The concept of social listening is an integral component of being able to produce measurable ROI from your social media strategy. In Part 1 of this 3 part series, I discussed the value of balancing pushing content versus pulling data to garner insight.  I also introduced the concept of the 4 pillars of social listening: Features, Content, Accuracy and Infrastructure. Today we will further discuss the 4 pillars and how an understanding of them will help you make decisions for your program.

So how does this apply to the listening market’s development?

The graphic below is a representation of the cross section of the pillars described, the maturation of the market over time and where we are as of today. Each phase of the market as I described it is from the perspective of a madman selling the concept of listening to companies, agencies and consulting firms.  It is what I perceived to be important to those interested in buying and represents the cultural shift in the buying cycle of the customer.

The Features ERA: 2009-2011

The first era of social listening was the features era.  It was highlighted by the importance of “seeing”.  All that mattered for a very long time was the visual expression of data.  While people cared a bit about how much data a company gave them, the conversation of whether the data was accurate or not was invisible.  It was all about volume shifts and the numbers; not what was really behind them.  This era was highlighted by the trailblazing of the PR department (the true champions of social listening) who really owned it back then.  They wanted to measure and know how much reach and volume their company’s efforts generated.  It was really the Wild West back then.  Because the pace of PR is frenetic, they didn’t stop to smell the social media roses and often simply measured and moved.  As a scientist, I hated this era, because the blindness to asking the important questions about the data were nowhere to be found.  It was all about “can you express it?  I want to slice and dice, quality be damned!”

The Content ERA:  2012 – Creeping into 2013

If you care about measuring and expressing data, the next logical question is do you have all the data?  This was the hallmark of the content era of social listening.  Everything became about can you get me all the data.  How many languages do you have?  Do you have the twitter firehose?  Can you get it all, I need it all.  I need to be able to see every single frickin tweet.  Can you see them all?  If you can’t what can I do with this?  This conversation when I get into it always reminds me of Kramer talking to Jerry and George after he wins the coffee lawsuit when he was hopped up on caffeine.  Insert the dialogue using Kramer’s style and you are living in a content hell conversation.  Last year was all about this.  First, it was “can you see it?” and then it became “how much can you see?”  Again, I am not knocking the importance of content at all.  It is a critical part of being a good listening system (as there are new data channels that must be captured popping up all the time), but there is more than having all the data.  I mean, they have been polling forever using representative samples to make accurate predictions.  And I know you will say, I can’t miss any tweets when someone beats on my brand or when I need to find patient zero during a crisis, and you would be correct in this, but content isn’t everything.  It is a merely a key element.  During the content era.

The Accuracy ERA:  2013 and the foreseeable immediate future

Well, here we are…today.  The market is finally shifting towards accuracy.  ”Can I see it?” and “how much can I see?” has finally been replaced by the sensibility of “is the data trustworthy or actionable?”  It is nice to have the ability to express social data.  It is great that you can see everything.  But if your data is crap, how can you make any decisions? This is why accuracy is becoming so important.  If you are in a social media crisis and you are able to track the rise or fall in all the volume around the subject that is giving you heartburn, but can’t really understand if the data making up those sets is filled with crap, then how can you even trust what you are seeing?  I will go one step further, if you can’t accurately understand what that data is telling you, how can you know if what you are PUSHING is making it better or worse?  Let’s take another use case I love, customer care.  Yes, you need every tweet to be able to catch and engage issues your consumers are having with you.  There are, however, two sides to this use case.  One side is being able to quickly know who is talking about what so you can engage more quickly.  If the front end of that process is a dataset littered with junk the chances of you missing something goes up.  And if the data is no good, let’s not discuss how much time you are wasting searching for that tweet you need to engage with.  Again, if you have all the data and it is the right data, then the features that allow you to see it are actionable and trustworthy.  We are here today and the rise of accuracy is enabling the design of a litany of use cases across a variety of verticals.  If you have the first three pillars you can do much with your program…but it is still not enough.

The Infrastructure ERA:  2014

At the end of the day, social listening is an effort to tame big data.  In order to tame big data you need an infrastructure capable of managing the continued immenseness of it all.  The other three pillars will continue to evolve for sure, but those who will be standing at the end have the infrastructure to continuously innovate.  If you have built the right backbone, you can easily roll with the market as it tries to punch you.  Enterprise social intelligence is a battle that is currently raging, but is only winnable by those who have the flexibility of infrastructure to handle it all.  The infrastructure era will bring integration into the fold as well as a company’s ability to continue to execute the other three pillars with excellence.  Social enterprise intelligence will be about actionable data that is a closed loop process that brings value to the business every single day.  We are certainly aren’t there yet, but that day is coming soon to a marketplace near you.

So how can this help you make decisions for your program?

No one likes the word change in a software market, but if you haven’t realized you have to be a change agent to successfully sell and implement a listening program, get off the can and flush.  Whether you are an agency selling to your customers, an internal champion standing up your program or a software vendor attacking both, you are in the business of change, so accept your fate.  And when it comes to selling change, I find having a model to process anything that comes at you is imperative.  This is why I built this model.  It helps ME evangelize effectively because I can use this language in conversation I enter into during my day.  Below is how to think about the 4 pillars model.

So how can I tell those who will be there the end?  I would say this; if you don’t have the ability to flex over time with the market’s customized needs, you will not be picking the right partner.  Infrastructure will rule in the end because it will enable full integration across the entire enterprise.  That being said, you will also need accuracy to make sure that all that content can expressed with features that show you what you need.  Essentially, I am saying look for partners who express a strong RIGHT TO LEFT mentality.  This would be strong in infrastructure, who owns their accuracy methods, with the ability to integrate all that content while being able to show you data in a way that makes sense. You are looking for RIGHT to LEFTERS not LEFT to RIGHTERS as illustrated below.

Don’t be fooled by pretty interfaces with tons of content that is inaccurate.  That is why the market shifts and matures.  A RIGHT TO LEFTER will be a company that you know is heading where the market is and shows the ability to innovate as needed over time.

This was the second post in a 3 part series intended to open up a dialogue and discussion regarding social listening. Join the conversation and share your experiences about how you use social listening to build your social media strategy.

“Everyone’s doing social media marketing, but does anyone know if it’s worth the investment? The people we marketers report to—the ones who sign off on budget requests—and we ourselves want to know how we can measure the return on our investment in terms of business metrics like leads and sales.

Throughout 2013, pressure will increase on marketers to use metrics to close the loop between our social efforts and actual revenue.”

That’s the lead-in to a new 14-page eBook just published by NetBase, a social media monitoring, analytics, engagement and publishing company. The eBook is based on a webinar I did for NetBase in January, called “Finally Deliver Measurable Social Media ROI.” It was part of their Social Savvy Webinar Series. If you are interested you can watch the complete, original webinar here.

The new eBook, called Calculating ROI to Make the Business Case for Social Media Marketing, describes a methodology for measuring social ROI, explains where social media fits into the traditional sales funnel familiar to business decision-makers, and offers advice on aligning social goals and metrics. You can get a free copy here.

So if you’re struggling to calculate ROI and persuade the executives at your organization to fund and support more social marketing, check out the eBook. It will give you the understanding and approach to social ROI you need to make a convincing business case for your 2014 budget. Because seriously, covering all of that in a blog post would be…well…too much for any of us to handle!

With all the time we spend talking about the best ways to measure, the best metrics to measure and how to measure, it’s important to occasionally raise our heads to look at what is on the horizon. Then we can rise above some of the minutia that fills our brains today and get a glimpse of where this is all headed. As technology allows us to process more data faster the next logical step is to start to actually predict the impact a few key decisions will have on sales, revenue and costs.

If you have an extra $30k in your budget, we all want to know where we should put it to get the most impact. Should we put it into more content marketing or should we increase our online ad spend? What if you could log onto a measurement dashboard and answer exactly that question? What if it even projected the difference in revenue based on which triggers you move? Would you want that?

I think most of us would absolutely say yes. The good news is that the technology to do this type of predictive analysis exists and recently I looked at a model that was built by a Social Media Explorer partner that made my mouth water. The bad news is that it’s not cheap. It requires phD level scientists and a ton of analysis on existing data to build the right algorithms, so the price tag is going to be in the high six-figures to low seven-figures. However, there is a market for this today. Companies who see a return in the millions with a simple move of a needle can justify that expense today. Obviously, we hope that the cost of the technology comes down and makes it approachable for more mid-sized companies as well. But this post isn’t really about the fact that the technology exists, in reality bigger companies have been trying to build this in-house for the last decade.

What I want to talk about is what you would do with the data. As executives and marketers we are always on the hunt for better data that will help us drive decisions. However, I wonder if in the face of the best data we have ever seen if we will actually listen to it. Think about that for a little while. If your predictive software predicts that you should decrease advertising spend and increase content marketing significantly would your executive team actually do it? Or what if it was the converse and told you to significantly decrease the spend in social media and content marketing and increase advertising spend to drive immediate revenue gains? Would your executive team do that?

Unfortunately, for too many companies they would say yes to the first scenario and no to the second. As executives and marketers we have to find a balance between short-term ROI and building for long-term gains. We think our decisions would be so much easier if we had reliable data that provided an absolute clear outcome for decision-making. But in fact, better data may make our decisions even more difficult.

There are two sides to this coin. If we don’t listen to the results from the predictive model what good is the predictive model to begin with? How can we possibly justify the effort and expense if we won’t trust the model to help us make the right decision? I can’t think of anything more ridiculous than finding the optimal way to spend that extra $30k and then ignoring it based on our gut.

On the flip side, could the predictive model lead us to making decisions that benefit us in the short-term, but hurt us in the long run? Arguably, there is no predictive model that could’ve predicted the impact social media would have on businesses. By its nature, predictive modeling is relying on past performance to predict future performance. It will always have a blind spot where there historical performance doesn’t exist.

Is our future success found somewhere in the success of yesterday? Or do we continue to rely on our instincts to find the golden nugget that a predictive model would easily miss?

What do you think? Where does predictive modeling fit into decision making? Will it be good for businesses? Could it prevent organizations from investing in new technologies and channels that take time to build ROI? How should we balance the need for short-term return against long-term gains? Leave a comment and let’s have a healthy debate on the role of predictive modeling versus gut instinct. 

I was at a party the other week talking to an old friend that had recently launched a startup. He was sharing some interesting statistics on the growth of the startup, that they have increased sales by X and clients by Y.  In all, it was very positive news. After a few minutes of conversation, I asked him whether or not the business was successful. I was expecting a short and simple, “Yes!”  Instead what I received was a rehashing of the metrics he had already shared. Having known him for a while, I felt comfortable stopping him mid-sentence asking, “It’s great that you’re meeting all these goals and objectives, but does that mean your startup is successful?

His response, “I don’t know.”

Defining Success

When you’re constantly working to meet the next goal, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture.

As a digital marketer, I live and die by goals. Every single moment of my work week is spent ensuring that some metric is being met. Increase Twitter followers by 25 a week – boom, met. Receive zero client complaints and three client compliments every month – big ol’ check-a-roo. Ensure that there are exactly 24 jellybeans… well, you get the picture.

However, when you’re constantly working to meet the next goal, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture.  You might be successful in growing your Twitter reach, but does that mean your business is successful?

Think about that for a second. How many people can honestly say that they know what success is for their business? Can you?

And don’t give me that cop out, “We will be successful when we meet our goals.”  That’s a cheap answer and you know it.

A true definition of success should boil down to a single statement, something that starts with, “Success is…” and ends with a few words that then define that success. Ask yourself, “If I was at a party and someone asked me if my campaign/business/love life was successful, what one thing would have to happen for me to give an immediate yes?”

Some example success definitions for me:

Campaigns: This social media marketing campaign will be successful if both the client and I are happy with the campaign results.

Startup: Our startup will be successful if we are on target to have an exit event worth at least $1,000,000 for each senior officer involved.

Revenue: We will have a successful revenue stream if we can continue to give raises to all employees and afford to bring on at least 3 new staff members each quarter.

Unlike goals, which should never be ambiguous, having an ambiguous definition of success is fine. After all, everyone’s definition of success is going to be slightly different (Although if you’re working under a supervisor, make sure you’re working off of their definition of success).

Set Goals To Meet That Definition

Can you be successful without meeting your goals? Absolutely.

Once you know what you’re aiming for, setting goals becomes way easier. If my definition of success for an upcoming campaign is to ensure the client is thrilled with our results, I know my next step is to identify what the client’s expectations are and to quantify those expectations into a goal.

Goal: Drive 10,000 new customers over the course of 12 months.

Keep in mind a goal should never be ambiguous. You show me a goal that’s ambiguous and I’ll show you a person that’s too afraid of failing to do their job right.

Once this initial goal is identified, (I refer to it as a master goal) I can then ask myself what needs to happen in order to meet this goal. From there an action plan develops, more goals are identified and a campaign begins to take shape.

If I hadn’t identified success first, and just started creating goals, I would have no idea on whether or not those goals were doing me any good. If you’re going to make a sandwich, turn on the light in the kitchen first. Don’t go around trying to find the bread in the dark. It’s great to grow your Twitter following, but if that has no bearing on your success at the end of the day, then it shouldn’t be a high priority.

By focusing on goals and objectives that drive the success of your business, you can better ensure that your energies and resources are spent working on the things that truly matter.

Can you be successful without meeting your goals? Absolutely. That’s the whole point. Goals give us something to measure against. A feeling of success however can come from any part of the project. Perhaps your campaign was an utter flop. Does this mean you were unsuccessful? Not necessarily. Maybe the client’s thrilled with the results you did get. Maybe they’re excited with the learnings, or maybe they understand that they themselves had unrealistic expectations.

Conversely, can you meet your goals and still be unsuccessful in business? You bet your ass you can, especially if you’re setting superfluous goals without clear direction. Striving to meet the wrong goals can pull your attention away from the areas of your business that truly matter.

Success is something that must be constantly strived for. If you ever feel yourself bogged down by senseless goals, take a second to think about the success you are trying to attain and realign yourself.

Remember, success is a state of being, not a destination.

I love Twitter. I really do. Even when I have a beef with it, I recognize that it is an amazing tool connecting people and businesses and cultures and organizations and thoughts and ideas and revolutionaries. And it was built by a small conclave of guys who had no idea what it would grow up to be.

But there is a gap in our measurements, and it’s one that Twitter might make some real money while fixing the most bogus metric of all.

Blind Man’s Bluff

When you send out a batch of marketing emails, you know an awful lot about your audience. You know how many addresses were on that list — how many bounced — how many went unopened — how many converted, etc. You have a clear picture of what works and what doesn’t, and can do nice A/B testing to figure out some ironclad behaviorally-based guidelines. (Many of those crappy-looking webpages you come across at the end of a sales pitch look exactly that way because they work. Pretty doesn’t pay the bills.)

With Twitter, you have something called “Potential Reach.” The Potential Reach of a Tweet is defined as the theoretical maximum number of users who might have encountered it within their timelines. (Let’s ignore aggregate and unique instances for the moment.)

A Tweet from an account with 50,000 followers, in theory, would get 100-times the exposure of an account with 500. There are still other variables at play, like how focused that audience is on your topic, how many accounts those people are all following, time of day… it gets rather messy.

And it doesn’t have to.

You see, all of the metrics that marketing folks have at their disposal are dependent upon assuming apples equal apples in Potential Reach. You compare engagement numbers for various messages. You use link shorteners with Google Analytics campaign codes to slice and dice every last bit of divination as to the effectiveness. You Tweet at 4pm on a Monday, and 4pm on a Tuesday, and you see a five-percent difference, so one day is obviously better, right?

Well, it is if you think Potential Reach is a constant.

What Twitter Isn’t Selling You Yet

The dirty little secret that Twitter isn’t sharing is just how many people did “see” it. The current menu of Promoted offerings will measure engagement: Clicks, Retweets, Follows. But it doesn’t tell the truly data-driven marketer what she wants to know:

How many of my followers accessed the API to receive my Tweet?

Think of the feature that Facebook offers in Groups, that allows you to see how many people have seen a post. For Twitter, that might be an expensive proposition for coding and architecture and bandwidth, but from a data standpoint, it’s not something that has to be delivered in real time. (Facebook’s analytics for its pages are notoriously slow.)

Let’s suppose a particular Tweet – sent to my potential audience of 50,000 – was only accessed by 325 users. (I might get all frowny about the seemingly low number.) I could compare a number of Tweets over time and learn when my audience is “awake.” I could frame questions of effectiveness with regard to percentages instead of a flat metric.

Solving Two Problems

It’s all about the Clicks, you say? I totally agree. But maybe a lot of what you think drives those clicks is just wrong? What if an average message got the fluky benefit of a high spike in Real Reach, and tested better than a superior message? What if you tweaked your writing based on inaccurate assumptions?

It’s a classic statistical dilemma, trying to solve for two factors at the same time. And it is unnecessary, if Twitter gets smart.

So, Twitter: Sell us the analytics to truly know what got seen, and what didn’t. Charge a very pretty penny for it. Charge by the month, and make it steep, because firms will use that month to get a lot better about how they use Twitter for marketing. They will know when their users are really plugged in, and know which messages better resonate. That will be better for them, better for the userbase, and better for your own Promoted Products.

How much would you pay for Real Reach numbers?

In a recent Velocity Content Marketing Hangout, Joe Chernov said something interesting. In fact, he said very little that wasn’t interesting. But this one made me raise an eyebrow that took a while to come back down.

Joe said, “Don’t knock vanity metrics. Sometimes they’re all you’ve got.” (or something like that).

I had just been writing a spoof post that put all vanity metrics into one big infographic hierarchy (provisional title: ‘Ego Candy’). But Joe’s little side remark made me press pause on that one and write this one instead.

Because, of course, he’s right (it’s annoying how right Joe tends to be).

Vanity Metrics get really bad press by people who consider themselves hard core content marketers or social media ‘ninjas’ and it’s high time someone defended them. So here goes.

What is a vanity metric?

If real metrics are things that show you whether or not you’re succeeding, vanity metrics are things that make you feel like you’re succeeding.

The ones most people trot out are things like Twitter followers, Facebook likes, Page views, Registered Users and Downloads…

Vanity metrics are to content marketers what strokes are to the family dog. They make us wag our virtual tails and roll over for a high-rev tummy rub.

Why we’re supposed to hate them.

We’re supposed to hate them because they divert us from ‘actionable metrics’ – the ones that really do tell you what’s going on; the ones you can and should do something about; the ones that correlate really highly with the Mother of all Metrics: money in the bank.

Eric Ries called the obsession with vanity metrics ‘Success Theater’ and I take his point. But Theater is only bad when it lies to us about real life (or when it’s by Andrew Lloyd Weber). Theater can also be interesting, provocative and illuminating.

Why I like them anyway.

The folks who warn us away from vanity metrics are really just warning us away from replacing better metrics with vanity ones. Or getting so seduced by shares that we fail to notice we’re teetering on bankruptcy.

And of course, that’s a sound principle. You’d be crazy to value registered users over active daily users or to hold Facebook likes in higher esteem than, say, paying clients.

But that doesn’t mean vanity metrics are useless. In fact, they serve some important purposes.

Three important things vanity metrics can do for you. And one relatively frivolous one.

1) They can buy you time.

Most of the benefits that content marketing and social media marketing deliver take time to accrue. But the mean people with the purse strings aren’t always the most patient people in the world. Being able to dangle some vanity metrics in front of their noses can chill them out for long enough for the real metrics to kick in.

As long as you’re not still dangling them 24 months later.

2) They can indicate better things.

Vanity metrics are still metrics. They may not prove you’re succeeding in your ultimate goals but they provide evidence that you’re doing so.

Because, in most cases, vanity metrics do tend to correlate with bigger, better things.

After all, a complete lack of Facebook likes and Twitter followers and downloads starts to look like you just might be failing to gain what the venture capitalists like to call ‘traction’. No traction and the car stays still even though the wheels are spinning. (Ooh. Good analogy. Vanity metrics are to real metrics what RPM is to speed or miles per gallon).

And a million followers is at least an indicator that you’re saying something people are open to hearing.

3) They can give you an early warning sign that something important is broken.

If your Vanities are going all hockey-stick on you but your Actionables aren’t budging, you’ve got yourself some kind of mechanical breakage in your business machinery.

If Twitter followers aren’t translating into web sign-ups, maybe you’ve attracted the wrong followers or are tweeting about the wrong things or are making the wrong offer on the page. These are not only nice to know, they’re critical to know.

Fix your fundamentals and your vanity metrics should start indicating success again.  But only if you’ve learned your lessons from watching them.

(Continuing the car metaphor, RPM fails to correlate with MPG only when the car is up on blocks or mired in mud or has a missing gearbox.  See?  Something broke and the disconnect between your vanity metrics and actionable metrics told you so.)

4) They scare your competitors.

A million YouTube views is sure to get the wind up your arch enemies’ backsides. And that’s always fun.
(Of course, they’ll tell their bosses it’s ‘just a vanity metric’ — but their bosses haven’t read Eric Ries so they won’t buy it and the pressure will ramp up and they’ll do stupid things — like chase vanity metrics at the expense of market share).

Be honest with yourself.

Vanity metrics get a bad name when stupid or dishonest people use them to hide the real facts.
When a fund-raising entrepreneur puts Registered Users in his business plan and leaves Active Users out. Or when a marketer puts Page Views into a deck but leaves out the 92% bounce rate.

When people spend time and money actively pursuing vanity metrics at the expense of real ones, the trouble starts.

These people are either trying to fool someone or have already fooled themselves.

But you’re neither malicious nor stupid. You don’t have to fear what vanity metrics might do to your strategy or your budget. You only have to keep an eye out for con artists and morons waving ‘likes’ in your face.

And, since you’re smart and honest, it’s okay to go ahead and use vanity metrics as part of your bigger picture. They’re not the whole dashboard, but in the right hands they can be a useful widget.

Long story short: vanity metrics can and should be your friend. Just because others may misuse them, doesn’t mean you can’t use them well.

So use them well.

Ask good e-commerce or search marketing professionals how they build successful programs and you’ll hear them discuss things like conversion rates. Conversion rates are the percentage of a total audience that takes an action. I’ll take that a step further toward clarity and say that “conversion rate” is reserved for a monetary transaction. For other activities you try to motivate and measure (filling out forms, social sharing, answering questions and etc.), I prefer to use the term “action rate.” 

So, if you have 1,000 visitors to a web page and 200 of them fill out a form, then 20 of them actually purchase the product in question, you have a 20 percent action rate (200 of the 1,000 filled out the form … they took the action) and a two percent conversion rate (20 of the 1,000 actually “converted” to a customer.)

Search engine optimization and e-commerce experts live in this math. They know how many visitors to a given site or page it takes to produce one action. They then know how many of those actions they need to produce one conversion. They focus their energies then on two areas:

• Drive the requisite numbers to the page to result in the projected conversions for their business’s success
• Optimize the site or page so it takes fewer visitors and/or actions to achieve the same outcome

The more efficient the action and conversion rates on the back side of the site or page, the less work there is on the front side to get people there. So, in essence, this math is a microcosm of an effective business: Reduce costs and maximize revenue.

Your challenge this week is to determine what your action rate and conversion rate for your website, landing page or even social sites are. Then you can start reducing costs and maximizing revenue to optimize what you’re doing.

Everywhere I go and speak, I ask the same two questions before I start my presentation.  The first question I ask is, “How many of you trust social media as a data source to make business decision?  Please raise your hand if you do.”  You know how many people’s hands go up after I ask this question?  About 5-10% of the room.  And when I ask this question, the room is filled with at a minimum 100 people all the way to 500 people.  After asking this question, I follow it with a second one.  I ask, “Ok, so when you are thinking of buying a new electronic device or appliance or picking a restaurant to make a decision, how many of you go to the web first to collect information to make your decision?”  Now everyone’s hand goes up.  Well at least 98% of them…the other 2% are sleeping.

To me this is what I call businesses’ social media cultural conundrum and it is very real.  Simply put, as consumers, we are hooked on trusting what others say to make decisions in our personal lives, but as companies and professionals we are extremely reluctant to use this same data to more quickly and efficiently make business decisions.  Below is an illustration of this behavior to help you frame it up if you are slapping your forehead right now.

PEOPLE DRIVE INNOVATION

Posts that discuss corporate culture and social media often fall on deaf ears.

Why do I bring this up?  Because as companies continue to explore the idea of social media analytics and how they take on this concept, there needs to be some reality in how they think about it.  I often write about the social media analytics market on my blog (innovationmuse.blogspot.com).  What I find quite interesting is what people like to read.  In my 3 years of writing about social media, I am finding the people want to hear about concrete things like use cases and product features, but less about the means by which they convince their organizations to adopt this new business methodology.  In fact, my posts that discuss corporate culture and social media often fall on deaf ears.  This is simply the fact that people are wedded to ROI and the tangible more often then what drives real innovation; people.  The other day, I was talking to my friend and former colleague.  Even though I left the company two years ago, my job as Global VP of Innovation focused on getting 80 teams of people working inside the organization to collaborate effectively as a cohesive unit.  It was a cool gig and it taught me how to think about driving tangible change in a large corporate culture.   As we spoke, we often reminisce about my time there, and he said something to me.  He said, “everyone can focus on the operational side of driving business, but too few people think about the human side of creating business value.”  It was one of the greatest compliments I ever received.  And to boot, Jim is a VP of finance, a role filled by ROI dynamos.  So how does this pertain to social?

WAKE UP!

YOUR COMPANY’S CULTURE IS WAITING TO KIBOSH YOUR EFFORTS TO IMPLEMENT SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS.

Let’s talk about that…

When implementing change, particularly when it comes to technology, there are three simple pieces:  Tools, Process and Culture.   Below is an illustration of that idea with some key questions to think about.  The main point is this; you can’t simply spend your time picking a tool and have no real plan.  It is kind of like spending all your time deciding whether you want children and never stopping to think about how long it might take to get pregnant as a couple.

Success in your program is dependent on your ability to successfully align all three of these.  You need great tools working in a great process with a corporate culture that is ready to say yes to a new way of doing things.  That being said, what opened my mind recently is bring my past experience with culture into my thoughts about the social media tools market.  For the last several months, I have been espousing the importance of how to think about the tools as you think about buying them.

WHAT ARE YOU MISSING?

If you are only focused on picking from the litany of tools out there, you are missing way more than you realize.  It is why I call this Technology Fantasia.  Many people machinate over the smallest details trying to worry about a certain feature they think is imperative or if they can get all the data (never mind if it is good data). If I could tell you the war stories from the field of people worrying about the wrong things when looking at technology, you might cry.  I often do, quietly, because I know what awaits them beyond Technology Fantasia; reality.

Why do I say this?  Because getting your system chosen is only the first step.  Now the real work begins.  Is it your job?  Are you going to commit the needed amount of time to learn your new system?  Will the system evolve from where it is today so it can work as you learn?  Do you have an idea of how it will integrate into the business?  Are you trying to pushing water uphill with a slotted spoon?  I can go on and on.

You need to start thinking about the process for applying those tools.

There is so much more to having a successful social media analytics program than the tool you choose.  You need to start thinking about the process for applying those tools.  What use cases are you thinking about understanding? What are the right metrics within those use cases to know you are moving the needle?  Who actually cares about the insights/learnings you can create from your social analytics program.  Again, these are just some of the things you should ask yourself.

But the last part is the whopper…your company’s culture.  This is the squishy thing that everyone deals with but no one talks about.  It may not have quantifiable ROI, but it is certainly the thing that is keeping you from making a decision.  It is the part of your success that most quickly kills the ROI of what you invest in.  So why not acknowledge it?  Being concerned about the human side of driving the business is where all success and failure lies.  Let’s make it easier by saying you sell your products to your customers and the consumer insight you need to get them interested to buy isn’t really that much different from saying you are hitting as many consumers as you can in a culturally scalable way (ok behavioral is more appropriate but you get my point).

I lay the gauntlet down here;  if you are only bickering about whether your social media analytics system can measure demographics, has engagement, can show you the chart a certain way, and is perfectly easy to use, then you will FAIL!  Wake up and be more holistic about your program.  Don’t worry about getting the best value on spending for a tool and…

• DO begin to think about how that tool can create processes that fit into the way you company does things.
• BE willing to break some glass or sidle up to the right allies who understand that things need to be different.
• KNOW that change is hard and the journey is long, because you will face obstacles way harder then patting yourself on the back for picking the right tool

I wag my finger at those who like to read about tools, but ignore my pleas about the cultural component…it is real and very tangible.  Why? Because culture makes you fail.  And culture is not politics, it is a silent wall that kills innovation.

As I always like to say… change is my business and business is good.

When most people think about social media they immediately jump to Facebook or Twitter. However, some of the best companies are looking at social media in a different way. They are spending time figuring out how they can leverage social behaviors with their audience to meet their goals. Autodesk is doing just that. Rather than only focusing on social networks, they are taking social integration to a new level. They are building it into core decision points in their prospect lifecycle. Figuring out how to deeply integrate social elements into a company’s products, services, and business processes is where the most innovative companies are moving and Autodesk is certainly leading the charge in their industry.

Who the heck is Autodesk?

Have you ever wondered how those amazingly realistic graphics are created in video games, how complicated special effects are generated for movies or how the animated movies our kids have come to love were created? Chances are there is an Autodesk software product behind it.

Autodesk, Inc. is a market leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, including AutoCAD®, Autodesk® Revit® and Autodesk 3ds Max®. With more than $2 billion dollars in annual revenue and 12 million registered users, Autodesk caters to a variety of industries, including manufacturing, architecture, construction, and media and entertainment. Their software enables users to design, visualize, and simulate their ideas before they’re ever built or created.

Autodesk 3ds Max Fuels Realistic 3D Graphic Design

The Challenge

Due to the power and complexity of Autodesk’s software, a user license can be a significant investment, making software trials a critical component of a customer’s purchasing decision. In fact, data showed that prospects were twice as likely to purchase Autodesk products if they had used the software at least three times during a 30-day trial period.

But with millions of online visitors every week looking for software trials, Autodesk knew it needed to provide an engaging experience for trial users — one that rewarded and encouraged them to leverage the robust features and functionality of the product. If Autodesk could somehow increase usage during the trial period, they knew they could convert more users into paying customers.

The Audience

The Autodesk team led by Dawn Wolfe, Senior Digital Marketing Manager and Andy Mott, Manager of In Trial Marketing, came up with a test using their 3DS Max product. This product is used by game designers to create many of the amazing video games we love and by movie special effects designers to add the special touches to movies like the Academy award winning Hugo and Transformers.

The Solution

Leveraging The Behavior Platform by Badgeville, Autodesk built powerful Game Mechanics in UndiscoveredTerritory, a new software experience for Autodesk® 3dsMax® 2013 trial users. Autodesk wanted to give their potential customers a guided, more engaging experience, enabling them to fully experience the benefits and key differentiators 3ds Max. They leveraged gamification within in-trial marketing to give customers a clear learning path and a way to really see and feel how the software works and can help them. They have created an experience (the trial is contextualized within a “race against time” narrative) and a reason to experience it (participants compete against their peers to earn the most points and win an Autodesk® Entertainment Creation Suite).

Autodesk identified and configured the key behaviors it wanted to drive with smart gamification elements, then designed a series of Missions to guide users through the various features of 3ds Max. At the heart of these missions is the learning track that walks a user through activities where they interact  with the product and learn how to use it. Rich data sets as starter files and detailed tutorials with instructions on how to do the tasks and how to use the software are included.  “Players” are rewarded with points and achievement badges for completing missions or specific behaviors. They can also share their achievements on Facebook and Twitter to earn additional points. A leaderboard shows trial users how they rank against their peers and ultimately who wins the game.

AutoDesk Gamifies Product Trials for 3ds Max

The Results

Sounds fun, right? But what happened? Autodesk showed that the gamified trial had the highest increase in engagement during a trial than any other campaign designed to date. In fact, it led to a 54% increase in trial usage over the lifetime of the campaign. Considering the software retails for over $3600 per license and we know that an increase in trial usage correlates to an increase in the likelihood to buy, this should have a nice long tail ROI.

One nice thing about the software industry is that they have the ability to integrate calls to action right within the product. Autodesk has a buy now option within their trial package which can be evaluated for a further indicator of purchase intent. The Undiscovered Territory User Experience drove a 15% increase in buy clicks within the software.

This wouldn’t be a post I’d written if we didn’t get right to bottom line, though. The big question is what impact did this have on revenue? In fact, it was a big one. Initial data shows a 29% increase in channel revenue per trial start. This means that not only is the Undiscovered Territory experience driving a higher conversion rate, it is also driving higher than average revenues for each new client which could mean that they are purchasing their more expensive software suite or they could be purchasing several licenses.

The Autodesk team also received the 2012 Forrester Groundswell Award for “Spreading” which recognizes excellence in effective use of social media to advance an organizational or business goal.

Level Up

One of Autodesk’s challenges is that a large volume of their software is sold through value-added reseller network which adds a delay in measuring bottom-line impact.  However, there are several core metrics that would help to drive the message home.

Cost Metrics – Did gamification decrease costs in the following categories?

• Cost per Trial User
• Cost per Engagement (each login to the trial)
• Cost per Lead
• Cost per Customer Acquired
• Cost per AutoDesk community user (their on-site user community)

Revenue Impact – How do these revenue metrics compared to other users?

• Average Revenue Per Customer
• Average # of Licenses Per New Customer
• Average # of Suite Licenses Per Customer
• Total Revenue Generated
• Upgrade Rate (Percentage of Users that upgrade to the current software version over a 3 year period)
• Average Months to Next Upgrade (How long does it take for them to upgrade after there is a new release)
• 24/36 Month Customer Value

Ultimately, the goal is to compare these metrics against those who did NOT use the Undiscovered Territory trial so that Autodesk can measure improvements or declines. One thing to keep in mind is that the lifecycle of a customer is very long for Autodesk, customers retain for several years, if not decades. Further, their product is not a SaaS product, therefore how often a user upgrades and the time it takes them to upgrade after a new release are very important elements for future revenue growth. While the historical Autodesk data shows that using a trial 3 times increases likelihood to buy two-fold, they may find that in the Undiscovered Territory trial version the same usage increases likelihood to buy by 4 or 5 times. Further, they may find that this new group of customers actually upgrades faster than previous groups. This type of data is very insightful for the executive team and the marketing team for short term and long term decision making. Keep up the great work Autodesk!

What are your thoughts on gamification? Have you tried it? Got any great examples to show? Join the conversation and leave a comment in the comments section.

Want more on measuring social media? Get step-by-step instructions including hands on exercises in my book How to Measure Social Media: A Step-by-Step Guide to Developing and Assessing Social Media ROI

Defining the best way to measure the value of your infographic content can be an adventure in semantics. Your objectives, the organizational culture you operate in, and your definition of return on investment (ROI) all contribute to how, or even if, you measure the business performance of infographics.

ROI is calculated as follows: (Gain from an investment – Cost of the investment) / Cost of the investment

The formula is simple enough. So why do ROI discussions always seem to have the potential to become acrimonious? Like a good political debate, how you approach the measurement of your content marketing and communication initiatives can depend on your perspective.

THE ROI SPECTRUM

Those on the left side of the spectrum believe that creating marketing content such as infographics and publishing it across social media channels helps their brand communicate and connect with audiences. Because “engagement” is always the right thing to do, measuring performance becomes less of a priority.

Those on the right side of the spectrum ardently believe that content marketing initiatives must be able to be measured and show a proven ROI, or they are not viable or beneficial to the organization.

A practical solution to the measuring of infographic value lies somewhere in between.

Costs are associated with the development, design, publishing, and promotion of your infographics. It may be unnecessary to measure the direct correlation between your infographic marketing efforts and revenue, but it is important to understand and measure the relationship between resource allocation and marketing performance. As a business person, you need to be able to justify the internal and external value of infographics as a communication tool.

Conversely, looking at infographics and other content marketing purely through a fiscal lens may be too narrow an approach. Not every marketing and communication initiative that adds value to an organization can be unequivocally connected to revenue. In reality, some hypocrisy is related to ROI expectations with new marketing tactics such as infographics and social media when compared to legacy programs. For example, how many organizations actually measure the ROI of an established marketing activity such as attending a trade show?

When it comes to measuring the value of infographics, maybe ROI is simply not the best end goal.

MEASURING VOI (VALUE OF INFOGRAPHICS)

Another way to study the value of information design as a marketing and communication tool is to take a more balanced approach that assesses both tangible and intangible benefits over the short and long term.

Be sure to set analytics objectives and have a benchmark for each metric so that you can gauge progress over time. For example, you can note, audit and record performance metrics as of a specific date, such as the first day of the next fiscal quarter. Then measure the same metrics in regular intervals moving forward – 30, 60, or 90 days – comparing them to the benchmark and subsequent historic figures. This process helps you measure progress related to awareness and engagement and also helps you assess what infographic content is most effective.

Tangible Metrics

Awareness

These basic metrics indicate the level of exposure your infographics are receiving across different digital channels:

• Inbound links – Use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to measure how many sites are linking back to your infographic content. Also, if you include an embed code, track how many people copy and paste the code and embed your infographic on their sites. In addition to measuring awareness, back links also provide insight into the types of people and websites that are publishing your infographics.
• Page views – Use Google Analytics to measure how many page views and unique views each infographic on your website or blog is generating.
• Searches – Use Google Analytics to see how many people are finding your infographics by using specific keywords. Understanding which topical or industry search words are working well can help you refine keyword optimization in future infographic titles. In addition, you will be able to assess the growth of an infographic’s popularity by how many times people search for its title.
• SEO ranking – Use RankChecker to measure the page rank of your infographics on major search engines such as Google and Bing.
• Subscribers – Use the analytics functionality native to each of the applications you are using – blog, Facebook, Twitter- to measure how many people subscribe to your content across digital channels. Examples of metrics include blog subscribers (RSS and email), email subscribers, and followers on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s important to recognize that these metrics reflect your potential audience reach. Not all your subscribers will necessarily see every infographic you will publish.

In addition to quantifiable metrics, a number of less-tangible benefits are associated with using infographics as an internal and external communication tool.

External

• Building relationships – The process of publishing and promoting your infographics presents opportunities to develop relationships with a wide variety of influential individuals, media, and organizations.
• Credibility – Publishing relevant and useful infographics that educate and offer insight positions you or your organization as a thought leader within your sector, building credibility with your audiences.
• Experience with your brand – Infographics and other content create micro-interactions with your audiences, helping facilitate positive experiences with your organization.

Internal

• Communication – Infographics can make it easier for your employees to communicate problems, ideas, concepts, and processes with each other, allowing more efficient dissemination of information and transfer of knowledge. Infographics, because of their accessible and viral nature, also have the potential to get spread to all corners of an organization, fuelling expanded internal debate and dialogue.
• Corporate pride – If an infographic becomes popular and gets shared across social media channels, it can become a point of pride for employees and the organization.
• Decision-making – Infographics speed up information consumption and understanding, resulting in incrementally quicker decisions.
• Learning – Infographics make complex information easier to understand, helping educate employees about important data and processes.

I would love to get your thoughts on measuring the value of infographic content. How important is it to measure VOI? What others ways would you measure the impact of infographics? The comments are yours.

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This is the final post in a 4-part series covering some of the themes included in The Power of Infographics: Using Pictures to Communicate and Connect with Your Audiences – my new book now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Que and Indigo.

Does anyone else feel like Facebook is making it really difficult for brands to be successful? Or do you feel like Facebook is on your side? Personally, I feel like Facebook has become disconnected from what brands are trying to achieve and they keep making it more difficult to be able to prove the ROI of having a Facebook presence. Why would brands invest big dollars into a platform that seems to constantly turn its nose up at their efforts? Further, how can we ever get the budgets we need to make additional investments if Facebook has an anti-ROI policy for brands?

At the end of the day brands are on Facebook for a reason. We want to drive fan engagement, sure. But ultimately it’s about driving a financial return to the organization. Every brand has an action that they want their fans to take, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to drive to the right call to action when Facebook keeps stripping away our ability to do it.

With the release of timeline there were some nice features for brands. We can now pin certain posts to the top of the page. That’s cool. And now we can even schedule posts. That’s cool too, but we were already able to do that through third party tools. Way to catch up, Facebook.

Facebook Removes Calls to Action

When timeline was released I was surprised there wasn’t more backlash at removing the ability to have a default landing tab. Default landing tabs helped brands tell first time visitors why they should like their page. Many brands also used their default landing tab to inform visitors about loyalty programs, special offers, and exclusive content. The only option you may have to accomplish this now is on the brands cover image. Too bad Facebook doesn’t want that, either. Their new terms and conditions explicitly say:

“Covers may not include:

i.    price or purchase information, such as ‘40% off’ or ‘Download it on socialmusic.com’;

ii.    contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s ‘About’ section;

iii.    references to Facebook features or actions, such as ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features; or

iv.    calls to action, such as ‘Get it now’ or ‘Tell your friends.’”

This policy shows a complete disregard for the brands who are supporting Facebook’s revenue stream. I understand that there were some brands that did a poor job of building compelling offers and perhaps led to the creation of this policy, but there were far more who provided fans with value through their calls to action. But the intent is pretty clear.

Facebook Forces Brands to Use Tabs that 54% of Users Can’t See

Another challenge is that if you take the time to build a compelling offer or contest for your fans it must be deployed on a tab. That’s not too bad, right? Well unless your fans are like most of the world and access Facebook through a mobile device. Edison Research reported that 54% of Facebook users access the site through their mobile phone in The Social Habit. And we all know we can’t look at a brand page’s tabs if we are accessing through mobile.

It seems that Facebook wants you to pay for driving action on the platform through the use of ads, offers, and sponsored posts. Zuckerberg has been testing new revenue models, something that he was very protective of prior to the company’s IPO. But it seems that pressure from investors is pushing him to consider new alternatives. Interestingly enough, it doesn’t seem to have connected for him that brands need be able to show the ROI of Facebook before they invest big dollars, which is becoming more and more difficult for marketers to accomplish with these new policies and feature changes.

Facebook wants Revenue. Companies want ROI.

It’s the chicken and egg scenario. Facebook seems to want you to invest more to be able to demonstrate a higher return, and marketers are struggling to try and demonstrate the return on the investment they’ve already made. Who will win? Unfortunately, for now Facebook will likely win this battle. They have the audience and we need to capture the audience. Therefore, we are at their mercy. But Facebook should strongly consider how they treat the brands they rely on. There has been so much focus on making Facebook better for the average user, that it may be time to start focusing on making changes to help brands maximize their ROI.

Facebook is the big dog today, but Zuckerberg should be cautious. He remembers what he was able to do to MySpace which probably seemed like an impossible feat at the time. If a new network comes along that can capture their users with a better interface, cooler features and makes it easy for brands to achieve positive ROI for participating, they could very well be at risk. But we know that will take a couple of years, so for now, we will deal with your shortcomings while we try to engage our fans. But until Facebook figures out that conversions are the name of the game, we will continually sit in board rooms trying to justify your existence to executives who aren’t in it to be cool. They want to make money. So does Facebook. There has to be a happy medium somewhere that doesn’t revolve around an advertising model. That’s so 2000 and late Zuckerberg.

So let’s tell Facebook exactly what we need to be able to demonstrate a higher return on investment to our executive teams. This is your chance to share your ideas on how Facebook can become brand friendly. What features do you want for your brand pages? What metrics are you longing for? What changes have been made to your brand page that leave you saying WTF? What would you be willing to pay for?

Leave a comment and tell the Facebook team exactly what they need to do to start supporting the brands who pay their bills.