This post was initially posted on the Critical Mass Experience Matters blog on October 17, 2011.
We had a great turnout at Critical Mass for our Social Media Week presentation on measuring Social Media ROI. As the standing room only crowd attested, this is a topic that many people are grappling with right now.
One Step Forward, One Step Back
From my standpoint as a marketing science data junkie, the Facebook changes announced at F8, while very cool from my perspective as a user, ultimately amounted to no change at all in my role as a data analyst. While personally I am already enjoying the new design and sharing elements, when I put on my marketing hat, I can only be disappointed that in their version of the “open graph”, Facebook remains the only party with full insight into any users’ integrated history, and the exchanges across the social graph created by its users.
What did not change with the redesign is that Facebook’s business is still built on targeted marketing. Its expansion of interest signaling from just “liking” to now any verb will certainly improve Facebook’s ability to target based on unique and shared interests. Every business on Facebook would benefit from an understanding of their consumers’ shared interests and key influences across their social graph, but Facebook retains a tight hold on their sole position as market-maker. » Read more…
The first part of this blog on social media and marketing arrived at the observation that questioning the value of social media to your business is fine, but not bothering to look for an answer will be deadly.
Most businesses now understand that they cannot chose to ignore the question of how engagement in social media can benefit their business, so the search for an answer as to how this will work for them is now underway at most firms.
Of course, business being business, these explorations are rightly being rooted in questions of return on investment. In this light, understanding the value of social media to your business is the most critical first step in establishing a truly effective and value-generating social media strategy. » Read more…
The Challenge
Common sense asserts a wealth of marketing opportunity residing in the correct analysis of consumers’ publicly shared (and digitally documented) interests and interactions. However, there are significant challenges in separating valid information from noise, then structuring that valid data to draw actionable insights with the same level of confidence that businesses expect from their market research, web analytics insights, and other Business Intelligence functions.
The first generations of social media measurement and analysis have addressed these challenges as best they could. To advance beyond pseudo-science into the realm of truly actionable business analytics, the next generation of analysis will need to draw from the established standards and best-practices of organizations’ existing analytics functions such as web analytics, with established competency in building data-driven management practices from digital analytics. » Read more…
Markets and the businesses that serve them are being required to respond to the perpetual state of advance in digital information technologies, particularly social media and mobile. The question that everyone working in any part of digital communications is now facing (explicitly or not) is whether the change to business is more revolutionary or evolutionary.
As the currently pervasive online and offline discussions of topics such as “social media ROI” reveal, organizations are currently struggling to understand and manage these transformations through the established language (and mathematics) of business management. » Read more…
