On Radian6

Kyle Monson of JWT focused the importance to have the “right person sitting in front of the Radian6 pane” and that journalists were perfectly qualified to do this. He also noted that Radian6 does produce lots of data that needs to be cleaned and sifted to get to the meaningful results.

Comment: While I agree to some extent, social listening isn’t just about sitting in front of the Radian6 pane analyzing conversations it is about finding the data, manipulating the data, mashing that data up with other sorts of data and using statistical analysis to draw insights.

On the Future Of Listening

“In the future can social listening data be used to predict brand sentiment/reputation,” – Michael Learmonth of Ad Age.

Shiv Singh of PepsiCo noted that “smart agencies have already moved beyond just listening but the next thing is to start identifying pop culture moments so that the brand can insert themselves into that.”

He also noted that “the future of listening is to study how memes spread both geographically and from influencer so that you use this to predict the spread of news and content.”

On Facebook Listening

Shiv Singh commented, “The elephant in the room is that 25 per cent of all online time is spent on Facebook and yet we only see a small about of that conversation on fan pages. Listening won’t be complete unless we can listen to the whole of Facebook.”

Comment: there weren’t many people that really is either a good idea or likely given the obvious implications for all profiles being set to be public!

On Influence

I was surprised the conversation about Influence took so long to come up. One of the comments, again from Shiv, that really hit home with me was that “we shouldn’t be letting technology vendors define influence, we should be drawing on the numerous people in academia who have been studying influence since 1950s.”

Comment: As a company that employs an academic and statisticians, this was music to my ears. If you want our head of R&D’s view on influence and some of the debate around it check it out.

“Should you use sociological, psychological and consumer behavior theory to segment, classify and measure consumers’ buying stages relative to corporate media strategy? Seth published an in-depth paper for the Institute for Public Relations entitled, “Using Web Analytics to Measure the Impact of Earned Online Media on Business Outcomes: A Methodological Approach.”

John, a former Forrester Research analyst and now web analytics consultant, shares the social media framework he co-authored with Jeremiah Owyang from Altimeter. Both of them are put on the spot by Shonali, one of PRWeek’s Top 40 Under 40 PR Pros. Do formal methodologies stand up to close scrutiny in the face of hands-on, real life experience?”

Some of the topics they will be addressing are the limitations of tools when it comes to deriving marketing insights from data, the current state of social media metrics, and real-life examples of putting methodology into action.

Despite the word “Faceoff” in the title of the panel, there is apparently no truth to the rumor that Nicolas Cage and John Travolta will be co-moderators. But we are all sure that Seth will bring his best game to this.

For more info on the conference go here: http://www.emetrics.org/washingtondc/2010/tracks/socialmedia-metrics.php

I recently came across this post from Nokia’s Arto  Joensuu titled Conversations are the New Conversion. In the accompanying SlideShare presentation, he makes the case that the traditional sales funnel is no longer linear and controllable. Consumers are now are in control and make their own journey through the “inverted funnel.” This puts new demands on marketers, as the traditional one-way forms of communication increasingly struggle to attract consumer attention. Arto’s presentation says that they have found that ~30% of engagements are generated from paid media, while the rest is generated through owned and earned media. This is why he argues that Social Media Optimization combined with SEO is critical. I couldn’t agree more. Whether you call it Social Media Optimization or Earned Media Optimization (which is the phrase we prefer), the basic message is the same: if you think that the media you own and the one you pay for is all you need to leverage in your marketing campaigns, then you’re missing a massive opportunity.

So what exactly is earned media? Earned media happens any time a brand or a product is mentioned or discussed in a place outside of a brand’s direct control. It can be anything from a positive review in the New York Times, to your best friend sending you a note via Facebook to check out this cool new product. Essentially, earned media is any media generated that you didn’t pay for directly, and if it is an endorsement or a recommendation by someone trusted, it can make all the difference. Conversely, one single bad review can be the ultimate deterrent, and ruin all well-laid marketing plans.

Now, it is important to note that while earned media occurs outside of a brand’s direct control, it does not mean that a brand cannot influence the process, or be part of the conversation. For one thing, PR has been – and still is – a proven tool for influencing influencers. And influence still matters today, even if the field of influence has fragmented and mutated into something many communicators are grappling with understanding. But crucially, it puts the onus on marketers and communicators to really understand not only what their target customers and their spheres of influence really care about, but how and where they talk about it. Because if you cannot communicate your message in a way that resonates with your intended target, they can skip it in an easy click.

And that is why the word “earned” is very apt. In an attention-deficit economy, it is harder and harder to earn the interest, attention, engagement, and ultimately, the trust of your customer. Therefore we think that it is critical for marketers to understand and optimize the impact earned media has on their brands. As Peter Drucker famously said, “if you cannot measure it, you cannot control it.” But understanding and optimizing earned media goes far beyond just measurement. As SEO and SEM pros will tell you, optimization means integrating analytics deeply into your planning process (and that planning process has to be actively managed and revisited). And it means going beyond “out-of-the-box” data. Data only becomes truly valuable when you apply the business context to it that makes it actionable to decision-makers. We’ll be posting more on Earned Media Optimization over the next few months, so stay tuned.

If your reaction to the headline was, “what on earth does Web analytics have to do with my job?” you probably weren’t alone. Web analytics might be thought of as the realm of SEO pros and online marketing teams, but it can be an incredibly valuable tool for PR teams too. In fact, Web analytics can give you insight into the value of PR and the types of business outcomes it helps drive in a way that hasn’t been possible without expensive primary research. In much the same way, online advertising has revolutionized how advertisers can measure and optimize outcomes, PR can leverage exactly the same tools and techniques. As communications becomes increasingly more digital, it also becomes increasingly important to measure actual user behavior and optimize campaigns to get the best outcomes.

Here are some examples of questions that Web analytics can help you answer:

• Is our corporate Twitter account driving traffic to the right Web pages?
• Are our press releases or social media releases being cited by journalists and bloggers, and if so, do they drive traffic to our corporate site?
• Is Key Message A more effective at driving sales than Key Message B?
• Should we invest more resources in social or traditional media?
• Where do we find the audiences most likely to respond to our campaigns?

While some of these questions require advanced analysis and statistics, there are many straightforward questions you can ask your internal Web analytics team for data on:

• For starters, get some data on what unpaid sites drive the most traffic to your Web site. Unpaid traffic includes any Web sites that provide a link to you for which you have not paid (i.e., not ads or paid search). Many of these sites are influential publications that publish content about your brand, so you should know who is most effective at driving awareness and demand.
• Next, ask questions about what the traffic that these sites refer looks like. Do they tend to sign up for information or buy things on the Web site (or to put in Web analytics speak: “how well do they convert?”). Where are they located geographically? What keywords did they use to find the information, if any (this is great input into determining how you should write copy about your company)?
• Then you may want to do some benchmarking. How does earned media compare to paid media? How does Twitter compare to blogs?

Your internal Web analytics team should be able to provide you some of these reports out of the system or provide you or your analyst of choice access to the application. You can also talk to your agency or research vendor who can help answer your questions on how to get started. We frequently get asked by clients to do this and also help answer complex questions such as: what messaging results in more sales? Where are the untapped audiences with the most potential? Which audience segments should you target with various messages to get optimal business outcomes? There are many ways you can use the data to give you campaign insights, and if you combine it with other data sources, the possibilities are vast.

For more information on the subject of how to get started using Web analytics for PR, you can download our white paper on the subject (published by IPR), or you can also take a look at this presentation, which Context Analytics’ Seth Duncan gave at IPR’s Measurement Summit.

A recent study published in Booz Allen’s Strategy+Business, point to some of the same reasons  that we have found in our research for this effect, and include much that is relevant to communications professionals. The study, authored by Young & Rubicam’s John Gerzema and Ed Lebar, and titled “The Trouble with Brands,” presents data that makes the case that brands have been losing power over time, with the exception of a handful of brands whose values are afforded a premium and financially outperform their peers. This is based on intangibles the study’s authors call “energized differentiation,” but really boil down to having an emotional connection with customers (i.e., emotional loyalty), in that the brands speak to their customers (relevance) and have a unique meaning to their customers (differentiation). Further, these brands “add up to a more exciting, dynamic, and creative experience” to use the authors’ words. These brands have built valuable equity with both customers and prospective customers, creating intangible value. Apple is probably the most obvious example of such a brand at the moment, but since we do a substantial amount of work in the technology industry,they are an inescapable example. Apple has emerged as one of the more revered brands of recent times, and in our research the brand continually elicits a share of voice and sentiment that is completely out of proportion to its share of the markets in which it competes, be it PCs, laptops, mobile phones or consumer electronic devices. If you also look at market capitalization and valuation ratios, the company is afforded a rich premium by investors (PEG ratio of 1.5 and P/S ratio of 4.15 at this moment). Customers are also willing to pay a premium (Apple has a market share of 91% for all PCs priced over $1,000 – which shows clear dominance of the premium segment). And the media loves to write about Apple. Much of that is explainable by rational factors: investors like the margins and growth rates, and customers like the innovative products and product design. But, there is an emotional connection that causes both investors and customers to be willing to pay a premium and sustains the momentum. This premium is due to the company’s ability to excite the public, the fact that the products delight the customers, and the fact that a leader like Steve Jobs can captivate journalists to the point of worship.

PC/Notebook Market: Share of Voice Vs. Market Share

While these intangibles may seem very wooly, they are in fact very measurable. As an example, in the 90s I worked on building a customer satisfaction and loyalty program for a large software company who had a dominant position in one market and wanted to extend it to another – and they needed to understand how well loyalty would extend to this market that was relatively new to them. One of the key findings from our research – based on interviewing senior-level executives at the 2000 largest companies in the world – was that our client had two types of loyal customers: those who bought because they either had no choice or logic dictated it (e.g., because of issues such as compatibility, cost, or corporate policy), or those who not only stayed loyal because of the facts, but also showed a high level of emotional involvement in the purchase. They were more likely to recommend the brand (something Net Promoter has since exploited in its simple brand advocacy model), but they also exhibited other perceptions that indicated that there was an emotional connection that shouldn’t necessarily be part of a rational purchasing decision process. In understanding these perceptions lay the key to  a successful marketing strategy.

Ultimately, in our current environment where trust is easily lost and brand value is eroding, it is more important than ever for a brand to understand the strenght of the emotional bond with their customers, and to use that knowledge to better manage their brand. And if you think about it, much of what goes into creating that bond boils down to good PR strategy: design and communicate a clear vision of the brand that is distinct, is authentic, resonates and engages its audience (aka the DARE methodology employed by Text 100). Further, the leadership of a brand is key to communicating this vision, and marketing must back this up by sticking to the same message and effectively engaging the brand’s audience. Great brands don’t create value by accident – they do it through deliberate planning, thorough research and flawless execution. So if you do not have a clear strategy on how you will excite your market, then ultimately, your brand value will suffer. And of course, if you do not measure, you won’t know.

There is an old saying in statistics – “correlation does not imply causation” – and we would have to respectfully disagree with the conclusions of the report on the grounds of that saying. The report goes a long way in implying that social media engagement is the cause of the financial out-performance that successful brands display relative to others. In our opinion, the correlation is more likely a result of the fact that the most financially successful brands have attributes that make them more apt to be an early successful adapter of social media (they have more resources, are better attuned to the market, they’ve hired better marketers, or whatever other reasons you might think of), than it is that social media engagement is such a big driver of financial success. The correlation is real – or at least appears to be so from the graphics, though the report doesn’t actually state any numbers around the strength of the correlation.

But the question is what the direction of the causality is – or to put it in the plain words of TechCrunch: “I really doubt that their level of social media engagement had anything to do with their revenue growth, it is just that the strongest brands are the most engaged.” This is not to say that successful social media marketing strategies can’t add value to a brand. To the contrary, the report could have simply stated that successful companies are more likely to be engaged in social media, and that laggards ought to try to catch up to keep up with successful brands.

We used web analytics data (such as # of monthly visitors) and combined that with data on product-related coverage we already analyze for the client on a quarterly basis. We repeated this process for each of their competitors, and found the following:

• Our client was the only company amongst the competitive set to have a significant relationship between media volume and web visits. This meant that they were the most successful in using communications to drive traffic. Part of the explanation for this was the fact that the client obtained better quality press – our metrics showed higher message penetration and better tonality for key product attributes than the competition.

• 1 product-focused article in the media resulted in approximately 10,000 visits to the website. In other words, there was a tangible ROI to their efforts.

We were also able to provide insight into their SEO and search term strategy, that could be implemented in future messaging strategy for the client.

This case study is a good illustration of the fact that PR and Communication investments can be measured by not only how much press coverage was earned, but also in how the investments ultimately contribute to business outcome metrics across the organization.