Archive for October, 2011

Book Review: The Social Customer

11.10.31

The Social Customer is one of the best books I’ve read on practical uses and implementations of social media marketing. Given that I’ve read a fair number of them over the last few years, that’s saying something.


The author, Adam Metz, takes the reader through a straightforward, easy-to-read summary of the concept and potential for social CRM, but that’s really only part of this book. While it covers social CRM at length, this is a solid 201-level tome on many aspects of social media, which means this is a useful read for anyone wanting to go beyond the intro level and commit to the social marketing arena.

Structure

The Social Customer is divided into three sections:

  1. Section One takes the reader through an overview of the topic of social CRM.
  2. Section Two walks through 23 use cases of social CRM (based on Altimeter’s 18 social CRM use cases, with a few extras thrown in), dividing them into six groups:
    1. Social Marketing
    2. Social Sales
    3. Social Support
    4. Social Innovation and Product Development
    5. Collaboration
    6. Seamless Customer Experience
  3. Section Three looks at the implementation of social CRM within the organization.

Strengths

While unashamedly enthusiastic about the potential and desirability of social CRM implementations, Metz is honest throughout about his thoughts on the market-readiness of the various use cases that are put forward. You never get the feeling that he’s just preaching for the sake of it, but that there’s a considered opinion behind the assessments.
The book is extremely easy to read. A consistent energy and enthusiasm flow through it, and the personal anecdotes lend a human feel to the book throughout.
Lastly, he book draws frequently from other popular texts including the aforementioned Altimeter paper, Paul Greenberg’s CRM principles and the book Blue Ocean Strategy. In doing so, it creates a really solid overview of the topic that ultimately leaves you wanting more.

Weaknesses

The book isn’t without its issues, however.
The vendor-focused nature of much of the book means that it will be out-of-date before long – especially as it provides a point-in-time assessment of the market readiness of tools and use-case implementations.
The book offers a fairly immature definition of a socially-enabled business which, while fitting the topic of the book, ignores many of the other potential considerations in play.
The middle section of the book – the 23 use case – does drag and becomes repetitive as it progresses. This part of the book, while valuable, is a bit of a slog – you’re best either taking a break before diving into it, or just picking and choosing the chapters based on your own business objectives.
Still, these weaknesses don’t ultimately spoil what, as I mentioned earlier, is one of the best social-focused books I’ve read in a long time – if not the best.
Who should read this: People with a good knowledge of social media who are looking to begin to go more in-depth; people who want to explore the potential of social CRM at a basic level.
People who should avoid this: Anyone looking for an introduction to social media (this will be too advanced); people looking for an in-depth “how-to” on social CRM.
What you’ll learn:
  • Introduction to the concept of social CRM and the social customer
  • High-level introduction to 23 use cases for social CRM and their market readiness
  • Introduction to operational factors, including analytics, work flows, legal and ethical considerations

Posted in: books

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You’re Not a Strategist – You’re a Punk

11.10.20

I’m constantly astonished at how many people looking to get into agencies describe themselves as a “strategist” and think that by doing so, they can now avoid all of the work they don’t want to do. Whether it’s planning and budgeting, client project execution or measuring the outcomes, some people seem to think that by calling yourself something different, you can avoid learning about critical elements of a communications function.

Here’s the thing, though: it’s by doing that that you learn how good programs and strategies work.

I know I’m going to piss a lot of people off here, but in my opinion you can’t be an effective strategist until you’ve got some experience to rest behind it.

Mashable recently published a post that nicely explains my frustration. It’s entitled “What Does It Take To Be a Social Strategist?” Key points:

  1. About a third of companies look for at least six years of experience when looking for a social strategist
  2. 92% of social strategists are manager-level or higher
  3. Key success factors:
    1. Rallying stakeholders across the organization
    2. Leading multi-faceted, cross-departmental efforts
    3. Having a long-term, customer-centric vision
    4. Being multi-disciplinary and wearing “many hats”

Sounds pretty intense, right? So then why do I encounter so many inexperienced people giving themselves that title?

Here’s where I’m coming from: When I started working in communications, after doing a few internships during school I spent four years, analyzing quality assessments of communications plans in the public sector.

Sounds mind-bogglingly boring, right? On the contrary, I think that experience set me up fabulously to succeed later. I looked at poor plans and learned to spot the holes and what doesn’t work. I looked at good plans and learned how they effectively fit together. I did the same for tactical materials, too.

Later I moved jobs, began executing things myself, and learned from my mistakes. I organized a media event that I thought was near-perfect but that had ZERO media show up (sob!). I had drafts returned to me by editors with so much red ink on them, you could barely read the original draft.

On the flip side, I also wrote a release that got verbatim pick-up on the front page of tier-one media (I still have a copy of that paper!), and led programs that delivered great results for clients. In short: I learned.

You can’t just flip a switch and consider yourself a strategist without gaining experience in these other areas. You need to get in the trenches, get your head down and learn.

What’s more – sorry to say it – but there’s a lot more to strategy than just idea creation.

You might be great at putting the pieces together, and have a really great mind for integrating different elements to solve problems, but until you’ve gained enough experience to know (the majority of the time, at least – communications isn’t a science) what is likely to work and what isn’t, be quiet and continue to learn.

If you think you just flip a switch and become a master strategist overnight without gaining the experience needed first, you’re not a strategist. You’re just a punk.

(photo credit: Flickr)

Posted in: strategy

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Content Is King At BlogWorld

11.10.20

I’ll be speaking at BlogWorld LA in a couple of weeks, along with my good friend Jeremy Wright, on the topic of blogger relations – how to identify people, how to approach them and how to avoid the mistakes of others.

I had a chance recently to chat with DJ Waldow, who recorded this video about our session and about why I keep coming back to BlogWorld.

If you’re interested in attending BlogWorld LA, you can use the code BWEVIP20 to get 20% off the registration price.

Posted in: blogger relations, BlogWorld, events

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Return On Influence Can Return From Whence It Came

11.10.05

The Harvard Business Review recently published a post entitled “Return on Influence, the New ROI“. In it, the author suggested that marketers consider the use of “Return on Influence” as a metric for measuring social media activity.

What is this metric, you ask? To quote the post:

“Divide the total revenue generated via social efforts by the number of social media fans and followers, and you get a per-fan/follower value.”

There you have it – your “new” ROI – return on influence.
Really? Looks to me like that’s “Revenue Per Fan/Follower”.

Sorry, but this kind of black-hat math just doesn’t cut it. There are so many holes in the post, it’s hard to know where to begin (fortunately, Olivier Blanchard and Katie Paine did, in the comments). Still, I’ll take a stab, because I think it’s important that you, me and everyone in this space stop using BS metrics to justify social media activities and start to tie them back to business objectives.

I’ve written on this before (check out this post from two years ago) but here we go again…

1. Measuring a return requires that you compare outcomes to the input

How can you calculate a return on something without knowing what you put into it? My head hurts. This isn’t a true “return” metric; this is a poor attempt to calculate the value of a fan (without considering many of the factors in play even in that instance).

2. ROI is ROI, not Return on Imaginary Numbers

ROI has a formula. It goes like this:

(Gain from investment – cost of investment) / cost of investment

This isn’t up for negotiation. It’s a business staple. Please – if you value your job – don’t walk into a boardroom and try to sell your CFO on your fan numbers. Don’t try to sell them on retweets, or replies, or anything like that (they’re useful, but not in that context or for that audience). Show them the return that you’re able to generate for the business.

It might be hard to tie social media activities directly back to ROI, as there’s rarely a direct, solid line to be drawn (it’s extremely hard to say what, beyond the final trigger, influenced a decision to purchase, for example, but it doesn’t mean those things weren’t worthwhile). However, solid business objectives do tie back.

Which leads me to the next point…

3. Return on Influence has nothing to do with business objectives

This is something I’ve been putting a lot of thought into recently – ensuring that the social media activities we plan tie back to business objectives for our clients. Sometimes that’s sales. Sometimes that’s reduced customer churn. Sometimes it’s lowered costs.

It’s never “increasing the revenue per follower” or the “return on influence”.

 4. Measurement should be activity-specific

Imagine going pitching a metric like “return on PR”. The conversation might go something like:

You: “We calculate Return on PR by looking at the revenue generated from PR against the volume of releases we put out…”

Boss: “Get out.”

This idea is similarly ridiculous. Measure an activity, not a medium. You want to measure the ROI of a tweet? Fine. Figure out what it cost to draft/approve/publish it (time is money) and how much revenue it generated (assuming it was sales-focused). There you go – you can calculate the ROI of the tweet, and you haven’t broken a sweat yet.

Don’t try to measure the ROI of social media, or of “influence”… please.

5. Followers and fans don’t define influence

Every time someone uses reach metrics to try to define influence, a great hue and cry goes up. “It’s not reach, it’s context!” they cry. It’s true. Plus it’s a bunch of other things.

Folks like the team at Traackr have realized this, as have those at PeerIndex. Klout has cottoned-on, too, with its topic pages (although I’d still like to see them go much further down that road).

If you measure your results based on fans and followers, don’t expect senior leadership to buy into your plans for long.

6. Please – PLEASE – stop creating fake numbers

Like Ad Value Equivalency (AVE), this number tries to force a square peg through a round hole.

AVE aimed to show the value of media coverage if that same coverage had been a paid ad rather than earned media. It was bullshit, plain and simple, as it didn’t account for sentiment, credibility or any other measurement that fit around it.

There are plenty of other metrics thrown around that apply arbitrary (and, often, opaque) formulae to generate meaningless values for social media activities. I can’t stand them (plus, they violate the Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles, which the world’s biggest PR firms (ours included) have endorsed.

Please – let’s stop creating fake numbers and take a long, hard look instead at how we can tie our activities back to business objectives, and measure against that.

Fair?

Posted in: measurement, social media

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Three Ways To Wag The Long Tail Of Content

11.10.04

I was glancing at my blog traffic stats the other day, and noticed something that made me sit up and take notice – after three years, the most-viewed post on this site continues to be the opening post in my good communications planning series, with over 125,000 views.

What’s more, the traffic to this post is continuing to rise over time. Here’s a chart of the daily traffic to the post:

Doesn’t look much like the typical ‘long tail’ image of traffic over time, does it?

I got to wondering why this is happening. Here are my ideas:

 

1. Useful content

The 13-part series of posts I wrote on communications planning walk through the process of creating a communications plan, from start to finish. It (I hope) is useful stuff; content that people find applicable and helpful.

2. Evergreen content

These posts are as helpful today as they were when I wrote them. While best practices around plan development will, I’m sure, evolve over time, this series should remain helpful for a long time.

3. Optimize for search

As someone pointed out to me on Twitter, Google “good communications plan” and this post is the top result. “Communications plan” continues to be one of the top search terms used to reach this site. I thought-through the titles of the posts, and the cross-linking between them, when first writing them, and it worked well.

I’d love to hear your take – have you experienced this kind of effect before? What caused it then?

 

 

 

 

Posted in: social media, statistics

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