PR Communications

Measuring Brand Experiences In Social Media

What if a company was able to segment how their market perceives their product by each brand experience? Wouldn't such an ability to segment enable a company to guide product development by keeping tabs on the pulse of the marketplace, and how a company is measuring up to the competition in the market place?

To illustrate, let's use the example of a webinar software company, where the company might have three brand experiences its identified the company wants to succeed within the marketplace, those brand experiences would be a) easy to use, and b) how the company explains how to present a good webinar, and lastly c) how the webinar company integrates web 2.0 technologies into the product like twitter (twebinars).

Using social media monitoring technology the webinar software company would be able to determine the volume of conversations around each brand experience.

In addition the volume of conversation around each webinar software brand experience could be tied to a vendor/competitor in the marketplace.

However, the volume of conversation around a brand experience or competitor may not be an indicator of success. One or two competitors who have a significant volume of conversation, but those conversations might have a lot of negative sentiment. Therefore its important also to segment competitor brand experience conversations using social media monitoring tools, and at the same time measure the sentiment of each brand experience by competitor. Here, we'd show a bar chart for each brand experience, sentiment rating (positive/negative/negative-positive) by each competitor in the marketplace.

Looking at the volume of conversations, the sentiment about brand experience and as they relate to a competitor will enable the webinar software company to determine what are the most important brand experiences for customers within the market, and how each competitor measures up by conversation market share and sentiment rating. Using this information the webinar software company might then model its product development strategies on the volume of conversations around brand experiences and the competitive landscape. We'd track the progress of the conversations around each brand experience by competitor. As the webinar software vendor runs campaigns the company would be able to track how each campaign influences the marketplace.

Using social media monitoring software in this way, a company can conduct initial and ongoing market and competitive intelligence, one, to manage strategy, and two, to track progress.

I'd be curious if the volume of conversation and sentiment matches the market share of competitors, or their relative growth rates. It would be great if the industry could conduct a study both on these factors, plus in measuring how a competitor compares in the market place with the recommendations of analyst firms.

If your company has a case study, with publicly available data to show on the marketplace, let me know I'd like to write up the story.

Reflections On The PR Global Blog Week

The Global PR Blog Week was a virtual conference attended mainly by PR bloggers in the summer of 2004. As it has been five years since the conference I thought it would be good to catch up on what the Alumni from the conference have been doing and thinking, as well as discuss the long term influence the event had on participants.

I'd been blogging for 4-6 months when I heard about a virtual conference called the Global PR Blog Week. While I'd previously been a PRSA member and even helped with the 2001 PRSA technology section conference in Seattle, I'd always been more of a marketer than public relations professional.

Yet the PR blogging community in 2003-04 was very active, if small. I very much wanted to have a dialog with other communications professionals about how social media could be used for marketing. Communications professional bloggers appeared to me to be that group.

The PR blogging community being at the forefront of analysis and narrative on enterprise social media is interesting in itself. As my background had previously been Internet marketing and the SEO industry; at that point in 2003-4 there were not many SEO bloggers, and if an SEO practitioner was blogging, there were few who discussed the issues PR bloggers were writing about: Dialogue, conversation, engagement; all for public relations and marketing.

The PR Global Blog Week introduced me to the PR blogging community, the concept of virtual conferences, and helped forge relationships with bloggers that continue today.

I think the conference was very important for the early PR blogging community. The event gave the PR blogger community a central focal point, helped established some of the norms within the community, and encouraged people to make extra effort to prepare content for the event itself.

For me, the event inspired my expansion of the Corporate Blogging Survey 2004, a series of questions to corporate bloggers about the value of blogging; including, how to blog well as a corporate blogger, and how to set up a corporate blog?

My first post for the Global PR Blog Week included those questions to corporate bloggers, who then answered the questions on the New PR Wiki and also on my PR Communications blog.

In my second post, "MicroSoft Corporate Blogs & Other Stories," I describe the benefits of blogging with examples from Microsoft and Macromedia. In my third post, "The Value of Corporate Blogging", I describe the value of blogging for the enterprise. And in my fourth post, "Now Is Too Late", I wrote a review of the book Now Is Too Late.

When we held the second Global PR Blog Week in 2005, the first survey in 2004 inspired the Backbone Media Corporate Blogging Survey, both as a research tool to understand the state of blogging and its value. And as a way for Backbone Media to announce itself as an agency that provides social media strategy advice and services.

A lot has changed since I first conducted my survey in 2004, participants included bloggers from Macromedia, Microsoft and Dell (Dell had a blog in 2004, but for their Linux community). It was by conducting the corporate blogging survey that I really came understand the value of blogging for business.

Those early insights from corporate bloggers led to several jobs, my book, "Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging," more studies and case studies. What's interesting is that how much I did learn from conducting the '04 and '05 studies and where they have led me in terms of ongoing thinking, career path, and social media.

One big thing that has changed is that we now have more tools for monitoring, and a better understanding of how a triage process for monitoring and response within social media should work. Dell has been tremendously influential to the industry, not just because of the Dell Hell story, but how the company managed to turn things around using social media to measure their success. The entire Dell story was 2-3 years away back in 2004. Macromedia and Microsoft were the poster children for social media in 2004. Now Robert Scoble has left Microsoft, and Adobe bought Macromedia.

After the 2004 and 2005 conferences the PR blogging community grew tremendously. The group organizers talked about another event in 2006, but given the growth of the community, there did not really seem to be the same needs to have such a virtual, all volunteer conference.

I think because the conference was all-volunteer it set the stage for the tone of the community. People were all in the same boat in 2004, we were all learning how to use social media and blogs for corporate communications. Having a volunteer conference meant everyone had to muck in with resources and time; this created a camaraderie that continues to this day.

After the 2004 and 2005 events, the Society for New Communications Research was founded, while there was no direct relation between the events and Society. Many of the participants in the Global PR Blogging virtual conferences have become Fellows and Board members. Participants with SNCR.org, Fellows, Board Members, are non-paid, so some of the same etiquette and practices developed in the conference can be seen at play today in the Society.

Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson were not participants during the 2004 event, but they did get involved in the 2005 conference. Shel & Neville's podcast, the For Immediate Release show captures the themes and tone of those events, and still to this day manages to connect the PR social media community worldwide. The PR Blog Week was global; many of the participants were from across the world.

Trevor Cook had a big role to play in the PR Blog Week it would be really interesting to get his thoughts on the conference, as well as how his work with members influenced future discussions and relationships. Constantin Basturea worked on much of the technology for the web for the site. And Elizabeth Albrycht played an important role in engaging participants and helping set up the program.

These are some of my thoughts on the two conferences, I'd really like to hear or read other conference Alumni impressions from the PR Global PR Blog Week events. To start the conversation off, I'd like to ask each of the participants five questions, which can be answered here or on your blog. If you answer on your blog, send me a trackback, but also put your name and link on the New PR Wiki Alumni page I created for the Alumni Reunion, that way, the whole community can share your perspective. I will blog about any posts published.Here are my five questions:

1) What was the significance of the Global PR Blog Week for you?

2) What were the lasting effects of the Global PR Blog Week?

3) How did the Global PR Blog week influence you and the industry?

4) Reviewing the post(s) you wrote for the Global PR Blog week what has changed? What has not changed, since you wrote the post?

5) Give an update on what you've been doing in the last five years, and what you are doing now?

PR Blog Week Alumni

Constantin Basturea Elizabeth Albrycht  Richard Bailey  Chris Bechtel Anita Campbell Trevor Cook Don Crowther Kevin Dugan Sally Falkow, Matias Fernandez Dutto, Angelo Fernando, Dan Forbush, Bernard Goldbach Robb Hecht Wayne Hurlbert Jim Horton Mike Manuel Alice Marshall Ryan May World of Spin John Mudd Tom Murphy B.L. Ochman Anthony V Parcero,Jeremy Pepper Evelyn Rodriguez Todd Sattersten (A Penny For... and 800-CEO-READ Blog) Trudy Schuett Roland Tanglao Octavio Rojas Steve Rubel (Micro Persuasion) Jeremy Wright  Philip Young   Hans Kullin Colin McKay

If you were not a participant, read through the blog posts, and write a blog post about your thoughts on the event, and the content created. Put the link on the wiki, or let me know, and I will add it to the list. Again I will blog about your post. Good to get the wider community’s perspective on the PR Global PR Blog Week’s impact.

Update On The Global PR Blogging Week Alumni

Nostalgia is something to be avoided, especially when you're 41, however, next week I'll have a case of reminiscence for the the Global PR Blog Week 1.0, 2004.

The event, a virtual conference organized between July 12-15 2004 featured thirty seven bloggers writing about PR, Marketing and social media. Next week will be the fifth anniversary. 

To the Alumni of the Global PR Blog Week, thanks for the memories, and the many continuing conversations. 

To celebrate the anniversary I took some time to track down all of the Alumni's Twitter addresses (If one exists) and to give an update from the final post, listing all of the participants during the virtual conference.

1. @ealbrycht  Elizabeth Albrycht, (CorporatePR) Update: Now a University lecturer in France.

2. Dave Austin (Intraware Blog) Update: SEM Manager, IGN Inc.Fox Interactive Media

3. Richard Bailey (PR Studies)

4. @cbasturea  Constantin Basturea (PR meets the WWW) Update: Director of New Media Strategies at Converseon.

5. @chrisbechtel Chris Bechtel (Internet PR News Blog) Update: At ipressroom.

6. @smallbiztrends Anita Campbell (Small Business Trends)

7. @johncass John Cass (PR Communications)

8. @TrevorCook Trevor Cook (Corporate Engagement)

9. @Don_Crowther Don Crowther (101PublicRelations.com) 

10. @PRBlog Kevin Dugan (Strategic PR)

11. @SallyFalkow Sally Falkow  (Web Strategies) Update: Now running the PRoactive report

12. Matias Fernandez Dutto (Comunidad Relaciones Pblicas Argentina) Update: Now at http://matiasdutto.com/

13. @heyangelo Angelo Fernando (Hoi Polloi) Update: Communications Manager @ Decision Theater, ASU

14. @DanForbush Dan Forbush  (ProfNet, Media Insider) Update: Blog at PR Newswire is now http://profnetpost.prnewswire.com/, Dan has moved back to education PR and is Executive Director of Communications at Skidmore College.

15. Bernard Goldbach (Irish Eyes) 

16. @robbhecht Robb Hecht (PR Machine)

17. Jim Horton (Online PR)

18. @waynehurlbert Wayne Hurlbert (Blog Business World)

19. Hans Kullin (Media Culpa)

20. @Canuckflack Colin McKay (Canuckflack)

21. @mmanuel Mike Manuel (Media Guerrilla)

22. @PrestoVivace Alice Marshall (TechnoFlak) -

23. @MNPR Ryan May (Minnesota Public Relations Blog)

24. Montag (World of Spin)

25. John Mudd (Inside Real Estate Journal) 

26. @tpemurphy Tom Murphy (PR Opinions)

27. @whatsnext   B.L. Ochman (What's Next Blog)

28. Anthony V Parcero, (eKetchum Digital Media Group) -

29. @jspepper Jeremy Pepper (POP! Public Relations's Blog)

30. Evelyn Rodriguez (Crossroads Dispatches)

31. Todd Sattersten (A Penny For... and 800-CEO-READ Blog) 

32. Trudy Schuett (WOLves) 

33. @rtanglao Roland Tanglao (Streamline) Update: Founder of Bryght

34. @octaviorojas Octavio Rojas

35. @steverubel Steve Rubel (Micro Persuasion) Update: Now at Edelman.

36. @jeremywright Jeremy Wright (Ensight) Update: CEO at b5 Media

37. @mediations  Philip Young (Mediations)

   
Not to be out done, we held a follow up conference in 2005, the PR Blog Week 2.0 was September 19-23, 2005. Here are the Alumni from that event below. The anniversary for this virtual conference will be in September, here's the list of Alumni from the original participants at the second PR Blog week.

   1.  @ealbrycht  Elizabeth Albrycht, Blogging Planet, US, France. Update:  Now a University lecturer in France.

   2. @cbasturea  Constantin Basturea, US, Romania.  Update: Director of New Media Strategies at Converseon.

   3. @chrisbechtel Chris Bechtel, iPressroom, US.  Update: Still at ipressroom.

   4. Jesper Bindslev, E-mediators, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, http://www.e-mediate.squarespace.com/  Update: Now Global Project Manager at Novo Nordisk Global Marketing

   5. @stuartbruce  Stuart Bruce, Bruce Marshall Associates, UK, http://www.20six.co.uk/stuartbruce  Update: Now founder and managing director of Wolfstar.

   6. Jorge Camara, http://theprinquisitor.blogspot.com/ Don't know.

   7. @smallbiztrends Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends, US, http://www.smallbusinesses.blogspot.com/

   8. @johncass John Cass, Backbone Media, Inc., US,  Update: Still writing PR Communications but no longer at Backbone.

   9. Joel Cere, Hill & Knowlton, UK, http://beyondpr.blogspot.com/

  10. @niallcook  Niall Cook, Hill & Knowlton, UK, http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/niallcook/ Update: Now author of Enterprise 2.0

  11. Andrew C Corcoran, Lincoln Business School, UK, http://andycorc.blogspot.com/

  12. @tdefren Todd Defren, SHIFT Communications, US, http://pr-squared.blogspot.com/ Update: Still running Shift.

  13. @prblog  Kevin Dugan, FRCH Design Worldwide, US, http://prblog.typepad.com/ Update: Runs Strategic Public Relations and the Bad Pitch Blog

  14. @SallyFalkow Sally Falkow, Falkow, Inc., US, http://www.webstrategies.blogspot.com Update: Now running the PRoactive report

  15. Matias Fernandez Dutto, Argentina, http://relacionespublicas.blogspirit.com/ Update: Now at http://matiasdutto.com/

  16. @tifisch Tim Fischer, Germany, http://www.fischer-netze.de/ 

  17. @DanForbush Dan Forbush, ProfNet, PR Newswire, http://mediainsider.prnewswire.com/ Update:Blog at PR Newswire is now http://profnetpost.prnewswire.com/, Dan has moved back to education PR and is Executive Director of Communications at Skidmore College. 

18. @RDFrench Robert French, Auburn University, US, http://www.auburnmedia.com/wordpress/ Update: Robert's still at Auburn University teaching commuications. He became a founding Fellow with the Society for New Communications Research, and started PROpenMic.org a Ning social community for PR students, acedemics and professionals.

  19. @Froda Jon Froda, E-mediators, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, http://www.e-mediate.squarespace.com/ Update: Co-founder / partner. Product development at Hoist.

  20. @Hyku Josh Hallett, hyku, llc, US, http://hyku.com/blog/ Update: New Media Strategist at Voce Communications, and Fellow/Board Member of the Society of New Communications Research.

  21. @jshardison Jeff Hardison, McClenahan Bruer Communications, US, http://www.mcbrublog.com/

  22. Christopher Hannegan, Edelman, US, http://www.edelman.com/speak_up/empeng/ Update:  23. @robbhecht Robb Hecht, IMC Strategies.Principal at Booz & Company. 

  24. @PeterHimler Peter Himler, the Publicity Club of New York, http://theflack.blogspot.com. Update: Founder and Principal of Flatiron Communications LLC

  25. @jangles Neville Hobson, UK, The Nederlands, http://www.nevon.net/ Update: Resides in the UK, runs FIR Podcast with Shel Holtz. Founding Senior Research Fellow and Advisory Board member of the Society for New Communications Research.

  26. @shel Shel Holtz, HC+T, US, http://blog.holtz.com. Update: Shel runs the FIR Podcast with Neville Hobson, Founding Senior Research Fellow and Advisory Board member of the Society for New Communications Research.

  27. @waynehurlbert Wayne Hurlbert, Blog Business World, US, http://www.blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com/

  28. Timothy Johnson, Voce Communications, US, http://www.vocecomm.com/ Update: Principal at White Spinnaker Partners.

  29. @trevr Trevor Jonas, Bite Communications, http://blog.bitepr.com/ Update: Director of Social Media at Access Communications

  30. @mmanuel Mike Manuel, Voce Communications, US, http://mmanuel.typepad.com/media_guerrilla/ Update: New blog url http://www.mike-manuel.com/blog/

  31. @PrestoVivace Alice Marshall, Presto Vivace, Inc., US, http://technoflak.blogspot.com/

  32. @MNPR Ryan May, BAE Systems, US, http://mnpr.blogspot.com/

  33. @Canuckflack Colin McKay, Canada, http://www.canuckflack.com/

  34. @tpemurphy Tom Murphy, Cape Clear Software, Ireland, http://www.natterjackpr.com/ Update: http://tpemurphy.com/blog/ Works in PR for Microsoft in Washington State, since March 2009.

  35. @michaelocc Michael O'Connor Clarke, Canada, http://michaelocc.com Update:  Vice President Thornley Fallis Communications.Vice President

  36. @whatsnext   BL Ochman, Whatsnextonline.com, US, http://www.whatsnextblog.com/ 

  37. @prjobs Lindsay Olson, Paradigm Staffing Solutions, US, http://www.paradigmstaffing.com/pp.asp  Update: blog http://lindsayolson.com/

  38. Anthony V Parcero, http://www.anthurian.com 

  39. @jspepper Jeremy Pepper, POP! Public Relations, US, http://pop-pr.blogspot.com/ 

  40. @tp_da Thomas Pleil, Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences, Germany, http://mars.sdi.fh-darmstadt.de/wordpress/ 

  41. @podboy Matthew Podboy, Voce Communications, US, http://podboy.typepad.com/techvoice/

  42. @vailvoice Dee Rambeau, DVCO Technology, US, http://adventures-in-business-communications.blogsite.com/public Update: Founder of The Fuel Team

  43. @giorodriguez Giovanni Rodriguez, Eastwick Communications, US, http://eastwikkers.typepad.com/eastwikkers_/ Update: Co-founder and managing partner at The Conversation Group

  44. @octaviorojas Octavio Rojas, Weber Shandwick, Spain, http://octaviorojas.blogspot.com/

  45. @markrose Mark Rose, Comm|Tech, Inc., US, http://www.commtech.us/prfuture.html Update:Influence Consulting Director of Internet PR Strategies   46. @ericschwartzman Eric Schwartzman, Schwartzman & Associates, US, http://spinfluencer.blogspot.com/ Update: Founder and president of iPressroom,

  47. @jeneane Jeneane Sessum, The Content Factor, US, http://www.contentfactor.com, and http://allied.blogspot.com/

  48. @SKYDIVER Peter Shankman, The Geek Factory, US, http://prdifferently.typepad.com/my_weblog/ Update: Founder and CEO of The Geek Factory, Inc and founder of HARO

  49. @Davetaylor Dave Taylor, Intuitive Systems, US, http://www.intuitive.com/blog/

  50. @michaelterpin Michael Terpin, Terpin, Communications Group, US, http://www.uncorporatecommunications.com/ Update: Founder of Terpin Communications, Inc.

  51. @italovignoli Italo Vignoli, Quorum PR, Italy, http://www.italovignoli.com/

  52. @mediations  Philip Young, University of Sunderland, http://publicsphere.typepad.com/mediations/

  53. @bobwyman Bob Wyman, PubSub, US, http://bobwyman.pubsub.com/Update: At Google.

Following The Global PR Alumni

If you'd like to follow all of the PR Global Blogging week alumni who are on twitter, you can use Twitterator, a tool for following a group of people at once on twitter.

ealbrycht
cbasturea
chrisbechtel
stuartbruce
smallbiztrends
johncass
niallcook
tdefren
prblog
SallyFalkow
tifisch
DanForbush
RDFrench
Froda
Hyku
jshardison
robbhecht
PeterHimler
jangles
shel
waynehurlbert
trevr
mmanuel
PrestoVivace
MNPR
Canuckflack
tpemurphy
michaelocc
whatsnext
prjobs
jspepper
tp_da
podboy
vailvoice
giorodriguez
octaviorojas
markrose
ericschwartzman
jeneane
SKYDIVER
Davetaylor
michaelterpin
italovignoli
mediations
bobwyman

Marketing Is The Whole Brand Experience

Paula Drum's recent reply to me on twitter had a phrase that really struck a chord with me about the concept of marketing, she said, "Marketing is the whole brand experience - not just how to acquire customers." My tweet had discussed the issue that marketing includes customer service.

Perhaps a contradiction in terms, but often marketing managers are tasked with growing a business through sales, yet oddly the best way to do that is not to focus on building sales, but on building the best product, or overall brand experience.

I believe the promotion or communication of that complete brand experience should part of the goal of any marketing communications effort.

I think we see an example of communicating brand experiences in the Dell Hell example, both in the decline of the brand once Jeff Jarvis wrote his series of blog posts about his Dell experiences in 2005, and the recovery of the brand over an 18 month period starting in late 2006.

Dell had to make structural changes to their customer service infrastructure and improved their product line, as a result of these changes, and Dell reaching out to customers individually through social media, Dell was able to improve overall sentiment about the Dell brand by lowering a 49% negative sentiment in 2006 to 22% in 2008 (Dell's numbers).

Social media is not and should not be at the center of every marketing effort, but in today's world of the web, the internet plays a huge role in buyer decisions and customer communications.

Analytics for social media can include the task of measuring conversions, and I believe it should. But at the same time, I believe there needs to be a role for measuring what the customer's perception is about the brand experience, perhaps through sentiment rating.

I don't know what happened with Dell in 2005 or early 2006 when it came to measuring customer satisfaction levels, but I wonder if measurement of such metrics would have given early indication as to where the company was heading in '05 and '06. I looked at the American Customer Satisfaction Index up to '08 for Dell and the numbers were '04 - 79, '05 - 74, '06 - 78, '07 - 74, and '08 - 75. Some signs of lower customer satisfaction in '05, but the boost in '06 was an increase.

One issue with customer satisfaction is that it measures the rate of satisfaction of existing customers, not necessarily the sentiment of potential customers. Dell's social media monitoring efforts indicated high rates of negative sentiment towards the brand across customers and non-customers. We can argue about the validity of the results taken from social media. But 49% is quite a high number, enough to tell Dell something was serious and action was required. Because social media monitoring tools are now available such as Radian6, Visible Technology, Techrigy's SM2, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, and JD Edwards, I think social media research of this nature enables companies to monitor the sentiment towards a brand much more easily than traditional market research tools (Though I am not arguing for their replacement).

Executives may not always see the relevancy of brand experience measurement when the bottom line is a pressing issue, especially in the current economy. However, case studies like Dell illustrate how important a company's total brand experience can in the end have a dramatic effect on sales.

Maybe the problem for social media measurement is that it is easy to see where brand experience is important in crisis communications situations like Dell, Kryptonite, Ford or GM, but tougher to see the need for brand experience measurement and investment when you already have a good story to tell.

This is an aside: I thought I’d take a look at the Southwest Airlines blog to see what progress the company has made with social media since the company launched in April 2006. Southwest is a leader in the airlines industry and a good candidate for a company that is involved with social media but was not in crisis. I noticed when I looked at the few posts I reviewed that there were no return replies, this reminds me of GM and the FastLane blog before Christopher Barger joined the company. I will have to spend some more time looking through the last few years posts to discover how often Southwest employees reply to commenter’s on the blog. I’d be very curious to know what effect Southwest’s social media efforts have had on the sentiment towards the brand. 

Measurement Strategies For 5 Social Media Goals

Measuring company goals in social media all depends upon what those goals are, be they: Sales, higher SEO rankings, crisis communications, thought leadership etc. In this post I provide five social media goals and some strategies for measuring those goals.

Though one caveat I'd give is that in my experience those social media efforts that include customer service or product marketing research typically have a great return on involvement in social media and online community. Why? In addition to reaching customer support and product innovation goals, those activities are great content strategies that turn ordinary customers into evangelists (for an example, take a look at my case studies at from the Corporate Blogging Survey at my old company Backbone Media).

[A List of Goals and their Measurement Strategies]

(1) Sales - Goal conversions, some identifiable increase in conversions through social media. In the Boston AMA we've seen increased retention rates among members involved in social media.

(2) Higher SEO Rankings - Build a list of keywords and monitor the rankings as you develop content and an outreach program around those keywords.

(3) Crisis Communications - Conduct sentiment analysis to determine the overall opinion of your brand in the community, and how it moves up and down. Dell discovered in 2006 that they had a negative sentiment rating of 49% in the blogosphere, over an 18 month period they managed to get that down to 18%.

(4) Thought Leadership - Here's a combination of metrics, sales, higher seo rankings, and sentiment rankings.

(5) Customer Service - Does social media reduce your expenses in customer support? Typically in a forum community members will support other community members. Outsource your customer support to the community. Intuit has done this with their online products, reduced expenses, and increased product innovation by building a customer advisory board.

[Is Measurement A Realistic Goal?]

I was thinking that aiming for measurement goals in social media may be unrealistic because you are really dealing with relationships.  And that the path to success in social media is not through a focus on obtaining sales, but rather a focus on building and maintaining those relationships. The danger of only measuring sales related goals in social media is that those goals may drive the wrong strategy for success in social media. I think there's some basis in that argument, in that its difficult to measure the enthusiasm for a brand on the part of customers, or the strength of a relationship. 

One way you can measure a customer's commitment to a brand is through the Net Promoter Score, this is a measurement of the likelihood a customer would recommend a company. It is possible to ask customers their opinion on the whether they would recommend a company or product. Often important community members may not be customers, I think it unlikely that such non-customers would answer a net promoter score survey.

Really this goes back to my caveat about measuring social media goals, the path to success comes through engagement on topics that seemingly have little to do with direct sales, but have a lot to do with building the value a customer perceives provided by a brand. How a company provides customer service, the pace of innovation for product marketing, and operational excellence; these are not direct efforts to sell products, but they are factors that have an influence on the opinion by customers of a brand.  Rather than abandoning measurement goals for sales. I think its important to track such data, but also at the same time keep an eye on indicators for community building. 

[Measuring Participation by Community Members]

How do you measure the success of your online community? I think you determine the amount of participation by your employees who engage in social media, and the level of involvement and sentiment toward your brand by community members. Involvement could be if community members comment on your blog, or if they write about your brand on their social media platforms.

Success in increasing community member participation will probably increase if you conduct an outreach strategy or develop a reward system for involvement. Rewards in social media don't have to be monetary (ethics dictate that you don't compensate with hard money, or if you do the person receiving the compensation reveal payment), rewards can take the form of recognition perhaps by ranking participants for their level of involvement or by giving community members a platform for building their brand within the community.

Measuring participation and sentiment levels when combined and balanced with some of the measurement strategies I've outlined above will I believe help a company to achieve success in social media. Part of the reason I think this is from conversations with Richard Binhammer at Dell, Frank Eliason at Comcast, Wendy Harman at the American Red Cross and many other brand social media strategists and online community managers within brands.

FIR Live Blogger Relations Show About Gary Varynerchuk Pitch Email

Today I was on a panel discussion at the For Immediate Release BlogTalkRadio Live program with Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, Gary Varynerchuk, Connie Reech, Connie Bensen and Kaitlyn Wilkins discussing Gary Varynerchuk's email about his new upcoming book. I'd written a post describing the email as a bad pitch, and Gary had responded.

At the beginning of the discussion, I gave an overview of how I saw the pitch email, here's the overview.

1) Did not know Gary before I received the pitch email, though had seen him in social media. No comments or other connections between us.

2) If you are going to pitch someone it pays to read blogger’s or journalist's stuff before contacting them. You can personalize the email.

3) The email pitch did not even talk about the contents of the book, the email seemed to be pitching traffic rather than the book. I may have been interested in getting a review copy if I'm been asked, but I wasn't.

Crisis Communications - Gary's Good Engagement Strategy

1) Engaged all of the people who commented on the post. That's good.

2) Apologized for the email, I very much appreciated that effort.

Aftermath

1) I heard reports of other bloggers getting the same or very similar emails. So while engagement was good, no change in behavior. I will continue to provide constructive criticism of Gary.

Lastly, I Recommended The Following

a) Use media relations tactics that are much more likely to work.

b) Don't ruin your reputation in the world of blogging and social media.

c) Don't ruin your credibility in providing social media branding advice.

Gary followed up with his thoughts about the pitch. I thought he did a great job of explaining why he thought his pitch could have been better, and he would not have recommended this strategy to companies. He also explained that he wanted to get the word out about his book, and connect with as many people as possible. But that he did not have a lot of time because he is very busy. While I can sympathize with Gary about being busy, any parent will understand the trials of juggling so much in their life I still think companies should attempt to personalize their posts by reading each blogger or journalist's material. Gary suggested that most public relations people only spend a short time doing this. While that's a good point, I think taking that extra step can help to alleviate bad pitches. I brought up the issue of large companies having to do pitches and hiring the staff to conduct outreach.

My impression after talking with Gary directly over the telephone is someone who is very passionate about what they do, so much so that they sometimes take a tumble in the world of social media through a misstep but someone who will be right back at connecting with people again tomorrow.

Connie Bensen gave her perspective on her comment and thoughts about the follow up from Gary. Connie had a few concerns about some aspects of the pitch, but on the whole she thought it was good because the pitch offered to help her.

Kaitlyn Wilkins was appearing for John Bell (John was stuck on an airplane) she discussed the blogger relations approach of Ogilvy with their blogger relations strategy from two years ago. Kaitlyn would not have recommended the approach Gary's colleague used. She recommended that Gary use a video in the future.

Connie Reech also could not recommend Gary's approach, and suggested Gary use some alternative tactics.

While Neville Hobson strongly recommended Gary and people not use this approach.

Several people called in, including Krishna De from Ireland and Paull Young from New York.

Krishna provided some perspective about the pitch. She looked at the intent of the pitch rather than the execution. Krishna also wrote a great follow up post, one that you should review as she provided some good advice about blogger outreach strategies.

Paull Young can in with another perspective, he recommends to clients to reduce their traditional outreach strategies, and rather use dialogue and good content as a blogger relations strategy. Shel Holtz and I discussed the issue of blogger relations three years ago in relations to a Click.TV pitch on my old blogsurvey blog at Backbone Media, where Shel and I discussed the definition of blogger relations, I’d suggested blogger relations was not media relations. However, that discussion got me off my curmudgeon horse to accept the reality that there are two definitions for blogger relations.

This discussion reminded me of my attempts at blogger relations with the Corporate Blogging Survey 2005, where the outreach program to ask people to participate in the survey resulted in a snafu on our part, here’s a post “Connecting With Bloggers To Review Your Product,” about the incident with links to more posts on blogger relations.

The show was a great conversation, my thanks to all the participants and especially Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz for continuing to host a great discussion about public relations.

Socializing With The Northeast Association of State Transportation Officials

Being able to get from A to B via transportation fuels the economy and providing a safe and functioning transportation system is one of the most important services Government can facilitate.

This Tuesday, June 23 The Northeast Association of State Transportation Officials is holding its Annual Meeting here in Boston at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel in South Boston near the convention center.

I'll be presenting on the topic of engaging your community using social media to the assembled DOT officials from a number of states in the northeast.

I'll be discussing some of the lessons learned from the American Red Cross. I developed a study on the Red Cross for the Society for New Communications Research New Influencer study with the Red Cross social media guru: Wendy Harman.

Identifying Andesite in Social Communities

Adrian Chan discusses a recent conversation he and I had on the phone together; on the question of whether social media users, more experienced people, or analysts have the skinny on understanding a social media community.

On the question of who knows best, I'd hope the social interaction designer.

I'm reminded of a story about my Geology professor in Seattle, Washington. I was taking several geology classes at night for fun with a number of other older students, and one day we were out on a field trip. The Professor picked up a rock and identified the rock. While he wandered off to look at an outcrop. His students were left to ponder the question; "how does he know what he knows?"

I suspect that after a while knowledge about communities and social media becomes second nature, you almost run on auto pilot in the same way you know where to turn on your daily commute. In the community you know what to say and what not to say, but sometimes you have to prepare if you are going to experience something new.

Interestingly, I had asked my Geology Professor a few days later how he knew how to identify the rock, he had explained he'd earlier looked at a geology map, when planning the field trip and knew that there would be only certain types of rocks in the area of the field trip. When looking at a rock at random, he had already eliminated most of the alternatives based on that map knowledge. I studied rocks in Seattle for a few years, and after a while I remembered consistently the secret to rock identification was looking at what minerals made up the rock; be they mica, feldspar, or quartz.

To me the older, or more experienced someone is with a community, the more that person is able to recall patterns of recognition. Or as Adrian does, he uses his existing layers of knowledge and frameworks to explain new social media communities he observes.

Adrian, you ask a good question about who knows best. I would have thought the person who is the keenest observer. Though I thought you also made a compelling argument in our conversation about users of a social media community. You said that part of the success of an individual within a community comes from that individual's membership of the group. Without the membership, even the best observer will not have the same credibility.  Perhaps we really have two questions here, 1) Who knows best? and 2) Who can participate the most in the community? One person may do both well if they are member of a social group, but it’s unlikely that an observer who is not a member of a group will be able to interact as well as group members.

Measure Time In Social Media To Determine Engagement Results

As social media and social networking becomes ubiquitous and automated sign ups for subscribing to friends increases, social media technologies face the danger of becoming less relevant to participants.

Not because of motivation, but merely because of time. If you have 10,000 twitter followers how likely is it that you will have the time to read every tweet; increasingly low.

In my book, Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging I wrote about the right approach to conducting engagement using blogs. Rather than pitching people, I suggested that companies should have their employees actually engage community members through blogs. Read other people's blogs, and write content that speaks to the person who wrote a post, rather than just try to prove a point on a blog post, or sell their own ideas or products. I’d advise an attempt should be made to build a real relationship, rather than advertising wares.

I am beginning to think that as business people and marketers get caught up in the volume of social media they will forget about an effective strategy of engagement.

Measurement in social media is helpful, but if social media measurement is a high number of followers, is there value in that statistic? If you don’t achieve any sales or provide customer support through social media, signing up 10,000 followers really does not matter. But if you receive 10 customers for every 100 followers, then there's a value in measuring social media the number of friend subscriptions.

To get social media measurement right, first set your goals, and then determine what it will take to produce a result from your level of engagement. How many followers do you need to achieve your result is a question you do need to answer, but it is not just a matter of increasing your number of follower. Rather it is important to determine the amount of time it takes to engage each community member, and what results do you receive from that engagement. Time is the critical factor in social media, the more time you spend on reading, commenting and building a relationship with a colleague the greater the chances that something will happen. You can measure the time it takes to interact with a community member and the results.

Community Building In Nonprofits: Big Brothers Big Sisters & AMA Boston

B&W Big Brothers Big Sisters Brochure
Originally uploaded by sreffler.

Summary: Facilitate the process of your community elders advising your newbies & novices.

Tonight I attended the Social Media Club in Boston, the topic was "Integrating Social Media Across the Big Brand," I thought the panel did a good job of covering all the bases. For me my most interesting conversation of the evening was with Bob Collins as we traveled back to Arlington & Lexington.

We were chatting about my post concerning Big Brothers Big Sisters and how that organization is formulating its strategy for social media between children, parents, mentors, and alumni mentors.

Both Bob and I thought it was not a good idea for a current mentor or Big as they are called to write about their mentoring of a child or Little in social media. 1) because of privacy concerns and 2) because even if the Little was kept anonymous if the child saw the social media commentary by their mentor and he was not comfortable with what is written then that might ruin the relationship and harm the child.

There's always the possibility that the Big could ask the Little's permission to post something about their relationship by running their post by them. That's a standard practice in most corporate social media guidelines. Check in with your colleagues, partners and customers if you write about private information that you would not have known if you did not have a relationship with those contacts.

One issue for Big Brothers Big Sisters is that the organization would like Big's to write about their experiences with mentoring because it would promote the organization and encourage more people to become mentors.

Big's would also be able to use social media to learn from other mentors. Big Brothers Big Sisters of Mass Bay is thinking about developing a social network where some sections of the site are private for users depending on their role, Little's would be the most restrictive role, and other sections of the site might be open to the public.

I was comparing the situation with Big Brothers Big Sisters with the Boston Chapter of the American Marketing Association. I'm a Past President with the chapter, and we've developed an active social network over the last year using Ning technology. We opened up the site to both members and non-members, and as a result we've seen membership increase, and events sell out at AMA Boston.

The connect site at the AMA has about 20 groups, but three of them were closed to non-members; volunteers, mentors and AMA Members. We recently decided to open them up to non-members to demonstrate the value of membership. But I'm wondering if we actually made a wrong move with that strategy. I'm thinking we should have done more work to support our existing members, perhaps by building a section on the site that gave people the ability to ask a question of an old timer in the AMA.

I could be wrong here, but I was also thinking there's a parallel with the situation at Big Brothers Big Sisters. Mentors need help and support in mentoring Little’s. There are Alumni Big’s around who are happy to answer questions about their mentoring experience. Perhaps the way to support the Big’s and illustrate the benefits of mentoring is to ask Alumni Big’s to answer questions from current Big’s in a public section of the social network.

Alumni Big’s have a better understanding of what it takes to be a successful Big, plus Alumni are probably a little more media savvy in handling questions about working as a Big because they have a few years experience. Lastly, there’s no current Big/Little relationship to be affected.

If BBBS encouraged current mentors to use social media to write about their current relationships you might have more misunderstandings occur because of the Big's lack of experience with the mentoring process.

These ideas are not really new, for instance Amy Jo Kim wrote about the process of encouraging elders in a community supporting novices in her book "Community Building On The Web".