Posts Tagged ‘marketing measurement’

Three reasons why Klout fails as an effective Twitter campaign measurement and optimization tool

Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis, Twitter ROI by Taariq Lewis on January 12th, 2011
 

The team at Klout did a great job launching a new way to measure influence and engagement on Twitter. By their description, they are “The Standard for Influence.” That puts them in the hot seat to deliver a reliable metric that social media managers and marketing executives can trust as a turnkey standard. Along the way, they have also stirred up interesting analysis and experiments with Klout’s measurements and methodologies.

klout-logo-success

As social media managers tasked with running successful Twitter engagement campaigns, we have over 200 Twitter measurement tools from which we can choose, including Klout. However, using scoring methodologies to manage ongoing twitter campaigns is risky. Though I am not a Klout expert, I do use Klout daily to monitor my personal score. However, when matched against the most important activities in Twitter campaign execution, it’s my view that focusing on higher Klout scores fails to make Twitter marketing campaigns more effective and more influential for three key reasons.

Measurement without explanation
Klout scores are public, but the algorithms behind them are private. This is important so that folks don’t figure out and “game” or cheat Klout’s algorithms and render them valueless. As such, for Twitter analysis needs, Klout scores do not provide robust measurement that leads to testable explanation of Twitter influence and engagement. For example, if a Klout score drops from 40 to 30, marketers using Klout can only guess that user’s influence has dropped, but there’s no way to extract the explanation as to why the score changed. Without that sort of explanation, a Twitter campaign manager can’t determine what resources are required to reach the target Klout score. Measurement without explanation is not actionable in marketing. For Twitter campaigns, I don’t see how Klout can give deep measurement insights without sacrificing more transparency into its algorithms.

Optimization of Score vs. Optimization of Campaign
When managing a Twitter engagement campaign, it’s easy to use an improvement in Klout score as evidence of campaign success. After all, Klout is an independent measure. Of course, one can try to target Klout achievements as an indicator of campaign success, but Twitter marketing campaigns should be optimized according to the specific business goals of the total Marketing campaign. Tools that measure campaign effectiveness relative to goals would be a more effective than independent third-party measurements that give more general evaluations.

Klout is not predictive
Klout scores are not predictive of Twitter campaign success or failure. Specifically, we cannot use Klout to predict whether our campaign achievement or Twitter marketing ROI will increase or decrease due to a higher or lower Klout score. A Twitter campaign marketer cannot correlate specific Twitter engagement activities with target Klout scores because of Klout’s transparency limitations. If you’re looking for a predictive model, it would be best to determine what campaign activities correlate with goal achievement and optimize toward a campaign target. If your Twitter campaign tools don’t tell you this, then you’re just guessing.

Are you using Klout to measure your Twitter marketing campaign effectiveness and ROI? If so, share with us how you optimize and predict engagement trends. With so many tools, there must be smart ways to do this online.

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3 reasons why SMBs fail to achieve positive ROI with Twitter Marketing

Posted in Social Media ROI, Twitter ROI by Taariq Lewis on December 27th, 2010
 

The United States Small Business Association defines a company with gross receipts of up to a maximum, on average, of $7MM dollars as a Small Medium Business (SMB). Therefore, when it comes to social media marketing, SMBs have small very small budgets and should be more sensitive to the impact of negative ROI on their social media marketing efforts. SMBs may view social media channels, such as Twitter, as a cheap or zero-cost way to extend their marketing and public relations functions. However, contrary to being cheap and effective, non-benchmarked and non-optimized, Twitter marketing, can be costly and can result in mostly negative ROI due to lack of sales or marketing contributions to the business.

Under-estimating the required time and resources for Twitter Marketing
MarketingProfs recently released a study that took a look at Social Media Marketing companies that have been using social media for more than three years and they found that these veterans are spending more on social media. Around 21.8% of social media marketing veterans say they devote at least two full-time staffers to social media, compared with 5% of rookies. However, most SMBs cannot afford to place full-time staff on their Social Media and Twitter marketing programs. These firms may have someone tweet a few times or for a few minutes, daily with the hope that someone will see a Tweet or that their brand awareness will grow. That’s a hope-and-pray strategy for most. Without any benchmark as to what is required to increase awareness or drive sales on Twitter, most SMB Twitter accounts, even with large followers fail to deliver positive ROI for their organizations.

Missing or very little Twitter Marketing strategy
Underestimating time and resources contributes to a lack of a clear and solid strategic plan for Twitter campaigns as part of a broader marketing engagement. Most Twitter marketing tools are free or a very low cost, relative to other marketing services and software. As such, it’s very tempting for any company, SMB or otherwise to get setup on Twitter and start tweeting. According to Social Media Guru Matt Singley, “the biggest temptation for any company with social media is that they want to jump right in without setting goals or having a strategy.” SMBs are sufficiently small that they may not have organizational resources to map out complex strategic approaches to their marketing programs. However, it’s still critical to have a Twitter marketing strategy that includes benchmarking, measurement and campaign optimization.

No Twitter Campaign Optimization
Even those SMBs that measure, many may not be optimizing their Twitter marketing campaigns, daily as sentiment, trends, and influence changes online. Firstly, SMBs may be local or regional businesses without large, global data-sets of data to process transactions and customer engagements. As such, these companies may see optimization as novel or out of reach of their organizational capabilities. Also, most free measurement tools provide measurement, but no benchmark in real-time. As a result, these companies fail to initially and continuously benchmark their performance against their target markets. Thus, they fail to optimize their Twitter marketing campaigns in real-time.

Failure to plan a strategy and to acquire a factual estimate of what it takes to be successful on Twitter means that most SMBs will try and dip their toes with a little Twitter marketing and expend ineffective resources to stay in the game. However, most will see only negative ROI from Twitter marketing continue to persist and may give up on Twitter as not effective.

Are you an SMB that wants Positive ROI from your social media and Twitter marketing objectives? Email us and ask about our risk-free trial of Twitter Optimizer for Small and Medium-sized Businesses.

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3 simple Twitter marketing rules that still maximize ROI

Posted in Social Media ROI, Twitter ROI by Taariq Lewis on December 21st, 2010
 

Kyle Lacy, Principal of MindFrame and author of the book, “Twitter Marketing for Dummies”and Terametric webinar panelist on “How to Measure and Maximize Twitter marketing ROI,”shared the ratio for effective balance of Twitter conversation, marketing, and sharing for social media. These were: Share your content, share partner content and share industry content evenly. We also adopted these three rules into another simple model that you can explain to your boss and that should make any Twitter campaign successful.

1: Promote
This is why we campaign on Twitter and why we need to show maximum business return on social media investment dollars. However, if promoting on Twitter sounds like just “broadcast your ad here” you’re in the wrong medium. Promoting content on Twitter means that social media managers should promote content and opportunities on Twitter that are unique, special, and hard to acquire on other channels. Since Twitter is real-time communication, organizations should promote call to actions that incentivize real-time response. Twitter promotions should be treated as hard-to-get, limited, and requiring ongoing monitoring. Old offers and promotions that are available elsewhere decrease the value of a Twitter promotion as a “must-have” or “must-click”.

2: Share
Twitter is an effective way to build authority by sharing highly relevant partner content. Social Media research on how individuals consume data show that news channels are considered the most authoritative of web channels for information. Sharing relevant, fresh, time-sensitive partner content should increase perceived authority and influence. However, sharing for sharing sake is not an effective approach to business marketing on Twitter. Sharing should be relevant to your audience and their biggest information needs. Sharing should also be free of any purchase obligation.

3: Converse
Maintaining ongoing Twitter engagement without self-reflective tweets is not hard if social media marketers engage in relevant conversations. Conversations can be started by discussing relevant industry content is an effective way to stay in touch with industry and the community. If the industry is not talking about your company, are you talking about the industry? Conversations require an exchange of information and talking about the industry is an easy way to launch that exchange.

Conclusion:
Make sure your boss understands that all three are needed for any Twitter campaign to be successful. If these simple rules were easy, everyone would be doing it perfectly. However, it’s hard to maintain an even balance between these three goals. Before you launch your next Twitter campaign, check your Twitter toolbox and identify any tools that make it easy to measure and maximize how best to promote, share, and converse.

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Kevin Palmer: Social Media Marketing and ROI is About Efficiency

Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Kevin Palmer on December 2nd, 2010
 

This guest post is Terametric’s Twitter ROI Series leading up to the December 9, 2010 Webinar: “How to measure and improve your Twitter Marketing ROI” with @Jim Sterne and @Kyle Lacy.



@Kevin Palmer is the founder of Social Media Answers, a leading social media marketing agency. Kevin has led online marketing strategies for companies that specialize in the luxury brands sector, including high-end hotels, private travel solutions, spirits, wines, cosmetics, and other luxury categories.

I know people will bristle when they read the title of this blog post. We are all programmed to say, “It is about the conversation, it is about relationships, it is about listening.” While all three of these are tenants of social media, if they aren’t done efficiently they are not going to be done well. If social media isn’t done well it can put you behind your competition, it won’t get internal support within the company, and worst of all, you could lose customers.

We all have finite amounts of time. Even marketers at the largest company can’t possibly do everything they would want to do within social media. There is always more that you can be doing, but whatever you ARE doing should be executed at the most efficient levels. You should never question if you should be doing something better. In order to execute at an efficient high level you need to have an understanding of your ROI – not just in financial terms but in terms your effort and time.

Understanding every action you take and the impact it has on your marketing efforts is one of the first steps to making you an efficient social media marketer. How many times do you post? Who are you following? Who aren’t you following? Who is retweeting you? Who are you retweeting? These are all time consuming activities on even the most basic level. To improve your performance in these areas requires even more of an investment. Making this time investment blindly though can make for a frustrating experience. The good thing is that all of these are measurable activities. You can see how your sweat equity pays off.

Taking the time to understand what you are doing, establishing a baseline, setting goals, and tracking your actions is the first step towards efficient social media.

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3 Steps to use Twitter ROI to increase your marketing budget, today

Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Anu Reddy on November 28th, 2010
 

This post is Terametric’s Twitter ROI Series leading up to the December 9, 2010 Webinar: How-To measure and improve your Twitter Marketing ROIwith Jim Sterne and Kyle Lacy.

The Question: Do companies maximize return on their marketing investment (ROI) in Twitter or are they only investing in Twitter marketing for the sake of having a presence? Or, rather, do companies invest in Twitter because it seems like the “right” Social Media thing to do? Although Twitter registration is free, investing in this channel is not a zero cost activity. A good Twitter strategy requires resources that are closely aligned with expected impact or financial returns.

Organizations are skeptical about allocating resources to social media marketing while creating marketing budgets, unless there is a quantifiable return on investment.


Source: Brian Solis

According to a survey by OneForty, when respondents were asked whether they would be interested in Twitter’s paid advertising product, Promoted Tweets. More than half the respondents said they would need to see more metrics to understand the ROI, first.

We agree that it is already difficult to persuade your boss to allocate more dollars to Twitter marketing without a sound business hypothesis. Given the immense difficulty facing Twitter marketers to justify social media investments, here are three easy steps to increase protect and even increase your Twitter marketing budget as you survive your 2011 budgeting cycle.

1. Track your performance
The first step to increasing your marketing budget is to track key industry topics, themes, influencers and hashtags while measuring sentiment, influence, reach, loyalty, retention and demographics. While some of these metrics are more important than the others, it is crucial to monitor all these metrics daily or weekly and to benchmark their performance in each campaign.

2. Calculate Twitter ROI
Next, calculate Twitter ROI using this easy method. If your inbound Twitter impact is greater than the outbound Twitter engagement costs, then you have a positive ROI. Measuring Twitter marketing ROI will highlight what are the appropriate investment levels and correct returns needed to deliver a positive business impact.

3. Create an investment strategy
Finally, Twitter ROI measurement will give you insight into how to invest your time and resources going forward. Use these insights to maximize the Twitter marketing strategy to get a bigger bang for your buck.

With these three steps, you can present the financial impact of Twitter marketing on your organization’s most critical business needs. This type of marketing management leadership should definitely help persuade your boss to increase your marketing budget, or at the very least, not reduce it in 2011.

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You can be thankful for these 6 Twitter Profiles of Engagement

Posted in Social Media ROI by Wendy Troupe on November 25th, 2010
 

This post is Terametric’s Twitter ROI Series leading up to the December 9, 2010 Webinar: How-To measure and improve your Twitter Marketing ROI with Jim Sterne and Kyle Lacy.

As we take a breather for the Thanksgiving Holidays, we’re taking a break to take-in and understand the different ways individuals engage in Twitter. As social media, marketing executives, we need to understand the different types of engagements which are critical to measuring and maximizing Twitter marketing ROI.

Over the past two years, we’ve noticed several clusters of Twitter profile behavior that may be of interest to marketers. Below are the top six that consistently arise and which we think are critical to effective Twitter channel marketing:


Image: Francesco Marino

The Mystified Twitter Profile:
Mystified Twitter users have a Twitter profile, but use it sporadically. Twitter does not yet have a significant impact on their daily activities. This group may consist of the largest number of Twitter profiles. Marketing to this group is difficult, but not impossible.

The Inquiring Twitter Profile:
Inquiring Twitter users are beginning to use Twitter actively and engaging with the Twitter community. However, they are still unclear as to how Twitter fits into their lives. This group needs help understanding how to use Twitter.

Surveyor Twitter Profile:
Surveyors have a limited engagement level because although they use Twitter regularly, they are still learning from reading and understanding. They may be more involved in an observing role. This group is willing to use Twitter as a learning resource.

Operative Twitter Profile:
Operatives are regular users of Twitter. They collect information around topics and create original content. This group also offers insights and criticisms around certain topics. This group will participate in regular tweetups and tweet chats as a member.

Engrossed Twitter Profile:
The engrossed Twitter Profile is one that is actively engaged in Twitter. These profiles both contribute and engage in online discussions. This group has a strong digital and social networking footprint and they share substantial relevant information through Twitter. This group may lead creation of Twitter chat communities or may offer to moderate and educate new members.

Evangelist Twitter Profile
Specific domain expertise drives this profile to be the most creative and prolific on Twitter. Evangelists derive their profile impact from trust and authority. Expect them to have the most followers and average number of tweets. Expect these individuals to create and maintain Twitter communities. People want to follow them will actively seek them out on Twitter. This group of profiles commands substantial respect for their Twitter engagement.

This is just an introduction and a broad overview of Twitter engagement profiles that we will continue share with Twitter channel marketers. It is our view that these clusters will help marketers understand how they should engage with potential customers and influencers in the Twitter channel.

Look out for more studies on Twitter population segmentation, inbound, outbound, influence and other marketing performance metrics.

Have a Happy Holiday from the Terametric Team
Wendy Troupe
CEO, Terametric

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3 ways to tell if you’re a Social Media Chart Porn Addict

Posted in Social Media ROI by Taariq Lewis on November 10th, 2010
 

I’m with you. I do it myself. I am addicted to my Social Media charts. I fire up my latest social media channel measurement tool. It’s awesome because once I enter my Twitter handle or login via Facebook, I have access to great charts. However, without a clear understanding of what exactly we’re trying to measure and why, it’s my view that most social media charts and graphs fail to maximize marketing ROI and are no more than cheap, chart porn. We like to watch it and we love it when it’s free. So here are my favorite 3 ways to tell if you’re a Social Media Chart Porn Addict.

1. Your get pleasure seeing your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn numbers go up each time you check your favorite Social Media analytics tool. Each week, we’re tweeting as hard as we can so we can add more followers who we hope must be listening. If we can just keep it going, our Social Media impact will increase. How can you not get excited about that? Each new follower tick upwards is a big turn-on.

Twitter_Goes_Up
Source: http://twittercounter.com/taariqlewis

2. You get a little depressed when your Twitter numbers go down. Maybe you couldn’t keep it up like you did, last week. Maybe it was your last intense and heated Tweetup turned a few good folks off. If we’re always engaged, how come folks lose interest? Were we just off message?

Twitter_Goes_Down
Source: http://twittercounter.com/taariqlewis

3. You and I have Klout envy. There’s always someone else above you with bigger Social Media influence, more Social Media energy and even great positive sentiment. These superstars must be raking in so much more returns on their investment in Social Media channels, like Twitter, they are the people to imitate!

Klout_envy
Source: http://www.klout.com

There is a way to cure the Social Media Chart porn addiction! Take action on your Social Media strategy. Stop chasing the Social Media charts and start maximizing your inbound impact with a roadmap of outbound engagement.

1. Identify your inbound objectives
2. Identify your outbound resources
3. Set a trial start and stop date
4. Execute your Social Media Campaign
5. Measure your resulting performance against your expected or desired performance
6. Optimize your outbound activities and run your campaign again.

That’s it. Now we can get on our with our social media lives!

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3 critical inbound Twitter metrics that maximize Social Media ROI

Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Anu Reddy on November 9th, 2010
 

There is a plethora of performance metrics that measure performance in various Social Media channels, including Twitter. These metrics usually track either inbound or outbound Twitter activities which we think are critical for Social Media Marketers to maximize their Twitter Marketing Return on Investment, ROI.

Let’s define an inbound Twitter metric as a metric that measures the impacts your Social Media marketing or your brand is driving in the Twitter channel. Let’s also define an outbound Twitter metric as any metric that measures the marketing activities you must execute in the Twitter channel. Below, we will share the top three inbound Twitter metrics that each Social Media marketer should not ignore.

1. Number of Follower Mentions you receive
The larger the number of followers you have, the wider your Twitter influence and the more people will listen. Thus, gaining more followers should increase and widen your brand’s exposure. However, simple follower addition is not enough, it is important that your followers are also talking about you. The best way to do this is to get referrals from your followers to their networks. Thus, you should also measure how many of your followers mention you in their tweets. In marketing parlance, this is simply word of mouth marketing.

Twitter_ROI_Pictures
Source: http://www.saschakimmel.com

2. Number of Influencers Who Follow You
While it is good to have a large following, it is crucial to secure as many important “influencers” as your own followers. There are influencers (i.e. followers who use Twitter prolifically and in turn everyone follows for the official “word”) in every niche industry. The aim is to create compelling content that results in these influencers following you as they have the greatest impact in the Twitter-sphere.

3. Unique Messages (RT) Retweeted
Lastly, everyone loves to see their tweets retweeted on Twitter. There is a distinction between how many times an individual tweet is retweeted and the totally number of retweets you receive. This measurement should be calculated as an average to determine consistency of content and what specific topics and insights resonate with your Twitter-sphere following and the community at large.

Are there other inbound Twitter marketing metrics that you believe are equally or more important to measure performance? Please share those you think are important in our comments below.

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The Quest for Performance Measurement

Posted in Social Media ROI by Matt Carter on July 6th, 2010
 

questThe path that ultimately led me to Terametric began as a bit of a quest. Working for years in the marketing and advertising industry, I’d fielded client and executive questions of measurement and performance hundreds of times.

In the early days we talked in terms of reach and frequency, CPM and a bit later, impressions.  We’d proudly say things like, “this TV buy will reach 60% of your target with an average frequency of 3.6.”  Or, “Our PR outreach effort yielded 687,000 impressions.”  The client’s eyes would momentarily brighten at the size of the figures and then inevitably the questions would come.

  • “What’s the average number of impressions?”
  • “What’s a good frequency?”
  • “Is that enough reach, too much?

Those shrewd clients and executives were really asking, “What does this mean in terms of performance?”  By performance, I’m talking about the degree to which something achieves a desired result.

Enter Web 2.0, the social environment.

A new frontier opened up.  Conversations were occurring, in real-time, across communities, networks and social outposts.  People were talking.  Even more importantly, people were talking about brand experiences. Quite suddenly, the world was awash in social monitoring and measurement purveyors.

We, marketing service providers, began to say things like, “You got 726 mentions around that topic.”  Or, “Your share of voice increased by 20%.” Or even better, “Positive sentiment around your product is trending up.”  Clients and executives would be pleased that counts of various things seemed to be on the increase but inevitably, those same questions rose.

  • “How many mentions is a good number?”
  • “What’s an average share of voice for our industry category?”
  • “What should our sentiment target be?”

They were really asking, “What do these figures mean in terms performance?”  So the quest began.  I searched high and low, reviewing and trialing this tool or that solution, trying to answer those questions.  I dog paddled through a sea of data visualizations, swam upstream through rivers of news and plunged headlong into automated sentiment trackers to no avail.

And then, I met Wendy Troupe.  She had taken a algorithm used initially to predict mutual fund performance and altered its data inputs and scoring methodology to quantify marketing performance.  She could literally measure a company’s ability to attract, engage and retain customers.  I knew this was something different.  I jumped aboard and off we went.

Fast-forward seven months and we find ourselves in our pilot client’s conference room.  Our Benchmark Assessment dashboard remains projected on the wall and there’s a moment of silence.  We’ve just delivered our report on their comprehensive and channel specific marketing performance to date.  Each channel has been scored 1-100 according to its current ability to attract, engage and retain customers.  We’ve demonstrated how to drill down, through the tool, and get at the underlying factors driving that performance.  Our tool provided a detailed roadmap at both a strategic and tactical level for improving that performance.

I braced for the questions but shouldn’t have.  We’d already answered them.  Instead, our client began to talk about prioritizing channel initiatives to achieve performance goals.  My quest, and hopefully yours, had come to an end.

Photo by the talented Kaysse

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A Peek at Terametric’s Metric Special Sauce

Posted in Social Media ROI by Matt Carter on April 23rd, 2010
 

Picture 3

Several companies provide multi-channel measurement capabilities.  Each has a dominant channel measurement “wheelhouse” with expansion services to measure and analyze a hand full of additional channels.  The issue is that each company measures and analyzes in terms of individual channel metrics.

While that can provide an amazingly accurate picture of the performance of a single channel, it doesn’t really provide you with an intuitive way to compare that performance with other channels to truly optimize your marketing mix.  Who’s to say that an email click-thru rate of 6.7% contributes more to overall marketing performance than 250,000 impressions?

Picture 5

Terametric uses a mix of data collected from publicly available, proprietary and social media sources to quantify the performance of each individual channel and through a proprietary algorithm, normalizes performance metrics into a common scoring system.  This allows our clients to:

  1. understand channel performance individually and comprehensively
  2. quickly identify under-performing channels and drill down into underlying factors
  3. understand which channels contribute the most to total marketing performance
  4. create an accurate marketing optimization roadmap to maximize marketing investment

The ability to quantify channel performance, accurately correlate it to marketing return and study changes in both over time allows Terametric to accurately calculate a company’s marketing ROI.

Let us know if you have any questions.  I’m sure some have occurred as you’ve read through this.  Maybe you wonder about the validity of our conversion of channel-specific metrics into a common numeric scoring system?  Whatever you’re questions may be, please let us know.  We’ll do our best to answer them fully and quickly.  Fire away, friends!

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