How are you measuring influence?

Last week I spoke at the European Corporate Communications Social Media Summit on tracking influence and the non-financial ROI. The topic has been a key issue for our industry in 2011 as offerings such as Klout, Peer Index and the Social Business Index have garnered plenty of attention — both good and bad. I’ve written on this blog before about ROI (Return on Influence) as has Aaron Pearson (Dare we measure ROI?) and I’ve also written about the Social Business Index. The subject warrants discussion as B2B companies are devoting more resources to social media and in particular working to discover and measure what matters — the people, messages and sources.

For my presentation I was asked to address what we are doing and to help the audience target two questions:  Where should your business be spending its time and how much time should you allocate to the social channels?

I will admit, this is nearly an impossible topic to talk about and discuss in any great detail in under 60 minutes.

When I look at measuring the effectiveness of what we are doing I like to break down our metrics into two categories. By doing so, it helps me to focus on both the quantitative and qualitative items that can help us see what’s working and who/what matters. The two sets of metrics I like to reference are Attention Metrics and Influence Metrics.

Attention metrics tend to have a bad reputation. But don’t discount them. While they are hardly scientific and lack context, they can help validate over time topics and issues that matter to your audience and who you are trying to reach. Keep in mind that these are a helpful guide — but treat them as a guide since they are easily and readily accessible, but lack the depth you need to act on any strategic decision making.

The second set of metrics I prefer for better analysis are what I call the Influence Metrics. These will take more time from you and your team to assess, but certainly can give you a better indication of the content and people that matter to you. For instance, location metrics can better help you understand if you need to translate content or even add more content to focus on other regions, but you need to get an understanding from the business if that’s really ideal to sales and revenue generation. In our case, seeing the growing traffic from China helped make our decision to join Weibo. Another metric that matters is trying to know the people who talk about your company and products, but it’s not as simple as seeing if they’ve retweeted you or posted something on your Facebook page (more than likely they have not). You will need to find the tools and resources needed to locate and engage with them both online and in person. Take a read at what Vann Morris wrote about the value of B2B relationships in social media if you want to learn more.

The conclusion of my discussion was more of a reminder than anything else. It’s key for any program — social or traditional — to focus on what you are trying to achieve and how you will get there. I like to use a three step process that I’ve used for many other forms of communication — new product launches, events and white papers. First, decide what it is you want to accomplish with your program. In the case of social media this could be to increase the number of positive conversations (or decrease the negative) and build relationships with the people online whose opinions matter most (customers, bloggers, journalists); understand the metrics you will want to use; and, finally, analyze the content and then repeat. You may find that you need to change what you want to accomplish or perhaps you were measuring the wrong item. Some programs we use require more detail and more steps, but these three should provide a good foundation.

Even as the existing tools get better and more tools are introduced (like Awe.sm — and I suggest you try this one), the key to remember is that you need to always focus on what you are trying to achieve. You may need to adjust your tactics, but use your metrics to better understand if you reaching your goal — and don’t lose sight of your goal.

So what’s Next for ROI? I pointed to four key trends that we are all going to need to pay attention to in the coming year.

  • We are awash with data. At times it seems like we are drowning. But don’t despair as the technology to analyze this will continue to get better. Will it be perfect? More than likely not, but it will continue to evolve and help us better evaluate what we are doing. My suggestion is that you not enter into any long-term vendor agreements and make a concentrated effort to use the tools. The more you can engage with your metrics the better you will be able to tell a story about what’s happening with your brand.
  • CRM will matter even more, which means communications and sales have a tremendous opportunity to gather social data and apply it toward sales relationships. Salesforce.com continues to integrate social capabilities and will provide more insight on your customers. While I’m a bit sceptical for the early results, it’s a step in the right direction and needs to be watched closely.
  • There’s not a silver bullet and never will be. There are some great resources and tools that help you move in the right direction, but one solution will not work for everything. If that’s what you’re looking for and expecting you will be disappointed. If you focus on using the tools to make you more efficient and better utilize your resources you will certainly move in the right direction.
  • Everything will move in real time. Are you ready for a real-time B2B world? Not only is the data growing exponentially, but it’s moving faster and faster every day. For example, StockTwits helps investor relations professionals now monitor real-time conversation, and those discussions are growing (we monitor nearly 45,000 posts each month about our products). Are you ready to monitor, report on and respond to this new era of public communication? In 2012 more B2B companies will look at who staffs and responds to these issues and the centralized v decentralized model debate will continue.

What are you thoughts on measuring and influence? Is this a case of too much information to make it matter or can we cut through the noise and build business solutions?

And while I like to delve into our metrics I continue to learn more from reading what some of the true thought leaders on this subject have to say. Here are some resources on this topic that you should read:

Social Media Measurement 2011: Five things to forget and five things to learn – Metrics Man

The Digitization of Research and Measurement – Metrics Man

Social Media Impact Takes Awhile to Gauge – KD Paine

Real Time is Wrong Time in Measurement — KD Paine

Making Business Decisions Through Data — Logic & Emotion

Why Online Relationships Matter — B2B Ideas@Work

12 Tools to Measure Social Media Influence (Maybe) – Social Media Today

Social influence matters! No, it doesn’t! — B2B Voices

B2B Creativity is Not an Oxymoron

One of the myths around B2B communications is that the industry lacks creativity – or the drive to be creative. I can’t think of anything that’s farther from the truth. And while it’s true that B2B companies don’t buy the flashy Super Bowl ads or use various mascots to win over customers, we are challenged day in and day out to think differently.

Another Lego creation at home.

Just like with B2C companies, creativity can be driven by a company’s culture. We’ve always been focused as an organization on innovation, which is why we’ve been so successful at trying new things, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and mobile devices. Ben Parr over at Mashable posted last year how B2B companies will be using social media as part of their creative campaigns. And Aaron Pearson just posted here on B2B Voices a post on world-class B2B social practices that’s a must read.

But there are some rules and guidelines to follow.

  1. Your ideas should always be in line with the brand you are trying to convey. Don’t be creative just for the sake of being creative. While this can work more in the B2C space, it rarely works with B2B companies. We have fewer opportunities to sell our products and services and every opportunity counts. In addition, B2B purchases are usually long-term investments by companies and they want to trust you. Any creativity — whether its very smart and interesting or immature and insulting — will reflect back on your organization.
  2. Study the competition — and be better — don’t copy or instigate them. Your competitors can always give you new ideas and thoughts, but I’ve seen B2B companies try to take on their competition head to head in ads and direct mail. That’s hard to pull off successfully (it can be done) and I always feel it’s better to focus on your strengths than your competitors weaknesses in paid campaigns. Save your competitive arguments for non-paid mediums such as your website and the media.
  3. Always be thinking about driving sales for the organization — this means being fully integrated. We know in B2B the sales process and cycle is much longer than in most B2C decisions, so you will need to think long-term for your campaign. If you are thinking of a new creative campaign it needs to play out online, at trades shows, through direct mail and in person. “One hit wonders”, like a weekend sale, are simply not the norm for B2B campaigns.
  4. Take risks, but know your limits. Good creativity helps you to stand out, but as you think about how creative you should be and how you will use the ideas read points 1 – 3 above.

Here are some other ideas from Marketo on being creative in B2B communications. It’s worth a read if you are looking to learn more about this topic.

I’ve been lucky to work on both national and international B2B and B2C campaigns in my career and personally I’m glad I’ve gravitated into strictly B2B. The creative challenges are different. They are more demanding. They require more time to succeed. And they need more buy-in from the organization. Not to take anything away from B2C creativity, it’s still demanding, but I’ve always liked that challenges and pressure as a professional of being more creative in B2B communications.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

Finally, a comprehensive B2B social media study

World-Class social practices for B2B companies

Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?

Using social networking sites in B2B businesses?

LinkedIn Becomes More Relevant for B2B Communicators

LinkedIn continues to be enhance its platform for B2B communicators. Last month the company announced that companies could stream news and information from its corporate page. That was a small change and a much needed addition. But a much bigger change has just happened.

When LinkedIn went public I wrote about some new things for the company to invest in and focus on, and one of those was a dashboard. Yesterday, the company announced that an analytics dashboard is now live within groups. This is a game changer for LinkedIn but also for all of us.

LinkedIn Dashboard

It’s no secret that I am a believer in the power of LinkedIn Groups. We use them extensively at our company. But the lack of data and information have made them a guessing game for marketers and human resource managers. LinkedIn says the dashboard for groups will be updated every day — something that would be expected and critical to the success of this tool.  The addition of data points about group members can help in two key ways:

  • Demographics. You can now see by title, demographics, industry and function who is in your group. For highly targeted product groups like we do, if you’re trying to reach senior managers in the Ukraine in the agriculture market you now can get a clear view. For larger groups that are more focused on a topic, the dashboard gives you an accurate display of who is interested in order to help better facilitate conversations and connections.
  • Discussions. Views on comments and discussions posted help show how active the group is and if you are facilitating conversations among the group. While this is a great view, this part of the dashboard still needs work in order to better drill down. I would like to see the dashboard to start to include information on who is most active at posting, commenting and sharing information. It would also be helpful to see which posts are most read by the group in order to focus further content.

One thing I also like is that you can see the data for any group. LinkedIn did not fence this data just for group managers. As a member of several groups on LinkedIn, I like that openness and transparency since I can now better determine which groups are worth my time and effort.

It was only a matter of time before this tool became available and there’s no doubt more changes will be coming. This initial launch was well done by LinkedIn and has already helped me get a better understanding of the groups we manage and how we can further achieve our sales and marketing goals.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

CME Group Builds Impact on LinkedIn Using Exclusive Groups

Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

What the LinkedIn IPO Could Mean for B2B Communicatons

What’s your “I” in social media?

Why LinkedIn’s Company Pages Now Matter More

Still Pitching to Use Social Media? Here are Three Steps to Take

Social media in B2B continues to rise in use. In fact, research from BtoB magazine shows that more than 90 percent of B2B companies are now using some form of social media to communicate with stakeholders. Before you present that B2B social media plan to executives or a client, the best thing to do is prepare. Here are three ways to ensure your pitch is a success:

  • Benchmark: Do your research first and look at not only what your competition is doing, but look at other companies in the B2B space that you emulate. Ask yourself what you like and what you would improve for them.
  • Be the Brand. I’ve always said that social media is not a silver bullet. While the tools are great they are not going to fix or anything alone. In the early days of social networking this could have been the case (e.g. @ComcastCares), but today you need to think about your entire brand story and how social media will fit into it. You will want to demonstrate that social media is not a silo taking resources away from other initiatives, but show how it complements, improves and is a part of what the company is already doing.
  • Back up your pitch. Executives are interested in facts and proof points. You should prepare yourself for an in-depth discussion not just about social media and what you want to do, but know who you are targeting, how they already use social media, and what business objective (not communication objective) you are working toward. Also, enlist the support of others in the organization — legal, research, products and IT. Showing that you have support from other parts of the company will help bolster your plan.

If you enjoyed this post you may also enjoy:

Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?

Need a Strategy? Start by Playing Games

Using Social Networking Sites in B2B Businesses

Why LinkedIn’s Company Pages Now Matter More

With one small update, LinkedIn made the company pages more releevant and more competitive with other social platforms last week. The new company updates feature allows the administrator for a company’s page on LinkedIn to now add news and share links that feed into the page’s stream. In addition, the stream for company’s you like will now be udpated on your own LinkedIn home page. I’ve been a long-time supporter of the group’s feature on LinkedIn to promote our company, and we use LinkedIn group’s as internal focus groups.

CME Group on LinkedIn

Prior to this update, administrators for the page could only update company basic information and facts — addresses, blog URL, number of employees, etc. Not a very compelling reason to visit the page. If you have been following companies you like via the LinkedIn “follow” button you know there is value in connecting with a company and its people. However, there was little incentive to revisit a company page once you started to follow it. As an administrator of our page on LinkedIn we’ve already started using the new updates feature to post and share news and information about the company. The new updates now allow an administrator to play a more active role in promoting the company and brand and makes a company more visible.

Why does this matter?

  • You have a highly targeted audience that is looking for information about your company. You can now share relevant information that matters to you and them.
  • The analytics portion of the LinkedIn company pages continues to get better and adding this feature should help you correlate more data.
  • Using URL tracking and analytics, you should try to develop and track use of the page and how it correlates to your other communications activities.
  • Anyone who is following your company will now see these updates in their own home page stream, which makes your updates more visible to the people who follow it. This should make your company page a more active landing page.

As next steps, if you play a role in your company’s social media efforts you will want to connect with your company’s page administrator and gain access if you have not already. Also, follow other companies that are now using the new update and benchmark your efforts against them. Finally, figure out how you want to use your LinkedIn company page and the new stream — will it be a job posting venue, industry news source, or a platform to promote your product efforts.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn here: Allan Schoenberg LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read:

Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

What the LinkedIn IPO Could Mean for B2B Communicatons

What’s your “I” in social media?


The Changing Role of Communicators — A Look at the Financial Services Industry

I was fortunate enough to be invited to and attend an event last week hosted by VMA Group in London rolling out the latest survey results of communicators in the financial services industry. I’m an enthusiastic fan of surveys and studies. Here were two takeaways from the study that I found most interesting:

  • A little more than half (52%) report to the C-suite (CEO/CFO/Chairman) with 3/4 of those respondents feeling that senior management feel communications is a priority. Among all of the various direct report structures, the report showed that there is a firm link between senior management understanding the role of communications and the prioritization of communications as a management function.
  • In terms of personal skills to develop, respondents feel they need to focus mostly on developing relationships outside of the business (23%) and presentation skills (22%). At the bottom of the list were developing business acumen (13%) (see my previous post on business acumen) and creating/engaging writing (8%).

Three trends and issues I hope the study explores in future versions include crisis communication and the role it plays in helping define/elevate the top communicator, the views of social media in financial services, and further analysis of integration and cooperation with marketing.

You can view the results of the survey here: Financial Services Survey: The role of communicators in a changing environment.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

Why my role model is an economist

The Trust Economy

Getting Your Degree in Business Acumen

You are What You Read

Is Motivation the Key to Success?

Do We Need a Social Index for Businesses?

Last month, the Dachis Group launched a public version of its Social Business Index as a way to measure and analyze the social influence of brands in real-time. Less than a month into its launch the company has gathered a lot of attention from the likes of Tech Crunch, AdWeek and Edelman Digital. There certainly are a lot of questions. For one, do we need this? And second, is it legitimate?

In terms of the need for it, yes, it’s an interesting way to benchmark brands and its early days for the index. Before the index existed taking a look across multiple platforms was time-consuming and, frankly, quite biased if you were doing this for your own interest. The index looks to create a “neutral” view of brands based on the back office technology it is using. This can be helpful, but it also needs to be accurate and fair. As time goes on I’ll be following what the Dachis Group is doing to improve and expand the service.

So is this a legitimate tool for you to use? That’s hard to tell since companies that do this type of analysis keep their formula mostly secret. The most well known indicator of online influence these days is Klout. The service is focused on individuals for the moment, but brands can take advantage of Klout as well. Klout has its detractors, but people can opt out of Klout. An advantage — or disadvantage depending on your point of view — of the Social Business Index is that if you’re a brand you have no choice — you will be measured against your competitors. In order to build on the influence of this tool I’m hoping the Dachis Group continues to reveal more about its metrics and analysis.

From what I’ve seen so far I like the index (One reason is that we rank quite well as a brand against our competition). Yes, there are a lot of questions that remain but surely Dachis will continue to improve what they have created. It’s not perfect. None of the metric and measurement tools that exist are perfect, so don’t think of this as a way to solve any content or competitive issues. It’s simply a tool to give you a view of your industry.

So what can you do?

First, if you’re company is not listed you should register it. Once you do so you can gain access to a handful of ways to compare your company against the competition. My hope is that Dachis Group will build out the metrics portion of the index, and even offer for purchase more detailed information on their scores.

Second, you should discuss the index with your team. Keep in mind that this is a view into the social side of your business only. I have always held the point of view that social media needs to play a part of your overall brand strategy — it’s not a silver bullet. If you are falling behind the competition in social media, yet, track far ahead of them in other marketing measures you will need to assess how important it is. On the other hand, if you are far ahead of your competition in social media, yet are behind in other areas you should decide how to integrate everything better. But these are decisions for you to make. The advantage is that you now have a new tool to help in your discussion and decision process.

Are You Ready for a Real-Time B2B World?

The past two weeks may have been an eye opener for firms who tend to ignore the “real time” world.  In fact, we may be reaching a tipping point as more and more data comes online via social media. That tipping point comes in the form of a competitive advantage for some. Some companies, like StockTwits, took this trend seriously three years ago and developed ways for B2B firms to use social media. We are now seeing more and more B2B companies, such as the hedge Fund Derwent Capital, put this data to use.

How are you managing "real time"?

And while companies like Twitter and Google (search only since Google+ brands pages have yet to officially launch) have been leading the way for B2B brands to look at and use real-time news and analysis, recent changes at Facebook are now under scrutiny by brands. With these three firms firmly racing to be the platform of choice for sharing information, as communicators in the B2B world we need to think about all of the options to meet the needs of our brand.

A number of stories and posts have come out in the past week showing how the mining of real-time data is making many companies and brands take notice. Here’s a sampling of the stories you should read:

The Economist: What’s in a Tweet

But companies that mine the stream of tweets for marketing and other purposes (see article in this week’s issue of The Economist) get much more information.

The Economist: Sipping from the Firehose

Fed through clever algorithms, a torrent of microblogs can reveal changes in a nation’s mood. Hence the excitement about a new market: the sale and analysis of real-time social-media data.

Think Quarterly (Google): Predicting the Present

Using the publicly available tools mentioned above, we’ve uncovered a number of interesting relationships.

Google: Predicting the Present with Google Trends

Can Google queries help predict economic activity?

Business Insider: What Facebook’s Changes mean for Brands

The key takeaway for brands is that the News Feed matters ⎯ a lot. For most brands, the News Feed is their best chance for interacting with fans (aka consumers).

UPDATE: This story from the WSJ also takes a look at real-time data analysis.

WSJ: Decoding our Chatter

Want to monitor an earthquake, track political activity or predict the upds and downs of the stock market? Researchers have found a bonanza of real-time data in the torrential flow of Twitter feeds.

So what can you do now armed with this info? Here are two takeaways from the recent news:

  • Now is a good time to take another look at your social media strategy and reassess what you are doing and what you are posting. We do this on a regular basis as new trends and technologies are introduced, but also as we connect with new users.
  • Share this info internally. But don’t just share this with the marketing and communications team, make sure the right technology and research managers know that you are watching this trend. You want to continue to push these changes internally and to ensure you can help evolve the business case around real-time information.

One objective of this blog is to continue to raise the business relevance of social media in B2B communications. We continue to look for examples and ways that companies are doing this in order for all of us to learn. Hopefully, we’re helping accomplish that and we can continue to build on this objective. Stories like I mentioned above add further evidence to the important of real-time information, which is taking place more and more online in public forums. As these stories develop we will share our thoughts with you and look for your comments.

If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read:

The Beat Goes on at StockTwits

Need a Strategy? Start by Playing Games

Using Social Networking Sites in B2B Businesses

Need a Strategy? Start By Playing Games

One thing that has always bothered me as a communicator — as a business manager — is when meetings start by talking about “tactics” without a mention of strategy. As soon as that happens it’s time to stop and restart the meeting.  I wrote about this before on B2B Voices when I focused on, “The Most Important Question You Can Ask.”

One way to get better at strategy is to start by playing games. I don’t mean by goofing around. I mean by actually playing games.

Instagram: Stratego -- How do you practice developing your strategy skills?

As a father, I have to say one of the things I enjoy most with my kids is game time. And there’s nothing better than taking on my oldest in a game of strategy. Here are three games we enjoy playing.

  • Stratego: One of the great strategy board games focused on capturing your opponent’s flag. It sounds simple enough. But the trick is you don’t know what  your opponent’s piece are — the values are not facing you. Since you are not allowed to see the other player’s pieces, the game is just as much about deception as it is about being aggressive.
  • Chess: The ultimate game of thinking and strategy. My son won the chess championship for his grade last year in London  so I was especially proud of him.
  • Slay: This iPhone game is similar to Risk where you compete against other “kingdoms” for land and resources. There are no alliances to be made but you need to decide which upgrades to make, where to move, and how you will defend yourself. You can only play against the computer, so this is a great team game for me and my son.

But how do these games — and others — teach you about strategy? Here are my views:

  • Games of strategy teach you to not just think about your moves, but you need to consider the other factors that impact you. You need to take many decisions into consideration before the game begins and as it is played out.  Because of this, you need to remain agile and flexible in your thinking, knowing that your strategy may need to change along the way.
  • You need to play a lot to be good. Learning how to develop a strategy — just like playing a game — takes practice. The more you do it the better you get at not only developing it but also articulating it to others.
  • Know when to take risks and learn from your mistakes. I love when I play against my son and I can literally see the next time we play that he’s learned from his mistakes. While our work tends to be repetitive — product launches, partnership announcements, new research releases — there’s something to be said about making adjustments and trying new things.
  • You can learn from others. There’s a reason there are so many books about chess strategy — to learn and benchmark from others. Are you doing the same across other companies and communicators you emulate? We have so many case studies, blog posts and news stories talking about communication success stories that taking the time to read and learn from them should be second nature. If you help, Mashable and PR Daily News are two excellent resources.

If you enjoyed this you may also enjoy reading:

Getting Your Degree in Business Acumen

You are What You Read

Is Motivation the Key to Success?

Business Tech Buyers Are Using Social Media, But Twitter? Not So Much

I’m at least a month late in reviewing Forrester’s annual 2011 Social Technographics for Business Technology Buyers report, by Kim Celestre (@kcelestre). As I was last year. :-)  It’s still worth doing. Forrester has conducted this survey for three years running and for those of us looking for the impact of social and digital media on B2B tech, this is about as good a study as we have available to us.

Here’s Forrester’s blog post.

This year’s report appears to show a real maturity in the behavior of technology buyers in social media. Basically, there was no substantive change in what percentage of their audience were social media spectators, critics, conversationalists, creators, etc. I’d venture to say that the average buyer here has pretty much found their comfort zone with social media engagement and is settling in on a specific style of engagement.

Twitter and Facebook are at the bottom of about a dozen online and offline sources.

The good news is that the average level of engagement is higher than for a typical consumer. For example, nearly a third are content creators online (for business purposes), while only 23% of the general population describes itself as such.

Where are they, though?  Forrester also looked at the sources of information these business technology buyers use, and guess what?  Twitter and Facebook are at the bottom of about a dozen online and offline information sources. (Only 5% claim they use Twitter for business purchase decisions.) It turns out more traditional channels like your website or conferences remain hugely important, if someone less so each year.  However, there are real opportunities to find larger segments of your target audiences if you can find niche communities online (LinkedIn does a bit better for instance) or if you can create a private community of your own customers.  For what it’s worth, e-newsletters remain important too.

I would also note that blogs appear to be fairly important sources of information. (Of course, I would say that!) This longer-format, “old-school” social media channel may be particularly well suited for discussing the complexity of B2B technologies. I would also argue Twitter is often a great channel for reaching influencers and opinion-leaders.

Bottom line:  Technology marketers should assume their target audiences are using social media, and probably more than just for consumption. However, they should consider nurturing more targeted online communities and ensure social media engagement efforts are seamlessly integrated with other marketing channels, including media relations, events, advertising and the website.

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