But here’s the thing, we need to get back to the basics before we invest in the infrastructure to go forward with big data. In this article, I’m going to show you how two companies are getting normal data mining wrong, specifically in target marketing. Then I will share an example of a company that is using big data to wow its customers (specifically me!).

1. Direct Mail

You know those pieces of paper in envelopes that are delivered to your house? Yes, direct mail. While I’m not a big fan of postal mail, it might make sense for your company to use this marketing tactic. It all depends on what communications your target market prefers.

Last week I received a piece of mail fro a dentist (I already have one, so they lost me at hello). But something was really peculiar. To set your quiz up, I am a 29-year-old home owner who is employed full-time. Do you see anything wrong with these two pictures?

This direct mail piece might have worked 20 years ago when I was nine years old. Even worse, I just moved into my new home, so I’m not sure what database they’re using.

Key Takeaway

Whether you’re extracting data in-house or buying it from a third party, make sure to perform a data quality check. There’s nothing more expensive than mining bad data!

2. E-Mail

I’ve been shopping at ACME markets for years. They have a fairly large amount of data from my purchase history. Yet, they continue to push weekly offers that are way off base. In the e-mail seen in the picture below, they assume that these are my favorite brands. I’ve never bought any of these brands in my lifetime as an ACME customer.

I get that they’re trying to push these items based on directives from management.

But their e-mails are not helpful to my buying experience, and consequently, I purposefully do not open them. Why they continue to send them is beyond me.

Key Takeaway

If you collect data on purchasing habits, put it to good use. Don’t send marketing communications for the sake of sending marketing communications. We’re in an age of personalization, and if you don’t give it to your customers, a more technologically savvy competitor will.

3. Fraud Protection

I’ve been a credit card holder with Capital One for several years now, and they continue to impress me with their use of data to protect me from harm. Just last week, I received an e-mail and a call from them stating that they noticed a peculiar charge on my credit card in Florida. I most certainly was not in Florida (I would have liked Florida weather though). They saved me lots of money, let’s just say that.

To put this into perspective, they handle a large amount of data every single day. The fact that they can scale fraud protection to every single customer in their database is astounding.

Key Takeaway

Capital One has the basics figured out. Protect one customer and then scale that process out to thousands (if not millions) of customers.

Conclusion

So, whether you’re a business owner, technologist, or marketer, make sure that you have the basics of data mining correct before trying to invest in big data. It will save you a whole lot of money, headaches, and your job.

Have you seen other examples of bad data mining? Please share your experiences in the comments below.

Facebook News Feed Changes that “Might” Have an Impact on Marketers

So what exactly is changing about the news feed design? Well I’m glad you asked. My short answer is the changes are DRASTIC. The more helpful and long answer starts right about now:

1. BIGGER Photos

Visual content has always been a core feature of Facebook. Now Zuckerberg and gang are making photos and videos even more prominent in the news feed. According to a recent report by Mashable, photos will make up nearly 50% of newsfeed stories.

You will also notice text overlaid in photo updates. I’ve heard from multiple sources that page admins might have some control over text overlay, but it’s not certain at this point in time.

Before

After

What This Means to Marketers

When planning your initiatives for the quarter/year, think about how you can tell your story through images. If you’re not the creative type and you have the budget, invest in a designer or photographer.

With text overlay remember to keep your copy short and to the point. You want your photos to be front and center.

2. More Feeds

I suppose Facebook looked at what Google+ is doing with circles and added their own twist. On the upper right side of every page, you will have several feeds to choose from. Facebook realized that people wanted more choice on what content they see. It will be interesting to see if people actually use the different feeds.

These are the default feeds with a short description of how they distribute content:

• News Feed – uses the Edgerank algorithm to serve you the most relevant content
• Most Recent – chronological order of all content.
• All Friends – chronological order of your friends’ updates. No ads or page posts.
• Photos – chronological order of all photos from friends and pages you like.
• Music – chronological order of artists’ updates and what your friends are listening to.
• Following – chronological order of people you follow (aka Britney Spears) and pages you like.
• Games – chronological order of updates from games you play and what your friends are playing.
• Groups – chronological order of updates from groups you are a part of.

What This Means to Marketers

The new feed structure could be a benefit or burden to marketers, depending on how you look at it. With the glass half full, you have the opportunity to show up in multiple feeds if your content is being shared by multiple people. With the glass half empty, people could miss important updates from your page if they only look at feeds which do not include page posts. Of course this is a benefit to music and gaming companies if those are the two feeds you view. :)

My best advice is to focus on what your evangelists love. Give them what they want, and your content will spread to the other feeds.

3. Experience from Mobile to Desktop is Fluid

Another big reason why the redesign was initiated was that the mobile experience was inconsistent with the desktop. According to Paul Chaney on Practical E-Commerce, 68% of users access Facebook from a mobile device, so it makes sense to allow easy rendering on multiple devices (modern web design 101).

What This Means to Marketers

If you were in love with the side bar ads before, you’re going to be pretty disappointed when I tell you that you are going to receive less visibility. The reason why is that the left and right side bars are being reduced in width to emphasize news feed content. But don’t fret; sponsored stories (or promoted posts) will receive greater visibility if you share engaging pictures and videos. It’s a matter of shifting budget.

I will leave you with these 4 pieces of advice to work within the Facebook sandbox once the redesign is rolled out to the greater masses:

• Visualize your brand stories through photos and videos
• Keep your text light
• Focus on your evangelists to spread your content
• Experiment more with mobile and desktop advertising in newsfeed posts.

Are you excited or nervous for the news feed design changes? Will you do anything different, or will you stay on course? Let me know in the comments below.

• Content
• Channel
• Consistency

I’ll coin these bullet points the 3 C’s of social media mediocrity. Should I copyright it?! jk.

Let’s dive into each category to figure out where people go wrong and how to fix it:

Content

Let’s be honest. Without content there’s nothing to be social about. How do you gain rapport with someone you don’t know? You find commonalities to connect on a deeper level. In an online environment, people create communities around specific themes like sports, knitting, and business.

First and foremost,  people don’t go to social networks to look at the latest promotion or special in their feeds. Counter to some studies that say this is true, it simply is not. It might be a secondary effect, but it is not a primary reason for community participation.

With this said, content is what binds communities together in social. If companies don’t have a content strategy for each social network presence, they simply will not succeed.

Here’s how to fix it: Survey your audience on what content types (i.e. pictures, video, articles) and subjects they want to learn more about. Ask what makes them tick both from an emotional and intellectual level. If they have the time to drill down even further, ask them what types and subjects of content they would like to see on each specific channel (i.e. Facebook vs. Twitter vs. Pinterest).

Channel

Why be on a social network if your potential or actual customers aren’t there to engage? This is like going to a bar that is totally not your scene, and you have nothing in common with the people that regularly hang out there. Yet, you can keep on going there trying to find subjects to talk about, and people just aren’t having any of it. Wouldn’t you want to go to a place where you are a better fit?

Here’s how to fix it: Before diving in, ask your customers where they hang out and where their friends hang out. From a business to business viewpoint, you will want to ask what social networks professionals go to find like minded professionals and to learn more about their craft.

Consistency

Ok, so let’s say you’ve found the perfect bar to hang out. You make a couple of friends and get to know the bartenders. All of the sudden, you take a 3 month break. You decide to come back but realize people have kind of forgotten about you, and you have to start the rapport building process all over again. It looks there is new staff, so you will need to get to know them as well.

This is even worse in social media, since the volume of people fluctuates rapidly, and you could be missing out on creating new relationships. Not to mention people could have forgotten about you.

Here’s how to fix it: Create an editorial calendar and stick to it religiously. Constantly monitor what days of the week and times of day perform the best when it comes to interaction. Tweak and repeat.

So there you have it. My take on why social media doesn’t succeed. I might add that all of this takes human resources and coordination, which is a managerial issue in its own. If you’re interested in learning more about how to staff a social media program, I would suggest you reach out to Jay Baer. There’s no one better qualified to help you in that arena.

image credit: Top Rank

Now putting my own opinion aside, I can tell you from experience that:

1. Putting social media in a vacuum doesn’t work without the help of other marketing channels.

2. Expecting social media to do all the “social work” for you will limit growth.

The point I am trying to make is that social media is used to compliment real relationships, whether you use it for introductions or relationship nurturing. I believe this is true for anyone, no matter what industry you are in. It just so happens that I’ve made it work for ME.

Instead of using the telephone to make introductions, which seems further away from best practice nowadays, you can now use the so called “social telephone”. It’s less obtrusive and gives people a chance to do some investigative work before they respond.

Here’s an example:

You are subscribed to a blog, and you really like the content that one of the authors creates week in and week out. Since, you like the content so much, you take great pride in sharing it with your followers/friends. They really like it too. The author gets exposure, and they appreciate your willingness to share their work. A relationship has been initiated.

For the next few months, you find some commonalities and begin to take the relationship to the next level. Sounds a lot like dating right? It is VERY similar to dating in fact.

Before you know it, you find that you are going to be in the same location as the author, and you decide to set up in-person meet up. The meeting goes really well. The two of you have some laughs and get to know each other on a much deeper level.

Eye contact, hand shaking, viewing each others’ facial expressions, maybe even a hug is icing on the cake when crossing the digital divide.

This is where real work and opportunities arise, only with real world contact. Give it a try. I promise you, won’t be disappointed!

I would love to hear some examples of your experience of using social media to compliment real world relationships. I might even put your responses into an e-book with your name and link to your website attached!

image credit: military times

• How much of an audience has the company built to view content?
• Is their brand recognized in the marketplace?
• Is there historical data that has provided a benchmark for solid business results?
• What are the goals of paying to promote content? Is it Sales, Revenue, or Cost related?
• What is the time frame in which you need to achieve your goals?

Sample Scenario

A company has just started forming a social media plan. They are widely recognized in the marketplace, but their audience doesn’t know that they have a social media presence. Historically, they’ve relied on third parties to spread their content like news outlets, so they have some historical data on brand awareness, leads, sales, and customer retention.

Based on their monitoring research, they have found that the product category that they sell is being spoken about in blogs, forums, and Twitter, but they aren’t being mentioned. Much to their liking, they already have a ton of blog content based on the conversations that are already happening. They want to increase sales leads originating from online sources by 50% in 12 months.

My Suggested Strategy

Based on this information, I can now be fairly confident that they will need a strategy that involves paid promotion as a tactical element.

The strategy:

Increase sales leads by providing relevant blog information

Tactics:

• Listen for product and industry related keywords in a monitoring station
• Participate in conversations on social channels mentioning industry and products. Provide links to relevant blog posts.
• Develop blogger outreach program for guest blogging.
• Optimize blog for producing leads (Note: Nichole Kelly rightly points out that social media leads are often earlier in the buying process, so they might need to be nurtured with e-mail content)
• Produce long form content for lead generation (e-books, tools, checklists, etc)
• Develop e-mail nurturing workflows.
• Sit down with sales team and figure out proper criteria for passing over marketing qualified leads.
• Deploy paid promotion of blog content on forums, blog newsletters, banner advertising, blogger affiliate programs, and Promoted Tweets.
• Determine monthly budget of paid promotion based on monthly leads goals.

What do you think? This is still fairly high level, as there are countless other details that would need to be taken care of.

photo credit: venturebeat

In my previous post, I asked Google to give us a cost input. They’ve answered my call (probably not, but I will pretend they did it because I asked). This has multiple benefits for measuring return on investment. You cannot calculate ROI without cost data. Although importing cost data does take some programming. Basically you have to create a file that imports the data into Google Analytics through API (application programming interface). For you developers out there, here is some helpful documentation on how cost data import works. If you’re a marketer reading this, just forward the documentation link to your developer or refer to this service that has already developed a solution.

Inputting revenue in Google Analytics is easy. You either create a Goal and attach a revenue figure to that action, or you can use e-commerce tracking. Both are fairly simple to implement.

Now all you have to do is subtract revenue from cost and divide by the cost. Voila!

This is where it gets really interesting…..

Say you want to track sales from a point of sale system at a physical store. You can now import this data from the POS software and slice and dice the data in Google Analytics. Depending on what type of information you collect from your customers, there are many benefits to importing this stuff.

If you collect zip code when someone makes a purchase, you can see which zip codes are the most valuable by product line, product category. And this is just one way you could do it.

If you sell via e-commerce and a physical store, you could see which types of customers are more valuable to your business. Some of the questions you will be able to answer:

• What is the average purchase value for online vs. in-store?
• What is the 3 year value of customers who shop solely through online vs. solely through in-store?

Implications for social media return on investment calculations

Granted you are already importing online analytics data into your customer relationship management software, you can start importing anonymous customer records into Google Analytics. The way you structure this type of data is something you will have to work out with a programmer. Once you get the data back into Google Analytics, you will be able to slice and dice magnificently!

Next, you will be able to import cost and revenue data for your social media efforts. If you tag your shared links correctly on all social media platforms, you will be able to implement Nichole Kelly’s Measurement Approach. (By the way, her book, How to Measure Social Media, is excellent and explains a lot of what inspires me every day as an analytics geek).

This is just the beginning

While I’ve only explained a couple of ways that marketers can use Universal Analytics, there are many more options for customized reporting. Fragmentation is clearly on Google’s mind, and they are helping address this problem.

Here is a link to sign up for the beta of Universal Analytics. Have fun!

Are you excited about what’s to come in multi-channel analytics? I sure am….

image credit: google analytics blog

Let us know what you think. Are you using pay per click advertising on Google? Are you using the Display Network?

I looked at 2 pages with over 50,000 likes for a 6 month period starting on April 1st. Both pages’ posting schedule is identical in frequency and days. Both pages rely on Facebook advertising to build their fan bases, but they rely solely on organic reach and engagement to get their content seen.

The numbers aren’t surprising, but I wanted to validate all of these claims of Facebook lowering the reach with actual numbers that are relevant to me (which I strongly encourage you to do for anything in your business).

As you can see, May, June, and July saw increased reach month over month, but then the negative trend starts in August. I hope it doesn’t get worse, or we’ll have to do a couple of things:

• Increase budget for Facebook marketing.
• Decrease investment in Facebook over time until other channels are driving the amount of traffic and conversions for these pages.

Here’s the kicker. Facebook is an extremely valuable channel for these two pages. In fact, it drives approximately 15%-20% of all conversions for these two companies.

I just hope that Facebook doesn’t force us to evaluate its effectiveness.

What do you think? Planning on making it work, or are you devising an exit strategy?

Focus is the name of the game. Whether you’re trying to be get acquired or IPO.

Think of it like a new meat company sales person walking into a butcher shop and rolling out a laundry list of meats from every single country of the world…oh and they sell bread and cheese to round out the sandwich. If I were the butcher, my head would be spinning, and I would question the value proposition of the sales person.

Now let’s look at it from a different point of view. The new meat company’s sales person walks into the butcher shop and places a freshly packaged hunk of meat on the counter. The sales person gives their pitch, and then allows the butcher to open the package and sample a fresh cut piece of the meat. It is the most unique taste that has hit the butcher’s palette! The product and selling process is super focused, has market value in terms of taste, and the sales person derives economic value when the butcher purchases 8 packages of fresh, uniquely tasting meat. One piece of meat, a short sales pitch, and 8 packages purchased.

What is your one thing?

As John Jantsch says, clarity is the best strategy. What can you be identified by? What does Pillsbury sell? What is LinkedIn? You get the point? Their positioning is so tight that they are the market leaders to the audiences they serve.

Now I am not saying that companies can’t venture into additional lines of business or offer additional features to keep their active users/customers engaged, but you must be known for your one thing and be able to provide user value and extract business value from users. Otherwise, “dead in the water” would be the correct phrase to describe the situation.

KISS Model

“Keep it super simple” to attract users, plan your current and/or future revenue models, keep users engaged, and don’t spend too much to acquire these users! By the way, you thought I was going to say “keep it simple stupid” didn’t you?

I’m more polite than that.

image credit: Rio’s Blog

According to Wikipedia the Spanish speaking demographic in the United States is the fifth largest group of Spanish speakers in the world (behind Mexico, Spain, Colombia, and Argentina). It would make sense for multiple companies to be targeting this population.

Toyota is the genius behind the Facebook ad. Keep in mind, they are clearly a global company with the resources to accomplish a tactic like this.

But I find it strange that they haven’t experimented with this level of personalization in their social advertising before…Until Now.

One day this week, I was browsing around my Facebook newsfeed, and this caught my attention:

The translation is “Look how surprised they were with the latest Corolla technology”. I was more surprised that I was seeing a Spanish Facebook ad honestly. But here’s the thing, Toyota is really smart. They are targeting people who have listed that they speak Spanish on their Facebook profiles. So the ad instantly resonates with many people (who are probably native speakers, as opposed to people like me who went to school to learn).

Even better, when you click on the ad, you are taken to a Spanish language website. The main headline on the webpage is translated as “Surprisingly New”. This provides a seamless user experience from one medium to the next.

Marketers, take a cue from Toyota. They’ve executed this tactic superbly.

Have you seen other companies targeting foreign languages within online marketing?

As flawed as Google Analytics is, it can still tell some pretty compelling stories about your marketing. Non-perfect measurement is better than no measurement.

You also have to consider what type of attribution you are looking at, especially if you post a lot of engaging, non-salesy content (think kitten and puppy pictures). You would want to know the impact of that…right? If you’re spending time during your busy day posting kitty pictures, you probably would want to know if you’re getting a return on your investment…right?

You’d also want to know that people are taking action immediately after clicking over from Facebook (and not being flakey about purchasing your product!)

I am going to pull data from an undisclosed source and compare the two instances where I can prove that being present and engaged on Facebook actually results in more leads than immediate click-thrus to leads.

First example from Google Analytics of direct sales leads (or last touch attribution for the analytics nerds out there):

Don’t worry, this was not a mistake, apparently there were no conversions in the month of September for this company. They must be doing a pretty terrible job, or maybe Facebook isn’t the right channel for them to market their products and services.

Second example using the multi-touch conversions area of Google Analytics.

You can see that 3 leads originated from Facebook, but they ultimately converted after typing in the web address in the browser or using Google search. Wow, Facebook does result in leads! (I actually took a portion of the total leads by the way. There were way more than this in September. And mobile is another story in itself).

In conclusion, don’t write Facebook off. It is a powerful way to generate purchasing intent if you have a good product or service that people can get behind. This is why data analysis is so key in online marketing. Like anything in business, if you’re not measuring, you’re walking blind on a freeway.

See you next week :)

But I am still wondering why they don’t allow marketers to input cost variables. Think agency services, sponsored content, other advertising mediums besides search products, internal labor, etc. Maybe I am naive to think Google would build this type of interface with the complexities of marketing budgets, or maybe enough companies tie into Google Analytics that do provide cost variables (mostly CRM providers). When it comes down to it, cost inputs make sense if are going to calculate return on investment.

Building cost into the web analytics equation would really give online marketers some power in the boardroom, and they wouldn’t have to be living in spreadsheets for weeks before these types of meetings. I know I do now, and it is probably the least of what I like to do in my day to day activities. Don’t get me wrong, I love data and analysis….if it’s actionable, and I know that it will be actionable to the parties I present.

I know Google offers a Premium version of its Analytics to high ticket clients, and the only difference with this service is that they offer better support and attribution modeling. But in reality, inputting cost variables should be rather simple if we are currently allowed to create Goal conversions with a $$ value.

Cost inputs would be a step in the right direction. Next up, attribution modeling…….

What do you think? Is this feasible for Google? Can they allow marketers to create their own line items without straining their own systems?

photo credit: boomtown internet group

Therefore, we as marketers need to get very serious about social media ROI measurement to move our industry forward. Many elements need to evolve including technology, reporting standards, and education. There are many more, but these are the key ingredients holding us back in my opinion.

I believe education is the first step, and this is why I am inviting you to a special webinar hosted by the Online Marketing Institute, Business2Community, and Social Media HQ. Nichole Kelly will be presenting on how to Report Social Media ROI to the C-Suite on October 3rd.

Just to give you a little background on Nichole, her company Full Frontal ROI merged with Social Media Explorer, Jason Falls’ company, earlier this year. Here is her bio from Social Media Explorer’s site:

Nichole Kelly is the social media pioneer who innovated the marketing industry by measuring social media results to core business objectives: sales, revenue and costs. As a respected national speaker, she has provided insight and training with leading marketing organizations including the American Marketing Association, Public Relations Society of America, Forrester Research, Marketing Profs, Radian 6 and HootSuite. Nichole’s systematic approach to social media ROI and case studies are highlighted in books such as The Executives Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy by David B. Thomas and No Bullshit Social Media by Jason Falls. Prior to joining SME Digital, Nichole worked for major brands such as The Sherwin-Williams Company, The Federal Reserve Bank, Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, Caliber Learning Networks (a Sylvan company), and Signs By Tomorrow, a national franchise. Nichole is one of the nation’s leading experts in building measurable social media strategies that are designed to deliver on your company’s business objectives.

She has the ammo to back up her experience, so I suggest you sign up for the webinar while the iron is hot!

Intro

The term “social media agency” has only been around for a couple of years, and we are at a point where the ground rules have been laid out. Agency management and employees have enough experience to know what works and what doesn’t. They know what clients value and what clients perceive as tasks that are better suited for in-house work (or don’t value).

The main purpose of this e-book is for other agencies to gather around the subject of “social media services“. Why don’t we help each other provide value to clients. Wouldn’t this benefit the longevity of social media services in the long run?

Is agency community management viable?

Yes with the right clients doing their part.

This is so overstated, that it isn’t necessary to go into details, but it is the client’s responsibility to answer questions and complaints from prospects and customers, not the agency’s. Now I am not saying it isn’t possible. We’ve done it for clients, but we’ll never know their business like they will. Only with time and a training process can agencies partake in this level of customer service.

With that said, agencies may certainly consult with companies to set up the right infrastructure, but I doubt agencies will be getting much revenue from moderating communities unless they are completely integrated with a company for the long run.

I do believe there is a place for agencies to act as the monitoring and listening agents for businesses. It takes a lot of resources to stay on top of the pulse, and agencies can provide them. The hard part is working with the client to establish a workflow for responding to online conversations. Agencies that excel at analytics can deploy their resources to analyze the insights from listening software.

Is community management effective by itself?

Yes and no.

Yes if the client is handling the other parts of an online marketing strategy (see below).

No if the agency is working in a vacuum. This always leads to confusion, strategy misalignment, and poor results.

What needs to be done to be effective?

Whether all parts are handled by the agency, or the responsibilities are shared with the client, here are the items that need to be tackled.

• Integrate with other tactics
• Content Creation
• Search
• E-mail
• PR

What do you think so far? Let me know what the rest of the ebook should cover. Thank you in advance!

Here’s a step by step process that you can use every day of the week:

Monday: 15 minutes

• Pick the topic, keywords, screenshots, stock images, videos, etc.
• Collect and organize internal links and 3rd party links

Tuesday: 15 minutes

• Write first and second sections

Wednesday: 15 minutes

• Write 3rd and 4th sections

Thursday: 15 minutes

• Write remaining sections

Friday: 15 minutes

• Add screenshots, stock images, videos, etc.
• Proofread, edit, and schedule the post

This should give you a good structure for producing some long form blog posts, but you may be asking why this post isn’t 1,000 words. I will be demonstrating over the next 4 weeks that this process is possible. If you’re not already subscribed, now is your chance to follow me on my 1,000 word blog post journey! Sign up for e-mail updates in the top right part of the screen.

What is your process for writing long form content? We would love to hear your ideas!

photo credit: water for sixth grade

Nick: What are the challenges of an agency pitching social media to clients?

Dane: The biggest challenge is clients that don’t actually know what they want – a lot of MDs and CEOs feel like they should be using social media because their competitors are, but don’t know why they want to do it.

This tends to continue in to our working relationship with them if we’re successful at winning the business – we can suggest some different targets, but it’s not uncommon for a client to change our priority from increasing sales to data acquisition to raising positive sentiment in the same month.

In some cases it’s fairly easy to switch from one priority to another, but we can prepare an entire pitch with the aim of increasing sales and discover that they’re only actually interested in gathering names for a mailing list. If something like that happens, most of what we’ve prepared is no longer useful, and yet they still expect us to go ahead with it despite the fact that we know it’s unlikely to help us achieve our goals and KPIs.

Another challenge that we’ve faced before is pitching work at a company who decide that their intern can do the job instead – we’ve seen people take some of the ideas from our pitches and try to carry them out themselves.

That’s often disastrous, particularly when they give the project to somebody who can’t construct a proper sentence. It’s hard to strike a balance between handing over enough to win the business and so much that they go ahead and try to do it in house.

Nick: What are some of the most successful social media tactics deployed? Any best practices for agencies?

Dane: This is quite a broad question – it depends. For gaining followers on Twitter, one of the easiest things to do is to search for the hashtag #TeamFollowBack and to follow them, or to buy a bunch of robot followers online. This is something that we’d never do, but it happens. Brands that do this are wasting their time though, as social media is useless without interaction and engagement.

Broadly speaking, the best tactic that any brand can employ is one of creating and distributing engaging and ‘likeable’ content – if you’re putting good content out there, the fans and followers will come. Just don’t expect it to happen overnight – it can take a year or longer to build a tight-knit community about your brand, but it will happen.

Best practices? Don’t sell, engage. Nobody is going to buy your client’s product because you ask them to, you have to make them WANT to buy it.

What types of reports do clients value in regards to social media?

Dane: Again, it depends upon the client, but as a standard we usually offer two reports – the first is a spreadsheet of statistics across the social networks, where they can keep an eye on key metrics like reach, fan and follower count, number of comments and @mentions, etc.

The second is an activity report, where on a weekly basis we list all of our activity across each of the social networks that we’re active on, as well as the planned activity for the following week. Some clients don’t ask for reports at all, while others ask us to go more in depth and look at sentiment analysis or activity monitoring for key rivals.

Nick: Has social media made your job easier or more difficult as a public relations agency?

Ann-Marie: Tricky one. I would say that social media as a whole, along with the search capability of Google and BBM instant messaging, has made everyone expect and in fact demand instant gratification, so whereas we used to say that results from media relations would start to flow in by month 3 of a campaign, now clients want instant gratification. Although we’ve always aimed to get some form of result in Month 1 there is even greater pressure now.

That said, with social media you can start to see results from Day 1, although I still believe that if you are growing fans and followers organically (without digital spend or FB ads), you still need to be a little patient.

Social media has enabled us to listen directly to what our audiences need and want, which enables us to test our demographics and key messages. It also enables us to engage directly with our audiences, which is invaluable. We can also be highly responsive – changing direction immediately if something isn’t working.

I have found that social media has improved our media relations. For instance, a number of my Twitter ‘friends’ are journalists who are much more receptive to an approach via social media than by phone or email. I have seen a rise in coverage as a result of social media. The use of the #journorequest on Twitter has also proved a great way of seeing what journalists need and want instantly.

So social media is a powerful ally when it comes to generating traditional ‘earned’ coverage.

Overall I love social media and as a company we embraced it as soon as we began to see its benefits – some four years ago now. Although I myself have been working in the field of what is now termed ‘traditional’ PR for over 20 years, I have become a true believer in the power and influence of social engagement, particularly when there is integrity of content. By that I mean, good quality content and conversations.

I believe that social engagement in its purist form, as a communications medium, sits naturally within PR and takes the place of what used to be called public relations – that is, direct influence of the clients’ publics. You need to know what is going on in the world, be creative and understand your audiences.

Overall I think social media has made life better, although much faster paced. However I think that is true of the world in general.

My feeling is though that sometimes it’s healthy to take a breath and a step back from time to time. Instant gratification is short lived, a bit like a sugar high. When social media is mixed with a more long term viewpoint and forward planning it gives you the healthiest campaign. I think of it in terms of a good healthy breakfast. If you start with Weetabix, with a sprinkling of sugar, you are pretty much set up for the day!

Nick: Where can readers learn more about you?

Dane: We blog weekly at www.sociabull.co.uk and release a new YouTube video every Tuesday on www.youtube.com/sociabull. We also tweet at www.twitter.com/thesociabulls and can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/sociabull and Pinterest at www.pinterest.com/sociabull.

We’re also occasionally active on Google+: http://bit.ly/wzbN8d and LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/sociabull. And if you’re ever in the UK, you can pay us a visit and check in on Foursquare: http://4sq.com/KZaLP9

I want to thank Ann-Marie and Dane for taking the time to provide their experiences with managing social media on the agency side. Stay tuned, as we might be doing some other stuff together!

Nick: You have a very practical approach to figuring out what customers want, how much weight does social media listening hold?

Kristin: Social media listening is incredibly important, of course. It can alert you to both positive and negative developments in terms of what customers are saying to other customers about you. But it does not replace the in-depth phone interviews of current customers. If these interviews are conducted properly, they will reveal critical buying process information, in a cohesive, “now we clearly see the trends” kind of way that leads to making the right business decisions.

The goal is to understand how they bought and why they bought, to use that information to reverse-engineer your successful sales, then produce new sales in quantity. You have to get the whole picture; you have to interview at least 5 people who fall into the same buyer category (by demographic, job function, need, etc.), and you have to ask them all the same open-ended questions. By the fifth phone call, you will understand what you are doing right, what you could be doing better, and what you need to do next. You will understand, in a human-to-human, deep way, what the customer’s agenda was when they started to buy and why they ended up buying from you.

I’m sure we all could argue that social media reveals these issues, but calling 5 – 10 customers of a given type and hearing them all say that the same five things are very important to them (by the way, they always agree on what those top things are) is quite different from “hearing” people bring these issues up, in a random fashion, in the social media channels. Plus, the most important question is “WHY” and you don’t get that answer as easily (if at all) through social channels.

Nick: Rather than taking social data at face value, how do you use it to augment your customer interviews?

Kristin: The companies that really make the best use of social media use it as a service medium. If a customer expresses a frustration or a desire, someone with organizational clout (in other words, they can actually help solve the customer’s problem) gets right on it and makes it right. These “best use” companies also provide interesting, useful, and relevant information to their followers.

Because happy customers can be very quiet, and unhappy customers can be very vocal (and that vocalizing can go viral!), I do not consider social media to be a valid research tool by itself. The balanced and contextual aspects, which are the earmarks of any valuable research results, are simply not there, just because of the very nature of social media. It is much wiser to call customers who share certain characteristics in common, and hear what they have to say, than it is to assume that the more vocal or active customers represent the majority.

However, once the “big picture” research is done, social media commentary can add compelling anecdotal support for the research findings. An executive team that has been somewhat isolated from customer input can understand the big picture issues and opportunities based on the results of the in-depth conversations with customers. The icing on the cake is for them to be 100% “convinced” by a representative, pithy social media comment that simply “nails it.” This one comment can even become the rallying cry, a concept that the CEO returns to, over and over, while trying to make the company more customer-centric.

This is the norm, not the exception; it happens quite often in my revenue coaching work. The company leaders read the word-for-word transcriptions showing what customers say on a given subject, and one phrase in the report, or one comment made in a social media channel, sums up the situation quite nicely. That then becomes the reminder for the entire executive staff of the customer’s reality, and the decisions they make going forward are influenced by that reality – which is as it should be.

Nick: Have there been instances where social media listening data was totally off-base, and the phone call provided more valuable data?

Kristin: Sure. As I mentioned, one very vocal customer can drive the social media conversation in one direction, while the bulk of the customers are not at all interested in that issue. While it is extremely important to address that person’s complaints as immediately, thoroughly, and publicly as possible, it is also important to see the incident in context. Why is this particular customer having this particular problem? Do other customers share this customer’s concerns? Or is it an isolated incident? The phone calls reveal what the bulk of the customers are thinking, and serve to put these issues in the proper perspective.

And yes, there have also been situations where a single negative comment turned out to be the tip of the iceberg, a early indicator to a much larger problem. The company’s management must know which category these comments fall into, and the only way to do that is to conduct the big-picture, in-depth research.

Nick: If you were in the shoes of a B2B or B2C company, how would you get started in social media listening? Would you approach the 2 verticals differently?

Kristin: I always laugh when people say that “B2B and B2C are the same, because you’re selling to people.” Yes. Last time I checked, except maybe for bots clicking on Facebook ads, bots don’t buy – people do. We all get this. But the minute you go a level deeper, and look at how those people make their buying decisions, a different kind of distinction comes into play.

The more important question is, how much “scrutiny” are they applying to the purchase? In both B2B and B2C purchases, there are four categories of scrutiny: Light, Medium, Heavy, and Intense. The higher the price, and the more complex the product/service, the heavier the scrutiny.

• Light Scrutiny products and services involve one person, a couple of basic questions (Do I really want this? Can I afford it? Do I want to buy this instead of something else?), and the decision is made.
• Medium Scrutiny products and services still involve one person, but there are more questions (think clothing, eye glasses, simple software products, etc.). These questions must be answered to the buyer’s satisfaction, or they won’t make a purchase.
• Heavy Scrutiny products and services involve more than one buyer (IT manager and the CEO, for example, or a husband and wife buying a house), lots of questions, a demo and/or test drive of some sort, a salesperson to answer questions and write up contracts, a contract, the purchase, and possibly service after the sale.
• Intense Scrutiny products and services involve all of the above, plus you “get married.” It’s an ongoing service or a very large custom project. This is really where “relationships” play a major role.

These four scrutiny categories are much more relevant to the social media listening activities than the “B2B versus B2C” categories. If you interview your customers, and ask the right questions the right way, you can map out the customer’s buying process and the customer’s experience after the sale. Your map can include “what the customer expects from us in the form of social media channels and interactions.”

In other words, if they expect to find you on Facebook (typically B2C companies), you should be there. If not, you can skip it. If, on the other hand, they expect you to be on LinkedIn (usually B2B companies) and would notice and appreciate your contribution to discussion groups, you need to be there. You can literally ask them, during the interviewing process, “What social media channels do you use as part of your buying process [remember, this is what matters!], and how would you like to see us participating in those channels?”

The answer to this question will guide your social media decisions and actions. It’s important to remember that every company and its customers are unique – even in terms of what customers expect the company to do for them. The best way to find out where they are in the social ecosystem, and what they’d expect you to do if you joined them there, is to ask them.

Nick: Finally, where can readers learn more about you and your book?

Kristin: It’s available pretty much everywhere, both in print and ebook format. The book website shows all of the customer and press reviews; that site is http://www.RoadmapToRevenue.com, and of course, it’s available on Amazon and in the iTunes store. So far I haven’t gotten a negative review, which makes me very happy. My consulting website is http://www.zhivago.com and my blog is http://www.RevenueJournal.com. By the way, the interview questions you should be asking and the best practice methodologies for conducting this research are all spelled out in my book.

There is one area of social media that is still out of reach from a lot of customers: analytics

You see, we’re currently in state where social media is still hard to tie into the bottom line. Yet there are many social media analytics software services that can do the hard work, some better than others, but the price points are pretty much out of reach for many small businesses. That’s the obvious challenge.

The second challenge is that in order to tie social media to the bottom line, you have to connect social data to a customer relationship (CRM) software package. The CRM market is dominated by a few, but there are numerous products on the market that essentially do the same thing, not to mention all of the custom built solutions.

What if these types of analytics were seamlessly integrated into a current web analytics service (cough cough Google Analytics). You could then tie all of the data into a CRM from a single source (clear throat..Google Analytics). Oh yea did I mention Google Analytics is free?

If you’re a small business, and you’re not using a CRM, then I’m not sure how you’re following through and reporting on sales. For small businesses that are, the acquisition of a social media analytics service would be the next logical step in the consolidation of a multi-billion dollar industry.

I would love to see Google make another acquisition, just like they did with Wildfire.

What do you think? Should Google buy a social media analytics company that integrates with its analytics service?

What are the 3 elements Nick? Well I thought you’d never ask :)

1. The content educates, entertains, and induces emotion. (all three)

I don’t care how educational your content is. If you sound or move like Ben Stein from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, viewers will click away to someone that explains the same point but with more feeling.

2. It’s concise, with short cuts to different angles and scenarios

As I’ve read in Steve Stockman’s book “Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck“, the human brain stays interested in short bursts of action, since it is forced to figure out what it’s looking at and what it means. Viewers are more engaged in what they’re watching because they have to do a little work to understand what’s going on.

3. You don’t get it into the right hands

Videos don’t auto-magically go viral. Planned seeding and promotion are done way in advance of the actual launch of a campaign. Local businesses should do the same, and it doesn’t have to cost a bajillion dollars to do so. It’s called old fashioned relationship building, outreach, and sharing via social media (ya know public relations?)

Now that I’ve explained the 3 elements of an interesting and promotional video, let’s take a look at an example: A local California taxidermy business (Thank you to Sociabull for sharing this on our Facebook page):

Ah Chuck Testa, the darling Taxidermy specialist. While his acting skills are a little bland, the entertainment, sort of education, and definitely emotion induced minute really puts a lasting memory on the viewer (well at least me).

This video became so widespread, that Chuck Testa became an internet meme with pictures like this.

And encore videos like this:

So my advice to you is to do a little homework on the following:

• What would your viewers find interesting, funny, entertaining, thought provoking, etc.
• Keep the shots short
• Hit the pavement, and get that video into the right hands

Have you had success with your video marketing efforts. If not, what do you think went wrong. Do you agree with my points?

Although it is a basic social media monitoring workflow, it also can be used to quickly get people all on the same page. Your business will need a couple of elements in place before embarking on your monitoring journeys:

1. Monitoring software

I suggest Radian6, it has the best workflow management hands down, and it integrates nicely with Salesforce, which is a huge plus.

2. Policies and protocols

If you don’t know the who, what, where, why, when, and how, everyone will be confused, and a social media blunder will be bound to happen. Let’s a take a call center for example: would you not train your phone reps on how to respond? Make sense?

3. A plan for ongoing training (just like a call center)

Like above, you need to allocate budget for ongoing training, for new hires and current employees alike.

Without further adieu, here is the basic social media monitoring workflow:

Think about it, we’re now using e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, online chat windows, review sites, forums, and a whole lot of other channels to communicate our praise, dissatisfaction, questions, problems, and what have you – in addition to the telephone. In fact, according to this study from the Harvard Business Review, people still rely on the telephone for purchase and customer support, BUT they rely on it less in two ways:

1. They don’t connect with a salesperson on the phone until later in the buying cycle
2. They don’t connect with a customer support rep until after they’ve gathered enough information in their answer seeking process.

This isn’t necessarily meant to be the status quo for every industry or company, but it certainly is a signal of the shifting consumer behavior.

Now given what we have before us, I suggest a couple of things to move the “call center” into the “brand experience center”. This is meant for the discovery phase of the shift in your organization:

1. Research where people are hanging out online, what information they are seeking pre-purchase and post-purchase. You can gather this type of information from asking your prospects and customers, social media listening, web analytics, and customer relationship management reports.
2. Start actively listening using software like Radian6 or Alterian SM2. Find out where your support representatives can activate conversations, and build this into their job descriptions, or hire a team to monitor and route conversations to the appropriate rep.
3. Work on making content more available as a sales and support mechanism. Blogging, online communities, ebooks, webinars, videos, and more will help the buyer journey. For customer support, a tool like Zendesk is a good start.

I’ve spoken about the ROI of social customer support before, so keep that in mind as your company makes the shift, both mentally and physically. ROI does not happen immediately. Rather it is a return that compounds over time much like you’ve learned in your finance classes.

Hopefully this is good inspiration to get you thinking and acting on the new buyer journey. Have you started orchestrating your brand experience center?

photo credit: the social workplace

I saw a video recently that talks about Facebook’s ad products having only reached the beginning stages of their revenue potential. This is fairly significant if you look at this from a long term viability standpoint. Therefore, I suggest that people not pay attention to the day to day swings, and concentrate on the broader strategy.

In addition to credits, I see their retargeting ads having incredible revenue potential. I use Google’s remarketing product within the Adwords platform, and it is great complement to search campaigns.

So to break it down, not only does Facebook own an enormous amount of highly specific data about individuals, but now they have the ability to know exactly what you are shopping for, and serve you the most targeted ads possible. I see this as a win-win for consumers and advertisers. Although I am sure privacy advocates would disagree with me here.

I can’t wait to see the data from the initial beta testing, and I am pushing for this to be Facebook’s shining star.

photo credit: techcrunch

The other aspect of social media that might not be apparent to a lot of people is that it can have an impact on every stage in the buying cycle, and of this writing I’m pretty sure that Argyle Social is the first social media management software provider that has correctly released the ability to connect off-website social media interactions and customer relationship management software records.

Although this is absolutely fantastic that Argyle has paved the road for the masses to start connecting the social dots within the entire marketing campaign history of a lead, the economics of implementing this type of solution is still out of reach for a lot of businesses. This is a short term drawback of industry firsts. Overtime, competitive forces and technological advances will drive prices down, so that this type of capability will be more accessible.

A great analogy is professional websites back in the mid to late nineties. There were only a few specialists that created them and demand was rising, so these specialists could naturally charge a premium. Over time, competition and technological advances have driven down the costs of producing and maintaining a website for smaller businesses.

So my only advice for smaller businesses at this point is: sit tight, the technology is coming in short order. Until then, there are still ways to measure social media’s impact with some less accurate but important methods. Google Analytics, campaign tracking from your social media links, and if budget permits, using contact record cookies with Infusionsoft or Hubspot.

First Way: Surveys

At the end of all customer service calls, e-mails, or online chats, you ask the customer to fill out a brief survey. The survey could be e-mailed to your customer immediately after the call. If you’re doing customer service within online chat, you could send a link to the survey directly in the chat window. Mostly, people won’t bother to fill out the survey, and I’ve found that surveys are sometimes too impersonal. BUT, I am not devaluing the worth of the data.

While we’re on the subject of data, you’ll have to make sure that you gather enough data to make sure that your end results are accurate. So for example, if you have a fairly low volume of customer service, you’ll want to analyze customer satisfaction results once per quarter. If you have a high volume, you could analyze once per month.

Here are sample questions to ask your customers:

• How satisfied are you with the purchase you made (of a product or service)
• How satisfied are you with the service you received?
• How satisfied are you with our company overall?
• How likely are you to buy from us again?
• How likely are you to recommend our product/service to others
• How likely are you to recommend our company to others.

Second Way: Kristin Zhivago’s Method

If you’d like to get more candid and qualitative feedback from your customers, I suggest you designate a person to call them directly. The person to execute the questionnaire is a 3rd party, as customers are more likely to be truthful, according to Kristin Zhivago in Roadmap to Revenue.

Compiling the answers from this questionnaire is somewhat manual, but the insights you gather will be powerful for your business.

If you haven’t picked up the book, visit Kristin’s Zhivago’s website to pick up a copy of Roadmap to Revenue

Conclusion

After conducting these surveys and phone calls, you can then start to segment customer satisfaction in digital vs. traditional modes of customer service. You’ll then be able to justify the budget spent on keeping your customers happy, and you’ll also find areas of the business that need improvement.

Have you done these methods of collecting customer feedback? Have you taken action on the results? What are the shortfalls of either approach? Let us know in the comments below :)

We have accumulated enough data from our time tracking and Google Analytics accounts to give you an ROI example of Tweeting! If your eyes aren’t 1. rolling upwards OR 2. glazing over, then I suggest you keep reading.

Let the fun begin with calculating our costs:

So I’ve spent an average of 40 minutes per day reading and tweeting around 6 articles on my personal Twitter account and our business Twitter account. Since I’m pretty sure many people can do this, I marked this type of activity as $25 per hour.

In total, I spent approximately 48 hours reading and tweeting articles plus I pay $5.99/month for Hootsuite, which comes to $1,200. We now have our cost.

Let’s figure out our revenue:

In the period between January 1st and April 30, 2012, we received 13 leads from Twitter. Our average sale price is $2,000, and we closed our leads at a rate of 10%. Let’s do some math:

13 leads X $2,000 Average Sale Price = $26,000

$26,000 X 10% Close Rate = $2,600 Total Revenue from Twitter

Social Media HQ’s Twitter ROI

(Revenue – Cost)/Cost = ROI

($2,600 – $1,200)/$1,200 = 116%

The next time someone asks you what the ROI of Twitter is, show them this blog post :)

As Jay Baer says, social media is a different kind of expensive.

Have you approached social media ROI this way? Would love to hear your thoughts.

photo credit: media funnel