Challenging old notions of value via social media

I hate the phrase social media.  I'd rather think about people.  People represent OTT  (opportunities to talk)  if we have to get back into media & evaluations terms. Conversations. Recommendations. Sharing. Suggestions.  Hugely influential.

There's lots of people like me scratching their heads and trying to crack a definitive measurement / value model for digital interactions with consumers in the digital space.  There's lots of things we can measure, and some we can't (yet) but one of the biggest challenges is relating direct cause and effect of money spent on initiatives in social spaces and sales uplift.  It's a tricky one. How do you qualify and quantify social influence to a client that's used to seeing x# TVR's (tv ratings) = y% sales uplift, and, rarely (and rightly) is digital / social media activity conducted in a vacuum.

Half the battle is getting clients to think about the longer term and get out of a campaign led mentality that only sees value in ££ and 6 week windows. Value in my mind means relationships, interactions, contributions, permission to engage in dialogue, reviews, all of which contribute to brand / product consideration sets and eventually sales. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe in 3 or 6 months.  That's why the Aleksandr Orlov/Compare the Meerkat campaign is so brilliant. There are always people in the market for one insurance product or another. Stick to campaign phasing to raise awareness and you'll only ever capture the active prospects for that 4 week window of activity. Yet by being regularly visible and releant via social media you can achieve ongoing top of mind awareness.

Marketers also need to recognise that consumers will only talk about things when it's relevant to them and their lives. So your brand might have done something interesting, & engaged someone's attention but the glowing recommendation to a friend might not occur for 6 months. In my books that doesn't make it less valuable at all. Just harder to correlate and prove,  because the recommendation will no doubt have come about because of multiple stimuli that may have occurred on or offline.

There are a few "social media" success stories being touted around(apart from my meerkat mate), and I've just tripped over this round up of some of them. Take them for what they are, often supposition, and not spelled out, nor with details of what the objectives were but to stimulate thought it would be 4 minutes of your day well spent.  Then go and think about whether you are setting the right real objectives for your digital activities and therefore the right metrics.

The out-take is so often open to interpretation

I'm genuinely not feeling deliberately argumentative this afternoon but when I read articles that interpret data and don't really think beyond the obvious I do furrow my brow. So I'm going to throw in my own point of view on this one.

The headline this chart was taken from was "Loyal visitors but small share from social sites", and the conclusion being that whilst the number of visitors to a site coming from a social networking site was small they were likely to visit several times (good!), whereas search engines are still overwhelmingly driving the lions share of traffic, but not traffic that returns.

Now admittedly I've not read the whole of Chitika research piece or deconstructed the methodology, but for me whilst it's great that social network sites can help drive traffic if that's what you are trying to use them for, there appears to be a key point that hasn't been brought to the table:

Half the point of having a brand page or group on Facebook or similar is so that people can interact with your brand / experience / event  IN AN ENVIRONMENT THEY ARE IN ANYWAY. So trying to distract a consumer from what they were there to do (interact with their friends) and drag them off to your site is a bit like picking someone up by the scruff of the neck and dragging them against their will to somewhere they don't necessarily want to be.

You wouldn't like it if someone did it to you now would you??  I read something recently that said something along the lines of "a marketer wouldn't dream of interrupting a phone conversation, but they keep wanting to interrupt in social media environments".  You need to make your brand part of the conversation not irritatingly interrupt it. That's just bad manners, and yes it might get you talked about but maybe not for the right reasons.

As ever it comes down to making sure that the metrics you set for activity are the right ones, and click through isn't the only option in the digital measurement toolbox.