Shoot the Messenger, the Media or the Originator? Social Media can do Good..

Last weekend saw the tragic death of a fairly high profile socialite/ businesswoman/ minister’s wife in India. Cause of death is still uncertain – but it followed a fairly venomous yet convoluted debacle on twitter, followed by retractments/ clarifications by husband and wife on Facebook.

A long debate followed – on the role of social media, twitter specially, in her death. Leading newspaper Hindustan Times actually carried a poll on whether Twitter was to blame for Ms. Tharoor’s death. (Results: 52% agreed that SM was to blame for her death!)

I say this is BS (pardon the french) – all that Social Media has done is allowed everyone an easily accessible/ easy to use/ free/ and increasingly popular medium for self expression – the presence of this medium in no way controls emotions/ behavior – except ofcourse allowing for an increasing need for sharing these emotions and behavior (and yes, in consequence making these same emotions/ behavior more share-worthy). It cannot be held responsible for what may be infidelity (except maybe give a means for communication of infidelity), and by no means is it a trigger for someone to pull a figurative trigger on oneself!

A now fairly viral article agrees with me – it looks like traditional media (read print and TV journalists) are those making the strongest allegations that Social Media was to blame; while, interestingly, post this article, Social Media is loudly saying that traditional media was to blame! (the lady had reached out to many journalists to “tell her story” – most were too busy to grant her a hearing!)

What Social Media is doing, is putting the onus on most of us to learn some new etiquette, and a newer/ maturer way of handling it. Celebs are most vulnerable (An interesting related article on Social Media savvy politicians mentions an interesting website Politwoops – check it for some fun stuff!). By the way, an Analysis of twitter behaviour for Mr. and Mrs. Tharoor shows that the politician was far more savvy than his wife.

There is a lot of good that Social Media is doing – look at its impact on Healthcare, with advocacy groups on most conditions bringing support and relief to millions of patients to state one. Or, as an example, my ex co founder’s initiative Let’s Do Some Good , and my husband’s proposed body for investing in Uttarakhand (yes yes, shameless plug!) that she is primarily promoting on Facebook. Or, just the pleasure that Facebook gives to the silver surfers – my mom and aunt being two avid proponents! It is really silly to state that the medium or the messenger is responsible for people’s stupidities.

I could go on and on, but just as I was writing this (reasonably impassioned) piece, I came across a new short film made in collaboration with…yes…you guessed it – Dove! It’s the perfect ending methinks to underline this message – the medium is not to blame! It can be used for a lovely reason as well…enjoy….

Outlay vs. Outcome: Why I need to diet AND exercise (or, why is “purchase intent” better than “likes” or “retweets”)

Classical scene in our house post any exam for the 8th grader child: One parent checking child’s answer against question paper. Child ofcourse answering to less-than-parent’s-satisfaction. Parent in glumpish/ lecturish/ sad/ disappointed mode. Child whining – but ma, I STUDIIIEEEDDDD – for TWO hoooouuuurrrrssss….

Actually mirrors my own scenario to a certain extent with the whole aerobics/ swimming business. I began attempting to get some exercise the beginning of this year (for the first time ever, I may add). Some 46 weeks later – very very very very marginal reduction in inches and kilos.

(Credit)

Reminds me of our early partner calls running our start-up, when we would each ask the other partner – so, what’s the sales pipeline looking like. And, one of us would always say – see, I called company XYZ, tried to catch person ABC, attempted to get a meeting with so and so….

What’s common between each of these? Effort – Much. much. much. much…. Result – Zilch. zero. zip…

The point is, most of us very often kind of give sop to our consciences saying – I put in so much effort – I studied x hourse/ did y hours of community service/ made so many calls/ research so many papers. NOT IMPORTANT – what IS important is – did you achieve what you were trying to? Did it have the required outcome/ the impact???

Honestly, if it didn’t, your effort went waste! There is a saying – don’t just work hard, work smart. It’s to do with this outlay vs. outcome thing. ROI is a key metric most smart organisations measure – how much “bang for your buck” are you getting? Are you able to get higher turns out of your resources – inventory/ capital/ people time…and, the only way to do it is to be efficient/ smart/ outcome focused.

A good tool to measure this is a time sheet – I remember in the early days of our startup, we four founders decided to fill up time sheets – one week into the game, and i had trouble accounting for my 18 hours that i burnt the midday and midnight oil at. It was astonishing for how many of the hours, I would have probably put in “email” and/ or “internet”…(ofcourse, we were a virtual organisation, hence email was important; and we were a secondary research oriented org, hence the internet was inevitable) – but still, eye opening!

It’s a classical HR conundrun also – do you hire/ keep the “well intentioned/ great attitude” employee, or the “expert” one – who probably comes with all kinds of baggage of maintenance. A smart company actually hires a mix – and the managing of this mix determines the success or not of the org.

Interestingly, this is counter intuitive advice from what the Bhagwad Gita (a well known Indian tome) gives you – Karmanyevadhikarastey, ma faleshu kadachana – means keep focussing on your work, don’t worry about the result. (looks like this has had a great impact of me one way or the other – I just realised I used it in a completely different context in an earlier blog). I think, it would have been better if Krishna said – “work ofcourse, but work towards a goal – results will come, so don’t worry about them” :).

I saw a depressing example of the flip side of this advice actually a few days ago. As most Indian corporates know, recently the Companies Act got revised, and it now includes a provision that companies have to show spend of 2% of their net profit on CSR activities. A friend (and former co-founder) now actively in the CSR space wanted to pitch advisory services to firms about how to make use of these “mandatory” funds to make an impact. The finding in most cases is, that companies don’t really care about impact – they care about the “doing” – so, its all – “We Spent XXX Volunteer hours on CSR activities” – OoooKaayyy, what did you achieve? “uh-duh…who knows, who cares, how do we find out, why should we measure”! Kinda defeats the spirit of the act, don’t you think?

Another corollary – the whole Social/ Digital Media ROI piece – most folks are chasing likes/ retweets/ shares – and calling it engagement. Sure, these are good goals to chase as a FIRST step – but thats all they should be – a means to an end. Unless it translates to actual brand health KPIs – like, consideration/ purchase intent/ recommend-ability, loyalty…its all so much “feel-good” stuff.

I read this interesting article recently on HBR – pretty much says the same thing; slamming “being slammed/ busy/ neck deep in work” on grounds of outcome vs. outlay, worth a click.

What’s the solution though – how do you make sure you keep end objective in sight and don’t get bogged down by the effort. Most of you management sorts probably HAVE the toolkits, for me, a simple daily checklist worked well (I loved the ticks against each completed task) – but this daily checklist needs to get collaborated against yr monthly / quarterly/ annual goals. (It’s end of the year, folks – I’m sure many of you are now filling out “traffic signal” sheets against goal achievement? ).

For weight loss, I’m onto a protein only, no carbs diet for some time starting, uh, tomorrow? 🙂 (I see with my own eyes the much better effect of a combi diet-cum-exercise regime on my aerobics classmates everyday!).

Credit

Regarding kids, and how one makes them goal oriented, and not effort oriented – well, I have NO answers! (Its amazing how the simplest parenting problem is so much more insoluble than the most complex corporate one isn’t it?) Anyone with any idea, DO PLEASE pitch in!!!!

Social Media: More a Research/ Analytics than a Marketing Tool?

Read an article yesterday about increasing apathy amongst college goers on brands’ social media marketing efforts. Add to that another from the flip side of the coin – CMOs. According to a recent study, only 15% of U.S. CMOs have been able to quantitatively prove Social’s impact!

It kind of points towards an old felt-but-not-quite-articulated hypothesis I had! At the time, I used to think that I felt this way because my business was more focussed on the use of social media for a “learning” experience, not so much an “outreach” one. And this despite the fact that marketers we spoke to almost always were interested in the lower hanging fruit, i.e., the marketing using SM. So, when we went in with a pitch that said – “hey, this is what social media can teach you about your consumer or your competitor or your brand”, they would say, “hey, can you help us make our facebook page better”! Maybe it was compounded by the fact that the consumer insights/ market research people, those that would truly benefit from this, turned up their noses at this “unconventional, unstructured, “qualitative”‘ data source and took whatever we said with a pinch of, no! scratch that – huge dollops of salt! (See my very first blog post on this question of whether social media research is fish or fowl! )

So my hypothesis was just this – that Social’s FIRST and BIGGEST benefit was as a data source for higher consumer understanding. After all, this was/ is a medium that is changing the way people talk/ behave/ share/ opine – in many cases, this reflects people’s needs/ wants/ perceptions/ attitudes/ usages/ purchases. Most importantly, it is PEER to PEER. And proactive/ not reactive. Why then would you not leverage it for classical research questions? (Sure, it applies only to that percentage of the population that is connected, but, a) that is a large number in most countries now and b) even where it isn’t, it can be used as a proxy for the relevant categories.)

Ofcourse, I don’t think we should be ready to junk Social Media as a marketing tool yet – in fact, my hypothesis notwithstanding, I do think that the world is getting more digital – and therefore, marketers have no choice but to follow their consumers – i.e., go where the consumers go – in other words, social..

So then, what causes the CMO’s disenchantment with the medium? Maybe its the inadequate/ non standardised measurement/ metrics piece – obviously, if you aren’t convinced about how you are measuring input and output, you will not be convinced of the ROI of your spend. (See my older post on KPIs for Social Media Measurement for a way towards metrics and KPIs)

What is your take? Marketing or Research? (or measurement?)

(Credit: conversition.com)

Facebook Doesn’t get Monday Blues? (Weekly Social Media Behavior)

Its true! EVERYONE rests on the sabbath!

I just completed 7 months of blogging – fairly sporadic stuff, i must admit. In these 7 months, I had formulated some theories about days and day parts that are most amenable to posting. These were:

– Mondays are great for posting on Facebook (Contrary to what you would expect, most folks do NOT get to office all waiting to sweat it out! I get loaaads of posts on my timeline, and actually a fair number of hits on my blogs on Mondays)

– Facebook gives me greatest hits – after all, these are friends, and they are fairly varied occupationally (from my mom, to my daughter – see this old post on Facebook’s ubiquitous appeal; to ex colleagues, to batchmates from school and college..)

– Fridays are bad – both these are actually a bit counter intuitive, aren’t they? If you look at lunch places, they are more crowded on Fridays than other places – most “nice to do” stuff is typically kept for fridays – so, one would think that Facebook browsing should be on the rise on Fridays? Not true

– Weekends are worst! On saturdays and sundays, I guess folks don’t use laptops; and, despite mobile increasing as access mode, I get least hits on those days 🙂

– For all social media platforms, the beginning of the day is better than the end – this is true of all, except twitter – where BOTH the beginning and the end is better.

I thought I would undertake some analysis and see if my hypotheses were true. Just so you know, I typically publish my blog at night, and then post it on twitter. In the morning, I repost it to twitter and then also post it on Facebook and Linkedin (Ofcourse, after judging appropriateness! There are posts that don’t make it to LinkedIn and Twitter; just as some that don’t make it to Facebook. See another old post with my opinions on segmenting content according to the character of the social media channel)

So, here’s what the trend of visits looked like:

This validated my hypotheses about weekends being days of rest, but threw out a few surprising winners!
Interestingly, on a cumulative basis, all weekdays had more or less the same no. of visits per day (average).

However, if you break it up into days when there were posts published and those when there weren’t, Mondays and Thursdays were best for posting blogs. (I did a further drill down where I removed the outlier posts – those that were wildly successful, and found that Mondays were certainly the stars by far)

But, for “regular” behavior, ie, that not triggered by posts – which further translates to organic / search type visits – Mondays were actually the worst (and Wednesdays the best!). My theory for this is as follows:

After a lazy weekend, folks get back to work but also to their social networks – this points more and more to social networks, even the “non professional” ones like facebook, being almost an adjunct to your productive work day! This explains the high visits on Mondays when new triggers (new posts) are seen. But, during the middle of the week, folks start actual “work” – I am talking presentations/ inspiration/ research 🙂 – and hence organic visits peak then! Makes sense?

Look at the sources analysis:

Again, much to my surprise, “search” almost equals “Facebook” – this is partially testimony to the (slow) speed of blogging, but does atleast endorse the cleverness of my tags 🙂

A look at a few other similar subject analyses can be had here and here

So, if you want to start blogging, you know what time of the day/ day of the week and which channel to do it on! Happy blogging!

Digital / Social Transformation = CRM = Big Data (About Old Wine in New Bottles, Darwin and Levitt)

My biggest comfort reading STILL is Enid Blyton’s books. I was reading one the other day, and realised that the word “gypsies” (In Enid Blyton’s debatably bigoted world, Gypsies were the bad guys – generally robbing and stealing!) was now replaced by “travelers”! (read this article on changes to Enid Blyton’s language)

It started me thinking on how concepts evolve with time – and how they get nuanced depending on context.

Look at our world of Social/ Digital Media.

First there was listening, then there was engagement, ofcourse then people started talking about ROI, then folks started talking digital transformation…and now about social integration.

Its a fairly normal evolution – you take piece parts of a whole process, and start attacking it from small angles, then the small piece parts coalese to form a larger part – which you can then make sequential evolution like a process. Then you bring the whole piece together and start talking the big picture – till you then leapfrog into next level applications etc.

We saw this in devices – the whole unification piece arising out of networking -> convergence -> wifi. (I did write an earlier piece on this). The world view that arises from this is that of the super connected/ “always on” world.

The good news though with the whole social/ digital piece is that after a lot of “wandering in the wilderness” and marketers and the C Suite looking upon it as the new kid on the block and not “real” marketing; then viewing it as stand alone another element in the marketing mix; now most folks are realising the ubiquitousness of the medium and figuring that “social business” is almost a way of life – for people personally, and therefore for enterprises. This is leading to integrated social marketing in the true sense of the word. Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism is a good example of a visualisation of an integrated world!

Evolutionarily, it first started with social media integration tools – how do you cross post/ make sure you don’t replicate/ undertake SEO for your Social Content etc. A look at some of the tools for this can be had here . But now you have some interesting campaigns that truly integrate many diverse elements so the consumer sees ONE brand/ ONE entity – and so do the employees – and so do the vendors/ suppliers and other stakeholders!

The case with Big Data is a bit similar. While it is greater volume/ velocity/ variety, it is ultimately about crunching vast masses of Data – something that actually gave rise to computers!! Also, if you then start looking at its applications, its the same ole same ole (old wine in new bottles) – CRM being a BIG one. So, ultimately, Big Data helps you compute, quickly and cheaply, thanks to the cloud.

The point, however, is, that its no longer smart to talk “Computing”, or even “Analytics” – you say “BIG Data”; just like you no longer say “Listening” – you say “Digital Transformation” (I’ve seen some folks calling it “Social Integration”, but as the economists and social scientists would know, THAT is more about social/ cultural amalgamation of immigrants into their adopted mileu :).)

But, think about this evolution – Darwin and his theory of natural selection actually applies to the technology/ data front as well! (For those who have forgotten Darwinism – I found this cute animated video tutorial – a bit long, but a nice refresher!). It basically states that living organisms evolved through a process of adaptation to surroundings, following “survival of the fittest” – hence, while computing is still the fossil, Big data is the evolved mammal. I did on my favourite facebook page I fucking love science today see a picture of this amazing fish – which is amphibious!

Coming back to business, in a way Theodore Levitt and his concept of “Marketing Myopia” – implied a bit of an evolutionary path too – from photo paper to duplicating machines to business process and document management (Xerox); from Time Keeping and Weighing Machines to Smarter Planet (IBM); from Petroleum to Energy (Shell); From Fast Food to “I’m Lovin’ It” (McDonald’s); from making movies to “entertainment” (Hollywood) and from paper to “connecting people” (Nokia). It was about evolving your business/ broadening its spectrum to serve your consumers’ basic needs!

You think about it then – concepts evolve, just as language evolves (etymology being the science of how words evolve – just so you know, “Digital” – seems to have taken the following path : “of or pertaining to a digit or finger” –> “resembling a digit or finger” –> “manipulated with a finger or the fingertips eg a digital switch” –> “displaying a readout in digital form”

To wind up, think about some stuff that used to be called something else in the olden days :

Motivation = gamification
Beauty parlour = Salon
Step cut (a particular hair style) = Layers
Fund raising = Crowdsourcing
Bribery = Lobbying
Plagiarism = Research 🙂

Some that have changed with the technology: (These are called retronyms):
Phone –> From Landline to mobile
Guitar –> To acoustic/ electric etc.

Some where our influence changed (in India, that implies becoming more American from being more British) or we became more politically correct/ less racist etc..:

Biscuits = Cookies
Toilet = Washroom
Merry Christmas –> Happy Holidays
Negro –> African American
I’m fine, thank u –> I’m good

In the end, evolution notwithstanding, look at where Homo Sapiens has got to, thanks largely to digital/ big data etc etc:

The Power of 7 (or 77) ! IBM Big Data, Wimbledon, and B2B marketing

What a Wimbledon this was! From slides (all around the court) to falls (of top seeds), to a dream win for a relative unknown Frenchwoman followed by the win Britain was waiting for – it took 77 years for a male to win it; was the first one after 1977 (Virginia Wade – the media certainly took a beating on this one, didn’t it? – and this despite the felicitation to Ms. Wade during the championships!)) and was won on 7/7…wow, the power of 7! Maybe Murray will win it 7 times!

This number/ data crunching reminded me of the ad that I saw on ESPN while the match was being aired – it was one of the series of ads that IBM released for its “smarter planet” positioning….by the way, I like that positioning – and I do think that IBM is doing many things right to work towards fulfilling that promise.

If you haven’t seen it yet, here is the series

But I was really confused about why there was a Big Data campaign airing on TV! Who buys Intel? Businesses – so CEO/ CTO/ CDO and of late, ever since their CMO focus, the CMO. (See this interesting article about IBM’s focus on the CMO). These are ALL C suite execs in enterprises! Intel is the quintessential B2B marketing firm! On top of which it has traditionally focussed large enterprises though it did start a mid market push a while ago (just to check – a google search for IBM enterprise vs SMB shows a ration of 153 million to 4 million!).

So, what is the typical purchase process for IBM like engagements? Long drawn out pitches/ the typical commercial engagement cycle…resulting generally in bids against 2 others (Accenture and/or Oracle may very likely be atleast one of the others – interestingly, I found in my inbox today an email from Accenture talking about the looming shortage of analytics talent – talk about topicality! ). What is the ‘discovery’ process in this Bizdev cycle? Well, Intel in the appropriate circles I would imagine doesn’t need discovery – it may need outreach, but not discovery. Which means, that the relevant people in a buying situation WOULD reach out to IBM. Now, sure, the world is becoming more and more socially integrated – and ofcourse, the business that IBM in, has a core foundation of social. So, should they give a social presence to this new positioning? Certainly! And, to their credit, they’ve done so. I do think salience of IBM along with Big data, Predictive analytics and Smart is probably highest amongst all comparative business entities. They’ve also done outdoors visibility well on the “smarter planet” platform – including a massive hoarding just outside the airport in my hometown Bangalore. So, why on earth would they advertise on TV???

Which brings me to the larger premise – B2B marketing and the role of mass media – I think the only scenarios that justify the use of mass media for a B2B entity are:

a) Launch of company/ large product – one which is revolutionary! (Typically a big bang ad may work in this case if it is a well known company launching a biggie product – Apple/ Mac/ Superbowl comes to mind for this ofcourse! See my earlier related post here). If it’s an unknown company and u want to build traction very quickly, then you may want repeated airings over TV/ other media…

b) Existing company repositioning in that it is targeting a newer audience – say an enterprise oriented company expands to now address the SMB segment only – mass media seems ideal to tell you that hey we talk to you too (actually in a way, in tone atleast, the IBM ads seem oriented towards consumers/ SOHO and the SMB segment)

c) A company is going IPO – ofcourse then, the target for the ad becomes the consumer/ investing public – and given the company is B2B, the mass public may not know much about it.

d) The media chosen is very very select (and hence not “mass” at all 🙂 – but I meant select very targeted print specially if it’s a specialist domain that relies very heavily still on traditional media – Print and Packaging/ fragrances/ maybe even some tech e.g. select storage/ design etc may be good examples – these are journals that may be peer reviewed etc – and strangely enough still do not have online editions – specially in geographies across the world. (Autodesk was one such product category). A corollary is select very targeted media programs that are clearly and squarely meant for that select audience (so, not Wimbledon Men’s final on ESPN 🙂 )

Interestingly, writing this side of the story nearly made me forget the early pains of proving the utility of social media – then a relatively new life form – for B2B businesses when we were running EmPower Research. Specially the fight we had on our hands when we started selling our services to the large clients of our aquirer – these were companies that largely required BPM services from our acquirer – and so, were all B2B – and when I say B2B, I even mean utility/ transport/ heavy engineering companies. At one time, we even created a two by two matrix showing how B2B companies were NOT good targets for our effort. That is why, most articles online for B2B marketing currently are selling the utility of social media/ business for propagating B2B businesses 🙂 .

Our own experience – ultimately – showed us that social could be integrated into B2B businesses at various stages:

– Listening for reputation management/ disaster preparedness – this meant you constantly trawl social conversations to a) spot any broad reputation detractors (or enhancers for that matter) for your business; but also check for any broad/ macro events that may turn viral and therefore increase your risk profile (nice predictive algorithms could be created to show when something could get viral)

– Lead Generation – this use has been questioned – but, atleast in user groups/ domain specific sites of certain types of product categories, there are lots of questions on upgrades/ switches/ problem solution type issues. These could generally cue the smart Bizdev person to atleast prospect

– Customer service – similar to the above – just for existing users

– Thought Leadership – creating enriching/ engaging content realted to the business you are in – in an effort to broaden the horizon of what your brand stands for…

– Using Social Technologies for collaboration for better efficiencies and smarter decision making…

So, in a way, we circle back towards the points IBM is making – predictions to enable cleverer decisions, more “right” decisions, etc – and all these are what social will enable – so my point – why use mass media to make this point? And why 5 years after the point has been made already, and well?

Please note – I am not questioning the “Big Idea” of the Smarter Planet at all! I think, for a company that was to the larger world known as the chip/ processor company, the “Smarter Planet” was a really superb plank – it was motivational internally, focused on what was important – core research leading to ‘intelligence” – an idea probably before its time 5 years ago; was applicable across verticals or domains easily; and ofcourse was executed brilliantly by Ogilvy and Office. (read this for an eulogic analysis!) My objection is really to the use – after 5 years – of the campaign in mass media…still!

And ofcourse the Watson vs. Man @ Jeopardy idea was a gem – by all standards – PR, engagement, amplification, just stressing core brand values.

At the end, as the pundits would say though, what sells is success – as this, slightly older article shows, IBM certainly reaped the benefits of the campaign – whether they make incremental returns on continuing the campaign is anyone’s guess. (for those interested in some behind the scenes photos of the commercial production, click here )

To come back to Wimbledon, many may not know (I have to confess I didn’t – and in hindsight maybe as partners they get some media time anyway, and THAT”S why they aired this campaign that is making me froth at the mouth so much!!!) – but IBM actually crunches all Wimbledon’s and other Grand Slams’ data for the interesting stats and analyses – including giving tips to players, and prompting commentators as they give you a blow by blow account of what is transpiring on court! (read here for some details on their SlamTracker)

So, as far as I am concerned, advertising or no, power to IBM and its like!

Is Facebook Killing Other Digital Assets?

A few days ago I got into a conversation with the sales head of an entity – this is a platform that operates in what i would say is still a niche. It started as a blog, but now has contributory content from many authors – some paid for, mostly free. Fairly wide coverage across segments, nice viewership numbers – which the team actively tracks as metrics.

Now they have the next step in front of them monetization – They are chasing the obvious like sponsorship and advertising by brands, apart from other more interesting ideas.

But, the question that this guy asked me is:

If you are a brand, why would you not buy facebook advertising – where you can get access to an immensely wider reach, a much wider demographic, arguably higher engagement…Don’t forget, even for this entity, 75% of their discovery comes via facebook – which is probably true nowadays of most newer digital assets.

Ofcourse, much has been written about why companies should keep their blogs rather than just go for facebook pages alone – here’s a neat infographic on this. Prime reasons are – control of content, better engagement of a type, higher relevance, better chances at showing thought leadership rather than mere snippets (so different content types as well). All these make sense.

Ofcourse, as a counter, there are apps – that pretty much work as content platforms now (the mother of all content platforms being arguably wikipedia), including those on Facebook. Actually, honestly twitter more than facebook works better as a local – intact hyperlocal – content platform, though with the changes to the newsfeed, facebook will come closer. But see, publishing houses such as the Guardian are choosing to evict those – read why here

And then there’s the argument against websites of how video is the big gorilla in the room now – look at these amazing stats, and facebook aids the video wave.

But this sales guy’s point was not so much from the brand/ company’s point of view, but the advertiser/ spender’s – who is viewing website vs facebook as media channels not necessarily content ones.

I do think if the advertising/ sponsoring brand is serious enough to want to own proprietary content – remember in the digital world content is king – it shouldn’t rely on Facebook – for the same reasons as owners of the content shouldn’t rely on FB alone! There is something to be said for acquisition of eyeballs in an uncluttered/ controlled environment after all. Ofcourse they will also get the concomitant facebook page – so you do end up “going where your targets are” – the classic win for facebook, apart from “taking targets to where you want them to go”.

What’s your take?

Read also related earlier post here

Social Media Crossword – Answers

Just to remind you, the clues were:

How many cracked it?

Social Media Crossword – Just For Fun

Try and solve 🙂

Answers tomorrow 🙂

Enjoy!

How to Create Social Media KPIs : The Science of Indices

Yesterday my nephew, who is an earnest young brand manager in a lifestyle/ accessories Indian brand, was staring at his computer. When asked why he was looking so perplexed, he said – We’ve created this really nice campaign on facebook, which is engaging as well as makes a very powerful brand statement. Its also a first of its kind we think. Problem is – I am not sure how to figure out whether it’s doing well, and my bosses – all they are saying is – have you doubled your “likes”?

As we all know, he is not in a minority – everyone on Social Media is chasing the ROI holy grail.

But, I really think in our quest for this elusive target, we are tending to overcomplicate Social Media.

Sure, “likes” is too unilateral and limiting – especially when facebook doesn’t allow dislikes. Everyone also knows we should also measure sentiment – positive or negative. But then comes “response” which signifies “engagement”. And then there is also “relevance” – given that Social media has a) so much spam, but also b) so much that’s just random thoughts/ opinions/ rants that either don’t give you an insight into your brand, or don’t meet the objectives you have set out for your campaign.

So, what do you do? Its simple! You create metrics for each such that you can individually measure each parameter that you want to measure.

But ofcourse, there’s the C Suite who want your elevator pitch on – how are we doing? (3 seconds does NOT allow you to say – weeellll, on likes we are better than January, but on engagement we are slower…and sentiment is half positive – half negative – and the rest neutral (yah yah I know – it doesn’t add up!). Your CMO is going to walk right out of the room.

Hence, you create this snazzy sounding “Index” – you can name it ANY godd#$% thing. Integrated Performance Index (sounds even cooler as an acronym IPI ☺ )/ Social Media KPI/ Virality Index (I used that in the old days)/ Brand Health Index… / Campaign Success Index…

What is the Index finally? It is a multi attribute weighted number (remember I had said that most management professionals must be grateful to BCG for the 2 by 2 matrix? So also should a lot of folks thank the guy who invented this decision making methodology. So, you take whichever parameters you think you should measure, ascribe weights to them, and derive your index out of the weighted average of these numbers.

Simple? A-ha! The complexity really resides in WHAT parameters to choose and, more importantly, WHAT weights to ascribe. (A quick google to get some actual statistical validity here brought me to this complex article called “On the convergence of multiattribute weighting methods” in the European Journal of Operational Research – for those who are so inclined, please delve into the advantages of the ratio vs. the swing weighting vs. the tradeoff vs. the pricing out method ☺ )

But statistical theory apart, this above is what is the most important factor in getting the relevance of your index or KPI. The weights of each parameter really depend on a few things:
a) The marketing objective of the campaign/ channel – Is it to spread awareness, to engender better knowledge, to direct towards trial, purchase or loyalty – different objectives will have different weights
b) The product category itself – Is it an introductory/ launch category; a growth one or a stable one – where exactly in the PLC does it stand
c) The competitive scenario – how active or inactive are competitors (both category competitors and mindshare/ walletshare competitors) in the social media space – what is the clutter out there that your campaign has to break!
d) How much effort – time/ money/ people are you investing behind the campaign – actually, this is a bit of a circular function as this will to a certain extent depend on the marketing objective – atleast in the ideal scenario

All the above will help deciding weights – the allocation is however likely to be a bit of an iterative situation.

So there you have it – your quick and easy guide to creating your perfect unified/ integrated KPI for your Social Media Campaign (or for that matter any other). Where’s my consultancy fee?

Meanwhile, lemme go see if my young nephew created the right algorithm to keep his bosses happy ☺