Turning News Into Knowledge

Last week I was at the Third Tuesday kickoff event in Toronto. Joe Thornley did an amazing job putting a great agenda and excellent panels.  The one day seminar, titled Social Media Measurement Matters, focused on latest thoughts, tools and most importantly, metrics relevant in social media measurement.

I was in the panel discussing, “How to set-up your social media command centre.”  Moderated by Martin Waxman, we discussed the different aspects of setting up command centre. Be it the intricacies of keywords or the technical tools that are needed to support your monitoring program.

In my talk I focused on what is the conceptual framework we need to create a robust monitoring command center. This blog summarizes the essential elements needed to set-up your social media monitoring command centre.

Based on the studies of successful campaigns in social media and from my own experience with clients, I believe that the single most factor contributing to their success is their belief in the power of social media. They believe that social media is critical to their company’s or brand’s success and they dedicate money and resources to it because they believe it is worth every penny and ounce of energy spent on it.

Your belief in the power of social media is the very foundation upon which you will set up your Social Media Command Centre. That thinking is going to motivate you to approach the set-up and running not as a piece meal or responsive unit but as a strategic unit.

Now that we have the foundation in place, what are the pillars we need to put in place to sustain our command centre? There are three important pillars that we need.

• Understanding the needs. Each audience will have a unique set of requirements.
• Setting up the goals, processes and resources to effectively monitor and measure both goals and results.
• Delivering customized outputs that meet the identified needs.

Set-up your needs pillar by asking the basic questions. The questions you ask are important because your questions will define your framework including your goals, processes, resources and outcomes.

Ask around your questions, who wants them, why do they want it, what they will do with it, what are they trying to achieve with it, how will they access it, how often will they access it and very important, what is their comfort level with technology.  Ask them well, ask them from everyone, ask them again and again and make sure you have good answers, and make sure you understand these answers well, because in answer to these questions lies the success of your efforts.  Because only when you understand the needs, you can create customized solutions to meet their needs.

Which brings me to the next important point, how important it is to create customized outputs? And the answer is VERY Important.   I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to create outcomes that are customized.

The requirements of a VP, a CEO, A junior staff, a community manager, a product manager, a marketing manager, an HR manager are very different. They have different constraints on their time, they make different decisions and hence they need different information.

Customization sounds like lot of work but we have some very good products that can with minimal effort offer these customized solutions. We at MediaMiser thrive on that concept. It might appear more work but that’s more apparent than real. It’s totally worth it and it also brings to fruition all your work till this point. If you don’t take that one last step of creating customized products you risk losing all your good work so far.

When your audience gets a customized product to their needs, it makes them more efficient and focused on their objectives and then they value what you have to offer to them. They become dependent on you for their success, and then they will support you in your quest for resources and money.

So, take a look at your social media command centre and see if it has the right foundation and pillars in place. Let’s not add another blogger or tweeter to our monitoring because they wrote a negative or positive piece, and let that not be the sum of our social media strategy. If you have the right foundation and pillars then that blogger, should it be relevant, will automatically fit in your framework and that is how you want to approach each piece in your monitoring framework, not by accident but by plan.

How do you run your social media command centre? I am interested in hearing from you.

LinkedIn announced a partnership with Twitter on Nov. 9  allowing LinkedIn users to Tweet status updates from LinkedIn and vice versa by including a #li or #in hashtag in updates.

The announcement spread quickly across the Twittersphere after Mashable blogged about it the same day. LinkedIn and Twitter users around the world were fast to jump in and try it out, many of whom merely announced that their updates were now posting to both Twitter and LinkedIn. In fact 23.3% of tweets from our sample in the first couple of days did just that.

After two weeks, it seems the use of #li and #in has dropped to less than 10% of the activity in the initial 2 days after the launch.

More interesting facts:

• Realtors and recruiting “tweeters” were fast to make use of the tags.  4 of the top 5 handles (@hrdadgar, @ZuluJobsIN, @linkedin_jobs and @hotcandidates) posted 31.6% of tweets using the new tags, @hrdadger posted 26.7% of all tweets alone!

• #in seemed to be the preferred tag, with #li being used in only 9.2% of LinkedIn tweets.

• Of the top 10 URLs used in these updates, 75% linked to the announcement about the LinkedIn Twitter partnership

While the partnership may have been a strategic business move for two of the top social networks, the lack of uptake by users might deem this initiative a #fail.

This is a quick look at emerging patterns on Twitter. After three-months, MediaMiser will do a full analysis on multiple news sources. Stay Tuned!

from Katie D. Paine's blog

Still winding down from an exciting day at #Meshmarketing in Toronto yesterday (huge thanks to the organizers for a great event). I sat in on four fabulous presentations, but the highlight for me was Katie D. Paine‘s “Social Media Analytics – What, Why and How.”

All day, there were lots of questions about social media ROI and what to measure, both in the presentations, and in talking with other attendees. Katie’s presentation at the end of the day wrapped it up perfectly: The main point was “yes, you CAN measure social media ROI”

She explained the seven steps to social media ROI, you can find all this and more in her presentation, but in short they are:

1. Define the “R” – What are the expected results?
2. Define the “I” – What’s the investment? (She also points out that social media is not, in fact, free–”Do you work for free?” she asked)
3. Understand your audience and what motivates them
4. Define the metrics  (what you want to become)
5. Determine what you are benchmarking against
6. Pick a tool and undergo research
7. Analysis – because research without insight is just trivia

The best part about these steps is that they don’t *just* apply to social media, but any type of measurement.  The challenge with social media is it’s not yet widely adopted, but now you’re equipped to go out and lead the way, so what are you waiting for?

If you missed Mesh Marketing, but were in Ottawa, I hope you were able to catch Katie at Third Tuesday Ottawa. If not, I encourage you to check out the slide presentation or follow her blog.

e-Marketer today published a study saying that social media measurement lags adoption. The difference was quite large: while 86% of respondents had adopted social technologies, only 16% were measuring ROI.

Shocking, yes. But does this tell the whole story? While ROI is a great metric for tying efforts to a dollar value… It’s not the be-all end-all of social media measurement. In fact, if it is the only metric you’re looking at, ROI is actually poor measure of social media efforts.

If you are using it to its full potential, the real value of social media is in the relationships you build with customers and potential customers. The stronger these relationships are, the more likely they are going to turn into money–either directly or through referrals. This is what is often referred to as community building, and why many companies are hiring community managers. The downside to community building, from a measurement point of view, is it’s not an immediate gain… It’s not easily measureable and it’s definitely not easily turned into an ROI figure.

How can you measure community building? Engagement–Look at who is talking about you and how often. Sentiment–Are people talking about you positively or negatively? If you do it well and track these relationships over time, you’ll likely see them turn into dollars.

It should also be mentioned that community building is not just about posting to Twitter/Facebook, blogging and creating Youtube videos. It’s also essential you have a solid product or service and excellent customer service to succeed. This is another measurement obstacle, because you can have the best community manager in the world, but still fail if your offering is not up to par. This problem can’t necessarily be captured in ROI or any other metric unless it’s overwhelmingly obvious (it’s often not).

I can’t comment on whether or not the respondents in the study are measuring more than ROI, but I would hope so. What do you think? Should I be more worried about the lack of ROI measurement?

One of the great dangers of social media is not saying too little, but saying too much.

Being a decision-maker and founder at MediaMiser, not only do I have intimate knowledge of where my company is going, but I also feel I have intimate knowledge of where the industry is going.

MediaMiser has a lot of credibility in its space and that opens the door to many different relationships. Plus, since a lot of my time revolves around technology and the operation of my company, I’m exposed to many leading-edge concepts.

There is so much I would love to communicate, but can’t. If I did, I could alienate partners and clients, and provide our competition with an edge.

This should not be just my dilemma, this should be everyone’s.  “Keep your cards close to your chest!”

So the question is, how do you give back and provide value so you are relevant?

The answer is there is no right answer.

It’s a tight rope walk that you need to struggle with and there maybe times where you make a mistake.  Hopefully, it’s not a big one. Keep in mind, when you say too much, you are not just hurting yourself, you could be hurting coworkers, partners, investors, etc.

Tips to avoid saying too much:

1. Don’t get emotional and always keep your ego in check: This is tough, especially if you are naturally competitive like most entrepreneurial people are.
2. Think of the consequences of communicating something and remember you can’t take it back.
3. Try to vet your information through someone else, especially if you are unsure. I personally do this a lot. It is not a weakness to know your limitations.
4. Provide a reason ‘why’ or an objective to posting information. If you can’t answer why, maybe it’s not a good idea. Warning: if you have a reason, make sure it doesn’t conflict with point 1, ‘don’t get emotional’. Some ideas seem good at first. Also, when justifying something, deploy point 3.
5. Wait a day before communicating something. This helps flush out ideas based on pure emotion.
6. Have a clear idea what your target medium is designed for. This may also aid in preventing abuse.
7. Develop a social media usage policy for your organization.
8. Develop internal social media networks. This has the potential of also creating a new set of problems, but at least in theory the damage will be limited internally. This also allows people to get familiar with social media. Practice makes perfect.

These tips aren’t designed to remove spontaneity or to stifle creativity.  However, it may be a side effect. This is why I wrote, “it’s a tight rope walk.”

I’d say a very important skill in the field of PR measurement is to not be complacent. The industry is constantly changing–especially when you factor in social media and start measuring alongside your other PR efforts. If you feel it’s time for a refresher on what’s hot and what’s not in measurement, see this post from the Metrics Man, which is a fabulous compilation of great advice for PR measurement.

Happy measuring!