Archive for November, 2009

Social media measurement

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

Social Media MeasurementSpot On’s Alexander McNabb is taking part in a panel session on PR measurement in social media at News Group’s PR Measurement Summit in Dubai today. So, as the region’s public relations practitioners meet to discuss the region’s demand for monitoring, research and measurement methodologies, it’s probably as good a time as any take a quick look at measurement for social media.

I’m not going to delve deep into specific metrics and tools here. In fact, one could argue that all social media metrics either measure influence or engagement, or both and there are a growing number of tools to help marketers define and monitor such metrics. Instead I’d like to take a moment to tackle the broader problem that so often stands in the way of effective social media measurement. The crucial starting point for all social media communications campaigns. And this vital first step will come as no surprise to experienced communications and marketing professionals, because it is simply good objective setting. Without clear objectives social media is likely to be a waste of time, budget and resources for any organisation and the larger the organisation, the uglier it can get. Unless you can step back and take a strategic look at why you’re engaging social media and what results your organisation would like to acheive, all the social media monitoring and measurement tools in the world can’t help you become more effective. A simple enough propostion, but it’s still sadly a lesson that many corporate users of social media have yet to learn.

If you’re ‘different’, why copycat?
One of the first things to recognise is that your organisation’s social media objectives are going to be different to others. Everyone has their own core proposition. Everyone has their own target customers. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses. You’ll want to plan your own social media campaign to get your own messages across to your own target audiences: in a way that suits your organisation. So, bear in mind that whilst other social media marketers maybe a great source of inspiration, it’s not always wise to copy everything that they do and join every social media platform they use, just because their social media campaign is successful. Their social media audiences may behave in different ways and be engaged by different online content to your target social media audience.

Here are some broad objectives that you might consider, elaborate on and prioritise for your social media campaign:

- Generate brand awareness
- Build brand engagement
- Build a following
- Run product/service marketing campaigns
- Generate sales leads
- Establish / reinforce leadership
- Create a new communications channel
- Enhance customer relationship management (CRM)
- Test new concepts
- Drive visit to your website or blog
- Monitor opinions & feedback

Likely, you’ll find that several of these objectives figure in your planning and that prioritisation is the key. It’s through defining and prioritising obectives like these that you will be able decide what constitutes success for your social media program and identify the right metrics to monitor and review your campaign’s success moving forwards. As with other forms of communications, there are a range of methodical and anecdotal ways to track success and there are some quite sophisticated tools now available to track success metrics for online campaigns. Many companies will find that their online social media campaign is actually an extension of their offline activity and that one feeds the other, and so a combination of online and offline metrics will make sense for measurement. Many companies starting out in social media for the first time may also question the wisdom of investing in a state-of-the-art social media business intelligence system and instead opt for free-to-use online tools and existing offline monitoring methods. Note that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution for measuring social media campaigns.

As you spend more and more time running and monitoring online campaigns — and the clicks, links, visits, friends, fans, followers, subscribers, keywords, comments, replies, references, referrals, opinions and perceptions that are relevant to them — you’ll realise that social media is almost infinitely measureable. The trick is to know what you’re measuring and why you’re measuring it.

Useful links

Social media analytics systems: Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Radian6, Sysomos, TNSCymfony
Chris Brogan: Prioritize Your Social Media Efforts
Mashable: ViralHeat: Sophisticated Social Media Tracking on the Cheap
Mashable: HOW TO: Track Social Media Analytics

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Posted in CRM, Customer care, Customers, Internet, Middle East marketing, Online marketing, brand marketing, public relations, strategy | No Comments »

Social media isn’t socialist media

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

Social Media BudgetThe idea that social media is a new way of running marketing communications on the cheap is a beguiling one and, sadly, totally incorrect. It is also a piece of thinking that is increasingly common. In fact, using social media for marketing is time consuming, expensive and dangerous. The Internet is filled with examples of companies that have tried to ‘go viral’ with campaigns and been held up to public contempt as their lame efforts are pilloried and it is quickly filling with companies that have ‘gone social’ and suffered a similar fate.

It is easy to get social media wrong, particularly easy if you approach it in the same way as you would an advertising campaign. In fact, the thought processes and attitudes that underpin social media are precisely the opposite of those behind ‘traditional’ one-way marcoms, replacing one-way asymmetric communication with a two-way symmetric model. In other words, you have to listen to people and talk to them using social media, not view them as a passive consumer of your message.

Once you get going, actually listening to and talking to people takes quite a bit of time. You’re no longer looking at getting a message out to millions with a simple payment for airtime or space – you’re looking at actually creating engagements. Even worse, you are confronted, probably for the first time, with some uncomfortable facts, such as the fact that nobody other than you cares two hoots about your products for something like 99.9% of their lives. In fact, we are remarkably dispassionate about a large number of things, which is why we had advertising in the first place. To put them in our heads and create preference for one product over another.

Social media additionally gives you the problem of communicating with people who don’t necessarily talk product – and who don’t want to talk to a brand so much as a person who represents a brand. Companies using social media now really do have to live up to their brand values in every way, not just tack them up on a mission statement and forget about them. The organisational challenges can be significant – and expensive.

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named ‘A Moment with McNabb’ columns in Campaign Middle East magazine.

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Posted in Internet, Middle East marketing, Twitter, brand marketing, social media | No Comments »

Disintermediation and the media

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Professional PrintingPhil used to typeset my work. I’d send him my copy, marked up by hand and he’d send me back galleys, long strips of single columns of type which the graphic artist would then ‘lay out’ onto boards, creating pages of book and magazine out of strips of type glued down with ‘SprayMount’, a highly egregious sprayable glue. We’d size pictures manually, then attach them to the artwork (a box was drawn to give the printers a ‘keyline’ to place the image in) ready for sending to film.

Then along came Digital Research’s GUI, or graphical user interface, GEM and with it Ventura Publisher, a black and white piece of software that let you ‘lay out’ pages onscreen. I had a chat to Phil about the new software and how he needed to invest in it so that he could run my pages.

‘Rubbish! That’ll never take off! You can’t match the quality of compositors’ work, proper typesetting, with that amateur junk!’ said Phil.

Within the year Phil had gone bust because his customers were all running out their pages from packages such as Ventura as one single layout, all ready for the printers. I didn’t need a graphic artist anymore, either – I did my own layouts onscreen. They might not have followed Caxton’s rules of typography, but then we were redefining what you could do with type anyway – for a few halcyon years, drop caps and huge lettering ruled magazine layouts all over the UK.

Ever since then, I have heard people talking about quality as the reason why technology, the Internet in particular, won’t disintermediate them. But the amazing fact is that we don’t actually care about quality. Some of the most popular videos on YouTube are some of the crappiest pieces of filming. I play my music in my car, ripped from my ultra-high quality CDs and converted to lo-fi MP3s, using an iTrip radio transmitter thingy. The quality of what I am listening to is probably less than that of a chrome cassette.

When technology improves access, quality becomes secondary. And quality is the last refuge of the about-to-be-disintermediated.

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named ‘A Moment with McNabb’ columns in Campaign Middle East magazine.

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Alexander nominated for Communicator of the Year!

Sunday, November 15th, 2009
Spot On's Group Account Director Alexander McNabb

Spot On PR's Group Account Director Alexander McNabb

The MEPRA Awards shortlisted nominations and submissions are out today, which include 10 best practice categories and two individual awards categories, being Young Professional of the Year and Communicator of the Year. Having decided as an agency not to enter into the MEPRA Awards best practice categories this year, we had no expectation of seeing ourselves entered for any award. So, imagine our surprise on reading the official MEPRA Awards 2009 press release today when we saw Spot On’s own Alexander McNabb nominated for the Communicator of the Year Award! McNabb himself very nearly choked on his morning coffee as the news broke in the office!

MEPRA’s Communicator of the Year Award was created to recognise a communicator in the Middle East region that has demonstrated outstanding communication success in reaching stakeholder audiences in 2008-2009. Honest, open communications is something of a mantra for us and Alexander has certainly championed the need for organisations to communicate openly and honestly with their publics during the past year via a variety of media including print, radio, television, conference platforms and social media. Alexander is one of five nominees for the award and the winner will be announced at the MEPRA Awards 2009 gala dinner on Tuesday, November 24th.

You can read more of what Alexander has to say on the Spot On blog, his own FakePlasticSouqs blog or follow him on Twitter. And, by the way, he’ll be talking about public relations and the MEPRA Awards 2009 on Dubai Eye’s Dubai Today program tomorrow (Monday) between 9am and 12 noon.

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Posted in Awards, MEPRA, Middle East Public Relations, Twitter, public relations, social media | No Comments »

Market monopolies

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

Monopoly MarketI have always been terribly fond of the image of a small urchin throwing a stone to knock the top-hat off the fat, pompous businessman. I’ve even run campaigns based around the concept in the past, where we’ve been working against an incumbent telco on behalf of the challenger. Taking the role of the urchin, the ‘sha2iy’, against the established player was a highly successful strategy – the incumbent is aways monopolistic, slow to react and entrenched in its ways. As the market entrant, you’re always faster, slicker and, if you’re witty about it, can actually lead the positioning game from an early stage.

The great thing about being an urchin is that people are generally sympathetic to you in your acts of defiance against pomp and arrogance. Few of us have a taste for big business when it’s a monopoly or when we’re its customers and it’s not listening to us. And that has never been so true as it is now, with the fast flows of information, particularly consumer opinion and comment, that the Internet and the many consumer generated media outlets that it has opened up.

Businesses that have in the past ignored consumer opinion can, of course, continue to do so – particularly if they’re monopolies. But being a monopoly and behaving like a monopoly aren’t the same thing – and changing an organisation’s interactions with its customers can either come now at the pace and convenience of the company’s choosing or later at the pace chosen by a competitor working with the support of consumers who are grateful for the change being offered.

Of course, there are those that serve us badly and have no prospect of having to endure the rigours of competition. In an environment when today’s more empowered consumers are able to give voice, share information and opinion and reach out to each other, the pressure for change is suddenly a factor of significance. Although the monopoly itself may not change, the people within it that think that consumers are of no consequence may just find that competition doesn’t have to come from outside and that they are moved aside to make way from more urchin-friendly people.

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named ‘A Moment with McNabb’ columns in Campaign Middle East magazine

Posted in CRM, Customer care, Customers, General, Middle East marketing, competition, social media | No Comments »

Social media takes time

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Social Media TimeSocial media takes time. Didn’t we mention that? You may have heard detractors say that evangelising social media is fine, but it can suck down huge amounts of valuable company time and get in the way of ‘real work’. And they’re not wrong. A recent survey of 1,460 office workers in the UK claimed that social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter could be costing British businesses £1.38 billion per year. Now, it is possible to argue that browsing the Internet, making personal phone calls, smoking or simply office chitchat at the water cooler can be equally big offenders, but the undeniable fact is that, regardless of how you calculate it, social media can waste a lot of time.

Beginning a social media program and building social media connections is a time-consuming, ongoing process that will require ongoing planning, review and time-management. If you’re not prepared for that, then it may be better not to roll out a social media program at all. Anyone that has been bitten by the Facebook or Twitter bug will know how addictive social media can be, leaving you forever wondering if you have missed something whilst offline and drawing you in for a quick look at your updates, which can well turn out to be an hour or more of social media time that eats into your day. So, it’s an understandable concern for employers that opening their organisations up to social media may well be something of a Pandora’s box. Organisations can build up useful relationships with customers, partners, journalists, bloggers and other influencers if they communicate and network well over social media, but encouraging staff to communicate and connect more with social media audiences may well result in many hours of unaccountable company time spent on social media.

Regular social media users will know that time can also be the enemy where one’s social life is concerned and social media time can effortlessly eat away at their free time and social lives. Email and mobile phones have already done a great deal to blur the lines between work time and free time and those that are using social media for work will find that it can exacerbate the problem. Those that use social media for both work and social connections may well find themselves connecting almost every waking hour to check updates, respond to messages and monitor goings on. Mornings, afternoons, evenings, work time, free time, family time, weekends all meld into one seemingly continuous social media conversation.

Most people would agree that this is probably not a good thing at all.

Can social media be effectively time-managed?

Can social media be effectively time-managed? Yes, it can. Social media time-management issues have come to the forefront recently because social media communication is still very new and many of the rules have yet to be written. However, companies can set useful social media ground rules at the outset and many of these will be similar to guidelines set for company meetings, sales calls, telephone calls, emails and other forms of company communications. For example, you wouldn’t send your sales force out to attend meetings without briefing, objective setting, qualifying, monitoring and reviewing sales effectiveness. Likewise, it makes little sense to task employees with social media communications without taking both a strategic and tactical look at the opportunities and threats that social media surfaces. And no this doesn’t mean that delegating someone to investigate or research social media opportunities is a waste of time, just be aware that that’s not a long-term plan to manage your company’s long-term engagement with social media, particularly as more people get involved along the way.

If social media continues to gain and sustain consumer audiences in the way that it has so far, abstaining from social media completely is not going to be viable option for many companies. So, looking at social media obectives, program management and HR policies for social media use in the company are going to be tasks that many organisations will have to consider and, arguably, it’s going to pay companies to evaluate these issues sooner rather than later. Moreover, there is a human resource and staff development factor to consider here too. The salesperson that spends the most time out at meetings is not necessarily the best salesperson. The administrator who stays late everyday in the office may not be the best administrator. As with many commercial activities, hours spent on social media may be a poor measure of performance altogether.

Posted in Online marketing, Twitter, social media, strategy | No Comments »