Communications — No comments
17
Mar 13

Thinking About Network Efficiency

Lately a topic that’s been on my mind is the idea of network efficiency. This considers how a topic can hit a group of networked individuals so that it effectively gets spread throughout its network.  To think about this topic another way, how many people  did the Harlem Shake need to hit for it to go ‘viral’ instead of just falling into obscurity like many other videos.  Could a small subset of people effectively have enough reach and traction to reach a few hundred thousand others?

An Intro To Networks…

Something to keep in mind about networks (social networks, interpersonal networks and the like) is that there are two key components , nodes and edges. A node is an individual entity in a network ( ie: a person) and an edge is the different connections between the nodes. Now obviously, certain nodes have more edges, this connects them to many more nodes. Depending on the connections of the nodes, some have similar connections or some that are not similar at all. Why is knowing this useful? Information shared by a node with many edges spreads messaging more effectively than one with just a few. Also, two unrelated but highly connected nodes can share messaging with  a larger reach and less overlap compared to two that are similarly matched. This means a higher rate of separate connections= more reach= more effective messaging spread. (To learn a bit more about network graphs have a look here)

 

Here is a look at my Facebook social network. The circles would be all of the nodes and the lines between them would be the edges.

Here is a look at my Facebook social network displayed through a program called Gephi. The circles in this picture are my individual friends (or nodes) and the lines between them displays how they are connected ( the edges)

 

Making Something the Next Big Conversation Topic

I could go into a bit more depth with this topic but I want to keep this post pretty short. At the end of the day, the idea of nodes and edges in a social or interpersonal network  sense can be related back to how quickly and effectively a message is spread. Imagine if we could know which people in a network are needed to best get a message across. Instead of spraying a group with your message you could get it to the right people and have it evenly distributed throughout.Knowing what efforts are needed to make your content reach your target group rather than become  some little known code on the web can ensure increased success and better use of resources.

Personal Thoughts — No comments
04
Mar 13

On Settling Into Somewhere New

After being without my family in Toronto and now Montreal I’ve learned that that there are certain places and activities that make living somewhere more comfortable.

I’ve now been 8 months in Montreal and  having a week off  has made me realize that there are certain things that make me more comfortable living out here. Recently my biggest discovery is that knowing the location of a good book store is important to me. Back in Toronto it was Swipe Books and now here in Montreal its Drawn & Quarterly. Having good quality books available to big creature comfort to me…. yup I’m a nerd.

There are other things that give me comfort. Whenever I’ve needed to think I find myself going to the Vieux Port/ Old Montreal to check out the old cobbled streets or have a view of the St. Lawrence seaway. I  also have two bakeries that I tend to frequent and a Thai fast food place I go to when I don’t feel like cooking. In terms of person to person contact I’ve also discovered the Montreal New In Town Meetup where I can go and grab beers with people who are in a similar spot to where I am.

Rather than just living in a place, I think connectedness is important and that’s where knowing things are comes into play. We aren’t just people who go from home to work and then home again. Having a feeling of familiarity and comfort in your surroundings helps with your state of mind.

What is important (for me at least) to do when you live in a new place?

  • Explore your neighbourhood. Knowing what is around in your immediate vicinity makes you feel more comfortable and as a side benefit can give you places to check out later for activities.
  • Find places relevant to your interests. Not having access to activities that you previously had can be a bit of a downer. Find a comfy coffee shop or seek out a place that provides access to the activities/classes that you’ve enjoyed. This provides you with a feeling of continuity.
  • Find a group of like minded people. Going to a place alone can be tough. Having a group of people that you can talk to and share experiences with makes things a bit easier and can relieve feelings of frustration and isolation.

So while I’ve been unpacked for a few months in Montreal I’m still sort of still settling in and understanding my surroundings. In another 8 months I’ll have to see where things go!

 

 

Personal Thoughts — No comments
27
Jan 13

Old Becoming New Again: Getting an Old School Shave

If something is new, more technologically advanced or simply has more moving parts we tend to generally think that something is better. Simple means that someone hasn’t been thinking about something hard enough about making it better right?  Well I’ve learned in at least the case of shaving that this isn’t necessarily true.

First thing out of the way, I am one hairy dude and my hair tends to sprout up like weeds. If you were to do a poll of men to ask how often they shave I’m sure you’ll generally hear that they shave every two to three days. Well for me it’s almost every day with the exception of weekends and holidays where I tend to give my face a rest and just generally look like a hobo otherwise.

The downside I used to experience with growing in a thick mane is that multi blade razors would clog up  and become ineffective. Of course this then means that you’re constantly replenishing your razor supply.  This changed about a year and a half ago when a fellow co-worker of mine suggested I try out shaving with a safety razor (not so much like safety scissors) of which afterwards I was hooked!

The Experience:

After getting the metal handle ( a Merkur razor) and a 20 pack of blades I was set. It was a bit of a bigger upfront cost ( about $60)  but it felt really good having the metal handle in hand when I shaved. Outside of this my experience was generally the same as usual. I would wet my face, plaster on some shave gel or foam and then begin gliding the handle across my face.

In general, a clean blade netted me a really smooth experience. It feels like having the single blade results in a more accurate shave with less need to return to the same spot. With my face unfortunately nicks and cuts still occur but they’ve been less painful and much less unsightly which is a plus. All in all its an enjoyable experience.

Getting Sucked In:

Learning recently that a buddy of mine straight blade shaves as well has gotten my thinking of exploring my other options in shaving. Recently I’ve picked up a shave brush and soap package and have been experiencing a different way in how my face gets prepped and lathered up. Something about getting myself an antique razor handle also draws me in. Seeing the old pop open razors has a bit of an allure for some reason.

For something that men do fairly often in life, shaving is something that has become very casual and routine. What was once a social experience of going to the barber and getting a hot shave, has now become more of a commodity. For myself, noticing the small community of those who invest more into their regular shave I’ve started noting new products and to potentially add  to make my daily morning routine even better.Getting the parts I need may not be as easy as going around to the corner store but I’d consider that another part of the overall experience.

 

 

 

Social Media — No comments
30
Sep 12

How The New Myspace is *Potentially* Getting Social Engagement Right

A brief preview of the newest iteration of Myspace went up up with a bit of fan fare this week but perhaps not a lot of sustained interest. The upcoming re-launch of the site was announced with a completely new interface and what seems to be a massive amount of music options. What I was sort of surprised about was how little people seemed to pay attention to the corporate social engagement portion of the site which is an aspect that this site could potentially have all other sites beaten in.

What am I talking about?

Displayed in a brief preview video were two aspects of what look to be actions from fan pages (in this case Justin Timberlake’s) that caused a few neurons to spark when I spotted them.

The first was a fan source map showing not only where fans were located but attributed a  fan joining your page  to another fan. This is huge in the sense that you can understand how your community forms and who are essentially the taste makers or ‘influencers’ in your community. By doing some digging you can understand how a fan is sending their friends your way and what makes them trustworthy in that others will follow his lead and join the page. In general by having this information you are understanding why people are joining your page and as a result can deliver better value to these fans.

What also caught my interest in this video was the option for the page owner to be able to reach out to “top fans’. Considering what was discussed earlier and using the idea of influencer marketing this could  allow organizations to better spread the word not only online but offline.

So for an example  say a new product is launching. With the option of contacting your ‘top fans’ you can share this information allowing them to spread the word  within their social spheres. Not only are you rewarding your top supporters by giving them exclusive information but you now have a trusted source who will be likely to pass on this information with others. You’re not spending thousands on an ad spend to get the word out, instead you have someone embedded within the community you want to target that will happily spread the word.

Are Facebook and Twitter Falling Behind?

Based off of this video my opinion is that Myspace has taken a direction that understands communications and social better than its competitors. What I mean in this is that Myspace has taken a direction that focuses on the actions of individual users and their contribution to building communities and spreading messages vs. Facebook/Twitter that have gotten too focused on pushing messaging out to as many eyeballs as possible.  On one side there is focus on who your messaging is getting out to and on the other a largely pay and spray approach is being taken.

Advertising — 1 comment
23
Sep 12

A Personal Challenge: Ad Planning School Assignment

Well its been a while since I’ve written in here.  A lot has changed since my last post. Over the last 3 month’s I’ve  moved to Montreal to test my wits  (and language skills!) at Edelman Digital as a Senior Analyst reporting into their New York Office. Getting used to a new location/job…. I think that is reason enough for a bit of a blogging hiatus!

Anyways,on to the meat of this blog post. Since starting in the Marketing/Advertising/Digital (or however you would call it)  industry I guess you could say I  haven’t had very much interest in the mechanics of the different social media channels but was more so interested in how  people react to actions on these channels and simply why people do the things they do on the net. After reading “Truth,Lies & Advertising: The Art Of Account Planning” I hit a bit of a ‘AH HA!” moment in so that to do well in marketing you need to have an understanding of what your customers do and why they do it. Particularly in Digital this is a combination of understanding online conversations and actions along with  your audiences offline actions and feelings. Through reading the book I came to an understanding that while my reporting  on the numbers side of agregate online actions was strong,  to truly be good at what I’m doing I need to get a better understanding of the whole picture.

Stumbling quite randomly on a tweet from @Robertc1970 I came across the “A[P]SOTW Assignment” which peaked my interest in so much that its a challenge to look at the whole picture of online and offline consumer interaction. The intro to the assignment is found below and the full spec can be found at Rob Campbells site. 

 

So in general why am I posting this here? Well I figure by blogging about my process and research I can piece together my thought process. Also simply by making my process public it forces me to go through with this, rather than say I’ll do it and push it off.

Anyways, wish me luck with this! I think my big challenge will be balancing time as perhaps I already have a lot on my plate as it is ( new city, new language, new job… yikes!)  I really want to give this a go as even though I probably don’t stand a chance at winning this it will be a good exercise in stretching my brain a bit.

 

Technology — No comments
28
Jun 12

The Next Big Tech Battle: It’s Not About Single Devices Anymore

This week Google had its big I/O conference where it announced many of the new products it has coming out in the next few months. Two of the big surprises of the conference were the Nexus 7 ( a 7 inch tablet) and the  Nexus Q ( a cloud powered television media system). Most puzzling is that these products don’t particularly add anything to the Google’s core competency which is selling advertising but digging deeper you’ll see that this is part of a larger play to stay in the game against two other big rivals.

Android, IOS and soon Windows 8. What do they all have in common? Initially they were all platforms (or in Microsoft’s case based off a platform) for mobile phones that have since expanded into tablets and now television set top boxes. All three firms are making pretty heavy investments into products that most likely do not have high profit margins.  But in addition to this, products along all three of these company sets will be connected to a central content system where users can buy apps, video, audio and image (books/magazines) based content.

Ah ha! So essentially what the plan for these three is owning the media distribution system and making profit off of any royalties generated from the sale of media content. Where previously the war was over which computer operating system a person used or their search engine now the fight is over where they consume their content from. With content moving away from traditional sources such as cable providers, book stores and news-stands, being able to own an ecosystem that allows people to purchase media where ever they are is a big move with potential for a lot of profit.

Where will things go from here? So far Apple has the strongest foothold with iTunes entrenched as the first to launch. Can Microsoft and Google catch up being later into the game? Absolutely! Microsoft has the advantage of being a leader in the console gaming market which places them in a strong competitive position to Apple TV. As for Google, they are currently # 2 in the smartphone market using an open system where as long as it’s an Android powered device it will work with Google’s content distribution systems.  The big marketing move for all these players will be to get consumers to purchase into their whole line of products making them the primary content provider.

It will definitely be interesting to see where things go for these three firms and how competitive factors will come into play. Will cable providers and the big studios choose sides like in the fight for Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD? Or will they  move to limit things all together? What will happen to single device manufacturing firms such as RIM ? With the technology industry moving so fast the next year or two will be ones to watch to see where the cards land.

Social Media — No comments
06
May 12

There is No Magic Bullet in Social Media Measurement

Recently  a post from Avanish Kaushik was put before me for consideration. The post was “Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value” and in reading it I personally found some flaws with his overall approach which I wanted to address.

Measurement Isn’t So Simple:

Knowing how complex websites and search are, Avinash should know that good measurement cannot be simplified into a few key metrics across everything and everyone. Despite this he tries to do just that with his proposed 4 metrics for measuring social media.

Different companies have different goals for what they want to achieve in Social media and assigning metrics that don’t take this into account can potentially side track these initiatives. For example in the case of say Avinash’s Conversation rate  it doesn’t speak to the quality of the conversations that a firm may want to see or the  overall goal of the content they put out. With such a focused scope these metrics don’t  take into account the many other variables that can be tracked on corporate social media channels.

The size of the fan base does matter:

Another downside I see with the type of measures that Avinash suggests is that it does not take into account the audience that the company taps into. Without taking into account a firm’s fan base an even grounding is not created to ensure a comparable measure across fan sizes. Instead what more often than not will happen is that these measures will present  a constantly increasing ratio because a larger fan base often results in more engagement.

Outside of large spikes when there is a fan base drive or large campaign, a measure that does not take fan base into account will most likely continually go up in a linear fashion. The downside of this  is that it’s not easy to discern what proportion of a fan base is engaged. As a result there is no clear way to determine whether an initiative was successful.

Measuring Awareness Still Matters:

Much like with television or radio advertising, simple exposure to social media messaging still has an effect on consumers whether they act on this immediately or if this changes their habits further down the road. While this makes sales attribution difficult, measuring how far your content reaches  is still important. Unfortunately for Avinsash’s framework it does not take content exposure into account. By knowing your content reach you are a better able to compare and contrast initiatives to see if there was a discernible change in a firms end outcome as a result of marketing messaging.

With developing field like Social Media to make broad statements like “the 4 best social media metrics” in my opinion is harmful. What this does is it has the potential to close people’s minds to other alternatives and  more meaningful approaches. That’s why beyond the fact of perhaps not being too public with my work (for confidentiality reasons of course…) I won’t say that one measure stands above all the rest.   Instead my answer will continually be that measures need to be formed based on the end user’s goals and what they are trying to better understand.

 

 

Social Media — No comments
29
Apr 12

Determining A Brand’s Active Facebook Fan Base

A topic that isn’t discussed very often is the idea of active vs. inactive fan page users. When we are looking at a Facebook fan page’s user base this isn’t necessarily a true representation of who actually has an interest or may even see this page’s content (in recent months the metric of user unsubscribes has been removed from Facebook Insights). Compared to Twitter where someone who doesn’t like your content can immediately unfollow, on Facebook the function of removing yourself from a page is much less obvious and often not the first action a user will take to remove content from their stream.

So how should this be measured? First of all it’s in my opinion that Facebook should be providing this data as ultimately they offer the function of fan page unsubscribes. As this is unfortunately not the case then the only way of going about this is determining a proxy measure. On the top of my head the only solution (I’m open to others if anyone has an idea!) is developing a tab hosted survey with an email opt in for allowing a follow up survey to be sent.

My idea regarding this type of system would be that a first initial survey would be administered through the fan page with a request to be able to email the participant in the future with a follow up survey. In a selected time period (of say 3-6 months) the follow up email would be sent where fans would be asked if they are still subscribed or recall any content from this page. I admit that there are some weaknesses to this type of approach:

  • Low initial user response rate: Most people dislike surveys. Without a substantial incentive only the most active of your fans will likely participate meaning that you won’t get a fully representative sample.
  • Low follow up rate: It is very likely that a large amount of survey participants will not respond to your follow up survey meaning that you won’tt get a fully accurate representation of your initial sample.

After getting some sort of idea how many users from a page are falling off I would go about developing a fan degrade rate. With that I mean along with measuring how many users become fans of your page you would also have a  stand in variable for calculating approximately how many of these fans become inactive over a period of time. An example of this sort of calculation would be ( current fans + new fans) – (current fans *fan degrade rate)= current active fan base. A note about taking this approach is that the survey data needs to be renewed on a consistent basis to ensure that the degrade rate is kept up to date.

Strategic Implications:

By understanding the rate of which your fans are becoming inactive a brand can understand when it needs to put into place initiatives to increase user involvement (such as user appreciation giveaways etc.) but they can also have a better idea of the overall growth of their fan base. If it’s being calculated that there are more fans unsubscribing than fanning (a sign of a mature fan base) the brand needs to take a look at what steps (if any) they need to take moving forward.

Personal Thoughts — No comments
28
Apr 12

Why Isn’t Digital Marketing Doing More?

Having been in the trenches of the digital industry for a few years now, I’m starting to note that my optimism has begun to slow a bit. Based on general industry observations and recent conversations I’ve been having  the feeling that the industry has begun to slow down has started to fall on me.  As a specialty that often touts itself as game changing and disruptive I feel we haven’t been pushing enough of those boundaries lately.

Time To Demand Better!

Recently Facebook insights was down for nearly a week and this was the second time this year alone that this has happened. The biggest shocker for me has been that this didn’t make news at all and no one really spoke out about it. Instead everyone went on their way and hoped that Facebook would get to eventually fixing this problem. When we are looking to provide data and insights to our clients how is this acceptable?

From what I’ve observed, social networks and tool suppliers haven’t been doing a lot to really push the envelope. We haven’t gotten any closer to understanding our fans. We don’t have a better understanding of what our initiatives deliver. More often instead I feel we are left with ambiguity. The reason this isn’t changing is because we aren’t making it clear about what we want. As an industry we haven’t been putting any pressure on our suppliers who are instead themselves setting the agenda.

Demanding Better Of Ourselves!

As practitioners I feel we could push the envelope more as well. The race for fans still continues and we have yet to come to the determination of when we  don’t need any more fans! In terms of engagement we understand how people engage but we aren’t delving much deeper into why. To build better results we are asking people that follow us to “Like” or “Share” but we aren’t developing any better understanding of whether messaging resonates with our fan base or even if who we are advertising to are really the right people at all.

Looking Outside The Walls:

My feeling is that a lot of the time as individual firms we are looking to build our own buzz and aren’t bringing anything useful back to the industry. When I read the latest article from Ad Age or Mashable I’m rarely excited or blown away by a firm’s latest research report. Truthfully I’ve been more excited by what’s come out of the realms of academia and development.

When I’m reading academic journal articles such as “Consumer’s decision to shop online: The moderating role of positive informational social influence” or “Consumer Tribes: membership, consumption and building loyalty” that’s when I sit back and think ‘Wow that’s one more piece of understanding I have about how people work!”. With more resources and less hurdles to go through I don’t understand why we aren’t able to continually deliver ground breaking consumer research.

Time for Personal Reflection:

A potential problem with writing a post like this is that just about anyone can yell out “hypocrite!” and ask what I’m contributing. What I would have to say is that in the early part of this year I’ve been looking at ways at expanding my skill set and strengthening the work I do.  This year I don’t plan to read any of the countless social media books that have come out. Instead my goal has been to read more on topics outside the industry such as branding and research. Something I’ve also been spending a lot of time on lately is work in the social listening realm. I’ve been more active in asking questions on how things operate on the tool side and on developing stronger methodologies internally.

So this is my rant and a bit of a call to arms for digital marketing practitioners of all stripes. We’ve promised that what we do is ground breaking and innovative, let’s make sure that this is what we actually deliver!

Social Media — No comments
11
Apr 12

Analysing The Replublican Leadership Race Online (PART 2)

So perhaps this is a little less relevant with Mitt Romney now essentially the winner of the Republican leadership race but in accumulating the data (all 669 posts for February and March) there were some interesting findings that I felt were worth writing down. So here goes part 2 of my GOP Facebook analysis.

In this analysis I looked at only per post engagement counts and the content of the post. I didn’t take into account the size of the respective fan bases in evening out engagement as a rate (that may come later…).

To analyse  basics we’ll have to look at what content came out on top. Looking at the top 10 posts out of the data set it broke out as follows: 5 posts from Ron Paul, 3 from Mitt Romney and 2 from Newt Gingrich. I suspect that  a small fan base and high posting frequency were reasons why Rick Santorum fell off this list.

What was the highest scoring piece of content overall? Well it wasn’t hard hitting political rhetoric or an announcement of a big win. It was something that showed a softer side of the candidate that the general public general doesn’t see.

 

My initial count had this post at more than 80K engagements ( likes,comments, shares) and the highest of each individual engagement category. Interesting enough anniversary content also rounded out the top three posts with #2 announcing the anniversary of Mitt Romney and #3 as a follow up post to Ron Paul’s picture. Looking through the remainder of this content I think candidates missed an opportunity to differentiate themselves as more of a person rather than an icon. This may have opened up more people to their messaging.

There were also some interesting findings on a per candidate level that I felt were useful enough to share:

Mitt Romney: The common thinking among those who want to use edge rank for the highest reach  in achieving the highest post reach is to use photo content as it generally receives more engagement. Well looking at Mitt Romney’s content that may not be the case in all situations. In looking at Mitt Romney’s top 20 posts only three of these were photo content. Instead fans of this page were most affected by brief but resonating status posts positioning Mitt Romney as someone with strong leadership skills.

 

Ron Paul: Outside of his 1st spot post it was interesting to see Ron Paul’s tone. Out of the 4 candidates the tone of this page was much more first person like the candidate was writing it rather than someone on his campaign. In terms of data trends it looked like “Like” and “share” engagements were more common with “comment” engagements occurring less often. Perhaps some conversational content would have been useful to spur on response and increase post engagement.

Newt Gingrich: Out of all of the candidates Newt Gingrich made the most use out of photo content including vivid imagry and strong messaging within the photo itself. Placed along with strong calls to action such as “ Can we get 5,000 likes for an UNHAPPY Obamacare birthday?” Newt Gingrich was able to boost his engagement despite having a comparably small fan base (296K vs 925K for Ron paul and 1.5 million + for Mitt Romney).

 

Rick Santorum: Ignoring the data itself the sheer amount of posting was what really surprised me about the Rick Santorum page. Of a total of 669 posts recorded, the Rick Santorum page came in with 316 (47%) posts. To put this on a per day perspective that’s approximately 5 posts a day. In looking at this data on a by fan base perspective it will be important to see whether what seems to be over posting had an effect on engagement or not.

Looking at the data, Rick Santorum did not seem to be in the running when it came to the volume of engagements his posts received. Looking down the list his first post doesn’t register until 107th position. Arguably he did have the smallest fan base ( 188K) but it’s still interesting to see that none of his content particularly stood out especially as there seemed to be so much effort put towards it.

 

Part 2 of this set of posts looked at the bulk count of metrics but didn’t take into account the relative fan bases and only touched upon the different content variables such as content type. In the next post I hope to dig a bit deeper in seeing where the Candidates stood in terms of how engaged their fans were and who in the end of it all was most engaging. Stay Tuned!

ADDITIONALLY: As the data I used turned out to be a giant data set I’m hoping to make it accessible for download via a Google doc for any interested party to check it out. Once I’ve added fan base estimates and I’ve cleaned up the set I hope to have this going.

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