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Aaron Strout

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Show Me Da Monies: Live from OMMA Social

January 26, 2010 By Aaron Strout 3 Comments

This morning, I had the pleasure of listening in on a panel at OMMA Social titled, Social Media – Hot to Connect Metrics with Objectives. As you can imagine, the focus was on the Holy Grail of social media i.e., measurement. The list of panelists are below (David B. moderated the panel). Since I’m live blogging, the write up will be more of a collection of notes/tweets vs. a cohesive write up. Depending on where this goes, I may go back and do a second look. Here goes:

  • David Berkowitz – sr. director of emerging media & innovaiton at 360i
  • Carla Bourque – VP of sales and bizdev at Six Apart
  • Steve Kerho, SVP, analytics , media & marketing optimization, Organic, Inc.
  • Amber Naslund, director of community, Radian6
  • Bill Stephenson, VP social media & client services, Nielsen Online
  • Jim Sterne, President Target Marketing of Santa Barbara

The panel started off with a discussion of a basic principal of measurement (could be applied to any marketing discipline) namely that it starts with goals. Any company needs to know what they are trying to achieve and ideally, what the benchmarks look like for those measurements. Amber (Radian6) cited a case recently where a company wanted help with measurement yet wasn’t benchmarking across other channels. Of course this isn’t unique but might lead to future frustration as marketers hope/expect that agencies/service providers in the world of “social” will magicially be able to pull meaningfull statistics out of thin air.

David (360i) asked the question of the panelists, “what one thing do you hear that marketers wish they could measure better?” Some of the answers that came back were:

  • Which of all the stuff going on (Facebook, blogging, Twitter) is the most successful?
  • What is the reach (personally, this is a huge one and likely will make or break many social media campaigns this year).
  • Who are my most influential advocates? What spurs them to take action?

Another question (this time from Twitter), “when will predictive analytics take hold in social media?” A good response to this was captured by DaveYamon on Twitter…

@jimsterne says predictive analytics is data poor, SM is data rich: “Chocolate and peanut butter waiting to happen” #ommasocial

Amber chimed in and said that a lot of companies that Radian6 is working with are still in the early phases of adoption. So understanding second and third level impact is still on the horizon. She also emphasized the need for commonality in language between brand marketers and the C-suite. Knowing what “ROI” means and what the expectations are of what’s getting measured (and what’s possible) is key.

Carla (Six Apart) mentioned the importance of letting go a little bit of the rigid structure of traditional measurement.

Another good Twitter comment by Forrester Analyst, Augie Ray…

What is the value of a follower? Depends on what they’re saying! #OMMASocial panel<-the tweet that proves its own rule

My new friend, Siouxsie Jennett, asked a question that built on Augie’s point. She mentioned that the CEO of a client company was complaining about only having 200 followers on Twitter. Her question was how to make the C-suite better understand the relative value of a follow. For instance, the aforementioned company only targeted 1,200 companies worldwide. From that perspective, 200 out of 1,200 looked pretty darn good.

Another topic of focus was share of conversation. This metric measures the share of possible conversation that a company could be part of. For instance, a small B2B company should expect to get the same interaction/share of conversation as Nike. But this company should be looking at the amount of conversation around their industry and specifically, among their competitors.

Bottom line, panels like these never dig as deep into the world of metrics as we’d like but there definitely were some interesting perspectives shared. To that end, keep an eye on the Twitter stream coming from OMMA today for other interesting nuggets.

Thoughts on Brands Engaging on Twitter

April 2, 2009 By Aaron Strout Leave a Comment


Today I was putting together some thoughts for one of our customers who is thinking about getting started on Twitter. As you know, I’m a big fan of not trapping information in an e-mail so I’ve posted a cleaned up version of my recommendations below. Obviously there are probably 100 other things to think about but I didn’t want to overwhelm. If you want to add in the other 94, I won’t stop you (that’s why God invented comments).

For starters, I’m bullish on Tim Walker of Hoover’s online “Twitter primer” deck since it’s so chock full of great recommendations. Tim’s deck is more of a “how to get started/what you should think about” for individuals but there are tons of valuable lessons any business could learn as well.

Also, I thought it might not hurt to provide a list of 40 well-known brands on Twitter that friend, Jennifer Van Grove, put together for Mashable. Considering the fact that it got 200 comments, I’d say it did its job.

Without further ado, here are some Twitter best practices for that I’ve amassed from my nearly two years (and 15,000+ updates):

  • Be human. That doesn’t mean that you have to tell jokes or swear but it does mean that you should talk to people on Twitter like your customer service reps or store reps would talk to customers. Try to avoid using this as a corporate broadcast system.
  • Follow all real people back. Yes, it will be hard to keep up with everyone over time (there are tools that can help you manage this process, like Tweetdeck). For one, this shows that you care about having a conversation with your constituents and two, if people want to direct message you (many will to ask customer service related questions), this is the only way they can reach out to you privately.
  • Make sure you LISTEN. Twitter search is a great way to see who is saying what about your brand (and your competitor’s brands). You might consider following back anyone that mentions you. DO NOT lash out at folks that are talking negatively about you. Reach out to them privately if possible (via direct message). If they aren’t following you, let them know that you’re available to discuss the matter if they’d like to take the conversation offline.
  • Engage in the conversation. Ideally, the conversation involves topics that are germane to your company. However, don’t be afraid to support social causes or pat other companies or people on the back that are doing the right thing.
  • Measure, measure, measure. There are a couple of ways to do this. For one, track all of the URLs that you publish using a service like Budurl. Second, keep track of your follow growth rate (look for spikes around big announcements, offers, etc.). Third, watch for inbound traffic that you drive to your site. You might also want to keep an eye on the “velocity” of conversation around your brand i.e. keep an eye on the rate of daily mentions of your brand on Twitter search.
  • Keep up your momentum. One of the worst things you can do on Twitter is set up an account, tweet a couple of times and then let your account sit fallow. Try to commit to updating at least a couple of times a day (and don’t just point back to your site). This should be easy if you look at the URL next to “Listen” as there are already conversations going on about you that are begging for you to engage in.
Is your brand using Twitter? If so, what types of results are you seeing? Feel free to share in the comments below.

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