Who should manage social media?

It is Marketing, Communications, Customer Services, Tech or a separate team? Once you talk through the implications of enabling staff to engage with potential customers on any topic, at any level (i.e. C-level to cleaner), it becomes clear that the traditional business approach won’t work. Engaging in social media has huge implications for all of these departments – so a full strategy needs to cross-cut the organisation. This is easier than it sounds and you won’t get it right first time. I would start by ensuring there is a general understanding of the impacts social media might have for various departments, but focus initially on getting specific results in a specific area (i,e. whichever team is keenest and most likely to succeed). The wider strategy will evolve from the learning and success of the initial project.

Is Social Media Personal or Corporate?

It’s a cliche, but social media is all about people. The reason most corporate blogs fail is because they lack the personality, humour, critical eye, and the failings (even) of a real human being. It’s the same for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Free and unfettered social interaction and discussion is anathema to strict corporate communications – so for social media to work, senior managers need to loosen those strings a little and allow staff to be themselves online. It’s a big ask! The issue is even more delicate when using services like LinkedIn – in which the account is personal (not corporate) and the contacts and reputation each person builds are their own, not their company’s. This personal vs corporate line needs to be drawn clearly and early on in the process.

Where’s the ROI in Social Media?

I’ve written extensively about ROI in social media and, while it’s not always easy to gauge, there are clear methods for measuring the success of your social media campaigns. Measuring is one thing, predicting accurately is quite another. In order to get sign off on a budget you usually need to state the anticipated results in no uncertain terms – and with social media that’s hard. Thankfully, I think we’ve reached a stage in the evolution of social media communications that most CEO’s realise they have to try to understand it and maybe pilot a project to see what results it brings. Demanding immediate, financially measurable, returns is unreasonable when you’re working in a space of such rapid innovation.

How Can we Find the Time for Social Media?

While some aspects of social media – such as posting to a blog, or sharing a video via YouTube – can be scheduled, becoming part of an “online community” on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or across the blogosphere requires regular participation. One of the first things I do with a client is stress that, without a daily investment of time, their social media campaign is likely to fail. Getting the staff responsible to put this time aside and have faith that, six months down the line, their investment will pay off is a tough ask – especially when they are judged on targets. This investment really needs to be written into their job spec and signed off by their Manager.

Are our Customers Really Using Social Media?

I’ve been asked this question since the really early days of online communities, when the big charities I worked with were concerned that 70% of their donors were over 50 and (the perception was) unlikely to be online. That was 10 years ago and the ones that led the charge then are still ahead of the game. The fact is: not all CEO’s are on Twitter. Many aren’t even on LinkedIn (though, these days, I think that’s little short of idiotic) and you won’t find that many using Facebook for business. The point is though, millions of senior businesspeople are on Twitter, interacting in LinkedIn Groups etc. and you can connect and communicate with them really easily and for free. There has never been a more cost-effective way of making global connections and any business person who fails to recognise that now will be behind the game. Even if you are 100% convinced your target market isn’t using social media, in my view you should still use it. Using social media is a learning process and the more you learn now the better equipped you will be to take advantage of it when you do need it.

Katy will start of be setting out the ROI structure, asking: what are your goals? What do you want to achieve? By how much and, crucially, by when? She will explain the many different forms of “value”: such as cost savings, trust, the financial value of an advocate, the lifetime value of a maven etc. and set out how you might benchmark these values – and even test them before you start your campaign.

Next, she will look at the “consumer journey”, explaining how relationships with customers can develop over time, how their journeys fracture and become more complex, and how this effects measurement.  She will look at critical success factors, asking: how will you know if your campaign is working?  What are the milestones? And how will you separate the influence of other activities from this one?

It’s obviously crucially important to identify what you are measuring right from the start of your campaign. Katy will work through this process, setting out a framework for defining KPI, asking what the pitfalls of trying to measure some KPI’s are (including how sentiment is not a good measure of advocacy) and exploring other examples of “hard to measure” benefits, such as the value of ratings and reviews, product seeding and community involvement.

In the penultimate session of the workshop, Katy will focus on evaluation, including how to benchmark and how to set out detailed metrics analysis, plus the absolute need for frequent optimising and A/B testing. She will also explain the need for marketing mix modelling and econometrics as an evaluation and decision support tool – using Adidas as a case study.

Finally, Katy will do a live experiment. Using volunteers from the audience she will work through their requirements, producing a framework that will enable them to measure the results of their social media activities. If you’re coming to the workshop – I would strongly advise volunteering for this part of the session, it could save you an awful lot of time and money.

Luke Brynley-Jones talks with Philip Hofmeyr at Social Media Measurement & Monitoring (photo: Benjamin Ellis)

So who’s making the money in social media measurement and monitoring? I was on a panel asked this question at the Measurement & Monitoring Meetup on Friday. It’s essentially another take on the ROI of social media monitoring question, but with the focus widened to include suppliers and consultants, and at first sight it’s a rather annoying question. Having established at the Chinwag event on Tuesday that social media isn’t (necessarily) all about financial ROI, to be asked where the money is in relation to social media monitoring tools seems regressive.

Yet it’s actually a burning issue for many of the suppliers. Having tried and tested many of the leading services over the last few months (Sysomos, Synthesio, Radian6, Brandwatch among others), I have a new-found respect for the task these guys have taken on. Not only are they sifting through millions of new conversations every day, they are having to linguistically analyse these conversations and then produce results according to often very complex individual algorithms entered by their customers. This isn’t rocket science, but it requires rocket fuel of a variety in it’s processing power. That costs money so they need to charge their users for their services, and most of them do.

But are they making money? Granted, there’s a gold-rush going on, with companies desperate to know and understand what’s being said about them online. But, with some exceptions, social media is not yet accepted wisdom in many boardrooms and budgets in no way match the enthusiasm of individuals in forward-thinking PR and marketing teams. Even the sponsors of highly successful campaigns (such as the Meerkat) have not seen the need to invest in social media monitoring tools.

We’re just not there yet in terms of credibility and investment. The market is too young, too fragmented and too volatile for anyone to be making a fortune out of monitoring yet. As I said in the final Panel session at the event on Friday, I think we need to see some clear market leaders emerging, with easily comparable pricing and feature lists, before customers will have the confidence to invest freely in this exciting new marketplace. And of course, the shadow of a free dinner around the corner (aka Google Social Analytics) is likely to cause some companies to delay their purchasing decisions.

I guess that leaves the Consultants. I’d love to say that in times of uncertainty, it’s the consultants who make all the money, but in truth it isn’t. Consultants are at the bottom of the food chain in this ecosystem. First the brands need to be making money, enough money to feel confident enough to invest in something new. Then the monitoring companies need to be making money, enough money to be a contender. Then, someone has to decide that this is quite a complex field and it might help to bring in a real expert. I can tell you, that doesn’t happen all that often!

On that note – Marshall Sponder and Nathan Gilliatt, two of the best social media monitoring consultants around, will be in the UK at the end of March 2010. Contact us if you’d like to book an appointment with either of them.