The Elements of Influence

Posted by Scot Wheeler on May 27, 2011 0 comments

Many current discussions of online or social influence are focused on the “how” of measuring influence, exploring how the ever expanding wealth of digital data sources can be mashed-up to provide accurate estimates of a person’s ability to persuade others. These are valuable discussions for our current position on the social intelligence technology curve, and large investments are being placed behind efforts to program a better influence calculation.

The smart money in this race (or more likely slow climb) to accurately measure influence in order to better drive business results surely recognizes that “influence” cannot be measured on a single, universal scale. » Read more…

Walmart and Tesco Make Big Moves in Social Strategy

Posted by Scot Wheeler on May 23, 2011 1 comment

Tesco just announced its acquisition of social media marketing firm BzzAgent. This follows Walmart’s April acquisition of social media analytics firm Kosmix.

The world’s first and third largest retailers have thus set into motion what they view as the next stage in customer intelligence and engagement.

Each firm’s acquisition reflects a gap in their prior organization. Tesco has maintained what is apparently one of the most advanced customer intelligence databases for over a decade, while Walmart’s current consumer insights group was launched in February of 2011. (I’ve created a Storify story with background on Walmart and Tesco’s consumer intelligence approaches up to and including today’s acquisition.)

With a wealth of consumer insights already at hand, Tesco’s acquisition of a firm that specializes in linking loyalty and social-network promotions makes perfect sense in extending their existing intelligence into social engagement. What they do not get with BzzAgent is a social intelligence platform – a way to collect insights from social networks. Tesco may already have such insights through their existing database in order to add social graph connections as an additional layer on its existing consumer insights. » Read more…

The “Wisdom of Crowds” and Social Media Research Strategy

Posted by Scot Wheeler on May 18, 2011 0 comments

A few posts back, I wrote about the interdependence of communication and feedback in a social media listening strategy. That’s why I couldn’t pass up some commentary on this recent Wired article on a study that finds that sharing information actually reduces the “wisdom of crowds”.

This finding provides an intentional instance of the “observer effect” bias addressed in the earlier post, in which interaction with a population shapes the results coming from that population. In social media engagement, interaction with the population we want to learn from (through our listening program and other social media research) is unavoidable, thus, we must design our interactions to elicit the best feedback possible by accounting for the observer effect. This recent insight into the accuracy of data culled from crowds must clearly be taken into account by anyone conducting opinion or preference research from social media conversations. » Read more…

Investigative Forms of Social Media Measurement

Posted by Scot Wheeler on May 12, 2011 0 comments

In yesterday’s post I wrote about the category of social media measurement most frequently discussed in conference sessions; evaluative measurement which identifies/estimates the impact that communications are having across various media channels including social networks.

While this one form of measurement gets a lot of attention thanks to the facts that 1) people need to show value to their bosses/clients and 2) measurement vendors like to sponsor these conferences, there are other reasons for measurement that also bring great value to organizations.

While evaluative measurement looks backwards at what has been done to evaluate and confirm (and provides real value by this when done right), investigative measurement is a forward looking approach that seeks to discover advantages or even predict outcomes. » Read more…

When Measurement Talk Meets Measurement Walk…

Posted by Scot Wheeler on May 11, 2011 1 comment

Nearly every social media conference has its requisite session on measuring social media, usually featuring the same key points (often from the same key people), 1) it needs to be done, 2) it should be aligned with business objectives, 3) volume-based measurements do not measure impact, and 4) measurements must be interpreted against objectives to yield insight.

These points are often an eye-opener to people just beginning to formalize their social media practices, and a reminder of the ideal practice to those immersed in the daily flow of social media engagement. » Read more…