ScribbleLive

Got in a little late, was talking with Michael Garrity from the previous panel.

Panelists talking about ROI measurement on social media projects

Alan: measurement isn't so different from non-social media campaigns. It's difficult to track sales from any marketing.

Sylvain: not all campaigns are made to drive sales. Gave Greenpeace marketing as example. Selling is one objective. Talking to your consumers and adding value is another measurement.

Katie: research shows engaged employees have lower turnover, more efficient. a lot of engagement is good for business. you can find the #s to say that. engagement can help your business through a crisis. even though engagement is now done through social media, it's nothing new.

Alan: nobody is coming and saying i need to move a million widgets by next christmas. innovation, risk capital and experimentation is where it's at. Benchmarks can include web analytics. How many blog posts, how many comments, how many visits. Benchmark something. You've gone from zero to 10, then set a goal for 6 months. Then you can show traction. Then people can see a line going up on a chart and that's enough for experimentation phase.

Alan: in traditional space, it was hard to say I did this and then sold X. In the web, it's easier to say that. My business was on TechCrunch then I got this traffic.

Katie: you can put a number on time, track web traffic and analytics. in non-profit world, interaction & outreach is an important measurement tool.

Alan: advocacy is a different thing to track then trying to sell a motorcycle.

Katie: one place looks @ google rank and makes calculation on how much it would cost to have ad words in the same space.

Katie: are you doing a social media program to do google juice or get customer engagement?

Alan: the beer guys will tell you if they put an ad on and it's a sunny day, they sell more beer. they can't do that with social media. short term gain is tough to turnaround.

Sylvain says he disgrees on the advocacy side (that there's no short term turnaround on social media)

audience question: wants an example that worked well and something that didn't work well.

Sylvain: depends on what you measure. some campaigns have little audience, but the campaign was influential to that small group.

Sylvain: social media is mass reach. challenge is how do we make sense out of this? there's no great answer yet. we're still looking for key influencers to drive a lot of traffic.

Katie: there was an assumption made that exposure is good. social media by its nature skips over eyeball count and goes straight from activity to outcome.

Katie: some companies get more traction going to amazon than techcrunch.

audience question: is advocacy getting good return vs traditional goods on social media? if so, why is advocacy getting more traction?

Alan: people want to rally around ideas. social media gives them a place to easily rally around ideas.

Katie: in the old world, you wanted to effect regime change in local government. if there's 1 newspaper and didn't go along w/your idea of regime change, you were out of luck. now you can start a blog and another person can, and suddenly there's a few hundred readers and the old politicians are defeated at election time. word of mouth and readers were influencers in the town. social media is reaching people that you wouldn't normally reach.

Alan: marketers look for key influencers. influencers identify themselves on social media. if you start a blog, that person figures they have something to say and if they have something to say online, they have something to say offline too.

audience comment: we have to figure out what works in social media. companies trying to measure social media needs open source. we need agreement among people about what is measured means.

Sylvain: we all have our own voodoo way of explaining this stuff (social media return)

audience question: how can you measure influence beyond the blog?

Alan: you can see their influence on their blog, they write it. the may be influential another way. "you have to be psychic" "asking customers is not always foolproof because customers aren't that smart" big audience groan follows

Alan: many customers say they saw something on TV, even when they didn't have a commercial.

Katie: you're asking the wrong question. ask them how they feel about something and what they've done and come up w/a corelation on what they're buying.

audience question: how do you feel the effectiveness of scaling with companies. is it easier for small or large companies? is it more advantageous for a large company to use social media

Alan: depends on your time. coke has a bigger marketing department, so they could have more reach. other marketing is also relevant.

Sylvain: bloggers count for less than 16% of what people count on for a source of information. (Guinevere says: I wonder where he got that stat?)

Alan: companies big & small should be paying attention what's going online rather than mount a massive social media campaign. start with listening.

Katie: small business measures results in terms of sales & marketshare. it's nice to say you have social media activity but the little guy is more worried about dollars in his pocket. Don't spend too much money on measurement if you're not getting any insight.

Katie: you need a clear definition of "work". is "working" x # of visits, unique visits, what is it? you need a clear benchmark to measure.

Alan: clients looking for social media measurement are coming from everywhere... all industries. there's a digital component to every outreach a business wants to do.

Sylvain: social media programs are different from engagement. the first has a beginning and an end. the 2nd is about building a relationship.

Katie: conversations are easy w/people who understand data. PR people are allergic to numbers and the measurement conversation is difficult.

Alan: discussions vary by client. hard numbers need to drive a level activity in some space. others just want to build closer relationships with customers in specific areas. have done work for Intel with customers in gaming. they haven't said they want to meet x # of gamers, they just want to start talking with them. first time, do not say you are going to do X when you start.

Alan: the ah-ha moment for a lot of comments is when the blogger is shown in mainstream/traditional media. it illustrates to clients that you have to pay attention to blogs.

Alan: he wrote about flying Porter on his blog and then was interviewed by traditional news outlets about his experience because his blog post showed up on Google.

Stuart thanks panelists. applause/end.