Logic+Emotion

Do You Believe In Life After Likes? Measuring Social Business.

 
Colleague Steve Rubel and I were recently invited to participate in a very cool initiative coordinated by Eloqua‘s Joe Chernov and Jess3 – a social media playbook for industry professionals dubbed the “Social Media ProBook.” In it, you’ll find valuable perspectives from a variety of practitioners ranging from Ford’s Scott Monty, to Citi’s Frank Eliason, and HP’s Liz Philips among many others (disclaimer, HP is an Edelman client). My contribution was on a topic I feel will be of increasing importance to those of us deep in the trenches of social business integration and measuring results. Below is the full contribution, and I highly recommend that you browse through the ProBook and share it with others. It’s got some great, timely information on how to take social business to the next level within your organization.

Do You Believe In Life After Likes? Measuring Social Business.

Anyone telling you that they have the measurement and ROI (Return On Investment) issue solved in regards to social media is exaggerating at best. While I don’t have enough space here to dive as deeply into this topic as I could, there are a few specific points I would like to emphasize. But first, let’s do some level-setting — conversations around measuring results must move beyond fixating on single metrics such as “likes” fueled by the Facebook ecosystem. While they may be a desirable indicator of success, “likes” are one of many metrics, and social business leaders must take a step back to look at the big picture before putting all your social eggs into one big integrated basket. A great starting point when digging into measurement is to organize your efforts into one of the following outcomes: behavioral change and economic impact.

Behavior Change

Behavior change can be looked at from multiple perspectives. For example, if a large enterprise has determined that X amount of dollars can be saved annually if employees shift their behavior from A to B, then success can be measured by the percentage of shifts in the behavior from undesirable to desirable (over time). Likewise, on the public front, if a business finds itself in a crisis scenario and needs to “stop the bleeding,” it needs to trigger a shift in actions (such as fewer negative postings in public and more neutral or positive expressions, often referred to as “sentiment”) to help reverse opinions. From a marketing perspective, prompting desirable behaviors is also linked to influencing thought and opinion. Ratings, reviews and recommendations of products / services all serve as significant purchase indicators. Apply a social lens to these behavioral indicators (for example, sharing an opinion via a social network) and you can begin to frame up outcomes, which involve thought and action.

Economic Impact

Economic impact attaches a value — revenue generated or money saved — on a business initiative. It should not be confused with metrics. Returning to the crisis scenario, a business that has successfully averted or subdued a crisis (leveraging social media) can reference benchmarks from similar situations faced by other companies or their own estimations to evaluate how much money the business saved through taking appropriate action. Sales is of course the obvious financial outcome, however even if tracking sales via social activities is elevated to a science, companies must also consider how much more or less it might have taken to achieve similar results using other methods (such as traditional media purchasing). In areas such as human resources, economic impact can be measured in quality and efficiencies (such as recruiting better candidates in less time leveraging social networks). In customer service, it could spending less on call centers because customer advocates are helping others before they ever have a chance to pick up the phone. Simply put, economic impact is money the organization saves or makes integrating social initiatives into the business.

Construct A Measurement Framework

Measuring social business success begins with constructing a measurement framework, which maps to your objectives to the appropriate strategy. A measurement framework aligns KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) with criteria to measure against. For example, if your KPI is “visibility,” your framework should be structured around relevant, measurable metrics, such as page rank in search engines or designated networks. “Acquisition” could also be another KPI, which can be measured by fans and followers. A desired outcome can be ownership of a conversation or subject matter. In this case measuring against a KPI such as “authority” could include metrics like shares, media mentions, links, likes, embeds, traffic, and comments. Some of these metrics can be aggregated into things such as “share of voice” or the approximation of how relevant you may be to conversations. A measurement framework based on applicable KPI’s can be applied to different facets of social business — for example separate ones can be developed for customer service, marketing, sales, R&D, etc. There are metrics which can be shared across all of these functions, but a framework should go deep in identifying what needs to be measured and where (what social properties). The framework also should be flexible enough to change as new data is introduced.

Analyze For Meaning

The less frequently discussed aspect of social measurement is effort, or the time it takes to derive meaning from numbers, data and fluctuations in metrics. A “measurement dashboard” satisfies the need for program architects to view all types of information at a glance, but while it offers up valuable information on that “what,” a dashboard seldom tells us “why.” Human intervention is needed to determine why there might be an increase in re-tweets around one form of communication vs. another. Dashboards can tell us what times of the day users may be more and less active, but the insights we derive from them requires processing that transcends the display of information

Measure What Matters

Measurement initiatives must begin with serious consideration of the desired outcomes. On the behavioral front, raising awareness on an issue or a successful adoption rate of a platform can be sought after outcomes. Advocacy can be another powerful outcome for any organization. On the economic impact front the outcomes should be focused on determining if money was actually made or saved. The metrics you then choose to analyze and report against align against these outcomes from the beginning. Tracking irrelevant metrics is like playing a game with numbers instead of meeting your business objectives. Start your measurement initiatives with your goals, objectives and outcomes and work your way backwards toward what should be measured. Take a holistic approach and avoid the temptation to focus solely on metrics that demonstrate only short-term gain. Be prepared to update your approach and framework as your social business objectives evolve. And, most importantly, get ready for life after likes —because it’s coming soon to a business near you.

 

The Social Media ProBook

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Maybe Agencies Should Be More Like Blue Chip Companies

If you work in either an agency, consultancy or professional services firm, then you've likely seen an article or five over the past few years making the case for agencies to act more like start-ups. The logic goes something like this: start-ups are nimble and product focused. They embrace "cultures of code" and they build things. Start-ups move fast and adapt, and they celebrate experimentation and innovation. And some of the most famous start-ups are literally changing the way we live, work and play (see Facebook).

In the spirit of full disclosure, I once subscribed to this point of view but I do not any longer. Professional service firms like any industry are facing multiple challenges, from disruption generated in places like social media (anyone can be a publisher now) to the fact that there's convergence making it less relevant to distinguish how different your firm approaches the areas you provide services in (is it advertising, marketing, PR, or other?). In many cases, the dollars being pursued are up for grabs.

First, let's state that start-ups have their own issues. A very TINY percentage of them ever make it to a sustainable business model. Many start-ups are founded by ADD ridden entrepreneurs who build one, sell it for a modest price and move on to the next because that is what they do. Also, start-ups are in truth a commodity—there are thousands of them out there that are trying to be the next location based network just like the others before them trying to be the next Twitter and Facebook. Nobody talks about those.

Now let's move on to agencies and or consultancies. Some have actually figured out (or at least are trying to figure out) how to reconcile products vs. services. A social media agency called Mr. Youth created a community-rewards type product called Crowdtap and it's worth noting they even they call out the differences in the models:

Back to agencies and perhaps business in general. A few weeks ago in London, I had a very stimulating conversation with an Edelman colleague who was talking about "corporate memory" or simply put, the connection between the knowledge which is retained in any organization between their employees & their work product. It hit me that this is not only a challenge for "client side" businesses, but for agencies it can be a complete nightmare. Many agencies are revolving doors, where high turnover rates are expected and planned for. However, like any other business—each time a professional services employee leaves a firm, they take their corporate memory with them. In my opinion this may be the number one issue that any business, especially the professional service industry faces as disruptions continue to enter the market place.

My hypothesis here is that looking to the start-up world may not provide the inspiration agencies seek. In fact, the inspiration may lie in sustainable blue chip businesses who do a good job of retaining not only their most critical employees but the knowledge they amass as they spend their time with the company likely going from department to department. Having worked with several significant brands/companies over the years you can spot these individuals—they've put in their time and deeply understand the culture, values and mission of the company. They've provided value over the years and been there through good and bad times.

Whenever I meet an Edelman collegue who has been with the firm over 5 or 10+ years—(and there are many) I always ask them the same question. What keeps you here? The answer is usually consistent:

The people
The culture
The work

Perhaps agencies need to look not to the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world but to the sustainable business models that have withstood the test of time and are smart enough to invest in and keep their "corporate memory" intact. It just might be that unless you build the next Facebook or Google, that start-up culture is overrated and today's "empty suit" is actually an empty hoodie.

Topical Storms Brewing Around Influence

On the heels of our influence panel at Mesh 2011, Klout has introduced a new feature they call "+K". A simple way to think of it is a like button for influence which connects someone to a topic which you choose. The move by Klout to add this feature signifies a broader effort which impacts conversations on the subject matter of digital influence—that influence is meaningless unless you have context such as what subject(s) people and organizations are credible in. As I said in a recent piece on a related issue, topical influence is what counts.

Is Klout Smart Enough?

Klout's move into this area depends on how quickly it's algorithm learns from both what you say (post) and what others think you are influential in. Above is a sample of three areas Klout thinks I MAY be "influential" in. They are far removed from the types of things I discuss but for some reason, the algorithm picks these in addition to others.

These topics (above) appear to be more relevant to some of the topics I do discuss. What makes the +K approach interesting is that topics do not remain static but change over time, presumably as a result of your activity and the way the algorithm is designed. In the screen capture below, you'll notice that the +K I gave to a connection has a shelf life of 43 hours. This is likely designed to address the reality that people can become influential in a specific topic for a short period of time (think about how individuals have leveraged their networks for causes).

Klout's biggest weakness here remains the fact that you have to be on the platform and that +K activity, while it has the potential to act as a sort of social currency is limited (right now) to being shared on Klout itself.

Topical Storms Brewing
Klout isn't the only player in this space looking to tweak activity either by category, subject matter or relevancy. Sulia (below) uses Twitter lists and organizes them by category, listing profiles which have been most listed in a specific topic from the order of most listed to least (curating along the way). While the service is limited to Twitter only as opposed to others such as Peer Index, Klout and SocMetrics to name a few it provides a useful funciton which is to aggregate and organize profiles by categories which can quickly be scanned. Because Twitter lists are created by users (manually) and less likely to be gamed like follower counts, they serve as a significant indicator in regards to how an individual or organization is perceived.

 

Online Influence Measurement Remains In Its Infancy
As I mentioned in my panel at Mesh, we are at the very early stages of not only understanding, but harnessing and scaling efforts around digital influence. Most conversations are focused on scores and social graph analysis with a fixation on identifying "influencers". Identification is only the first of several steps—the more critical ones are engagement and management of an ecosystem which consists not only of stakeholders which hold various degrees of influence, but also the information or media itself which has its own potential to influence opinions, behaviors and actions. I also believe that a missing "indicator" is a simple metric borrowed from traditional digital marketing. Clicks. Simply put, we need to be able to analyze the percentage of clicks an "influencer" gets based on the total inventory of links they share in social streams. Clicking on links is a light action—but it is a measurable one. There will be much more activity in the influence space both on the external and internal operations of business. Be sure to watch the space closely as it matures.