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!

At the recent Facebook Marketing conference Facebook presented what most likely will be how the firm will operate its site for the next few months. While the most visible change to the general public will be the inclusion of the Facebook Timeline on branded pages, Facebook also placed an emphasis on expanding its capabilities for paid ad space on its online and mobile platforms.

Impressions vs. Engagement:

A key point of focus for digital marketers has been encouraging consumer engagement with brands rather than blasting out messaging. With the recent changes in its insights platform and expansion into how brands can promote itself through the site, Facebook seems to be disregarding this idea by placing brand impressions at the forefront.

Potential for Backfire:

As even brand page content has now become potential ad space, consumers will become continually exposed to branded content but also may become dis-engaged. As brands begin to fight their way onto user’s newsfeeds marketers may see a potential backlash where consumers decide to unlike pages to decrease the onslaught of content aimed towards them. This will be because while the content will have higher visibility it may have little relevance to the audience it hits.

Getting back to basics:

My thought on this is that it’s a move backwards towards pay and spray advertising and away from the relational marketing that I personally hold in higher regard. As a consumer a brand creates little to no interest to me by continually exposing itself through ads and promotional activities. Instead I have higher affinity for a brand and its product when I feel a sense of value from the relationship it has built  and the worth that I place in using the product. While through advertising I may see the brand more often, it probably won’t change my opinion when this advertising provides me with no demonstrable value.

This post got its inspiration from  Building Data Into The Stuff That Agencies Make written by @kevinrothermel where he spoke about integrating data into the work that agencies do. I thought this was an important idea and perhaps something that is not often thought about enough when awesome and creative works of advertising, public relations or marketing are put in front of consumers.

In considering how to integrate data to effectively measure a campaign or initiative (as well as to ensure that measurement is most effective overall!)  it is in my honest opinion necessary that it is put in place from the very start! I don’t mean the first day of the campaign or when all the pieces of the initiative are starting to come together but starting when the very first utterance of the initiative is said long before it is even decided what is going to be done.

Measurement At The First Meeting:

All marketing and even more generally communications efforts have a goal of what they are to achieve. This is the basis of what the measurement initiative should be. In the end the firm wants to measure how effectively their efforts work to achieve the end goal. Having this goal set out clearly and  understanding of how measurement can be integrated will spark everything to come.

Reviewing Past Data:

Remember all of those reports you had from previous campaigns? They aren’t something that should be put on the shelf once you have reviewed it at campaign end. They should be categorized and brought out every time you start to plan an initiative. Why? Because they hold the key learnings that you can form your strategy around. From this data you can see what worked, what didn’t and what can be reused in your work going forward. Without consulting with what you previously did you doom yourself to repeat the same mistakes.

Realizing Your deficiencies:

With your goals and your plan nearly in place  you can begin to realize if measurement can be done thus allowing the project to move forward. Simply put, if you can’t measure an initiative based on its goals then it should be highly questionable if it should go forward. If you don’t know whether something did great or completely flopped there is no way you can go back to your stakeholders and prove that you didn’t waste their money.  Some limitations in measuring a campaign can be technical (does the technology exist to measure this?) or can be as a result of  a strategic or tactical issue where the campaign is improperly aligned or perhaps the campaign goal set at the start needs to be revaluated as its either not defined enough or just unrealistic.

Improving The Visibility Of Measurement:

The point in all this that I’m trying to make plain and simple is that measurement needs to be given as much attention as everything else. Effectively measuring your work cannot be done when measurement is brought in as an afterthought because then its effectiveness is compromised. When its brought in at the start of the process it is then kept at top of mind and as a result allows any opportunities or potential difficulties to be considered. In a continually competitive landscape measurement isn’t a nice to have but a must have to prove your work.

To start the post off, the basis for my thinking comes from a presentation and resulting conversation by Jesse Hirsh from Metaviews regarding “The Future of Authority” given at the Academy of the Impossible. This presentation consisted of brief look at how we as a society currently view authority and how this affected the events of the past year. As part of this discussion a comparison of the current thinking of online influence against the idea of authority caught my attention because it was directly relevant to what is currently being done in terms of marketing products online through social channels as well as to the whole idea of individual influence and its measurement (example: Klout).

What I took away from the presentation is that the concept of being influential vs. being authoritative is the difference between generating awareness of a specific topic vs. generating action on it. When you are ‘influential’ the information you share has a larger reach than the average person. This is in comparison to being considered an authority where a person’s audience is likely to place trust into and act upon the information they distribute. To put it even more simply you can say that one person is really good at sharing a message but the other is trusted enough to have their message actually listened to.

After considering the difference between influencer vs. authority the question then becomes why do marketers place so much emphasis on influence? When the supposed promise of social media is to reach the most targeted audience as possible why is the focus still on the more traditional ‘pay and spray’ approach? My inference is that the focus is still very much on being able to see how many eyeballs an effort can generate (something tangible) vs. reaching someone with authority and the change in opinion/potential for future sales generated by those that trust them (something not as easily measured). To not be active in reaching those with authority though is something I find puzzling as isn’t the end goal of marketing to generate sales rather than have users simply know about your product?

To conclude I’m not saying that marketers should do away with influencer outreach as awareness generation is still important. When considering where marketing dollars are going though it is also important to consider if you can use your limited resources to positively change people’s minds about your product than simply having people exposed to it. To keep this post from going overboard I’m completely disregarding the implementation aspect of taking such actions for now (I’m thinking about it!). Watch for a post on that topic to come up very soon!  I’m interested in what others have to think about this  topic though. If you have an opinion feel free to share it in the comments or by sending a tweet to @kevrichard.

Getting users to ‘like’ their content has been a strategy of many Facebook fan page owners in recent weeks because it quickly amasses simple engagements and creates awareness of the page. But with users given better ability to curate the content on their news feed and profiles, being able to focus more so on app and ‘life period’ content, this mode of user engagement may not be as useful moving forward.

Engagement above the fold:

With the new OpenGraph optimized news feed, a separation has been made between content more useful to the user which is the first thing they see along with everything else further down the page. As this feature allows us to grab just quick information on the go we are less likely to scroll down the page and view everything else. This includes that post to ‘like’ carrots from the food fan page you liked a few weeks ago!

Can you ‘share’ this?

Without the full changes to Facebook completely implemented it’s hard to make an exact prediction to how corporate content will operate (sponsored posts anyone?) but with demos from the recent F8 and some functionality already in place some predictions can be made.

Prediction ONE: Posts of major announcements and big campaigns will reach higher on the news feed. Why? Much like with Twitter, people want to be the first ones to share breaking news and content with their friends. As a result this may lead to multiple content shares (increasing volume relevancy) and friend discussion on the topic ultimately driving this content higher up the news feed.

Prediction TWO:  Branded apps will become a stronger way to engage with fans. Why?  The creation of brand relevant apps where users can either create content or where users are encouraged  to return to on a regular basis is something that will either build the opportunity for a news feed impression (ex: creating a Spotify playlist) or because of usability reasons will create constant brand exposures as a result of using the app. With the new Timeline taking more of focus on life activities instead of user engagements apps are a way for users to become more active with a brand and integrate it into their online ’life file’.

Is it Time to Rethink Brands on Facebook?

All in all Facebook made some big changes to how the site will operate. Without looking into the future too much I think it’s going to be interesting to see  how brands will need to adapt to continue to stay relevant online with consumers. I don’t think it’s going to be as simple anymore as just putting out rounds and rounds of content for users to ‘like’ and comment on. I feel brands will need to create deeper relevance to continue to drive their messaging to consumers.

This post was a bit of an interesting challenge. If you frequent my blog you know that I tend to be a bit long winded when creating posts. Its something I’m used to and enjoy. Well in providing social media analysis, writing long essays does not flow very well. One of my manager’s  came up with the challenge of writing a post about writing social media analysis in exactly 100 words in a good exercise to test myself. Well you’ll find below that the challenge has been completed:

What Makes Great Analysis?

Clear and succinct communications are needed for strong analysis. Start with a brief introduction:

“Requesting user action generated significantly higher engagement”

Place key data up front:

“Asking users to click “like” for support generated an XX% increase against the campaign average”

Provide additional insight:

“ In total, the EPM for the period was XX against the current period average of XX.”

When providing recommendations, link suggested actions to outcomes.

“By directing fans to act on posted content they will be more likely to engage with subject matter”

What makes great analysis? Easily read and actionable information.

When writing this I found that I had to strip out a lot through multiple drafts. While I’m used to writing under a restricted word count writing in 100 words I found to be really tight.

Let me know in the comments what you think of challenge! I’m curious what people feel about its effectiveness and whether this sort of writing is useful in all cases. If you like you can also get in contact with me at@kevrichard or kevin@kevrichard.com

When the word ‘promotion’ comes up in the context of retail stores,  large signs or banners describing a firm’s next big deal comes to mind. “Get some gear! 40% of everything” or ” 2 for 1 on all merchandise” and the list goes on. When you go to the mall or shop online you’re often inundated with different sales and offers. So much so that it sometimes seems like some stores are having sales every day. These kind of promotions are aimed to get the most attention and hopefully drive the most traffic and as a result need to be as obvious as possible. But what if retail promotions were more covert? Instead of being open to everyone  it becomes something that is found or stumbled upon?

At some restaurants you can find a ‘secret menu‘ where there are  items that they don’t advertise but if you’re in the know will make for you anyways. Its a bit like a secret club where customers get something that publicly no body knows about and as a practice is something that ( to my knowledge) hasn’t been really explored in retail as much.

Recently I came across an unadvertised discount from the GAP that spurred my interest in secret promotions. Its  since been taken down from this marginally legit sounding page.  I had come across this link on a Reddit sub forum from someone who had came across it somewhere else. It asked for my cell number and in exchange sent me a discount code to be used at checkout. With some hesitance I tried it out as the site didn’t seem to have much relation to the GAP other than having its logo. Had I not trusted my source for the link I would have passed on it thinking it was a phishing attempt. It did end up working even though not even the employees had much of a clue about it having just come across it once before.

How is a promotion like this useful? Well in my case it gave me a feeling of exclusiveness (mouhaha! I’m one of the few!) and it brought me into a store I don’t often place at the top of my shopping list. With this promotion being so out of the ordinary it encouraged me to research further and with no promotion time span given it placed pressure on me to use this sooner rather than later.

Looking beyond myself as the customer, I estimate the benefits of this approach would be even further expanded when an influencer or content creator comes across this type of content. By seeing this ‘hidden’ content they have the ability to share and build further credibility with their audience. As a result I would presume a two fold result: this person would have a greater affinity for the company (Hey this company had awesome content that I could share with my following. I like them!) and there would be the seeding of this content to this person’s trusting followers who will be more likely to go through with a  purchase.

So…. how is this type of promotion or even campaign implemented?  That’s probably the harder part. Does the firm put up a site and just wait for people to come across it? Should content be seeded through chosen users or be  placed on specific sites? As interesting as this idea is implementing it is the much more difficult part and needs to be explored further. But looking at this just as a concept there may be opportunity in this rather than continually   building larger advertisements to get into the faces of the company’s potential customers.

As always feel free to contact me at either @kevrichard on twitter or kevin@kevrichard.com

*A note about this post. I’m not in anyway trying to say that lying or being not upfront with your customers can be used as a tactic. Obviously lying  equals angry customers which goes on to decreased sales. I mean to discuss the use of content delivery strategies that are outside of a firm’s owned properties (website, Facebook page, store front).

The most important concept in social media marketing that I’ve learned is that for efforts to be effective they should be connected to how the firm earns money. Having fans and creating engagements is great but when it’s not driving firm revenue in some way, shape or form it’s not useful.

That’s why when I read Mashable’s recent article about the McDonald’s head of Social Media Rick Wion celebrating a 33% increase in Foursquare check ins with a pilot program they ran I was disappointed that there wasn’t more to it. While the goal was apparently not to increase sales immediately this campaign could have been much cooler in seeing if McDonalds actions actually created an increase in sales( or not…).

How McDonalds could have measured the campaign (if they had wanted to):

McDonalds could have easily done one of two tests to see if this campaign was effective. First and probably most easy is that they could have just compared sales and check-in results from previous days for an extended time period to see if this 33% increase in check-ins actually led to an increase in money into stores. If revenue saw a significant jump when foursquare activity spiked (barring other variables) Mcdonalds would have at least some proof to try the campaign again.

The second test is running the campaign on a smaller scale comparing it between two similar markets. One would run the Foursquare campaign and the other would have no promotions. In the end, sales and check-in figures would be compared between the two. If the market with the Foursquare campaign saw an increase in check-ins along with revenues in comparison to the control market McDonald’s could further test this campaign and have it rolled out on a larger basis.

While I don’t know the full goal of the McDonalds Foursquare campaign I feel that despite the celebration within the Mashable article it’s still important to clarify that social media in business is not successful by engagements alone. If I would go on twitter or another network and tried giving away something for an audience action people would have jumped on it as well. In the end social media campaigns need to be attached to financial drivers because most companies can’t operate on foursquare check-ins alone.

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

Its that time again! As last year’s post showing the many Toronto (and eventually Canadian) panels up for voting was such a success I decided to give the list another go this year with the goal again to try to get as many Canadian Panelists into SXSW 2011! (And to make peoples dreams come true )

Find below an initial list of people who have submitted their panels up for review. This post is open to everybody, if you know of someone or have your own panel that you would like to submit feel free to @me on twitter or send me an email (kevin@kevrichard.com)

THE LIST:

• Understanding Customer Culture; Caution May Require Cajones moderated by Ujwal Arkalgud and featuring Grant McCracken, Sean Howard, Sam Ladner and Paul McEnany.
• Naked Dating: Finding love in 140 Characters or Less with Jeremy Wright and Melissa Smich
• Agile Ain’t Just For Developers: Agile People Manifesto with Andre Gaulin and Jay Goldman
• Conquering Creativity: A Creative Method For Every Mind with Jason Theodor
• Your Resume is so 2005: Show me Passion with Duane Brown
• Too Many Options: Choosing a Digital Media Platform with Duane Brown and Randy Matheson
• The Universal Declaration of Avatar Rights with Collin Douma
• Real User, Real Connections with Russell Sinclair
• What Does Google TV Mean For The Advertising Industry? with Andrew Bailey
• Branded Entertainment: Do Brands Hurt Good Storytelling? with Matt Di Paola
• I’m a Flash Developer. Now What? with Jeff Vermeersch
• Startup Marketing: Its More Then a Twitter Account with Saul Colt et al.
• Value of A Facebook Fan: Does it Matter? with Michael Scissons
• Bend Over! Surprise Agencys Are Screwing You with Lucia Mancuso and Meghan Warby
• Abolish The Hourly: How Value Pricing Wins Clients with Lee Dale and Jon Lax

And theres more! Came across this great listing of Vancouver SXSW sessions on Tech Vibes. Not to take away from the awesome work done in creating the profiles you can check them out and vote for them HERE.

I know there are many other panels out there so folks let me know if you want your session up! For those coming across this post please support these adventurous folk share what they have to say in Austin this spring at SXSW.

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.