expertSEM

This topic is very relevant for our clients and for my own internal social media efforts, so I was extremely interested in discovering some innovative ways for measuring social media and placing a value on those initiatives. I’m not convinced that I found any of those new techniques or tools, but I’ll recount some highlights before I provide any opinions.

Rob Howard, founder and CTO of Telligent, kicked off the session. He gave a brief overview of himself and his company (Telligent developed enterprise collaboration and community software that “helps businesses transform info into knowledge and actionable data”). Rob intimated the three most important steps for social analytics are listening, engaging and measuring.

When listening, you must monitor key discussions and note their sources, any volatile and active topics and user sentiment. He stressed engagement over simple page views; by evaluating user engagement through web analytics (noting where users spend their time) you can create better experiences and thus increase sales.

Rob used the National Breast Cancer Foundation as an example. He explained how they use Twitter, LinkedIn and other social sites as an entry point. They engage with users on these social sites, then bring then bring them into the Breast Cancer Institute site and the social communities there. He also noted how they pinpoint those users having a particularly hard time in coping with their cancer, then reach out to them online and provide support.

Richard Margetic of Dell was up next with a section subtitled “Growing Social.” Richard discussed Dell’s use of social media and recounted some great stats from their initiatives:

• 63% increase in time spent in member communities
• 566% increase in time spent on Facebook (Richard showed the number of Facebook users worldwide. I can’t remember the exact figure, but I do remember him saying it’s more than the population of Indonesia, essentially making Facebook the 4th largest country in the world! Crazy!)
• 4,000-5,000 conversations about Dell online everyday; they use social monitoring as an early alert system; Dell can now can respond two to three weeks earlier than before
• 50% negative sentiment found in 2006; that dropped 60% after Dell started getting more involved
• Dell measures just under 100 KPIs for social media

Richard stressed that measuring social media’s value depends on two things: objective and tools. He recommended defining your KPIs and objectives first and selecting tools/outlets way, way before launching social media. He discussed three types of outlets used by Dell: company owned properties (e.g., IdeaStorm), company run properties (e.g., 39 official Dell Twitter accounts, Facebook, etc.) and third-party properties (other Facebook pages, blogs, etc.).

Richard stated that the most effective social media tactics are often the hardest to measure. He implored that the audience “broaden your definition of ROI” to truly understand the value of social media.

Renee Jordan was up last. She does social media for Taste of Home, the world’s largest cooking magazine. Taste of Home was founded on user-generated content even before it went online. At first all recipes were mailed in, tested in Milwaukee then added to the magazine if they were good.

Renee laid out five steps to social media:

1. Establish strategy
2. Set goals
3. Create community policy
4. Define measurements
5. Execute, evaluate and build learning, or what she referred to as the “rinse and repeat” step

Renee provided a list of ten guidelines for community management. Most of them were somewhat second nature–be transparent, be honest, encourage product feedback–but there were a few gems that stuck out:

• Don’t force the formation of the community, it takes time
• Become the Alpha Dog — as a company representative, you must guide the groups and topics to fit brand-relevant topics, and yank the lease if the topics stray too far
• Advocate social media internally and encourage staff from every department to get involved
• Expect the unexpected and prepare to be surprised, even alarmed

Renee wrapped up her section by sharing some amazing metrics she’s see with Taste of Home and explained that attendees could get an idea of what they could/should track by these stats:

• 22% increase in searches for Taste of Home in search engines over past year
• 23 days per month is average number that people visit the site and participate online
• 1,103,500 posts on site since launch of new community functionality (18 mo.)
• 5x better response rate for tell-a-friend recipients
• $45,000 est. lifetime revenue value of one recipe generated by user (you read that right, one (1) recipe! that’s super impressive!)

Rob took a few moments at the end to push the main takeaway: there isn’t one clear metric yet. That said, measurement and analytics is the key; you’re only burning your company’s money with social media investments unless you have clear metrics.

The panelists did a fine job and provided some very important information, but I have to say that I was a bit disappointed in the knowledge level and I feel the title was somewhat misleading. I was expecting in-depth insights into tracking social media with analytics–new metrics that I never thought to track and innovative technologies. Instead, I got bigger picture metrics and basic, albeit interesting, case studies. I don’t feel that I walked away with any actionable data. In fact, this is the second session that made me fell underwhelmed. And the session I attended yesterday afternoon was a little too in-depth for my level. I need to find a happy medium between the two. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this afternoon’s session. Stay tuned.