kevrichard blog

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29
Apr 10

A Framework for Social Marketing Analytics

Like with everything that is done in business, it has to be done for a reason or else it’s just wasted effort. Measuring simply anything from your social media initiative without a reason behind it is just that – a wasted effort. In reading “Social Marketing Analytics” by John Lovett and Jeremiah Owyang this point is further proven. In measuring social media what you measure needs to be attached to specific business goals, not measured just because the number is available.

The paper by Lovett and Owyang starts off with a good definition of what Social Marketing Analytics is (what can I say I like when things are plainly defined):

“Social Marketing Analytics is the discipline that helps companies measure, assess and explain the performance of social media initiatives in the context of specific business objectives.”

Pay particular attention to the last part – “…in the context of specific business objectives.” What did your social media initiatives achieve for your company? Social media measurement is not just looking at the numbers of fans go up or down (or whatever shiny number there is out there) but looking at the end result of what your work achieved for your organization. Very simple but great stuff.

Lovett and Owyang write about a three layered approach to Social Media Measurement, which I feel is effective in further demonstrating the need for measurement:

1. Strategy: The reason behind the initiative.

2. KPI (Key Performance Indicator): What the measure of success or failure is with this initiative.

3. Granular Metrics: The information or inputs that need to be gathered to allow you to formulate the KPI.

Social Marketing Analytics Framework

In keeping the paper accessible to general business practitioners Lovett and Owyang present four major strategies (although they mention that there are more) along with suggested corresponding KPIs. I’ll leave the KPIs for more in depth reading in the paper but I thought I’d present the strategies as these apply to many businesses:

1. Foster Dialog: Developing conversation around your company or brand. This is the development of content to create interest in what you’re trying to achieve.

2. Promote Advocacy: The development of ambassadors for your organization. Encouraging people to actively discuss and promote your brand online.

3. Facilitate Support: Provide a channel where customers are able to get their problems/concerns addressed in a timely manner ( Ex: @Rogershelps or @Toronto311).

4. Spur Innovation: The development of active discussion around your brand or initiatives focusing on the topic of improvement. Essentially putting like minds together online in developing ideas to make things better.

Overall in reading this paper it really puts it out there that:

A: Knowing what you want to achieve with social media is important and,

B: Measuring your progress (and not wasting your time) needs to be followed right after.

I really encourage you to check out the paper as it’s a great first step in developing a measurement program. I would also add that while it’s a helpful framework, it’s not a complete instruction guide. Measurement, like any other business initiative, needs to be scaled and customized to fit with the specific organization. Measurement and tools that apply for a large multinational corporation don’t have the same effectiveness for a smaller, local business.

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22
Mar 10

Are you learning anything from Social Media?

So I’ve been procrastinating with posting this for a bit , but now I think I have a good intro…. So at my new job at Syncapse, I do a lot of measuring and spending my day looking at client data. I’m finding it really exciting because essentially I get paid to do the learning for companies so they can consistently improve their Social Media strategy. Reflecting on the work I do though it seems for a good portion of the ‘social media world’ that metrics and measurement and the whole idea of ‘learning’ from what you’re doing doesn’t get talked about a whole lot. With that, I thought I’d put down a few of my thoughts of why Social Media measurement or the idea of ‘learning’ within Social Media strategy is so important.

You Get To See if Things Work: With Social Media measurement you get to gauge how effective online strategies really are. Are there no conversations surrounding your content? Is there conversation but not the kind you want to hear? Then there is obviously something that needs to be fixed. Perhaps you haven’t told your audience about your initiatives or maybe your content isn’t relevant to them. By implementing strategies and comparing them to what you’ve done in the past you are able to see what you’re doing right or wrong and how to make things even better moving forward.

You get to see if customers love/hate you (and how to improve it!): As a part of online measurement you are able to look at what people are saying about a company or organization online . This is looking at what users are saying directly AT you or what they are talking indirectly ABOUT you with everyone else. Are they having problems with a particular product of yours? Is there something that people want to see more or less of from you? The insights you get from conversations are way different than what you can get from a survey or traditional market research. In a survey people have time to consider and alter their answers to give you just half truths. Within online communications you’re getting the raw knee jerk reactions regarding what they think about you and how they use your product in everyday life. ( CAVEAT: Watch out for Trolls! No matter what you do there will be someone looking to stir things up…. all I can say is DONT FEED THE TROLLS )

You Find the Unexpected: Often times its important to stick your head outside of what you’re doing to get a different perspective of what is actually happening with your company. This is especially true with Social Media. By looking at what occurs outside of your organizations’ initiatives every once and a while you may see surprising things happening with your customers that you haven’t heard of. Perhaps they are re-purposing your product in a way that you didn’t think was important (ex: Coke and Mentos blasters) or maybe some previously unreleased news about your company has become public and is gaining an unexpected amount of traction with your customers. By learning what your customers and the public is doing ‘out there’ you’re able to adapt to things as they come up rather than let events plow you over!

In closing while a lot of discussions regarding social media surround customer engagement and use of the tools, I think measuring your success and learning from what you’re doing online is just as important. Without knowing what you’ve achieved and what is occurring out in the wilderness that is the ‘internet’ you’re only going to continue making the same mistakes and not improve upon yourself. With my new position in Measurement Science I hope to be able to share some brief tidbits about online measurement and why its a useful part of the campaign process. Stay tuned!

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13
Mar 10

Geurilla Analytics Simplified

I think now is a good time to bring up this follow up post to the recent Geurilla White Paper posting. I’m sure for some, looking at the paper was an immediate shock of words and numbers! I hope in this small version there’s a bit more understanding of what the paper tried to get across.

So whats this paper about? Social Media Measurement and the common use of machine sentiment engines as a way of measuring effectiveness….. or how un-effective this is based on the research we’re presenting. Getting right down to the point, language is COMPLEX! Thats to say that the words and messages we share with our friends are full of double meanings, slang and one of my personal frustrations lack full context. I’m sure most people have had online conversations where you’ve had to defend what you’ve said as it was read in the wrong way.

Knowing that online messaging is really complex, often times in measuring the success/failure of social media initiatives firms use a sentiment engine to rate mentions of their brand on a scale of Negative, Neutral and Positive. With this in mind, we the Syncapse Measurement Science team looked to see if this was an a reliable measure.

What did we find? That again language is complex and no two people will perceive a set of messages the same way.

This research was based on an earlier survey we released on twitter where we asked people to rate a set of 20 messages ( all taken from a twitter search for ‘books’). The most significant finding of this survey is the lack of agreement on the survey as a whole. With such a simple answer set we did not find a single pair of respondents (out of 102) who could agree on the sentiment of these messages.

To put a further test in our survey we also put a wrench in the works with a trick question. We decided to repeat a question. While a majority of people rated sentiment of this question the same on each response, 19% didn’t! So in a span of a few minutes a person’s feelings about a message can change [ meaning you have to be particularly careful in how you time your emails! ]

What in the end do the findings of this paper mean? Well to quote directly from the paper:

” If a group of 102 humans could not agree, how can a single machine output a single score that everybody would agree with?”

The current sentiment score system that’s in use isn’t netting information that should be depended upon to make real business decisions. Language is just too complicated for a human programed machine to define the sentiment of social media messages.

But WAIT there’s more! If current sentiment scores should not be used in decision making then what should be put in its place? Well I know a team that does some mighty fine work in social media measurement ….. Ok, so there’s ALOT to measure in regards to social media measurement and no one has yet created the gold standard. As an emerging industry, measurement is still playing catchup to everything else currently happening (which keeps things interesting). What we could agree on with things as they currently stand is a more pragmatic approach, looking at the measures and feedback that is important to a brand( or ‘Brand Health’). This means looking at the overall online communications about a firm and determining what aspects of these activities are most important to have knowledge of.

Have any questions/comments ? Contact me at kevin@kevrichard.com or send me a twitter message .

PS: I know I’ve been on a massive blog hiatus, I’m looking to change this ASAP!

Personal — 1 comment
02
Jan 10

Strategy 2010

This will be a bit of a work in progress so I plan to keep it open for the time being but here goes, the big strategy for 2010!

To Do Something Interesting: Inspired by a Zen Habits post called Do Interesting Things I want to do at least one thing that is noteworthy or interesting this year. Something where I can say “Yes I did that! “. I find I’m in constant contact with so many interesting people but when it comes to sharing my story I feel boring and ordinary. I want to find a hobby or even just a one time activity that can have a story about it. ( If you have any ideas what this could be feel free to post in the comments or let me know!)

Live More the The Moment: Looking back on the past decade I unfortunately saw a pattern that needs to stop. I found that instead of pursuing things that I wanted to do, I let barriers or challenges get in the way and told myself as soon as these are out of the way I can do it. Problem with this frame of thought is that it then never happens because there is always something that will get in the way.

@mynameisguygal told me something recently that stuck with me “You can never find time, you can only make it.” and its very true. There will always be a barrier or situation in life that will prevent you from doing something. Instead you have to make the situation yourself that will make your plans work! The goal will be to create a habit out of this. Instead of postponing and saying it has to happen later I need to just go ahead and do it!

Define the “kevrichard” brand: Not in a business or selling sense but in a life sense. Being in school and being part of a military family made things very structured and planned. This goal fits with my goal of living more in the moment as with focusing on school and being prepared for the next move I put a lot of things off and didn’t take much time in developing myself as a person.

Being free of all of that, its now time to determine what makes me tick! Am I a foodie? Am I into extreme sports? Or am I a culture explorer? Unlike the rest of my goals for this year this will be a longer term process. ‘Discovering yourself’ isn’t an overnight process its going to be a lot of trial and error but it will also be an exciting process!

AND the returning resolution…. Become more healthy! : This didn’t happen as well as I would have liked last year. For the first half it just didn’t happen with early mornings and late nights of working hard in school while also pursuing events that made this learning even more concrete. And then the second half it just fell to the side in my attempts in settling my life post graduation.

So the goal this year is to get it done. Luckily (or unluckily) I’m being pushed on a diet for the time being and I’m going to try a more communal approach in being an active participant of the Reddit Health Project and Reddit Fitness (yes I’m a huge fanboy) . I’m hoping by doing this along with other that my motivation will keep up and I’ll feel guilty if I begin to fall behind.

As I stated in my last post my big goal is to get to get myself to 160 pounds of lean mass ( Update on this to come in the summer!)

Well there is my strategy for 2010! This year is going to be pretty big, especially as its a start to a new decade. I hope to you and your family ( and really everyone else!) this year is a great one!

Got to put in a LOL Cat for good measure!

Have any questions/comments ? Contact me at kevin@kevrichard.com or send me a twitter message .

Personal / Uncategorized — 3 comments
28
Dec 09

Reviewing My 2009 Strategy

So its been exactly a year to the date of my post 2009 Strategy. To me I think its important that I revisit it as its been quite a year since I wrote that (1 year blogaversary yay! ) and it should be something I keep in mind moving forward when I set my goals and plans for 2010 … or ‘010 as I like to call it.

So here we go…..

1. Becoming More Passionate: So I think I wrote this with a bit of an expectation that I would suddenly be hit on the head and determine that I would be completely passionate and happy go lucky about a certain job or aspect of my life. Well, it didn’t happen.If you do a quick search on the net you can find a lot of articles and postings on “Finding your Passion” but from what I’m realizing is that it isn’t a fast and immediate process. I made some progress but I would say that I’m still not close enough to choosing a passion and committing myself 100% to it.

Developing passion takes a bit of work- At Social Media Mastermind

That isn’t to say that I failed at my goal, I think as time went by I re purposed it and made it more realistic. Over the year I feel I discovered I really enjoy learning and exploring topics and that I couldn’t be passionate about something that stayed constantly the same. I also think that as a whole it has to be people related but in a more analytical sense. Reflecting back on school my favorite topics often related to how people interacted (be it Consumer Behavior, Psychology, Communications or Market Research ). Right now in my current work I’m exploring net communications and social media which may or may not be the same in the next few years. Overall I think I’ve laid out a bit more of a path for myself but there is still more work to do going forward.

2. Spending time on the right people: I think this has been the area of biggest improvement for myself , but an area that I still need to consistently work on. I made in my opinion 2 huge achievements: Setting my own boundaries and Getting out and meeting with/interacting with new people.

On Setting Boundaries: Looking backwards on 2008, a big downfall for me was not setting my own boundaries. So this meant going along with the group and not looking out for my goals and priorities. In 2009 while this was definitely a bumpy ride ( as some of my friends can attest to) I learned to protect my own interests and refocused on friendships that were really important to me. Overall it was a pretty significant personal endeavor.

Interacting with New People: I think this is what I’m most proud and surprised by. Over the past year I’ve met a ton of new people and really pushed myself to be more outgoing. I’ve met a lot of great people ( many of them are on this list here) and really got to learn* and explore a side of business that I sort of knew about for a while but didn’t completely understand till this year. I’ve met a few great people who’ve really pushed me to be better in getting out there and improving myself. You know who you are, I really appreciate it.

One of the rainier Patio Fridays with Katie Boland and Philip Moreria (C/O Lee Dale)

The Challenge: In the latter half of 2009 I lost momentum in this area ( job search/moving up north were to blame) I definitely don’t want to see the relationships I started with people wither .There are many people I respect and admire and having lost contact with many people in the past I don’t wish for that to happen again. So moving forward with w/e path I end up taking , being more deliberate with meeting people and perhaps just booking more 1 on 1 time is going to be important.

3. Taking Care of my Health: We can’t always get things 100% right? Alright so this was a fail on my part. While in some regards I was active in that if I was able to I would walk rather than take transit or drive overall the idea of moving towards less of a 1 pack didn’t exactly pan out. Well no excuses in ‘010, at minimum mornings will be work out time and when I’m able to I’m also looking to snag a gym membership to be even more serious. To put it out there my goal is to bring myself up to 160 in lean mass (I’m right now at around 150). As a secondary benefit I think it would help me gain a much better mental focus.

All in all I think for what the year was, I ended it pretty strong. The external environment could have been better but then who’s to say everything I’ve experienced would have occurred if it had been different. I plan on making a 2010 strategy coming up (its in the works). It will probably be posted closer to New Years.

*I’ve discussed some great events on this blog but for anyone looking for future reference 2 great places to learn if you’re a business person learning about the web and entrepreneurship are at SproutUps and Refresh Events( a calendar of events can be found here also) .

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28
Dec 09

Don’t Let Your Project Become Vapor Ware!

I recently came across an article from Wired Magazine called Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem . I was pretty blown away by it. The author told the story of the latest in development version of the video game Duke Nukem and how despite 12 years of work it will never be released! For someone who casually follows the news in the electronic gaming industry Duke Nukem Forever has been the butt of many jokes, being constantly labeled as vapor ware but still to be 12 years in development with millions spent to not release even a mini game at the end of it all is pretty intense.

C/O Go Gaming Giant

So What Happened? Duke Nukem a game known for its humor and quality as a First person shooter built a loyal fan base over the years with the latest game at the time being Duke Nukem 3d for the PS1 and N64 (1997). Lead by 3d Realms co-owner George Brousard , the studio aimed to make the best game of the series. Unfortunately with graphics technology constantly changing Brousard and his team battled with having the most up to date graphics and effects for the game and quickly began pushing back their set release date year after year from their initial one of of 1998 . After 12 long years and constant graphic engine changes and changes in the game itself this striving for a perfect game ended up killing it in May 2009.

Lessons Learned: Like Digital Realms we all want to deliver great work and are driven perhaps to far for what we perceive as perfection. With no solid launch date Duke Nukem Forever got passed over by many blockbuster games such as Halo, Mass Effect and Gears of War (among many others) who have in the same time span delivered even sequels. Had the developers set a solid deadline , they wouldn’t have had to constantly play catch up to all of these great titles. Instead they could have built a name for themselves.

Rather than giving yourself a wide open time period to complete your projects, set a solid deadline where regardless of where you are at you’ll decide whether to send it out or move on to the next project. You will always find areas to improve or things that could be different, instead of driving yourself mad with an ideal of ‘perfection’ take your ideas for changes and apply it to your next project. This way you can not only see the success of one project but you can continue to grow and develop your skills in the next.

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19
Dec 09

Is Your Product Noteworthy?

Ok. So I’m taking this opportunity to write a blog post because I’m really impressed by a company I came across and it really started the gears going in my head ( surprising I know!). Anyways on to the company! I stumbled upon IAmAStuffedAnimal.com casually through Reddit and its such a cool product! The premise is you send 1 or multiple pictures of yourself , your hobbies/interests and a few other personal details and they make a really cool stuffed animal of you!

Mike Bisogno and his Buddy C/O Iamastuffanimal.com

You now can never have to sleep or do anything else alone. You can do it with yourself! You could sort of say that its been done before with cheezy sites where you can send in a picture and you get a Barbie or porcelain doll that generically resembles yourself but I think this is much more cooler! These guys take into account your personality , facial features and even let you choose how your mini-me is dressed and recreate you (or your alter ego ) in this funny cartoon form. To make sure I’m not the only person who thought this was a cool product I checked out their Facebook Fan Page it seems I’m not alone! They have a decent sized community going.

So beyond me being a big geek about this product why am I mentioning it? Why do I feel that a toy is worth a blog post outside of being cool? Well its a product that can be so easily talked about and I think thats such a great attribute for a startup or any other sort of company to keep in mind. So often companies just present a product without thought about how it can be more interesting and have more value than its obvious qualities. What Iamastuffedanimal.com does is takes a basic product of a toy and makes it a piece for discussion. So in keeping this blog short and unrambly , products are much more interesting and easy to sell when they can be talked about. ( Or in true Reddit fashion TL;DR People talk about cool products. Find a way to make your product cool!)

Do you have feedback? Feel free to reach me at @kevrichard or kevin@kevrichard.com

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20
Nov 09

Talking Tech on MacDose!

I actually now have the time to post this! So I’ve been having some back and forth conversations with 3 Canadian techies Alex Flint, Matthew Couto, and Nile Livesey which has been majorly feeding my need for tech and giving me a few laughs ( Matthew especially is an interesting guy! ). Well Matthew and Nile are a pair that run Perpetual Radio networks…. which has a little to do with radio but a lot to do with consumer tech!

They kindly invited me and Alex to take part in their weekly podcast Macdose which I was involved in Episode 5 and spoke as well on Episode 6, but that’ll remain a lost episode(tech issues on a tech show, ironic!) . This weekly podcast and all the hilarity that ensues centers around Apple Computer corp. and in particular Mac products. I’m in no way an expert. I’m typing this right now on an Acer laptop unfortunately! But I figure it may be cool to be involved.

For those of you interested, Episode 7 is going to be recorded live and unedited (which is even more hilarious!) this Sunday starting at 12:30 on Blog TV . It will be later posted on the PRN site. Feel free to check it out! Overall big kudos to these guys for running Perepetual Radio Networks, its a cool upstart site that I hope goes places for them!

This weekend will be a serious time of ‘geeking out’ which I haven’t been doing in a while .Tomorrow I’ll be at Gamercamp which should be absolutely awesome. I’m looking forward to hearing some insights on the Ontario electronic entertainment industry and seeing some awesome independent gaming demos! Should be great times, expect a blog post on that soon!!

Erm yeah… contact information. Time to start adding that again! If you want to get in contact with me directly, feel free to hunt me down at kevin@kevrichard.com or on twitter where I’m @kevrichard.

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01
Nov 09

When Opportunity Knocks

I’m sure many people have seen the recent news story about someone in a BMW who does a comical hit and run in a Extreme Fitness Parking lot( video here) well more recently came the surprise response from Hyundai Canada which can be viewed here.

Looking at the video from Hyundai its pretty obvious that this was done for promotional purposes and to take complete advantage of the viral nature of this hit and run.Even I contributed to spreading it around the net. That being said I think it was an awesome idea that was a great initiative in marketing the Hyundai brand. Heres why:

It was timely: Hyundai didn’t wait forever to react. Within a few days they grabbed a camera and filmed the video while this event was still fresh in peoples minds. Sometimes marketing can be a slow and drawn out process and by not acting on a sudden change in the market or current events companies can miss out on major opportunities.

It focused on the company: The video that Hyundai created could have been an opportunity to take a direct swipe at the competition ( BMW and luxury cars) instead they focused on their company. Sure the parking demonstration teased a bit but in the end it took full advantage of demonstrating their product and how they care for their customers. This way all the attention is on them rather than sharing the attention with another company.

Its a good story: By doing good for the person affected by this park and run incident it makes you feel something for the company. It holds more value to the customer than a commercial or advertisement and its something people are more likely to talk about.

In marketing there is always talk about cutting through the clutter. In the past Gorilla marketing and shock tactics have been used to spur immediate attention from customers but after seeing many of these similar campaigns they become just the same. Instead I think being relevant to the lives of your customers may be a strong way to create a more memorable experience that people will talk about.

Not to seem exploitive but if companies would take a few moments to find a way to do something thats relevant to their customers but also fitting with what they do this may be another avenue of creating awareness for your product.

KevRichardTechnology and Digital Communications