How To Align Social Media Objectives to Business Objectives

Wendy’s post from February 24 outlines five key steps to better understand the effectiveness of social media objectives. This is a question frequently asked, so check out some ways to set yourself up to be more successful in determining social media ROI.

Video Scribing, Infographics and Data Visualization

In this post from February 12, Jason shows how you can utilize video scribing, infographics and other forms of data visualization as an effective means of story telling. For other examples of our video scribing, check out our Linux Foundation 20th Anniversary video scribe and our CoreLogic AgentAchieve video scribe.

Understanding Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines

Brandon’s post from August 12 helps you navigate the muddy waters that are Facebook’s promotional guidelines. This post is critical in understanding what you can and cannot do as a brand from a promotional perspective on Facebook.

Create A Theme For Your Facebook Page

Guess what? Sometime in 2011, Facebook changed stuff around. Probably a few times. In this case, back in February, personal profiles and brand pages got a major facelift. Take a stroll through memory lane with this post and reminisce about the good ol’ days.

The Hidden Facebook Advertising ROI Metrics

Back in March, I wrote about Facebook metrics and what you should be considering when defining success for a Facebook ad buy. Fast forward to the present, where Facebook is doing a better job of prominently showing connections from ads. I still stand by my statement that they still have much work to do in this regard though.

There are a lot of other great articles in our archives so make sure to check them out if you’re interested in reading more!

At Room 214, we have seen over and over how contests can help drive our clients to achieve their social media goals.

However, an astounding amount of Facebook pages run contests that put them at risk of being shut down. If you’re running a contest through your Facebook fan page you need to take a good hard look at Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines. Remember, if Facebook finds you operating a contest outside of the rules, they can delete your page without warning.

In case you are unsure, keep in mind if you give away a prize of any monetary value based on skill or chance, you need to follow the rules. Luckily, I’ve compiled a few easy to understand points to help you keep your contest legit.

Follow these simple rules, and you can run your contest in peace:

1. Contests must be run through a Facebook app. This means you need to create a custom tab or an application canvas page to host your promotion.

2. Never use these Facebook functions as the actual mechanism for entry: Liking a page, checking into a place, connecting to your app

3. Never condition registration or entry upon a user taking any action with a Facebook feature (other than liking a page, checking into a place, or connecting to an app). This means you can make fans like your page before they can fill a contest entry form, but the contest form has to be the actual entry mechanism, not the act of liking a page. Note: This also means you can’t condition contest entries on upon users liking your wall post, posting a comment, or uploading a photo to your wall.

4. Never use Facebook to notify winners. This includes chat, messages, wall posts and comments.

5. Never use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion.

6. Cover your butt with the right legal language. Promotions on Facebook must include the following:

• A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.
• Acknowledgment that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.
• Disclosure that the participant is providing information to your company and not to Facebook.
• You may not use Facebook’s name, trademarks, trade names, copyrights, or any other intellectual property in connection with a promotion or mention Facebook in the rules or materials relating to the promotion, except as needed to fulfill the requirements above.

If all of this this leaves you feeling overwhelmed, there are several simple ways to keep using promotions on your Facebook page. Just remember to stay updated on the official rules so you don’t put yourself at risk.

Tips:

• If your users enter an entry form, force them to Like your page before they can access the entry form. Since the form is the actual entry mechanism you are following the rules.
• If you want to run a simple trivia contest, have your fans email a “contests@” address with their answers. This ensure that you don’t require a comment for entry, and you won’t have to notify winners through Facebook.
• If you are a larger company with a budget for custom contest applications, get in touch with a custom Facebook application developer like Room 214, Wildfire, Offerpop, or Buddy Media.
• If you are a small business with a limited budget you can use an application called Easy Promos. The first promotion is free!

UPDATE:

For those of you trying to support a charitable campaign, “Like for Donation” campaigns are not against Facebook Terms & Conditions.  As long as you run the campaign as a fundraiser, rather than a promotion (giving anything away, including a cash prize).

“Getting into social” is now a mandatory part of the marketing program at most firms, but it’s frequently an execution, not a strategy. Would you ever send out a generic mailer to 100,000 with just your logo and company description to “generate awareness”? No. The act of creating a social presence must be tied directly back to your measurable business goals for the year. Check out this tutorial on aligning business goals with social objectives and write your own down. A few sample goals:

• Increase product penetration by X %
• Drive foot traffic in-store
• Increase customer service ratings

And a few sample objectives. Remember that objectives are NOT (!!!) executions:.

• Drive brand awareness among new customers
• Encourage brand loyalty and increase retention among existing customers
• Solve customer service issues
• Highlight and encourage positive product reviews

2. Have the right tools.

There are hundreds of social media tools out there, and it’s easy to be talked into using most any of them. If you come to the table armed with clear objectives for your entry into social media, and an explanation of how those goals fit into your measurable business goals, then you start to understand what services you need from the tools.

Example: In sample objectives above, normal sentiment analysis won’t help you solve customer service issues because you won’t know what’s driving negative sentiment. You will need something that can analyze and group complaints and themes, so you would instead look for a tool that is able to parse common themes in language, like Crimson Hexagon, Netbase, or Collective Intellect.

3. Understand the Output

Before you contract with a tool, ask the provider for help with building a report that maps back to your business goals and social media objectives. Work with your account rep to understand how you can take different outputs or reports from the tool and build them into a larger report that is relevant to key stakeholders, which may include other departments and those in the C-Suite. You may realize you are asking for more than the tool can provide, or that you are in for more work on your end than you initially bargained for.

Our Method

At Room 214, we are tool agnostic. We use a lot of different tools, and understand that as of yet, we cannot get everything we need from just one provider. It is important to have a deep understanding on your own needs before looking to contract with a tool. This is the best way to avoid having unrealistic expectations and get the most bang for your buck.

If you try to google for information on the food that’s most important to buy and eat organic, it’s a tad confusing. Every list seems to focus on a few different things, usually driven by nutrition and meal plan bias. So rather than dig through a lot of conflicting lists, I thought it would be interesting to see what organic foods consumers discuss the most.

I was amazed to see that these main food categories all have similar volume. As consumers, we’re buzzing about a wide variety of organic foods. Interestingly, animal products are the big winners, even if by a small margin. There has been ample coverage, mostly in books and films, on the state of the meat and dairy industry in the US; perhaps there is slightly more consumer awareness that drives these conversations.

Per Capita Buzz

I thought it would also be interesting to look at volume of conversation per capita to see if there are any states that stand out in their conversation around, or awareness of, organic.

The standout regions are the West Coast and Northern New England/New York State. Indiana, Wyoming, and Georgia were also standouts (though worth noting that Wyoming had a total of 94 mentions to Texas’ 1,000+).

Noteworthy Themes

Apparently, as consumers we talk about chicken more than beef. And we’re really interested in information that includes scientific backing, or at least mentions scientists. Also interesting that the UK’s Organic Trade Board, tweeting under @whyiloveorganic, pops up.

While I don’t have the answer to what exactly are the best products to buy organic, I will be interested to see how these trends change over time. Right now, the volume of conversation is lower than I expected, at just over 100,000 mentions in 6 months in everything from tweets to recipe blogs to Facebook conversation. I think we will see volume growth as consumers continue to get more education on the importance of organic, and brands like our client, Horizon Organic, have the kind of distribution that make organic increasingly accessible.

Starbucks Card Mobile is the first example of mass-adoption of a mobile wallet, and you should expect to see this happening much more, and soon, due to use of near-field communication (NFC). You likely already know NFC; if you’ve ever paid by holding a credit card a few inches from a swipe machine, then you’ve seen this technology at work. Visa is currently testing this technology in smartphones. How easy is it to pay by phone? Very. Watch and see.


Breaking Down a Barrier

This technology, a blending of new tech and old behavior, seems like it might be for the early adopter only. But let’s look at some stats:

• Smartphone penetration in US mobile users is already at 33% and growing rapidly
• Ebay is reporting 1 mobile transaction every second. This isn’t just for small purchases; this includes Ferraris
• Apps like Foursquare and Groupon have already gotten consumers comfortable with incorporating a phone into a point-of-purchase experience
• In a survey by NACHA and PayPal, 27% of people said P2P payment through mobile (via banking services or PayPal) was important to them

Increasingly, consumer are used to their phones as a part of their shopping and transactional experience. More importantly, we want shopping and payment to be as easy as possible; a mobile wallet solves a clear consumer problem.

Why This is Good For Brands

• Loyalty: For a brand like Starbucks that has frequent repeat purchase, creating a payment app is an easy way to track consumer behavior and spending. I look forward to seeing how this translates into retail locations with lower-frequency purchases, like clothing stores
• Ease of Purchase: Gilt and Groupon have capitalized on the beauty of one-click purchase on mobile, using stored credit card information. Mobile reduces barrier-to-purchase and, for better or worse, removes a consumer from the experience of handing off actual money
• Go Social: You can integrate all sorts of things into a mobile purchase, including a geo check-in or a push-to-social update

How do you use mobile payments? What do you wish you could pay for with your phone? What concerns you about these developments? Let us know.

You are likely conscious that the television experience has changed in the past decade. We once participated in appointment TV, taking the time to sit down at a specific hour to watch a specific show. Today, two significant behavioral changes in consumers are redefining the entertainment landscape.

These changes require television networks and advertisers to evolve rapidly to keep their shows, content, and ad buys relevant to a demanding consumer set.

1. People now consume television via time-shifted DVR, online (legally), online (illegally), mobile device, Internet streaming to TV, and a wide variety of other methods.
2. Viewers now consume multiple forms of media at the same time, such as watching TV on a television while checking Facebook on a computer. This is commonly referred to as two-, three- or multi-screen viewing.

With these changes have come digital spaces like Facebook, Twitter, and U-Stream in which consumers can find information about, and interact with, a television network or show. While this notion is reaching the mainstream, few networks and advertisers are finding ways to properly capitalize on, as well as monetize, this opportunity (more on this in my next post).

Touchpoints, From Simple to Complex

When television first became a household staple, families gathered together around one device to share in an experience from one of three channels. For a network to reach a consumer, it pushed traditional methods of mass advertising.

Today, households have multiple televisions and watch multiple programs simultaneously. They engage in multi-screen viewing, and consume many streams of relevant and irrelevant data while watching television.

Networks push advertising through a wide variety of channels but, more importantly, consumers now have a measure of control by reaching out to networks through social media and other digital properties, in real time.

How Connected Are We, Actually?

While not all households are highly-connected, it’s important to note the continued penetration of smartphones and tablets, items that are slowly shedding their luxury product association. There are already 141 million 3G subscribers (read: smartphones) in the US. Increased sales, palatable price-points, and widespread adoptions means a huge increase in users at potential touchpoints between networks and consumers.

What We Do When We Watch TV

Over the past few months, I mined over a million conversations in Crimson Hexagon, in which consumers state they are watching some form of cable or internet entertainment. Looking at these conversations, divided by platform, lets us see how consumers express their multi-screen viewing behaviors, and if it differs by platform.

Tweeting

Twitter requires nothing more than a 140-character attention span; it’s easy to Tweet and watch TV at the same time.

• The number of TV-related posts on Twitter continues to increase, hitting over 300,000 Tweets in January 2011
• Few mention consumption method (DVR, for example), but 14% do state they are watching a show or movie online through both legal and illegal platforms

Facebooking

Users on Facebook are, predominantly, just letting us know they are watching a TV show. However, because Facebook allows more information to be shared, conversations are longer and more detailed.

• 22% of users share additional information about their lives, either through context (where they are watching, who else is with them, etc.) or by sharing a list of all their activities throughout the day, including the media the currently consuming
• 19% of users are starting a conversation about the show

What Does This Mean?

In this age of New Television, consumers are constantly expressing their thoughts online while simultaneously engaging in other social behaviors. The opportunity for networks and advertisers is huge; they can not only provide relevant, interesting content that keeps viewers engaged, but also grow relationships that are driven by the consumers’ stated needs, wants, and interests. The value of a click, an eyeball, or a connection when a consumer makes a choice to participate is infinitely higher than that of a passive action, like viewing a commercial.

As tomorrow is election day, the online world is buzzing with political conversations. As we are in the process of working to relaunch and run Politicosphere, I’ve got the intersection of politics and social media on my mind. On that note, I want to draw attention to an interactive map the New York Times put up. This map looks at Twitter buzz around individual candidates’ Twitter handles, including their own tweets, tweets to them, and their tweets retweeted.

If you’re sitting in front of your TV tomorrow night, watching the election results, I highly recommend you practice some media multi-tasking and watch this along with results. It will be interesting to see how big wins, big losses, and tight races pace with Twitter buzz.

Throwing money into the abyss?

I was quite excited when Kiva first opened its (virtual) doors. Kiva harnessed the power of storytelling, as well as ease of online payment, to help online individuals make a difference they felt connected to. I was equally excited when I watched the rise of crowdsourced funding in the startup world. I believe there is value in this. I know some people who argue that it’s just like buying a lottery ticket; you’re putting in money with no real chance at return. I like the idea, however, of supporting projects that I see as having social value but are not in the non-profit sector.

Small money to big money

So I gave money to Diaspora, the damn-the-man Facebook rival that got some attention this spring. A small part of me wanted the t-shirt that came at the $25 donation level so I could sport it like an indie band shirt. A large part of me was simply excited by the fresh-thinking college boys who were going up against a giant. At $25, I wasn’t in for much, so I committed. It turns out that 6,478 other people felt the same way. The project came it at 2006% of its original goal.

Let the crowd decide

Diaspora utilized Kickstarter, a website that allows startups to raise funding through micro-payments. Here’s why I think Kickstarter has it right: The model is set up so that, if a startup hits its goal, donors are charged. If it doesn’t hit its goal, the assumption is that the idea isn’t strong enough to fund, and no donors are charged. Neat. It takes the wisdom of the crowd and applies it to projects.

So now this idea is hitting public radio. Why is this so incredibly cool? Because individuals can pitch stories, multiple individuals can provide funding, and then a professional produces it. Many ideas are pitched, only the good ones get funded, and we all enjoy a better public radio. To me, this is huge incentive to fund. I’d certainly prefer to give money for a story than to give money for an NPR tote bag.

I recently caught up with Gary for a podcast, and am sharing a condensed version of our discussion with you as part of this post. Additionally, I’ve included my “Top 5 Things to Know” based largely on my experience and discussions with Lauren Maynard, who works with the tool almost daily as Room 214’s Director of Research.

Social-Media-Monitoring-Podcast-With-Crimson-Hexagon

Podcast Show Notes
1. We discuss the original intent of Crimson Hexagon’s technology, and Gary references the “disaster” of attempting to use documented practices for extracting meaning from large volumes of textual content.

2. Gary discusses how Crimson Hexagon overcame the challenges associated with common linguistic analysis by developing something I have come to refer to as their “proportional estimate” methodology.

3. I ask about the accuracy of data and validation methodology. Gary explains in detail.

Note: Gary sometimes refers to posts, tweets, blogs, etc as “documents.” Between his knowledge of the subject matter and natural train of thought, you may find yourself needing to listen to certain sections more than once. The last two minutes of the podcast, when he talks about people/messages basically saying the same thing over and over again, are my favorite.

The Top 5 Things You Need to Know about Crimson Hexagon
I’d like to quickly preface this by saying Room 214 is a tool-agnostic agency. My objective is not financial compensation from Crimson Hexagon for saying nice things about them or even selling their offerings.

It is instead to evaluate, recommend, use and help optimize business intelligence and social media monitoring tools from any number of technology providers my agency deems praiseworthy. This is the best way we know how to continue matching effective solutions to our clients’ requirements (ok, end of my pitch).

1. Crimson Hexagon Accounts for Consumer Variation

Consideration of varied language use is important because it can vary greatly by consumer segment. For example, 12 year olds and 45 year olds might describe something they love very differently, but at the core their statements are both saying, “We love this” or “We are going to watch this.” Identification and categorization of both types of conversation is valuable.

2. Crimson Hexagon Research Enables a Thesis

Using the same set of keywords, and assuming a given volume of subject matter, a question can be asked and subsequently answered. Example: For a TV show, questions ranging from intent to view to sentiment reaction can be answered. Most tools require manual sorting through piles of posts based on keywords and inferred trends. Crimson Hexagon can factually and correctly capture trends pertaining to the question being asked within a given set of posts.

3. Crimson Hexagon Enables the Training of Their Algorithm

We have been at this kind of work (leveraging social media business intelligence and monitoring tools) for about three years, so can appreciate that many of these tools are essentially in their infancy. Still, it wasn’t that long ago we joked about providers needing to activate the “army of midgets” behind the Wizard of Oz curtain in order to get calibrations/adjustments done due to poor data filtering or off-target monitoring.

Today, one of our favorite things about Crimson Hexagon is the ability to make their tools work more effectively without the need to give them a call. This is a huge time saver, allows us to better optimize the tools for relevant results and positions our analysts in the driver’s seat when it comes to delivering value.

4. Crimson Hexagon Helps Narrow the Research

The first steps of keyword refinement are made easier with Crimson Hexagon’s visualizer functionality. The visualizer helps us understand how to better narrow a search, and may even reference items that might be missing. This has made our process more efficient, providing automated assistance towards cleaner, more targeted results.

5. Crimson Hexagon Understands Customer Service

This might sound cliché, but we are all basically in the customer service industry (living in the “thank you economy”). We have somewhat of a unique partnership, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that Crimson Hexagon responds to us very quickly. We’ve had other “partners” that didn’t. This makes a huge difference, because the more we use their tools, the more we need to work through nuances. They have consistently demonstrated a willingness to help refine searches, take feedback and give tips and insights with respect to updates.

A Complicated Journey

When a brand creates a piece of information, that piece has a twisted, convoluted and often times unexpected set of adventures across the vast world of the interwebs. Once upon a time, this was the simple vision for the internet.

40 years later and things are not so simple. Interesting information about a brand can be shared on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, email, Buzz, text and a wide variety of other places. From those individual social spaces, others can share, reshare, and create additional information. Individuals with no inherent interest in your brand can stumble upon it by reading tangentially-related stories on blogs. And now we’ve got the Facebook Like button, which lets individuals trace their way through the web by means of their friends’ interests.

It gets very messy, very quickly. You have to know what to track and where to start looking in order to determine what kinds of people, places and spaces are hotbeds of activity surrounding your brand. Knowing this information, you can then create sticky and relevant content and properly support communities that have the highest propensity to make content viral.

How To Make Sense Of It All

You need to figure out what it is that you need to know in order to better understand groups and places of influence.

• What content gets shared most
• Where it goes viral
• What types of content are best fit to specific mediums
• Types of sharing (ie a few individuals share a lot vs. many individuals share a little)

Above is a snapshot of a dashboard from Meteor Solutions. We placed a bit of Meteor’s code on a client’s website. It allows us to anonymously track how individuals are choosing to share content from this website. We can see what days had the most visitors from shared links, where those people came from, and what kind of content they liked (shared) the most. It also allows us to find out where the content is being shared, potentially uncovering message boards, Facebook communities, etc. that are important influencers for our client.

Untapped Influencers

There are also plenty of sources that aren’t coming directly to your own website, but could be. Here’s a snapshot of a Syomos MAP search on “shade-grown coffee”, which gives me insight into influential message boards and forums surrounding this topic.

It’s Never Static

Whether you like it or not, this work is never done. Key communities will change. The types of content most often shared will change. To build a following, you can’t just monitor for the crisis situations; you need to monitor for the most beneficial situations too. We use a host of tools to go about tracking conversations, content sharing and overall feedback, but that toolset changes constantly. I’d love to hear anything you’ve seen useful. I’d also be happy to talk more about what we use. Drop me a line.