Social Networks

This article, written by Guy Stephens, was originally published on BeingGuy1067 on 17/12/10 and is republished here with permission.

A colleague of mine @RichardSedley tweeted about Fuselab’s Montage the other day. ‘Montage’ is a new ‘web-based service that makes it fun and easy to create and share a visual album of the web on the topics you care about’. So I decided to give it a go and create a ‘montage’ or ‘A visual social customer care primer‘. Read more…

On November 18th, Foviance presented at the Digital Fundraising conference 2010. The event included a number of insightful talks providing ideas, insight and case studies of amazing fundraising efforts that have been successful online. Along with Catriona Campbell, I helped chair the afternoon sessions. These focused on providing details of how the digital space could be used to maximise fundraising opportunities online and they really did demonstrate roaring success. Read more…

Gap this week announced a new logo, and all they had to say about it  (this only after a social media storm was unleashed around it) – is that after 20 years, it was time for a change. To put things in perspective, the “old” Gap logo is something of a branding icon – the 84th most-valuable brand in the world, according to Interbrand’s 2010 study, valued at nearly $4 billion on its books. Read more…

By Billie Andersen

Social networking and technology, such as mobile and computers, are very much an item these days but it’s still not clear exactly who ‘wears the trousers’ in this passionate relationship. The rise in popularity of social networking is fundamentally changing the development of technology. But in its turn, emerging technologies are continuing to shape the ways in which we communicate and use social networking. Read more…

In response to NMA article, 21 January 2010 Peter McCormack, co-founder of McCormack and Morrison, makes some interesting points in his opinion piece in published in NMA 21st January.

If brands are truly throwing away their traditional marketing campaigns in favour of third party channels such as Facebook then I would agree it is unwise – but only ‘today‘. Because today you cannot connect the dots and establish the identity of twitter’ers and other anonymous users of social networks, but that will not always be the case. There will come a time when total transparency exists online and your anonymity will be lost. Read more…

In this podcast with Ashley Friedlein, CEO of Econsultancy, we discussed digital marketing in social media, specifically Twitter.

Interview with Ashley Friedleing, CEO of Econsultancy

• Episode title: An interview with Ashley Friedlein
• Episode number: 4
• Series: Expert Interviews
• Duration: 27 minutes

Listen now:

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Or, Download the Ashley Friedlein podcast (12mb)

An abridged version of the conversation between Ashley Friedlein and Paul Blunden can be read in our August Newsletter.

Alternatively you can also read the Podcast transcript

By Chris Holmes

“Creating your own blog is about as easy as creating your own urine, and you’re about as likely to find someone else interested in it.” — Lore Sjöberg. Read more…

There have been a number of items in the online and printed press recently regarding measurement. It seems that when the going gets tough, the tough start measuring, and for digital media, things have never been tougher. I expect to see a lot more on the subject in the coming months as the recession bites, so I thought it might be useful to look at one area that commentators are finding particularly interesting.

Social media measurement has received significant attention, particularly since the elevation of Twitter as the application of the hour, but organisations were already discussing how social media in general should be measured. Just this week, Matthew Yeomans of Custom Communications was interviewed by Econsultancy on the subject. Yeomans identifies three areas that combine to provide ROI data about social media effectiveness in a campaign context. These are: Reach, captured from how many people are talking about a brand post campaign; Sentiment, from people during the campaign; and Competitor Analysis to identify how the brand compared to peers.

It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that the measurement of sentiment triggers the most debate when talking with clients. Methods range from software solutions that track words such as ‘like’ and ‘hate’ alongside mentions of brands, to detailed manual evaluation of comments made by identified influencers. The differences between qualitative versus quantitative methods and hybrid solutions leave marketers no clearer about the best approach. Even within the social media industry there is widespread concern that when discussing social media measurement, too many people are talking different languages and finding no concrete answers – yet.

Research conducted late last year by Marketing Sherpa added further to the conversation and the education. The US study looked at what worked in social media measurement, and where problems existed. It concluded that too many marketers were hung up on quantitative measurement when in fact qualitative measures added the most value. The survey found that the easiest things to measure (advertising for example) were actually the least effective, while the hardest things to measure (user reviews and ratings and relationships with bloggers) were the most effective.

Working in a research organisation, I understand why qualitative measurement is so important. 60% of the work we do is qualitative, although a great deal of that qualitative work is also supported by quantitative findings from parallel research in complementary areas (using web analytic traffic data to enrich findings from lab observation studies, for example). In our view both are needed to present the complete picture, but there are cost benefit arguments with every research project.

One thing is certain; there is a lot more to learn. Marketers will have to work through the noise to develop a clear understanding of how measurement should work for them. Establishing a measurement framework and strategy is work that can and should be done before even getting involved with evaluating solutions, and it should start far higher than the social media level. Providing your organisation with a measurement strategy is the gift that keeps on giving as it makes sure any decision making is firmly grounded in the business.

Returning to Twitter, we can see a great example of where an established strategy would help meet the challenge of measuring effectiveness. Trawling through pages of ‘Tweets’ to identify which referred to your campaign or website is not only time consuming it’s also very difficult to get right. Twitter’s prolific use of Tiny URL makes it impossible to see your campaign URL without actually clicking through each link. A better idea of what to look for can only help.

Businesses trying Twitter out today can write the investment off as innovation. Fairly soon though, senior people are going to start asking about ROI. When they do, we can expect to see a range of measurement solutions hitting the market very soon afterwards. By which time of course, Twitter will have been superseded by the next big thing. Do try and keep up!