Social Business Index: Bringing the Left Brain into Social Business

For the most part, traditional marketing is dominated by right-brain activity. Creativity, visualization, intuition – those characteristics drive success for brands in the media landscape. Quick, think of some of your favorite brand campaigns. Maybe Apple’s 1984 spot. Or 20 years later, Mitsubishi’s See What Happens. Maybe more recently, Old Spice Guy or The Most Interesting Man In The World.

Similarly, participating in social media is a right-brain activity. It’s full of spontaneous self-expression and person-to-person community engagement. Brands receive recognition for using these new communication channels in innovative ways – whether Comcast using Twitter for customer service, Nike splicing hundreds of user videos together to create The Chain, or Dell taking to blogs to share information during a product recall. As brand participation in social media grew commonplace, analysts (like me) and managers began to wonder – is there a way to make sense of this? And if so, does it matter?

What’s the cost of feeding an ego?

Yesterday, measurement service Klout announced that they had added five networks to their score calculations, allowing users to have their composite influence tracked on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, and others.

Klout has monetized in B2C with targeted product sampling and could easily generate B2B dollars by monetizing its APIs. It’s a fun service for consumers, playing into real-life game mechanics by providing system feedback at large for an individual’s social media behavior.

Users don’t actually have to create a Klout account to have a score. For example, Twitter creator and co-founder Jack Dorsey. Rated by his Twitter handle alone, his Klout score is fairly high. However, by creating an account and providing access to your data on other networks, Klout promises that your score will be more accurate and will not go down.

Playing this game comes with a price – paid by your privacy.

 

Measuring your way to a good night’s sleep

I’ve been spending the past month using the Zeo, a consumer electronics device that measures sleep patterns and provides sleep coaching guidance. Schneider Associates sent me the device (much appreciated). I had just read about Zeo in Delta’s Sky Magazine and was curious – unfortunately, I don’t sleep well on business trips, which gets to be a …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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)– …

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 …