I am so proud and happy to shine a spotlight on Rebecca Denison in today’s Community Week post. She was one of the first true fans of {grow} and one of my first guest bloggers, while she was still a student at UNC. She’s an Edelman measurement fanatic and here’s her take on the topic as it relates to her personal brand …

There has been an incredible focus on social media measurement lately, as well there should be.  If you want to convince business professionals and marketers to dive into social media, you need to be able to prove that there is value in it. Ideally value equals sales or dollars for most campaigns or projects, but is that really applicable to social media?

Is the bottom line really the only measure of success businesses focus on? Not exactly. For example, if you want to measure employee morale or satisfaction (arguably an important factor for any company), would you focus on dollars? Probably not. You’re more likely to track turnover or hallway chatter.

So why not measure social media the same way? Why not focus on the true goals of your social media marketing campaign?

Once you’ve decided that social media really is right for your business (and it may not be), your next step should be deciding what your definition of success is and how it will be measured.

Instead of trying to make social media try to fit traditional or common metrics, figure out how you will measure success.

When I first decided to put myself out there by joining Twitter and starting a blog, I did a bit of poking around to see how others were measuring their own social media success. A lot of the most common metrics and stats didn’t seem to fit my goals:

• Number of Twitter followers
• Number of retweets and @replies
• Number of blog subscribers
• Blog comments
• Total page views
• Unique page views

All of these metrics would only seem to feed my ego. I could never deny that it’s certainly nice to see these numbers grow, but to truly understand my progress, I focus on more specific numbers.

To understand my measure of success, you should first know why I joined social media in the first place. I wasn’t always such a digital nerd, but I’ve certainly always been a measurement nerd.

After I graduated from college last year, I took an internship focused on PR and media analysis. As I settled into my position and got a sense of the industry, I was curious to find more people who shared my interests and could offer expertise. And on a personal level, I wanted to meet more people in a new city. Lastly, something that is important to me both personally and professionally is to become a resource for measurement for others in my industry.

Knowing these goals, I brainstormed metrics and measures that were the most appropriate.

Social Media Goals & Metrics:

Goal: Connect and build relationships with other PR professionals and those interested in measurement. Metrics:

• Number of folks added to my “Measurement” list on Twitter
• Number of LinkedIn connections made with others interested in measurements
• Number of conversations per week about measurements

Goal: Find more ways to build friendships in Chicago. Metrics:

• Number of friends added to my “Close Friends” list on Twitter.
• Number of clubs and organizations discovered.
• Number of people I know I can count on in a pinch.

Goal: Become a measurement resource for others. Metrics:

• Number of recommendations received on Twitter.
• Number of guest blog posts written about measurement.
• Number of times per week I’m asked for advice about measurement.

While many of these metrics may not be appropriate for business, they all fit the goals in this case. Even though I may never be able to measure social media in the same way I can track the amount of money I spend on groceries month-over-month, I can easily track whether I’m reaching my own expectations.

What’s your biggest social media goal? How can you measure it?

Rebecca Denison is a social media analyst at Edelman Digital in Chicago who is passionate about all things measurement and all things UNC.

If you’ve read {grow} with any consistency you’ll recognize Jon Buscall as one of the most vibrant intellectual voices in our community. Today Jon tackles the tough issue of monetizing a blog community in our next installment of Community Week:

So many people (including Mark!) have written about the SEO benefits of blogs that I’m not going to repeat that here.  But one thing that rarely comes up is how B2B blogs help businesses convert readers and traffic into sales. Or whether they actually don’t!

Repeat Visitors & Conversion Apathy

If you’ve drunk the business blogging Kool-Aid and worked hard over time to build a strong, vocal community on your blog you might well find that repeat visitors don’t convert into sales. Go on, check your stats!

Regular visitors are there for something else: the community, the discussion, or even the friendships that forms around a successful blog.

As a business blogger it can be worrying to see that even if you’re putting highly visible call-to-actions above the fold the stream of regular visitors to your site forget about your propositions.

Maybe it’s because:

• regular visitors get used to your site and go straight to the content
• you don’t vary the call-to-actions often enough so they become “invisible”
• you don’t maximize the content space you’ve got to pimp your services
• regular blog readers often read your site with a news aggregator like Google Reader or NewsFire.

Why I Love First-time, Unique Visitors

My own experience is that it’s easier to covert first (or second) time visitors into clients with a B2B blog.

Yup, without going into the nitty-gritty of my own site stats, the biggest groups that make enquiries about our services at Jontus Media are, in fact, first timers. They’ve googled something, clicked through to our site and, low and behold decided to contact us (and Oh, boy do I love it when that happens!).

Google Analytics tells us this, but so do our customers when we ask them.

Now this isn’t to say that we’ve got spectacular landing pages or catchy call-to-actions littered across our site; but it does seem to suggest that all that our effort to build a community might be wasted! That in fact, the trust and thought-leadership that regular b2b business blogging generates is spotted by a cursory glance.

Google Analytics tells us that it only takes first time visitors a matter of minutes (or seconds) to convert organic search traffic into sales.

Give Me More !

Now I’m not knocking first time conversions. But I do want more business from that 30 percent of visitors who come back to our website on a daily basis. Even if it’s just a percentage or two.

So when it comes to B2B blog strategy I’ve got a few suggestions for those of us in the B2B business blogosphere who aren’t converting repeat visitors to customers. And want some of it.

Ask Yourself:

• Are our call-to-actions strong enough?
• How is the site working to remind the community that this is a business and that services (or products) are for sale?
• Is the overall site design geared towards conversion?
• Could we refresh the site design more frequently to stop visitors getting blind to our call-to-actions?
• Could we be making more use of our RSS feed to generate leads?

Finally, just to throw the baby out with the bathwater, maybe I’m wrong. And as I write it occurs to me that quite, possibly I am. Maybe I’m going after the impossible. Hell, maybe I shouldn’t think of a B2B blog as a conversion channel for repeat visitors in the first place?

Perhaps a B2B blog could / should just be a means to a different end. A great way of funneling visitors to an email list, for example, to be used for direct marketing.

Or perhaps it’s a word-of-mouth tool to help spread the news that you’re a kick-ass company with creative, insightful, quirky, talented staff.

So go on, help me out here! What can we do to really make a B2B blog a conversion engine? Or are B2B blogs for entirely different things?

______

Jon Buscall is head of Jontus Media, a creative content & communications agency working out of Stockholm, Sweden. You can follow Jon on Twitter.

Every week it seems there is some fresh research establishing that Twitter is irrelevant to businesses and/or brands. Bloggers gnaw endlessly on reports dismissing the marketing possibilities of micro-blogging, calling for the death of Twitter.

I’d like to suggest these debates are largely meaningless because so many of these reports are hopelessly flawed.  I’ll demonstrate this point by asking you a simple question:

If you took a survey asking you to name the brands you follow on Twitter, would you name me?

I’m guessing that you wouldn’t, because you relate to me as a person and possibly even a friend, and yet I am certainly also a personification of my company and its “brand” on Twitter.  I would be overlooked in any research report looking for how people relate to “brands” on Twitter, wouldn’t I?  And lots of other companies would be missed, too.

For example,  Amy Howell is the personification of Howell Marketing of Memphis, but I am following Amy because I like Amy.  Megan Parker is paid to be a voice of GE on Twitter.  I love her irreverent spins on corporate news and sometimes don’t even connect that in fact, I am following one of the largest companies in the world.  Everyone knows how fun and effective Chris Brogan is on Twitter yet make no mistake that he is the personification of his growing new media fiefdom. When you follow Chris, do you even think about him as a B2B company?

Here’s the deal. If research focuses on the benefits of Twitter for “business-to-business” or “business-to-consumer” it’s doomed because this channel is ultimately about P2P — person to person.  In fact I would suggest that with few exceptions, ONLY “personal” brands thrive on this platform.  I can’t imagine following a bottle of beer or a restaurant chain on Twitter yet I would eagerly follow real marketing professionals from those companies who can enlighten, teach, and entertain me.

And that’s why so many of these research reports are missing the point.  They’re asking the WRONG QUESTION.  In fact I think it would be very difficult to measure the complete business value of Twitter across the social web quantitatively — many of the successes are “stories” of connection or qualitative data points.  But I’m sure companies will keep trying to reduce Twitter to a list of survey questions because it’s easy to do, it’s a hot topic, and it’s a way to get their name at the top of the wave for a moment. And so many of these reports are being rushed to a data-hungry blogosphere without regard for statistical validity!

So, how many of the individuals I follow on Twitter represent brands or companies?  Just about every one of them!   And THAT’S the point!

Does this make sense to you?

The blogosphere is buzzing about the new social media measurement platform SAS Institute Inc. announced yesterday.   Is there a place for yet ANOTHER social web monitoring tool in a crowded market? And what is so special about this announcement?

The answer is yes, there is a place for this new entry, and here are four reasons why I think SAS will be successful in this competitive space.

Text-sensitive analysis — I had the opportunity to review several social media measurement platforms over the past few months including market leader Radian6.  Everyone is struggling with accurate textual analysis for “sentiment” reports and are loading up on costly human resources to examine tweets for tone and emotion.  Most don’t think computers can do it.  If SAS has started to crack this code — and some say they have done this by leveraging their other existing technologies — this will be of immense value to customers.  And hey, they claim they can understand and classify conversations in 13 languages (Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish).

Experience — I can say from my corporate days that SAS has a superb reputation in the analytical space and has expert resources that small competitors simply cannot match. During the Internet press conference, Katie Paine (a presenter) said, “Can you imagine the design of experiments we can run with these capabilities?”  Now we’re talking!  Putting the SAS computer power and analytical experience to the test in the social media market will produce incredibly powerful, breakthrough insights. We can only hope they make some of the new marketing innovations available to us little guys!

Market access — This move just makes so much business sense for SAS. They are already providing powerful analytical software to many of the most important companies in the world.  They are already embedded in the corporate cultures.  They speak the language. This is a perfect market extension for them.  They already own these customers and this is way to gather in the social media monitoring revenue as well.

Integration with traditional systems — SAS already provides their customers with services such as marketing campaign management, customer experience analytics, marketing performance management and web analytics. Add the social web on top of this and you are looking for some powerhouse combinations, some potentially breath-taking insights.

So that’s why SAS is going to kick social media butt.  And notice I didn’t even mention the basic analytical capabilities or user interface.  I’ll leave that to the tech writers. Besides it doesn’t really matter.   Nobody will really leverage technology in this space for competitive advantage when all the underlying data is already available.  Making the technology do tricks is the easy part. Having the market presence, integration capabilities, and customer access — now that’s something that SAS can take to the bank.

Is there still room for the other players?  Of course.  First, SAS is going for the large enterprise market. Bring $60,000 in annual fees just to get a seat with the basic platform and $180,000/year for the deluxe model.  That leaves 90 percent of the market for the other guys to squabble over.

Who does this impact the most? Probably Radian6. They’ve been working the large enterprises like Dell and Pepsi so this will be a tough new competitor on the enterprise scene.  But hey, this is a white-hot, still-emerging market. I would expect to see consolidation and players dropping out on the lower end of the market before the higher end, and even that is going to take some time.

What do you think?  Who are the big winners and losers out of this?  How will the market be impacted?

Well, I’ve written two recent posts on why people DON’T comment on blogs — one about re-defining engagement, and one with feedback on why people just don’t like to participate.

So today I thought I would write a post on why you NEED to comment.  But I’m not going to go into boring blogger mode by listing “Five Reasons You Should Leave Blog Comments blah blah blah.”  Instead I want to show you how leaving comments can result in serious business and financial benefits for YOU.  And I’m not kidding.

You see, this is not about just writing a little note at the end of one of my articles.  This is about showing up and joining a powerful business network.

So I’m going to put my money where my blog is.  Let me demonstrate just a few ways how the people who engage on {grow} have benefited …

• Gregg Morris was one of the first regular members of this community. We have become dear friends and he has become one of my paid technical consultants for my customers.
• Steve Dodd is another amazing guy I’m sure you’ve seen around here. He helped me land one of my best customers and we continue to help each other on joint commercial opportunities.
• Michelle Chmielewski did a company video for me and received a new HD camera from me for her work. Michelle and I have subsequently worked on many ideas together and I’m sure we always will.
• I’ve provided new customer leads to Trey Pennington, Christina Kerley, Lisa Foote and many others.
• Michele Linn has been a paid writer for me on one of my biggest customer projects.
• I helped Nathan Dube push his company promotion into viral territory and the case study I wrote up on him is being used by Jason Falls in a seminar this week.
• Billy Mitchell has become a great friend and I’m helping him develop a very important webinar for his company.
• I’ve pitched in to help charitable causes that were important to Billy, Danny Brown, Kacy Maxwell and others.
• I’m helping John Bottom with a social media experiment he’s conducting at an upcoming conference.
• I’ve helped edit a new book coming out soon by Rebel Brown and we help each other on all kinds of problems.
• I’ve provided free advice through phone calls and emails to DOZENS of people from {grow} and from time to time I’ve also called on my new blog friends to help me too.

I’m sorry if I missed you and your story … I could literally fill three blog posts with examples of the wonderful people on {grow} and how we help each other.

But you see this is just the beginning.  Because when you participate in {grow}, you’re not just connecting to me, you’re giving yourself a chance to connect to EVERYBODY.  I am seeing tons of new business connections among people who first met each other right here. And how did they do that?  They COMMENTED.  They ENGAGED.  And together we’ve formed a cool little help network of friends.

So why not get on board?  We need you here!  And don’t use “I have nothing to say” as an excuse.  Of course you have something to say, even if it’s “I appreciated Steve’s comment,” or “Something like that happened to me too,” or “Mark, you need to shut up now.”

Remember, you’re not just commenting on a blog, you’re joining this community of dynamic business professionals … and you never know what might happen!

So now tell me again, what’s the benefit of invisibility?

In all of the posts I’ve read about social media measurement, very few address the possible role of qualitative research — measuring when you don’t have data — so let’s take a look at that today, shall we?  This will not be boring, I promise.

To make sure we’re all on a level playing field, let me quickly review the difference between QUANTITATIVE and QUALITATIVE data.

Quantitative marketing research is descriptive and conclusive.  It addresses research objectives through numerical measurement and statistical analysis.  In the social media world, this means data you can easily collect and measure like tweets, page views, comments, and perhaps even sales.  These are the facts and figures that get all the headlines. 

Qualitative Research is more, well …  touchy-feely.  It uses small samples and may involve focus groups, interviews, and behavioral observation.  Although it does not lend itself to statistical analysis* it can still be a quick and effective way to tell a story.

Because of all the free and voluminous data available through the social web, most of the attention is on the sexy quantitative side, but it might not be the best way to show value or tell your story.

Story time

Let me give an example from my own experience …

In addition to marketing and management, I also have a background in organizational development.  On one of my projects, I was delivering a training program to help correct dysfunctional management-union dynamics in a large company.  The people who went through the program raved about its effectiveness and had concrete examples of how it was dramatically improving the workplace.  The company’s top managers — who would not go through the program — were very skeptical about any progress and, lacking measurable results, were leaning toward cancelling it.  Like most managers, they demanded quantitative measurement … and I didn’t have it.  Sound familiar?

At the next employee training session, I mentioned that the program was probably going to be cancelled. The result was an out-pouring of outrage by both union and management participants. I had a video camera nearby for a training exercise and said, “Excuse me, but would you mind if I just turn this thing on to record your views?”

The group proceeded to tell story after story about the benefits of the training and also scolded upper management for not attending.  I edited the video to conform to the 5-minute executive attention span and played it during their next meeting. The managers sat dumbfounded and impressed as their employees passionately talked about the tangible benefits of the training. By the end of the meeting they all committed to attending the training themselves and expanding the program — without one pie chart!

Apply this to the social web

I use this example because like PR, marketing, or social media programs, training is very hard to quantify on a nice, neat spreadsheet.   This situation was a perfect time to use stories — qualitative data — to define value in a very different, yet compelling, way.

When you’re struggling to measure the value of social media marketing in your company don’t overlook the possibility of using qualitative stories from customers, employees and other stakeholders.  They might be showing up every day in comments, reviews, and customer meetings.

The technology of the social web offers unprecedented ways to capture and display this qualitative output.  And you know, sometimes all it takes is ONE story to provide more new insight than a dozen graphs!

What are your ideas?  What are some of the ways we can use stories to demonstrate the value of marketing through the social web?

*Michelle Chmielewski wrote in a {grow} comment that values can indeed be assigned to qualitative data to create numerical analysis. In effect this is how sentiment analysis is conducted. However, I was just trying to keep it simple today! : )

There is an argument around the blogosphere that is DRIVING ME CRAZY.

When it turns to the topic of measurement and social media marketing, many “authorities” flippantly rely on the “double standard” argument — If you’re trying to measure the value of SM, you might as well measure the value of a cell phone, the company car and the receptionist.    One popular blogger and author recently said if your manager asks for the ROI of your social media initiative, you should ask him for the ROI of his pants.  Their point is that you just need to accept the social web as something ubiquitous and necessary, so why worry about it?

This is lunacy.  Here are three reasons why this “no need to measure” view is an irresponsible position:

1) Never get caught with your stats down

Let’s examine the argument that you don’t measure the value of a company car, or email so insisting that we measure social media is a double standard.

Even if you don’t directly account for the on-going value of these items on a spreadsheet, there is an implied economic value to cars and cell phones and all this everyday stuff.

I’ve spent a lot of time studying social media “listening tools” and found this site via Sidney Eve Matrix (follow!).  This slide deck by Stefan Betzhold (follow!) compares both free and paid options and I found it very useful. 

The idea of monitoring and measuring is crucial to social media marketing, whether for a company or your own personal brand.  It is also the most dynamic and exciting area of marketing right now. If you haven’t put together a personal “listening” platform, this side deck is a good place to start!  Click and enjoy!

This is also a good example of effectively using Slideshare to promote a concept and a company.  Do you have slide presentations suitable to share with the world? Why not get a little extra “oomph” out of your effort by posting on Slideshare?

Awhile back I put forth a “success formula” to create business benefits through social media:

Connections + Meaningful Content + Authentic Helpfulness = Benefits

The more I see and hear and learn about the social web, the more I’m convinced this is spot-on.  You can see the whole article here, by the way.

I’m learning that within this formula, content is a SEVERE bottleneck for most companies.  Here’s why:

1. Companies are piling on to the social web and are desperate to provide content that will cut through the clutter. It takes a special talent to do that. Typically, they don’t have that special talent … but are willing to pay for it.
2. I’m sure you’ve heard stats like, “more content has been created in the last five years than in the history of mankind.”  I either made that up or I heard it someplace (or both) but I’m sure you’ve heard similarly ridiculous statements.  There is a kernel of truth in there, however.  There’s already too much freaking content for any normal person to keep up with.  And the problem is going to get worse.  In fact, it will never get better. The need for content seems insatiable. This exacts more pressure on companies to not only develop “meaningful” content, but content that will knock your socks off.  Every day.
3. The need for “authenticity” is an artificial barrier set by the social media country club that is keeping some people from ghost blogging. (Article on how to do it RIGHT is here.)  That barrier will go down as the price companies are willing to pay for content goes up.  There will be plenty of content-whores around for everybody.  And I mean that in the most respectful way.  

So here’s the business plan: Come up with a posse of technical writers/content whores who can churn out blogs on a variety of subjects (maybe organize by verticals) and fill this out-sourcing market niche.  I would do it myself but I’m far too lazy.  

So there it is.  Business Idea of the Year!  Go be the Wal-Mart of content.  The Blog Super Store.  Content Whore Warehouse.  Whatever, just go do it and I’ll be the first to hire you for my customers.   See, you can’t tell me I never did anything for you. : )

Yesterday Business.com released additional results of its milestone study of social media  usage across American business, this time with a focus on B2B.  This research should put an end to the argument over the relevance of social media in the industrial sector. In fact, it appears that by percentage, B2B is ahead of B2C in some key categories.

Like the general study I reported last week, this report is chock-full of details by industry, job type, and social media platform. It’s significant because of the scope of the study and the statistical rigor applied to the results. I recommend spending time with this survey, but here are some highlights that caught my attention:

• B2B (defined as companies with >2/3 sales to other companies) actually show as much, or more, involvement in social media as counterparts in B2C.
• Professionals working on social media devoted 21% of their time to this activity versus 18% for the study average (this would imply a much lower rate for B2C but the number is not broken out).
•  B2B company respondents have somewhat more experience with business social media initiatives than their peers in B2C and mixed companies – 30% of B2B respondents have less than one year of business social media experience versus 35% across the study
•  The study showed a statistically significant difference in social media activity with B2B’s dominating in 11 out of 14 social media categories. The three exceptions are – there’s no B2B versus B2C difference in the percentage of companies managing online communities, and B2B companies are significantly less likely than B2C companies to monitor online ratings/reviews of their products or services and to advertise on social media sites.
• B2B’s are more likely to pay for social media monitoring platforms.
• B2B’s are having better fortune seeing an impact of social web projects on their web traffic (70% versus 62%); Revenue (60%/52%) and sales leads (57%/53%).
• Marketing owns the social media initiative in 76% of the B2B’s versus 63% B2C.
• B2B companies maintain a high presence on social media sites, with 81% maintaining one or more accounts on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. B2B companies are much more likely to engage in micro-blogging on Twitter than B2C companies.

It should be noted that of the total survey participants, just 25% were B2B, indicating that overall adoption of social media probably lags B2C.  And while the most highly-publicized success stories are eminating from B2C, this study shows conclusively that among those participating in the social web, B2B’s may be engaged more deeply and more broadly than their B2C counterparts … some of the most surprising, and compelling, conclusions I’ve seen in this field.

What are your thoughts on this research?