Archive for the ‘Strategy and Analysis’ Category

What’s ‘Best’ is What Works

Posted in Focus.com, Inbox Influencer, Social CRM, Social Intelligence, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Metrics, Strategy and Analysis by Chris Selland on January 25th, 2012
 

I jumped into a discussion today on Focus.com where a community member asked the question “What’s the best time to post to social networks?”

My answer, which built off fellow Focus Expert Andrew Baker’s, is that the ‘best’ time is when your audience is attentive and available – and when you have the right content. And those times depend – so it’s very difficult (and I’d argue impossible – or at least overly simplistic) to say something like ‘11:00 AM”.

Which in turn got me thinking about the related and much-debated topic of ‘Influence’. I read a post yesterday on the Pivot Conference site which makes the argument that Influence is a ‘numbers game’.

While at Terametric we certainly believe in numbers (we have our own Timing Optimization and Influence Measurement algorithms in our Optimizer for Twitter and Inbox Influencer products), the answer still ‘depends’ on context – and on what you’re trying to accomplish.

As my friend and fellow Enterprise Irregular (and Focus Expert) Paul Greenberg recently posted (using the much-maligned but also widely-used Klout score as a proxy):

Klout is good at measuring how engaged an individual is on social channels at any given time but doesn’t really measure influencers of the buyer kind or the industry kind.  Three weeks off the grid would lower your Klout score but wouldn’t necessarily impact your influence.  You see that don’t you?

In other words, numbers help but they only provide guideposts to ‘the answer’ – not ‘the answer’ itself.

‘The answer’ is ‘what works’ – and that only comes from defining what you will measure, and then in turn testing, and benchmarking those results against those desired results.

At Terametric we are, of course, rather partial to our own Timing & Influence algorithms but are also exploring opportunities to work with other offerings in order to meet customer preference and provide a more complete picture of your success in attaining the results that matter most to you. At the same time we will be rolling out a suite of services – some of them built around our own technology but also working in conjunction with partners – that can help you better define, measure, benchmark and improve the metrics you and your organization most care about.

Please contact us to learn more, and we’d love to hear your feedback and experiences. And of course, if you’re not already using Inbox Influencer (it’s 100% free) signup today!

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Posted in Focus.com, Inbox Influencer, Social CRM, Social Intelligence, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Metrics, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

Inbound Marketing Ecosystem

Posted in Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Strategy and Analysis by Chris Selland on January 23rd, 2012
 

Thinking about Inbound Marketing and looking for a quick snapshot of why it’s important and how it works?

This infographic from Volinsky Consulting does a great job of summing it up.

Inbound Marketing Ecosystem - Infographic

Created by @svolinsky of Volinsky Consulting

H/T to Barry Ritholtz for the link.

Posted in Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

What do CMOs need to focus on in 2012?

Posted in Focus Roundtable Discussions, Social Media Marketing, Strategy and Analysis by Chris Selland on January 18th, 2012
 

I love this post from Mark Hughes of C3 Metrics as published on Business Insider. 5 Things Chief Marketing Officers Need To Do To Stay On Top Of Their Game

Here’s the list – click through to read the rest:

Five ways for CMOs to lengthen that 18 months to 36 and much longer.

  1. Stop Worrying About Your Tenure: Part of the problem is that CMOs play defense. They spend a lot of time worrying about the chain of command, who reports to who and when the next board meeting is. They play too little offense because they’re afraid they’re going to ruffle some feathers, and then the next thing you know they become a statistic themselves. Get out there and be what your title says you’re supposed to be.
  2. Don’t Base Your Strategy On The Economy: Remember “Mr. T” in Rocky III? “Prediction? Pain.” You can’t be a CMO and base your strategy on an “if-then” economy. Don’t base marketing spend on the S&P 500. Base marketing spend and strategy on growing customer value, increasing marketing ROI and taking market share while your competitors play chicken with the stock market and latest Eurocrisis.
  3. Stop Experimenting With Digital Marketing:  Check the most recent Nielsen report on branding online. “It would be a mistake to assume that all ad networks or demographic models are created equal,” according to Nielsen. “It’s critical to measure the efficacy of delivery using campaign reporting to ensure the tools and audience are aligned with the premium pricing charged for that model.” Take note. The tone here is not one of testing and recalibrating. The tone is, “do it, and measure it properly.” The time for experimenting with digital marketing is over. The time for acting like a CMO, and demanding the right metrics, is on.
  4. Control Your Destiny: The best way to stay off the CMO scrap heap is to understand what you can control. Most great marketers share that. You control the message, the channel it will be delivered through, and the way you will measure the effort. You don’t control customer reaction or random events (see the economy).
  5. Measure Your Legacy: When you do get to that day when you decide to leave, get promoted, or they throw you out, what will they say about you? That you increased revenue? You controlled spending? Or you left some best practices and processes to do both? What’s good for the company is good for you. Make sure you have the tools to measure your impact.

We’ll be focusing (pun intended) on the digital/social marketing question in particular during today’s Focus Social CMO Roundtable. We’ve got a great panel – joining me will be:

  • Mitch Bishop – CMO, DotNetNuke
  • Debbie Qaqish – CRO, The Pedowitz Group
  • Britta Meyer – CMO, Magnet Systems, Inc.

I hope you can join us!

Also we are seeking panelists for what will be a monthly series on various topics surrounding ‘The Social CMO’ – if you’re interested or have a panelist to propose, please email me.

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Posted in Focus Roundtable Discussions, Social Media Marketing, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

The Bottom Line

Posted in Focus Roundtable Discussions, Focus.com, Social CRM, Social Media Metrics, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Chris Selland on January 16th, 2012
 

Our friend Heidi Tobias at Constant Contact shared some interesting statistics earlier today:

Not long afterward, we came across this terrific blog post and video from Brian Solis:

Yet despite the increasingly obvious positive (and negative) impacts that ‘Social’ is having on our businesses, we continue to hear many claiming that the impact of Social ‘can’t be measured’.

Wrong.

It may not be easy, but it’s increasingly necessary. There simply isn’t an option to ignore it anymore.

Quoting Brian:

What the social media gurus aren’t telling you is that the landscape for business isn’t changing because of social media, it’s changing because consumer expectations are evolving.

Your customers are empowered through technology where social media becomes only part of the disruption.

Your job in 2012 is to not embrace new technology with arms wide open, but instead understand it and learn which disruptive technologies separate you from existing and potential customers.

Exactly right.

Our Focus Social CMO Roundtable on Wednesday will be specifically focused on the metrics being used by leading CMO’s to measure – and manage – their Social initiatives in light of the tremendous changes we are all facing. There’s already an online discussion going around this topic – which will be continued live.

I hope you can join us – and hope that you are able to respond to the ’seminal changes’ we are all facing in 2012 in a positive, constructive, and measured manner.

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Posted in Focus Roundtable Discussions, Focus.com, Social CRM, Social Media Metrics, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

The Science of Influence

Posted in Big Data, Inbox Influencer, Influence, Social CRM, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy and Analysis by Chris Selland on January 10th, 2012
 

All customers are not created equal. Nor are visitors to your website, followers of your Twitter feed, or ‘Like’rs of your Facebook page.

While companies often give lip service to providing all customers and prospects equal allocations of resources and attention, the truth is that resources are limited – people, money, time. These limitations force organizations to tier their efforts, and to apply more resources to the more valuable relationships in order to provide the greatest economic return – ROI – on their investments.

Understanding who our most valuable, profitable customers are – and supporting processes to channel more resources and attention on them – is the entire foundation of investments in CRM applications, loyalty programs and other traditional customer-facing systems and processes.

In this new era of Social engagement, do we need to employ similar methods and tools to understand relative value? Absolutely! If anything, measurement becomes far more important, although the methods through which such measurements are attained changes dramatically.

This is exactly why, despite the protestations of many, Influence Scoring systems and tools such as Klout and our own Inbox Influencer continue to rise in importance. As NetBase CMO Lisa Rosner recently blogged:

As marketers, we’re always measuring things. It used to be butts in seats, then clicks, now followers and re-tweets. In 2012, we will be measured and rewarded by metrics like Klout scores—both our personal and our company’s scores. Last I checked, my Klout score is higher than my age—whew! But that was not the case a few months ago. So as you drive followers to your various social media outlets, make sure you have all the necessary elements going: influence, comments, mentions, unique likers and yes, still re-tweeters, to keep that score growing. Your boss is watching and measuring.

It is indeed about measurement – and the social data that we need to measure to understand Influence, and react accordingly, is expanding massively and rapidly. We cannot manage what we cannot measure, so tools to measure – and make recommendations on – this data are in increasingly high demand. As I discussed during my presentation at the recent Social CRM event in NYC, IBM estimates that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last 2 years alone.

Above the funnel – Social CRM NYC

As Cision USA President & COO Peter Granat wrote in his excellent post titled “Taming ‘big data’ for influencer marketing” yesterday in B2B Magazine, we are still in the very early innings:

Social media is only the first foray into big data in influencer marketing. The next advance will connect social profiles and content to customer profiles and transactions, accurately and in real time to bring message targeting to a new level of relevance and impact.

In other words, the coming challenge is to connect the results of the new science of Influence with the existing science of Customer Relationship Management – which is what the term ‘Social CRM’ should ultimately be about.

Like it or not (and many self-proclaimed ‘influencers’ don’t) Influence Measurement is here to stay – and grow in significance – in both marketers’ and executive toolkits. As Doc Searls suggests in the most recent Harvard Business Review, this shift will be wholesale, turning the practice of ‘marketing’ in a completely different direction:

This shift will be scary to many. It will strip the gears of marketing as we know it. But it will also improve marketing by fostering the design of new and better means of customer engagement—means that satisfy real demand directly, inform product development, and build true loyalty that goes both ways.

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Posted in Big Data, Inbox Influencer, Influence, Social CRM, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

Will Social Stay ‘Hot’ in 2012? Does It Matter?

Posted in Social CRM, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Metrics, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Chris Selland on January 5th, 2012
 

As we enter the New Year, it’s clear that Marketers across both B2C and B2B industries are continuing to invest heavily in Social – as a recent study by IBM indicates.

Yet there are still voices that continue to label Social as a ‘fad’ that will fade in importance in 2012 and beyond. For instance, Vivek Wadhwa predicted that Social will ‘lose its sizzle’ in this past week’s Washington Post.

It’s already happening in fact, as growth of social media usage has begun to slow for upstarts such as FourSquare and stalwarts such as Facebook alike. Silicon Valley has been obsessed with social media and investors have funded hundreds of “me too” start-ups to the tune of billions of dollars. There are social networks for pet owners, all manner of marginal Twitter apps, a ridiculous number of mobile photo-sharing apps, hundreds of apps targeting social media analytics and on and on and on.

Yet, is ‘losing sizzle’ such a bad thing? Or is it a signal that Social is becoming pervasive and mainstream?

There are still plenty of advocates for the value of Social. Forrester analyst William Band recently spoke for the demonstrated value of Social in Forrester’s The Top Thirteen Customer Management Trends for 2012:

More social CRM use cases spotlighting demonstrable business value will emerge. Forrester’s annual Groundswell Awards showcases hundreds examples of how organizations use Social Computing — for example, in market research, customer self-service, and product development.

Salesforce.com claims that 2011 was the year that Social already went mainstream.

Social Goes Mainstream: A Look Back at 2011

Salesforce.com VP of Strategy John Taschek suggested in his recent blog post that ‘The Social Revolution Has Just Begun’ (and agreed with my comments that while pundits and others may overstate change in the short-term, we are understating it in the longer-term).

I could go on and on, presenting various opinions on how ‘hot’ or not Social is and will be. While investors will care (in large part to justify the stratospheric valuations many Social companies are receiving), it’s not clear at all why companies seeking to leverage Social should.

Then what does matter? Gary Vaynerchuk (i.e. @garyvee) does his usual very direct job of getting to the heart of what does matter, in this recent Inc. Magazine piece.

Social-media marketing’s monetization will come, too, he says. “People don’t want to embrace culture shifts because it’s not going to happen in the next 20 minutes,” he says.

“When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail,” Vaynerchuk says. “Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They’re playing the sprint. They’re not worried about lifetime value and retention. They’re worried about short-term goals.”

So what should you be doing? Think long term, and consider how you can earn life-long customers. Says Vaynerchuk, “Social-media marketing is like going Beyonce on your customers. You’ve got to put a f—ing ring on it.”

In other words, for those of you trying to use it, don’t do Social because it’s ‘hot’. Do it because it’s about your customers and the value of their long-term relationship with you. In the words of Nick Cifuentes of ClickZ:

The long-term effect here is what makes social media more valuable than any other form of marketing. It connects with every part of your organization’s business.

As ‘Social’ continues to become mainstream and pervasive, we will likely no longer call it out as a special ‘hot’ category any more. Even the skeptical Wadwha admits to this:

Just as location-based applications became a “feature” rather than the “big thing,” social media will live on and become an integral part of what we do.

Exactly.

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Posted in Social CRM, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Metrics, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

Leveraging Big Data: THE Major Theme at Defrag

Posted in Big Data, Social CRM, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis, Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on November 15th, 2011
 

Upon returning from the 5th annual Defrag conference in Denver, it became evident very quickly that the major theme at the conference was “big data”.  Although the notion of big data has been around for some time in other industries, social media has created a whole new and exponentially larger deluge of data for businesses to leverage within the last couple of years.

To be exact:

  • IBM just completed a study and found that more than 90% of the data in the world today was created in the last two years.
  • Facebook allows users to share 30 billion pieces of content each month.
  • Twitter’s active user base generates 250 million tweets per day.
  • Combined, these sites create 17 terabytes of data every day.
  • In total, every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data.

What are the dimensions and challenges of big data? Roger Ehrenberg broke it down really well. Big data is:

  • Complex
  • Large
  • Unstructured
  • Real Time

Likewise, Jive’s David Gutelius described big data similarly using– the Four V’s analogy:

  • Velocity
  • Variety
  • Volume
  • Volatility

But let’s be clear – big data is in its infancy and growing at an exponentially high rate.

Analytics is More than Counting

This new data deluge promises to provide us the opportunity to turn information overload into an asset for better decision making by applying analytics. Even within analytics, it is more than just counting total volumes of activity – it is about mining intelligence from disparate data sources – looking for the patterns and relationships in the data itself.

Think of big data as the words of a story – by themselves they have limited meaning. When you add grammar and structure, you begin to link together these words and can develop many different meaning and insights from the collection of words.  The science of big data is similar – data stored in information systems are the words and the emerging data analytics is the grammar which allows analysts and decision makers to derive meaning from data.

There are some challenges in doing it the old way in collecting these huge volumes of data and analyzing it. It can be inefficient and cost prohibitive and difficult to scale.  People and resources are being wasted. It is estimated that employees spend up to two hours a day looking for the right information, such as analyzing tweet streams.

Collecting smaller subsets of data and analyzing it for patterns over time will provide better predictive capability that just storing and counting total volumes.

Your Customers Are Engaging in Real Time

And businesses are finding that they have to move quickly. Their customers are multiplying like rabbits online.

Did you know that socially engaged consumers spend more on brands than those people who don’t interact? That’s according to a new Bain & Company report, which studied social media and its role in marketing.

Apparently, the study found that people who talk to brands on networks like Twitter and Facebook spend 20 to 40 percent more money on their products and services compared to those who don’t. They also show a ‘deeper emotional commitment’ to companies who use social media – 33 per cent higher than the common measure for customer loyalty.

Due to the speed and access of information at their fingertips, consumers expect the same quick response if they talk to brands online. For example, if someone ‘tweets’ a brand, they expect an instant reply. If they don’t get this ‘real-time customer service’, they’ll feel ignored and your reputation could be at stake.

Looking at these fascinating facts and figures, it’s clear. Engagement adds real value these days, a crucial aspect of movement marketing. But how does engagement lead to more sales?

Big Data is About Connecting the Dots

With this extremely large and unstructured data set that consists of qualitative, quantitative and the social graph, there is a smaller very relevant subset of data that represent opportunities for sales and marketing to capitalize on. When this data set is combined and correlated with an organization’s internal data set, it becomes a lead-gen pipeline for  and a more efficient and effective method of attracting, engaging and supporting customers – in real time.

External data when collected and analyzed can provide awareness, intent and conversions and when combined with customer relationship management systems, provide opportunity for customer support and engagement.

Connecting the dots between external and internal data presents a new opportunity for marketing to directly impact sales and customer support.

Posted in Big Data, Social CRM, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis, Wendy Troupe's Perspectives | View Comments

Is There a Return on Influence? Top 5 Uses of Influence to Increase #SMROI

Posted in Focus Roundtable Discussions, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis, Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on November 3rd, 2011
 

How does Influence Measure in the Effectiveness of Your Social Media Campaign? Maurene Grey, of Grey Consulting and a Focus Expert, recently posted this question challenging the validity of traditional methods of measuring ROI (return on investment) in favor of influence and the “viralibility” of a social campaign as a better alternative.

Should we move away from hard conversion metrics in favor of the soft?

With the emergence of Klout, PeerIndex, and Terametric, we can see how identifying the most active and therefore influential people to help drive word-of-mouth through the social channels about your brand or product can generate real Revenue $$. This new business model is an emerging and nascent one but is it the only way to driving relevant return on the effectiveness of social media campaigns? What about the traditional methods of measuring a campaign’s success as Chris Selland suggests – “in terms of whether it moves opportunities INTO the a lead qualification funnel, and/or moves them THROUGH the funnel (or both)”.

Influence alone can’t be the only measure of a campaigns success but it is becoming the largest driver of how a campaign is executed and measured. Here are the top 5 ways you can use Influence to create a successful social media campaign:

  1. Quality of your Audience: understanding how consistently and active your audience in the social channels is an important gauge of how well your campaign will resonate and convert. Measuring the influence of your followers, friends and colleagues over time is top on the list.
  2. Trending Conversations:  using influence as a way to identify trending conversations as they happen helps to filter out the noise and zero in on topics that will drive engagement and ultimately determine the relevance and success of your social media campaign.
  3. Competitive Intelligence: measuring and benchmarking the influence of your competitors will help you to understand how you’re improving your competitive position in the marketplace and is essential in your ability calculate an accurate return on your marketing investment.
  4. Channel Mix: identifying the level of influence you have in Twitter, Facebook, and/or LinkedIn will help you calculate the right channels to target for your campaigns making you more efficient and effective in your campaign efforts.
  5. Lead Generation: using influence to identify, track and measure the frequency, diversity, and volume of social interactions is way to qualify potential prospects and leads for the sales pipeline.

Influence by itself is a “soft” metric and can’t by itself determine the success of your social media campaign. It can contribute in many ways to your ability to develop and execute the right campaign and targeting the right audience which will ultimately drive the “hard” metrics of traditional campaign success.

Posted in Focus Roundtable Discussions, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis, Wendy Troupe's Perspectives | View Comments

#Occupy Influence?

Posted in Events, Influence, Social CRM, Strategy and Analysis, Terametric In The News by Chris Selland on October 31st, 2011
 

As we move into the last 2 months of 2011, there are a few themes which it is clear we will look back on as the dominant ones of the year. There are, of course, the #Occupy protests taking place in major cities across the country, and there is the topic of #Influence among social marketers.

Is there a connection? Perhaps – it has certainly been said that both ‘movements’ are vaguely defined and lacking in clear goals. But perhaps there’s a larger connection as well. As was mentioned in a piece on the #Occupy protests in Sunday’s Guardian “If they do not have all the answers, they are at least posing some of the right questions.” That statement certainly applies to many ‘Influencer Marketing’ efforts as well.

The topic of ‘Influence’ continues to be a very important one for Terametric, as witnessed by some of the recognition we’ve recently received, and also by some of the activities we have coming up in the week(s) ahead – starting with this one.

Last last week Terametric was mentioned in a piece by David Strom published on ReadWriteWeb entitled 17 Alternatives to Klout. The article primarily focuses on our paid Optimizer for Twitter product, so it should also be noted (as I did in the comments) that Inbox Influencer is 100% free.

Also last week Inbox Influencer was selected to be featured on CatchFree, a leading site for free online solutions. We’re also very proud of the fact that we immediately landed in the Top 5 in both the ‘Optimize social marketing for free’ and ‘Launch marketing campaigns across social media sites for free’ categories. If you’re using Inbox Influencer already, please stop by and give us a rating to help us climb the ranks. If you’re not, what are you waiting for?

As for this week ahead, on Tuesday November 1, we have our next Focus Roundtable entitled Relevant Influence – Discovering and Engaging with Influencers for Effective Social Marketing. We hope you’ll be able to join Wendy, Mike Maney from Alcatel-Lucent, Matt Carter from IBM, and me for what promises to be an engaging discussion.

Then we are off to NYC to speak at Social CRM NYC – Wendy will be moderating a panel on Customer Listening Strategies featuring Sebastian Hempstead (Brandwatch), Marshall Sponder (WCG) and Joshua March (Conversocial), I’ll be moderating a panel on Social CRM featuring Josh Mendelsohn (Constant Contact), Bridget O’Brien (VistaPrint), Matt Carter (IBM) and Marshall Lager (3rd Idea Consulting), and I’ll also be giving a presentation entitled ‘Above the Funnel’ discussing the intersection of Social and CRM, and heavily focused on Influencer-related strategies.

Whew…! A lot there – and whether we ‘Occupy’ the topic of Influence or not, we certainly hope to be asking the right questions. Please join us!

Posted in Events, Influence, Social CRM, Strategy and Analysis, Terametric In The News | View Comments

From Social Selling to Influencer Marketing – Focus Roundtable Series update

Posted in Focus.com, Influence, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Metrics, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Chris Selland on October 24th, 2011
 

What are some things that salespeople can do to leverage social media and change the way they sell? We had a terrific kickoff to our monthly Terametric / Focus.com roundtable series last month, Above the Funnel: Making the Connection Between Social Sales & Marketing and Measurable ROI. For those of you who participated, thank you and we hope you found it valuable. For those of you who could not, you can listen to the recap and also participate in the ongoing Q&A at this link.

Some of the most popular questions that Wendy & I discussed with Focus Experts Tom Scontras and Dan McDade included:

This is only a sampling of the 20+ questions that came from the Focus community, and we were thrilled with the participation.

Our next Roundtable is entitled Relevant Influence – Discovering and Engaging with Influencers for Effective Social Marketing. It takes place on Tuesday November 1 at 2 PM EST, 11 AM EST, and you can register – and participate – by clicking the link and visiting the event page.

Our expert panel includes Matt Carter from IBM and Mike Maney from Alcatel Lucent. There’s also a rumor that we’ll be joined by an additional, well-known Focus Expert (or 2) as well.

Questions are already being posted – and answered – so sign up, jump in, and stay tuned for more!

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Posted in Focus.com, Influence, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Metrics, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments