Smart Social Marketing: Segment, Analyze, and Follow the Money

Well stated. Even a year later, with more sophisticated metrics and analytics tools in place for measuring social media impact, I still don't think we are there yet. Most of my clients see a spike in "brand buzz", name recognition, and traffic to their websites, but not necessarily a bump in conversions. I think you can make money using social media effectively, but I'm still looking for tools to accurately measure and monitor social media influence.

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Ditto to Stuarts remarks.

I'm hoping that someone accidentally misrepresented Greer in that tweet. I maybe should have been more explicit in the postu00e2u0080u0094those types of comments do nothing but distract. How are we to measure social media brand engagement anyway? I'm leery of trusting numbers without a credible URL or a data set.

Second, I think that it's necessary, before we look to large scale trends (as Stuart said, "fire hose"), that we look at the microtrending stories the data we've gathered from customers is telling us. If an organization has a very low cost of new customer acquisition, but a very high retention rate, then I think that organization's focus in their social strategies should primarily reflect their need to retain customers.

I've just seen far too many institutions writing social media engagement plans through their own intuition, without looking to what their data tells them they need to do better.

But on society need a year out, I think we're doing some of this prediction when we look at microtrends (a la Mark Penn - http://www.microtrending.com/ ]. Penn was able to find a small faction of women who he called "soccer moms" that helped to elect Clinton. This without social network data.

I think that too often we focus on the "next big thing," when in fact, businesses can sometimes benefit more greatly from creating a product that fit the needs of 2000 hardcore fans of some obscure form of scrap booking.

But I do have an honest question on trending, because your point has made me curious: Is there anyone you see out there who is moving in the right direction in terms of data-gathering and fast action?

Fucking awesome points.

The first one is dead on. Can't even remotely dismiss it. I think Ann Greer may have been on meth when she came up with that figure.

Second? No. That kind of analysis is best done internally via a walled garden of customers/consumers. You can't drink directly from the fire hose. If you take aggregate data from a larger network...you have to use some type of filtering method to discern which data is valuable and which isn't.

I'd put more credence in a consumer who uses your product then a so called "social influencer". After all...they have first hand knowledge.

First, I dispute that social media is nearly half of brand experience for most consumers. This is nonsense. The average U.S. consumer spends 5 hours and 9 minutes in front of live television vs. less than an hour on social media; and our daily lives (walking, talking, seeing, listening to other humans talking) exposes us to much more information.

Second, I love your focus on tracking. But there is a BIG problem few have addressed -- how do we listen to social media to observe real trends? Most chatter goes up and down quickly. Balloon Boy and Skittles both crested and fell within a week. So how can a brand really listen to assess what consumers will need a year or two from now -- required, since big companies take a year to move products into a production pipeline.

Trending. Real trending. That predicts societal needs a year out. Throw that question out at a guru or two at your next conference and let me know if they have a coherent answer. Until we can use the data to make predictions beyond our noses, the data won't help us very much at all.

Social MArketing is still practically inexpensive until today. But with their influences rising like wild fire, it's a matter of time when we have to pay for them.

Ditto to Stuarts remarks.

I'm hoping that someone accidentally misrepresented Greer in that tweet. I maybe should have been more explicit in the postu00e2u0080u0094those types of comments do nothing but distract. How are we to measure social media brand engagement anyway? I'm leery of trusting numbers without a credible URL or a data set.

Second, I think that it's necessary, before we look to large scale trends (as Stuart said, "fire hose"), that we look at the microtrending stories the data we've gathered from customers is telling us. If an organization has a very low cost of new customer acquisition, but a very high retention rate, then I think that organization's focus in their social strategies should primarily reflect their need to retain customers.

I've just seen far too many institutions writing social media engagement plans through their own intuition, without looking to what their data tells them they need to do better.

But on society need a year out, I think we're doing some of this prediction when we look at microtrends (a la Mark Penn - http://www.microtrending.com/ ]. Penn was able to find a small faction of women who he called "soccer moms" that helped to elect Clinton. This without social network data.

I think that too often we focus on the "next big thing," when in fact, businesses can sometimes benefit more greatly from creating a product that fit the needs of 2000 hardcore fans of some obscure form of scrap booking.

But I do have an honest question on trending, because your point has made me curious: Is there anyone you see out there who is moving in the right direction in terms of data-gathering and fast action?

Fucking awesome points.

The first one is dead on. Can't even remotely dismiss it. I think Ann Greer may have been on meth when she came up with that figure.

Second? No. That kind of analysis is best done internally via a walled garden of customers/consumers. You can't drink directly from the fire hose. If you take aggregate data from a larger network...you have to use some type of filtering method to discern which data is valuable and which isn't.

I'd put more credence in a consumer who uses your product then a so called "social influencer". After all...they have first hand knowledge.

First, I dispute that social media is nearly half of brand experience for most consumers. This is nonsense. The average U.S. consumer spends 5 hours and 9 minutes in front of live television vs. less than an hour on social media; and our daily lives (walking, talking, seeing, listening to other humans talking) exposes us to much more information.

Second, I love your focus on tracking. But there is a BIG problem few have addressed -- how do we listen to social media to observe real trends? Most chatter goes up and down quickly. Balloon Boy and Skittles both crested and fell within a week. So how can a brand really listen to assess what consumers will need a year or two from now -- required, since big companies take a year to move products into a production pipeline.

Trending. Real trending. That predicts societal needs a year out. Throw that question out at a guru or two at your next conference and let me know if they have a coherent answer. Until we can use the data to make predictions beyond our noses, the data won't help us very much at all.

Social MArketing is still practically inexpensive until today. But with their influences rising like wild fire, it's a matter of time when we have to pay for them.