Have To Measure It To Manage It

I have an opinion piece up now in Brandweek's Spotlight section about brand monitoring.  Other bloggers who've occupied the space before me include David Armano and Chris Thilk.

Here's a little bit on what I'm talking about:

To succeed in CGM today, you need to listen and measure before getting involved. Sticking your head in the sand isn't an option; neither is operating in 24/7 knee-jerk reaction mode to every piece of CGM related to your brand. Brand monitoring can help marketers measure and make sense of CGM by delivering aggregated cost- and labor-intensive consumer insights.

To read the entire article, visit Brandweek.com.

Romo and ROMO

You want to succeed in marketing today?  One good word to remember:  romo.

Left-Brain ROMO:  The acronym for Return On Marketing Objectives, as popularized by Marketing Evolution (this the company that identified the momentum effect in social networks).  Integrated marketing may be the top issue on marketers' minds today, but not without the need for accountability for what's being spent.

Right-Brain Romo:  As personified by Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony.  He's quickly becoming known for his on-field creativity, the ability to improvise and produce results.  No time left, need to produce results?  No problem.  With all of today's talk about left-brain marketing, let's not forget what marketing is better at than any other department.

These ideas work together - knowing what works gives you more room to be creative.  Knowing how to improvise gives you a chance to make the big ideas pay off.

Analytics 2.0 with Avinash Kaushik, Google

I'm at Darden today, speaking at an executive education course.  Great presentation from Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist at Google.  The big idea of the morning?

Analytics 2.0:
- [start here] Clickstream data (the what)
- Multiple outcomes analysis (the how much)
- Experimentation & testing (the why)
- Voice of the customer (the why)
- Competitive intelligence (the what else)
- Insights (the gold) [end here]

Can your company answer the question: "why does your website exist?" in 15 words or less.  Craft this statement around business outcomes.  Conversions aren't always sales - they can be interim goals, e.g. could be brand referral or propensity to visit a store.

The job of the online marketer is "learn to be wrong, quickly."  The web allows experimentation (A/B testing) at scale previously very difficult.  Google did this on Picasa.  Current page showed 30% lift.  "Free download" text doesn't work as well as a button that says "try now." A picture showing functionality didn't work at all (i.e. trying to show how much better than Photoshop).

Three key questions to figure out site intentions.  Most sites have conversion of 2%.  Why?  Not everyone came to your site to buy something.  Goal:  to find segments of discontent - and respond to them at scale.  So answer these:

1. Why are you here?  (aka primary purpose)
2. Were you able to complete your tasks today?
3. If you were not able to complete your task today, then why not?

Recommendations:

• Insight One:  the 10/90 rule.  Tools and Professional Services:  $10 vs. Investment in intelligent resources:  $90
• Insight Two:  Data quality sucks, get over it.  The web is the most perfect imperfect medium in the world
• Insight Three:  Reporting is not analysis.  Empower your analysts.  The critical few is the secret - on any dashboard you should have max 6 - 8 metrics.

Yahoo! up next.

Diva Marketing Talks Tonight: Blog Analytics

I've never been accused of being a diva, but I may consider myself one after tonight.  I'll be discussing blog analytics at 6:30 pm Eastern with two very smart people:  Toby Bloomberg and Marianne Richmond.

The format is a live show on BlogTalkRadio.  Listeners can join the conversation at 718.508.9924.

iPhone: advertising and brand monitoring

The iPhone goes on sale today, which you probably knew.  Do you remember seeing any ads for it?  TV?  Print?  Banners?

I've seen some paid keywords on Google.  Given the amount of buzz, hype, anticipation around the launch - why even bother?  (unless you're marketing Blackberries.) Today I got an email with the image at left.  Search ads and email - that's it.  Compare that to the consumer-generated content around the product:  on YouTube, Flickr, and in blogs.

Here's what brand monitoring experts have to say about the launch:

- Matt Hurst at Microsoft predicts the topic will garner 1% of blog discussion today.  Looks like he's right.
- Nielsen Buzzmetrics indicates positive sentiment around features.  Relevant Noise disagrees.
- BrandIntel points out that although discussion levels are high, purchase intent remains neutral.

So it seems as if we have a Subservient Chicken question here:  lots of buzz, but what about sales?  At minimum, the iPhone is already a huge success for the Apple brand and time will tell us about the bottom line...

Ad Age Digital Fact Pack 2007 is out

Ad Age has published their 2007 Digital Fact Pack.  If you're not familiar with it yet (there's a 2006 version as well), it's a great one-stop source of information on the state of digital marketing and media.

Why would I post about it?  Because in a Monday information wave of email and RSS, it almost escaped my attention and I'm guessing you might have overlooked it as well.

Research Agency CEOs at ARF re:think

The second day of the ARF's re:think conference opened with a panels research agency executives, called "The Research Agency of the Future" with the CEOs of GfK, Kantar, TNS and Nielsen.  Moderator Jim Figura of Colgate-Palmolive said it should have been called "Insights Agency of the Future."

Most of what these CEOs had to say didn't get beyond what you can read in the press today.  Thus as Joe Mandese wrote in his post on the official re:think blog, the interesting parts of the panel came from reading between the lines.  In fact, most of the talking points were so generic that I didn't know what company was being referenced for the middle two speakers.  GfK was introduced by the moderator and Nielsen went last by process of elimination.  But for Kantar and TNS, it was a few minutes before I knew what company was being represented.  This was because none of the CEOs told the audience their name, title, or company when they took the podium - they all just started talking.  Perhaps these guys are rockstars of research to the ARF audience.

Klaus Wübbenhorst from GfK proposed his company was best positioned to help businesses - after all, GfK stands for "growth from knowledge."  I asked Klaus about GfK's brand monitoring plans after the panel.  No response - he looked at me as if I had just asked him to go a grab me a coffee with cream and two sugars.  I asked again, mentioning how TNS and Nielsen were building capabilities in the space.  He mumbled something to the effect of "sure, it's important."  I asked him if he thought brand monitoring were an important capability for a research firm to have in its portfolio.  Certainly a slow-pitch underhand softball in my book, but it must have looked more like a Matsusaka gyroball.  No response.  Pretty clear he just wanted me to leave; unfortunately, I had to in order to deliver my breakout session.  Note to Klaus:  70 million and growing.  Think about it.

Credit to Eric Salama from Kantar who was aware enough that the Blackberry in his pocket was creating interference with the mic.  Salama says it's time to mind the gap between what research firms promise and what they deliver.  His firm's strategy hasn't changed for four years, built on three principles:  people, innovation, and data quality.  I asked Eric about brand monitoring, too.  He said none of his companies were doing it.  I asked about Visible Technologies - he said, "yes, we have a partnership with them."

David Lowden from TNS had this to say:  "The research company of the future will be a partner with its clients."  "Cost-effective servicing is an increasingly important issue, but quality must remain."  "Clients will only commit to insight that positively impacts business in a meaningful way."  He did mention the Cymfony acquisition as part of their efforts to stay cutting edge.

David Calhoun from Nielsen was certainly different in appearance - he was the only panelist sans jacket.  He also heavily referenced his client-side experience, which others did not.  Calhoun was formerly at GE and mentioned his experience and mentors from there both in his prepared remarks as well as the Q&A.  These remarks certainly pointed out management acumen that puts The Nielsen Company in good hands - hopefully Calhoun will be able to change the industry standard as well and help marketers make advertising work.

International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media

Are you interested in brand/blog monitoring?  If so, hopefully you're in Boulder, Colorado right now at the ICWSM.  If not, you can get a hint of the discussion on the event blog.

The conference started as a collaboration between chief scientists at Nielsen Buzzmetrics and Umbria.  Although the information is fairly technical in nature and a bit raw for public media consumption (you won't find any of these insights published in USA Today any time soon), there are some fascinating insights on why, where, and how the blogosphere is developing.

Advertising Works! Here's proof.

More results were released from Project Apollo, showing a lift of 5 - 8% for consumers exposed to advertising.  The potential here is enormous.  Start with timing and creative insight here and use household level targeting from a company like Visible World - and the industry just might be able to get past clutter and irrelevance.  Interruption is a bigger programming issue - but throw branded entertainment in there and you've got yourself a winner.

For anyone who reads the news and thinks, "so what?  we already know that ads work."  Because believe me, I've heard this sentiment many times before.  You show ads, you sell more products.  But that's the shotgun approach.  Technology allows you to answer the more refined question, "how well?"

And that's approaching the issue like a ninja, not like a frontier settler in a coon-skin cap.

[photo:  rahen z]

TNS acquires Cymfony

The news is out - TNS has acquired Cymfony.  The new operating unit will be called TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony.

I'm not surprised - in my opinion, this was inevitable.  In the Forrester Brand Monitoring Wave, published in September 2006, one of the clear conclusions was that Cymfony would be a great fit with a large research firm like TNS. 

Did they sell too early?  From what I can see, mainstream attention is just starting to turn towards brand monitoring services.  In my conversations with vendors, everyone loves the fact that Nielsen brought attention to the space - now TNS ratchets it up a notch - and my Forrester wave helped validate the market as well.  But nobody wants to sell too early - like selling the rights to the Nike logo for $35 - and thus the market has been dating around, but not making long-term commitments.

Now, expect additional activity in the brand monitoring market.  Other conclusions from the Wave:

• Agencies will boost their market research capabilities.  I think this is the next big deal to be announced. MotiveQuest is the most likely candidate here.
• PR services agencies upgrade their offerings.  Not yet, but WagEd launched their own product  called Narrative Network.  Biz360 is a great fit for one of these firms - some of which could benefit from better social media skills.
• Nielsen Buzzmetrics will go public.  Wrong.  No IPO in sight as the measurement juggernaut formerly known as VNU builds an integrated measurement offering.  But now they have a challenger.
• Factiva will boost consumer capabilities.  Nope.  They were consumed by Dow Jones in December.  What this foreshadows, however, is the impending forward integration of data source owners, like Verisign.  Or at least starting to charge a premium for their services.

So who's next?  Well, the only ones I didn't mention yet are Brandimensions and Umbria.  For BrandDimensions, it'll mean selling off half the business, i.e. BrandIntel. I think Umbria will follow in the path of Buzzmetrics and Cymfony, getting paired up with a major research firm.  BTW did you know Umbria's CEO is the former CMO of IRI?

Too bad I didn't include a line in there about me becoming a billionaire!  Congratulations to Jim Nail, former Forrester analyst and Cymfony's CSO/CMO.

Nielsen: Death Star Approaching?

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...well actually 30 years ago and in Hollywood (same difference?) the Death Star came into our collective consciousness.  The Death Star was the dominant force in the universe, wiping out small planets at will.  However, its size made it difficult to maneuver and left it open to small rebel attacks.  One final point I'll bring to your attention was the political backdrop - lots of posturing, gesturing, and threatening, while the Empire just kept on doing its thing.

Since VNU took Nielsen private last summer and started trimming fat/streamlining operations, the direction looks pretty clear on an emerging integrated marketing measurement superpower.  Don't get me wrong - Nielsen was a TV ratings monopoly to begin with, but has been slow-moving.  Witness the anticipated launch of A2/M2...in 2011.  The media industry has been debating the validity and use of live/commercial ratings, delaying them for now.  While all along the way, Nielsen has been reorganizing and building a potentially unstoppable "superlaser" of measurement.  [sorry, saw that on the starwars.com site and can't get Dr. Evil out of my head]

The one element that would have made this the perfect analogy to torpedos in an exhaust port would be if social media measurement were missing.  But it's not, thanks to Buzzmetrics.  Is the new Nielsen Death Star III in the making?  With the repurchase of NetRatings, the company now owns measurement in television, print, online, outdoor, consumer-generated media, and out-of-home.  We hear experiments in cross-channel, like Project Apollo.  [btw no assumptions from me on who'll be cast as the Emperor, Darth Vader, et al.]

Is there anything that's going to stop this measurement juggernaut?  A truly integrated measurement suite would be invaluable for marketers - but market power in the hands of a few tends to produce sub-optimal results.  Do market mix modelers have the answer?  Or other companies that can aggregate an independent array of data sources?  Or should we hope that Nielsen gets it right, quickly, for the sake of marketing accountability?

Blog measurement: authority vs. influence

The Z-list meme started by Mack Collier has picked up incredible momentum.  While it's been fun to see my blog's Technorati rank skyrocket, it's more interesting to step back and analyze the big picture (it's what I do for a living).  Compare authority and influence; the presence of one does not necessarily mean the other exists.  (see David Armano's image at right illustrating potential presence of authority, probable lack of influence).  So how can you think about blog measurement with these concepts in mind?

Like many other bloggers, I've redirected my feed through Feedburner.  Your subscription stats give a great idea of how many people [and bots] you may be reaching on a daily basis - a better indicator of ongoing influence rather than point-in-time authority.

I tested out a lot of different analytics packages as I started blogging:  SiteMeter, Performancing, Fireclick, Google Analytics, and Blogbeat.  I've heard good things about Mint and MeasureMap, but I don't run my own server and have been on the waiting list of the other for about a year.  Google Analytics and Fireclick are robust - a bit much for a personal blog.  So I coughed up the $24 for Blogbeat (which was refunded around the Feedburner acquisition) and  have been loving the service.  Now that Blogbeat stats have been merged with Feedburner, there's no need to go anywhere else - and their customer service is FANTASTIC.  Again, thinking about influence:  these stats give you a sense of (1) new vs. returning visitors, (2) volume of traffic from inbound links, and (3) popularity of outbound links, i.e. what you are influencing.

In the land of the non-quantitative, there are comments that form conversations - any blog that doesn't allow them is all about authority.  Press outreach indicates a combination of authority and influence; when you receive concept pitches and get on BR (blog relations) lists, or when journalists call/write to follow up on posts.

Bottom line on determining the balance of authority vs. influence depends on why you blog (a subject for another post).  Whatever your reason(s), putting the right tools in place will help you keep tabs on how quickly you're getting to the goal.  (BTW you do have goals...right?)

Your help is absolutely welcome here - are you using any tools that I haven't mentioned here (e.g. Alexa)?  Do you see the authority vs. influence issue differently?

Social media on the NewPR Wiki

I ran into Constantin Basturea at the WOMMA conference in DC a couple of weeks ago.  I've been following his NewPR Wiki for a while, which is a great source of information on social computing.  Today, I finally got around to contributing on the Social Media Measurement page, which has a lot of great brand monitoring information.  Take a look and add your expertise!

Data freaks rejoice! Swivel preview is live.

Swivel launched last week and is being called the "YouTube for Data."  Have fun and remember that correlation does not imply causation.

I've uploaded some data on internet ad revenue and domains in use - pretty clear connection.  Also created a simple graph on google stock price vs. search share - makes sense, too.

Enjoy!

UPDATED:  Here's the ad revenue/domains graph, embedded.  Great stuff. You should get the authors of Freakonomics to start using the service and illustrating their arguments!

Brand Monitoring. Topic = USA.

Great article in the New York Times today about how brand monitoring software is being developed to monitor opinions about the United States in overseas media.

Come to think of it, that's one of the reasons why brand monitoring vendor Cymfony was originally founded - for US intelligence applications.

At $2.4 million over three years, it makes me wonder why Homeland Security doesn't just go with one of the existing vendors - existing systems are fairly well-developed and an $800,000 annual contract would land in near the upper end of current monitoring contracts.

Story:  Software Being Developed to Monitor Opinions of U.S. (New York Times)

Forrester's Q3 2006 Brand Monitoring Wave is now live

I began working on the brand monitoring Wave in May and wrapped up the research with publication of the documents today.  More on the process and a pretty picture of the results on the Forrester Marketing blog.  More on the personal side of the process here.

The Wave is a quite intensive piece of research.  It's very process-driven which is good in some ways, bad in others.  The process makes for a very rigorous analysis.  It also means that there's very little time for other activities when you've got one in progress.  I ran in-person "lab" evaluations with each of the seven vendors.  I made 17 client reference calls with existing and former accounts.  I also developed the 56 evaluation criteria (with vendor input) and scales, scoring each vendor and backing it up with written analysis.  These scorecards turned into longer written documents in addition to the "long doc" that describes the brand monitoring market and process.  Moreover, there was discussion at each step of the way with vendors regarding their scores and my analysis, whether fact- or opinion-based.  It adds up pretty quickly.

As a result, I'm looking forward to taking a real vacation!  Haven't had a full week off yet this year...

Free at last! Google Analytics is now open to everyone.

Google Analytics is now open to anyone for free - no more waiting for an invitation.

Too bad for the people who paid for the service on eBay yesterday.  In the past, bids had climbed into the $40 range.  Prices are down to $1.79 - $5.00.

While some other free analytics tools are tailored for tracking blogs specifically (e.g. Blogbeat, Performancing, and MeasureMap), Google Analytics is a great tool for both individual publishers and SMBs.

If you're not hooked on one service over another, the cost of running multiple services is minimal.  You should implement a few and then decide for yourself after comparing user interface, reporting, tracking results, etc.

Paying for Google Analytics

You probably know that Google offers a pretty good free web analytics tool called Google Analytics.  And if you can use web analytics, you've probably signed up for an account.  Hopefully you're off the waiting list.

If not - read on.  Before I got my code (which took considerably longer than spreadsheets or calendar), I searched around for invite pools and other sources where excess inventory might be distributed.  The one place with a lot of action?

eBay.

It struck me that the scarcity of this free product had driven some people to pay for an invite - the highest recent price for a successful auction was $46 on June 5th.  With the clear imbalance of supply and demand, and an available secondary marketplace, watching the equilibrium price of a Google Analytics invite has been a great microeconomics experiment.  It looks like codes are going for about $1.00 now.

Given the drop in average selling price for successfully completed listings, it looks like Google has increased the available supply and/or people are finding substitutes, e.g. Performancing or Sitemeter.

The creation of a market here makes me wonder - how long until Google turns on a business model for premium consumer services?

Oh - and if you need an analytics invite - try one of these:  M2AA-DZBJ3-HMDS or KWSN-EBKGJ-KIAS.  If you claim one successfully, please post and I'll strikethrough.

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Measuring Super Bowl Web Traffic

Akamai has launched a Super Bowl usage index to track traffic sent to its advertising clients before, during, and after the game.  It appears that the premier site they're delivering is Dove's "Campaign For Real Beauty" v2.

If you remember, Keynote used to do this for all sites in 2000, 2001, and 2002.  Too bad they discontinued it after the crash - I think we're going to see even more integrated TV-to-web campaigns this year than ever before.

Now if we could only get something like a Fireclick Index for the sites as well, we'd be a tantalizing baby step away from measuring what matters - bottom line results.  I hear that water cooler buzz is important but maybe clarifying with something like "because buzz signifies brand awareness which leads to consideration and purchase, meaning sales in the short term and loyalty in the long term" would help dispel the notion that the CMO and CEO aren't on the same page.  Just think of your CEO as Rod Tidwell and CMO as Jerry Maguire.  And the CEO wants the quan.

Oh yeah, I'm also publishing a piece this week on advertising campaigns best practices.  Not up yet but hopefully will be by the end of the week.

Tags:  super bowl, akamai, measurement, quan