This morning, I listened to an excellent panel discussion chaired by Harvard Business Review's Eric Hellweg, with Novell CMO John Dragoon, Forrester's Andre Pino, HP Hood's Lynne Bohan, and Evan Falchuk from Best Doctors. The topic was The Impact of Social Media.
What became immediately obvious was how social media is laying organizations bare. Nothing is hidden. As barriers to communication have fallen, so has the ability to obfuscate, to hide, or to forestall. It also means that everyone in an organization has a megaphone, so everyone is involved in the message. This is a good thing.
PR has become a team sport. Increasingly, PR teams need to subsidize news creation and increasingly own content and news output. To do this they'll need expertise. And to be effective in today's media environment they will need a chorus of voices all on key, all singing from the same tune. This requires the active support of much of the organization – marketing, sales, HR, product development, support, and executive leadership – all on the front lines, all participating and engaged with the myriad conversations taking place.
This will involve PR relinquishing some of the control we're used to – we need to give a wide network of people in our organization the skills, confidence and ability to work directly with media and with key audiences. We need to harmonize this process. As a result, PR will take a more strategic role in the marketing organization.
These changes will also involve us cultivating talent inside our organization so they can participate. For me, this is one of the hardest steps in creating a successful PR program that adds real value to the organization. Getting engaged with new and social media can often appear to be “free”, but actually soaks up considerable time, and hence resources. Persuading often overworked colleagues to engage with social media can often be difficult.
This is just one reason that building-out “observing” capabilities is such a crucial first step. By listening, monitoring, measuring and reporting on the conversations taking place about your organization, brand or product, you can start to understand relationships, influence, and salience, and focus on where and how to get involved for maximum impact. You can also monitor how effective your activities are in driving involvement and participation from audiences – and all this will help justify the resources needed to sustain a long-running social PR program.
Starting with “observing” is also the first step towards engaging with the larger marketing organization in a meaningful, data-driven way. The strategic value of PR can be measured and articulated, and we can show this value at every stage of the sales process – from driving awareness to helping close a deal, and on to cultivating ongoing loyalty to a brand.
This is the level at which we need to think in PR – of course we need to understand the technologies that are enabling new media, or the techniques to attract the right audience to your corporate blog. And of course we still need to do what we have been doing well – crafting a tight message, sending our the release. But too often the level of conversation is about whether to use a conventional press release or a so-called social media release. This is a tactical discussion that has merit, but PR has the potential to engage in a strategic discussion about how effective communication, as a critical component of marketing, can drive meaningful business outcomes – sales, better customer satisfaction, greater profitability.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
The Reflex Dilemma
I've just finished listening to an excellent series of presentations on social media hosted by Vocus, and among the speakers was the justly famous (at least in marketing circles) David Meerman Scott.
In suitably rapid-fire fashion David talked about, to quote from his book blurb for Real-Time Marketing & PR, the “opportunities (and threats) inherent in today's always-on, 24x7, instant business environment” His latest opus is all about speed, being first, tempus fugit, etc, etc. Watching him rush about the stage as he presented, you can't help but admire his embodiment of the message he's delivering.
No question, speed is of the essence in marketing and PR: News cycles, product development cycles, sales cycles... they're all shrinking. To illustrate his argument for PR pros, David talked about United Airlines and their infamous PR fiasco over Dave Carroll's broken guitar, as well as Amazon's Big Brother antics pulling Orwell's 1984 off Kindles. He argued – correctly no doubt – that both companies took a geologic era to respond to events that unfolded in hours, and that their reputations were thus badly and unnecessarily damaged.
Lets look at a couple of other, recent anecdotes. Shirley Sherrod, anyone? No question, the White House, the NAACP, Fox News and pretty much every media outlet in the country acted damn fast on this one. And you'd think that many of these politicos would have learned their lessons from the BeerGate nonsense from last year. In both cases, everyone rushed to judgment, desperate to get into the news cycle and desperate to appear to be responsive. Both times, reputations were badly and unnecessarily damaged.
Speed has a price. Reflex PR is a high risk game.
In suitably rapid-fire fashion David talked about, to quote from his book blurb for Real-Time Marketing & PR, the “opportunities (and threats) inherent in today's always-on, 24x7, instant business environment” His latest opus is all about speed, being first, tempus fugit, etc, etc. Watching him rush about the stage as he presented, you can't help but admire his embodiment of the message he's delivering.
No question, speed is of the essence in marketing and PR: News cycles, product development cycles, sales cycles... they're all shrinking. To illustrate his argument for PR pros, David talked about United Airlines and their infamous PR fiasco over Dave Carroll's broken guitar, as well as Amazon's Big Brother antics pulling Orwell's 1984 off Kindles. He argued – correctly no doubt – that both companies took a geologic era to respond to events that unfolded in hours, and that their reputations were thus badly and unnecessarily damaged.
Lets look at a couple of other, recent anecdotes. Shirley Sherrod, anyone? No question, the White House, the NAACP, Fox News and pretty much every media outlet in the country acted damn fast on this one. And you'd think that many of these politicos would have learned their lessons from the BeerGate nonsense from last year. In both cases, everyone rushed to judgment, desperate to get into the news cycle and desperate to appear to be responsive. Both times, reputations were badly and unnecessarily damaged.
Speed has a price. Reflex PR is a high risk game.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Is social media good business?
Lets compare a couple of stats --
A few months back, audited circulation data showed that subscriptions to the New York Times had fallen below one million for the first time in living memory, and declined a whopping nine percent year-over-year. Around the same time Mashable reported that Twitter traffic was growing at a hyperbolic 1300 percent year-over-year, with over 1.2 billion tweets a month.
Numbers like these are thrown about all the time to illustrate an undeniable shift in the way we consume information, news and a whole load of gossip. The economic consequences for the Dead Tree News Business is dire and well-documented, but what about the business prospects for the social media upstarts that seem to be precipitating all this change? Are they making boatloads of cash?
There's no doubt that the main revenue stream that drives the information economy – advertising – is seeing a shift towards online spending:
Looking at the Forrester Research numbers, overall online advertising in the U.S. is expected to have a CAGR of about 17 percent over the next few years, which aint too shabby. Within that, social media advertising will be a rocket ship, with 34 percent CAGR, reaching an impressive $3.4 billion in 2014.
All very nice, but does this all add up to big profits? According Reuters, Facebook made a whopping $800M last year, or about two bucks for every user (let me repeat that – over a full year, Facebook made all of $2 for every active account). Small potatoes you may say, yet this was enough for the company to eek out a $10M profit, at least on paper. Facebook's revenue growth has come as the number of users on its website has exploded: the company started 2009 with the January announcement that it had reached 150 million users and by December that number had swelled to 350 million.
What about Twitter? Bloomberg reported that even on a sliver of revenue from Google and Microsoft, a mere $25M, Twitter is also profitable. They have about 58 million users, so they're getting about 40 cents a user. Poor MySpace, owned by News Corp., has something like 111 million users and made about $360M last year (down from $460M the year before), or about $3.50 per user.
None of this could be described as printing money, in my opinion, and there's a very healthy debate about the long-term viability of social platforms as self-sufficient, profitable businesses. Here's Charles Hugh Smith writing on the investor site Benzinga:
Bo Peabody in the Washington Post thinks social media outfits will always be “crappy businesses”, while Henry Blodget at BusinessInsider thinks Facebook et. al. are the next Google. They can't both be right, but they could both be wrong.
Most likely, some social media properties will figure out a way to make advertising and other revenue streams pay their way. Some will have frothy IPOs. Most will die slow deaths. What I'm sure about is that none of these companies will duplicate what the New York Times does, nor should they. Whichever way you cut it, the vital statistics for the news business remain terrible.
A few months back, audited circulation data showed that subscriptions to the New York Times had fallen below one million for the first time in living memory, and declined a whopping nine percent year-over-year. Around the same time Mashable reported that Twitter traffic was growing at a hyperbolic 1300 percent year-over-year, with over 1.2 billion tweets a month.
Numbers like these are thrown about all the time to illustrate an undeniable shift in the way we consume information, news and a whole load of gossip. The economic consequences for the Dead Tree News Business is dire and well-documented, but what about the business prospects for the social media upstarts that seem to be precipitating all this change? Are they making boatloads of cash?
There's no doubt that the main revenue stream that drives the information economy – advertising – is seeing a shift towards online spending:
 |
| Forrester Research data for online advertising revenues. |
Looking at the Forrester Research numbers, overall online advertising in the U.S. is expected to have a CAGR of about 17 percent over the next few years, which aint too shabby. Within that, social media advertising will be a rocket ship, with 34 percent CAGR, reaching an impressive $3.4 billion in 2014.
All very nice, but does this all add up to big profits? According Reuters, Facebook made a whopping $800M last year, or about two bucks for every user (let me repeat that – over a full year, Facebook made all of $2 for every active account). Small potatoes you may say, yet this was enough for the company to eek out a $10M profit, at least on paper. Facebook's revenue growth has come as the number of users on its website has exploded: the company started 2009 with the January announcement that it had reached 150 million users and by December that number had swelled to 350 million.
What about Twitter? Bloomberg reported that even on a sliver of revenue from Google and Microsoft, a mere $25M, Twitter is also profitable. They have about 58 million users, so they're getting about 40 cents a user. Poor MySpace, owned by News Corp., has something like 111 million users and made about $360M last year (down from $460M the year before), or about $3.50 per user.
None of this could be described as printing money, in my opinion, and there's a very healthy debate about the long-term viability of social platforms as self-sufficient, profitable businesses. Here's Charles Hugh Smith writing on the investor site Benzinga:
Facebook will never be very profitable, for it is a utility which will never be able to charge its users. Its free functions are more valuable to marketers than its advertising, hence it will never generate big ad revenues.
Bo Peabody in the Washington Post thinks social media outfits will always be “crappy businesses”, while Henry Blodget at BusinessInsider thinks Facebook et. al. are the next Google. They can't both be right, but they could both be wrong.
Most likely, some social media properties will figure out a way to make advertising and other revenue streams pay their way. Some will have frothy IPOs. Most will die slow deaths. What I'm sure about is that none of these companies will duplicate what the New York Times does, nor should they. Whichever way you cut it, the vital statistics for the news business remain terrible.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
What is Buzz?
iPhones do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it...
Buzz, that is. But in the iPhone sense – the cool-hype sense - what is Buzz? How do you measure it, and when do you know you've got it?
In marketing terms, we know that “Buzz” is composed of awareness, preference and – with due apologies to Cole Porter – even desire and love. People crave their iPhone, they are quite literally passionate about them – the brand-as-device has become a part of their identity and is valued beyond its intrinsic usefulness. This is a hallmark of Buzz: in some sense it goes beyond logic and reason – it is emotional – and this is why Buzz is so hard to define and to measure.
Most people agree that Buzz originated as a word-of-mouth phenomenon, a kind of groundswell, but beyond that definitions get fuzzy. In her much-cited 2000 HBR article The Buzz on Buzz, Renée Dye calls it “explosive self-generating demand” which doesn't strike me as particularly useful or specific (another takeaway from her article is how faddish Buzz is – her examples of buzziness include the long forgotten Pokemon, Beanie Babies and the movie The Blair Witch Hunt).
Not that others have got more specific since then. In her book Buzz, Mariam Salzman gives us this:
Mark Hughes riffs in a similar vein:
Buzz, that is. But in the iPhone sense – the cool-hype sense - what is Buzz? How do you measure it, and when do you know you've got it?
In marketing terms, we know that “Buzz” is composed of awareness, preference and – with due apologies to Cole Porter – even desire and love. People crave their iPhone, they are quite literally passionate about them – the brand-as-device has become a part of their identity and is valued beyond its intrinsic usefulness. This is a hallmark of Buzz: in some sense it goes beyond logic and reason – it is emotional – and this is why Buzz is so hard to define and to measure.
Most people agree that Buzz originated as a word-of-mouth phenomenon, a kind of groundswell, but beyond that definitions get fuzzy. In her much-cited 2000 HBR article The Buzz on Buzz, Renée Dye calls it “explosive self-generating demand” which doesn't strike me as particularly useful or specific (another takeaway from her article is how faddish Buzz is – her examples of buzziness include the long forgotten Pokemon, Beanie Babies and the movie The Blair Witch Hunt).
Not that others have got more specific since then. In her book Buzz, Mariam Salzman gives us this:
...buzz marketing is...organic; it is centered on conversational value; it is peer driven; it is strategic; and it spreads outward from trendsetter to trend spreaders to the mainstream.
Mark Hughes riffs in a similar vein:
Buzz marketing captures the attention of consumers and the media to the point where talking about your brand or company becomes entertaining, fascinating or newsworthy.
Both these books have a lot of good things to say, but like many other social media tomes they don't really give us a crisp definition of the fundamental commodity at hand. In social science speak, they certainly don't get us to a point where we can operationalize “Buzz” and thus measure it effectively.
This is a failure. How on earth can we have a conversation about Buzz, and all that it entails, if we can't agree on what it is? In many respects, this has echoes of past marketing conversations around another slippery concept, The Brand.
So, Buzz is elusive in nature and elusive to define. This hasn't stopped a boatload of companies claiming it and even naming products after it – Google Buzz, BuzzMetrics, ThoughtBuzz, BuzzTrace, BuzzGain, BuzzFeed and even BuzzLife. Buzz is Buzzy, I guess.
Let me know your ideas on what exactly buzz is...
This is a failure. How on earth can we have a conversation about Buzz, and all that it entails, if we can't agree on what it is? In many respects, this has echoes of past marketing conversations around another slippery concept, The Brand.
So, Buzz is elusive in nature and elusive to define. This hasn't stopped a boatload of companies claiming it and even naming products after it – Google Buzz, BuzzMetrics, ThoughtBuzz, BuzzTrace, BuzzGain, BuzzFeed and even BuzzLife. Buzz is Buzzy, I guess.
Let me know your ideas on what exactly buzz is...
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Jim Sterne's Social Media Metrics
I've just finished reading Jim Sterne's new (ish) book, Social Media Metrics, How to Measure and Optimize your Marketing Investment, published by Wiley. I recommend it. “We are what we measure” may be a tired cliché, but Sterne nevertheless brings a fresh perspective to the subject and drives home why measurement may be the foundation for building a successful social media program.
The book does a great job of linking social media metrics to things that matter in business, what Sterne describes as The Big Three Goals of increasing revenue, lowering cost, or improving customer satisfaction. These goals may sound lofty or even unattainable to some, but Sterne is, well, stern in his views: If social media can't make a meaningful impact on the business, why bother at all? This tone distinguishes the book from the many volumes of fluffy nonsense written about social media.
From here, Sterne constructs the book around the logical steps necessary to attaining meaningful business results. At each step the book suggests ways to measure activity and drive toward a desired outcome. I was glad Sterne wasn't afraid to address the real costs associated with a rigorous social media program, and take this on as a metric (borrowed from Avinash Kaushik).
The book has its faults. It could have done with an edit, and I wish Sterne had talked more about the practicality of measuring things, and the tools that can support ongoing measurement. I also found issue with some of the discussion around “identifying influence”, but these are small gripes. If you've ever pondered how to measure the meaningful impact of social media on your business, this is a good book to buy.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Google and the news
This week, The Atlantic Magazine's James Fallows wrote a cover story titled How to Save the News, about Google. He might more accurately have titled it How Google is the News.
Google has been an unavoidable focus of news for most of the last decade, but things have really heated up over the last year or so. Google has enjoyed cover stories in pretty much every news magazine in the US, and lead stories in the business and financial pages of the dailies on a regular basis. Type “Google” into Google, and the news hits are 28,000 for the past month alone. By comparison, “Obama” gets 44,000.
Frankly, I'm all Googled out – we went well beyond saturation coverage a long time ago.
Of course, Google is the news is another sense: they have become the way that most people find stories, or aggregate the information they consume. In the process, they've also become the totem for all the online ills that plague the old-school news media. The thrust of Fallow's story is that Google recognizes the value of a healthy Fourth Estate, etc. etc., and that the company has plans to make good on keeping journalism healthy and vibrant. Right. Forgive my skepticism.
The US media's love affair with Google is perverse, or ironic or maybe just weird. Fallow's has fallen victim to it. Google is adored not so much because they're fighting for information freedom in China, or because they build very cool and totally free stuff we can all use, or because their search engine is a simple work of genius: The US media loves Google because it is a phenomenal financial success. This trumps everything, and makes them infallible in the way Microsoft was in decades past. Google prints money. They may be a one-trick pony, but the trick is very lucrative.
A year ago, The Atlantic ran another cover story on Google, although much less flattering. Is Google Making us Stupid? was written by Nick Carr, and the title pretty much says it all. I think Carr has a very level-headed view of the social issues with new media and online economics, but you could argue that he too has fallen prey to the Google hype. We should remind ourselves that this is a company that makes bundles of money selling advertising atop a search engine; everything else is window-dressing. They aren't going to democratize China, make us stupid, or save the media biz. They're just going to continue to make a lot of cash.
Google has been an unavoidable focus of news for most of the last decade, but things have really heated up over the last year or so. Google has enjoyed cover stories in pretty much every news magazine in the US, and lead stories in the business and financial pages of the dailies on a regular basis. Type “Google” into Google, and the news hits are 28,000 for the past month alone. By comparison, “Obama” gets 44,000.
Frankly, I'm all Googled out – we went well beyond saturation coverage a long time ago.
Of course, Google is the news is another sense: they have become the way that most people find stories, or aggregate the information they consume. In the process, they've also become the totem for all the online ills that plague the old-school news media. The thrust of Fallow's story is that Google recognizes the value of a healthy Fourth Estate, etc. etc., and that the company has plans to make good on keeping journalism healthy and vibrant. Right. Forgive my skepticism.
The US media's love affair with Google is perverse, or ironic or maybe just weird. Fallow's has fallen victim to it. Google is adored not so much because they're fighting for information freedom in China, or because they build very cool and totally free stuff we can all use, or because their search engine is a simple work of genius: The US media loves Google because it is a phenomenal financial success. This trumps everything, and makes them infallible in the way Microsoft was in decades past. Google prints money. They may be a one-trick pony, but the trick is very lucrative.
A year ago, The Atlantic ran another cover story on Google, although much less flattering. Is Google Making us Stupid? was written by Nick Carr, and the title pretty much says it all. I think Carr has a very level-headed view of the social issues with new media and online economics, but you could argue that he too has fallen prey to the Google hype. We should remind ourselves that this is a company that makes bundles of money selling advertising atop a search engine; everything else is window-dressing. They aren't going to democratize China, make us stupid, or save the media biz. They're just going to continue to make a lot of cash.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
A definitive list of social media measurement & metrics tools?
(Updated December 2, 2011)
Last week Jeremiah Owyang at the Altimeter Group, along with his colleague John Lovett, published a nice report on social media analytics. It's a very useful framework for thinking through how to measure the rights things, which in turn will focus attention on the right kinds of activities.
But how to measure? Way back in 2006, Owyang took a snapshot of the companies that offer tools for social media metrics, and came up with a list of forty-two firms. In the last week I've trawled the web to update his list (and thanks to Ken Burbary for a nice wiki list of different tools), and come up with an astonishing 82 firms that offer some kind of social media measurement solution. And I'm pretty sure I've missed a bunch.
Help me update and correct the list. Please send me your additions, along with any other comments on these tools, and I'll post an update. If there's enough interest, I'll also try and categorize these solutions better -- there's certainly a lot of diversity in this list.
SOCIAL MEDIA MEASUREMENT TOOLS
Updated: February 11 2011
Last week Jeremiah Owyang at the Altimeter Group, along with his colleague John Lovett, published a nice report on social media analytics. It's a very useful framework for thinking through how to measure the rights things, which in turn will focus attention on the right kinds of activities.
But how to measure? Way back in 2006, Owyang took a snapshot of the companies that offer tools for social media metrics, and came up with a list of forty-two firms. In the last week I've trawled the web to update his list (and thanks to Ken Burbary for a nice wiki list of different tools), and come up with an astonishing 82 firms that offer some kind of social media measurement solution. And I'm pretty sure I've missed a bunch.
Help me update and correct the list. Please send me your additions, along with any other comments on these tools, and I'll post an update. If there's enough interest, I'll also try and categorize these solutions better -- there's certainly a lot of diversity in this list.
SOCIAL MEDIA MEASUREMENT TOOLS
Updated: February 11 2011
| Company | Comments |
| Alterian | SMM |
| Appinions | SMM |
| Andiamo Systems | SMM |
| Attensity | SMM |
| Attentio | Multilingual |
| Beyond Analysis | Gone |
| Beevolve | SMM |
| Biz360 | Acquired by Attensity. |
| BrandIntel | Gone |
| Brandwatch | Brand monitoring |
| BurrellesLuce | SMM |
| Buzzcapture | SMM |
| BuzzGain | Meltwater Group Product |
| BuzzLogic | Now TwelveFold Media |
| BuzzNumbers | SMM |
| CIC Business Consulting | BI tool Chinese market |
| Cision | SMM + other tools |
| Collective Intellect | SMM |
| ComMetric | Mapping to financial data and stock tickers |
| Converseon | Agency with some tools |
| Cover-All Technologies | No longer supporting SMM |
| Crimson Hexagon | SMM |
| CustomScoop | SMM |
| CyberAlert | SMM |
| Cyveillance | Brand monitoring, QinetiQ company |
| Cymfony | SMM + other tools |
| Dow Jones & Company Insight | SMM + other tools |
| EchoMetrix | Gone |
| eCairn | SaaS metrics solution |
| EmPower Research | Custom technology solutions |
| Ethority | SMM |
| Evolve24 | SMM |
| Jive | FilterBox product. |
| HowSociable | Free gadget |
| Imooty | SMM |
| Infegy | Brand monitoring |
| Integrasco | SMM |
| Intelligence Technologies | Gone out of business |
| JamIQ | Asian languages |
| J.D. Power and Associates | acquired Umbria |
| Jodange | See Appinions |
| Kaleidico | No longer supporting SMM |
| Kaava Corporation | Marketing services, some SMM |
| KDPaine and Partners | No tools but strong analysis |
| ListenLogic | social CRM? |
| Lexalytics | Sentiment detection |
| Linkfluence | French language |
| Lithium | Social CRM |
| Market Sentinel | Brand monitoring |
| mBlast | SMM |
| MediaBadger | Consulting firm with tools |
| MediaHound | SMM competitive intelligence |
| MediaMiser | Media monitoring |
| Meltwater News | Media monitoring |
| MetaTale | Gone. |
| Metrica | Multilingual, part of Gorkana Group |
| Millward Brown | Precis |
| Moreover technologies | SMM |
| Netemic | SMM |
| NetEquity | Gone. |
| New Media Strategies | No longer supporting SMM |
| Nielsen Online | NetRatings |
| Onalytica | SMM |
| OneRiot | Gone. |
| PRMetrics | Free customizable social media portal |
| Radian6 | SMM, acquired by SalesForce.com |
| Relevant Noise | See Zeta Interactive |
| Report International | Brand monitoring |
| RepuMetrix | Brand monitoring |
| ReputationHQ | Gone |
| SAS | Business intelligence tool with SM |
| SamePoint | Gone |
| Scanblog | Gone. |
| ScoutLabs | See Lithium |
| Sentiment Metrics | Not just sentiment |
| Socialarc | SMM |
| SocialMention | Social search engine |
| Statsit | No longer Relevant |
| Synthesio | Multilingual |
| Sysomos | Business intelligence tool |
| Tealium | No longer relevant |
| ThoughtBuzz | SMM |
| TraceBuzz | SMM |
| Trackur | SMM |
| Thomson Reuters | BuzzAnalytics and OpinionAnalystics |
| UberVU | Now Crimson Hexagon |
| ViralHeat | SMM, Free API |
| Visible Technologies | SMM |
| VMS | Gone |
| Vocus | SMM |
| WaveMetrix | SMM |
| Zeta Interactive | Relevant Noise product for SMM |
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