This morning I attended the Albany Ad Club’s annual meeting and social media panel discussion, which featured five local PR, marketing and advertising professionals discussing their current use of social media tools and strategies. All were from different backgrounds and it was neat to see the contrasting methods and platforms that each preferred for communicating to their audiences and the various strategies they highlighted:
- Steven Jeffes of EdgeUp Marketing uses LinkedIn and manages several groups. He connects with more than 15,000 professionals through his moderation of eight different LinkedIn groups. Jeffes manages employee groups for GE, Lockheed Martin and the Wharton School and also the popular Albany, NY Professionals LinkedIn group. He’s gained several consulting clients through the connections he’s made on LinkedIn.
- Megan O’Toole from the New York State Bar Association has found that a combination of blogs, LinkedIn Groups, Facebook groups and pages have been an effective way to reach out to her organization’s members. She often uses traditional media (direct mail, e-mail newsletters) to promote these new media channels and the NYSBA is budgeting for Web advertising in 2010.
- Gina Hyams works with several arts and non-profits in the Berkshires. She used Twitter to promote the Berkshire International Film Festival and to interact with filmgoers during the event. As a “Tweeter-in-Residence” for the festival, Hyams shared links to film trailers, film makers’ Web sites, and general information about the festival. During the festival, she would monitor and retweet mini-reviews of the films and would tweet information about parking and ticket availability and line length.
- Patrick Boegel and his firm, Media Logic, have redesigned their business model and offerings to focus on a conversation-centric model of marketing. Through new tools, like their proprietary custom “Zeitgeist and Coffee” social media monitoring dashboard system, they are encouraging their clients to become involved in the conversations that are already happening about their brands. He stressed the importance of starting with a strategy and letting that dictate how and when you use social media tools for communication.
- Paul Fahey of Zone5 discussed how really the “old school” principles of communication are the core of social media. He referenced Dale Carnegie’s book, published in 1936, that focused on how to establish good relationships with people. That’s what social media is really about today. He noted that there’s a lot you can’t control in social media – but you can control the way you respond and the principles you use to guide you in a conversation or interaction.
Following the panel, I captured a quick reaction from my table mate Jim Stagnitti, general sales manager for Clear Channel Radio. Here were his three takeaways:
(Free videography tip: Get a Gorillapod. Do not try to use a full glass of water to prop your camera on, or you could possibly knock it into the glass. Not that I’ve ever done that. Like, say, this morning.)
I had a side conversation with Jim and some of his employees about social media ROI after the panel. I agree that none of the panelists really did have a good answer when the question of measurement came up, but that’s about par for the course these days.
I directed them to Katie Delahaye Paine’s blog and talked about how ROI in social media is a lot like ROI in sales: How do you put a value on building relationships? Taking a client out to dinner? A round of golf? It’s still the million-dollar-question as to how you take the customer engagement and relationship-building that happens as a result of interactions in social media and link it to revenue gained or costs avoided.
As for Jim’s assertion that the medium is no longer the message and the “message is the message”… exactly. Social media is allowing information to be seen/heard/shared across platforms and with loads of added commentary, perspective and criticism. Consumers are no longer bound to receive messages exactly as brands or organizations dictate. As Patrick stated during the panel, “consumers are in control now and clients have to understand that their brand is not all their own anymore.” Right on.
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Fair take away on Jim’s part. But I do have to say the question steered away from return on investment to a very loose what are you measuring and what metrics do you use.
I would be a charlatan to say that social media has any magical roi button, and frankly if I ever get caught saying that I expect to be called out on it. But neither is their a magic roi button for any media form.
I hoped that I clarified my take on that a little bit by stating in no way whatsoever do I believe social media platforms usurp and remove what are in my humble opinion unfortunately termed “traditional media.”
One think that we were unable to tackle today beyond the idea that social is in most cases not a magical fix for a brand/products marketing problem, is how social platforms have a tremendous opportunity to transform how so called traditional platforms re-engage with their audience.
I’ve said this elsewhere, so I don’t feel like I am letting a grand cat out of the bag, but it is my belief that we are witnessing the early stages of the death of local television. I believe local tv news stands next to no chance of survival as they are on the edge of the abyss of losing their connection to the parent national networks which feed them entertainment content.
Radio and print, in off shoots of their terrestrial and physical published editions will fill the gap of local tv through a combined mix of digital media, high speed web, wifi and mobile. It is incumbent upon marketers and the content producers to give the audience what the want. To give them reason to engage and come back.
Trust me, I look forward to a day when I can without hesitation through the arbitron and neilsen books out the window. The ROI begins with satisfactorily meeting the needs of end users seeking content. The dollar value associated with that is going to vary, there is simply no way around that, but it is an endavour all parties to the marketing table need to be invested in.
Return on Investment might be a good focus of topic at the next SMB-TV. Lots of people that attended are spending serious time in the space. It is worth exploring how collectively we make plugging into social platforms most effective for all involved.
Patrick – Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I think you were very clear during the panel in stating that social media is part of the mix, not the only thing in the mix. I liked how you and Paul both reiterated that you have to start with a strategy and then from there, see which tactics (both traditional and new media) are the best fit.
Measuring marketing and PR of any sort is tricky, and it’s always going to be difficult to directly tie behaviors to social media efforts. There are so many other factors at play that it is difficult to parse out cause and effect.
I liked how today’s discussion really focused on the transformative nature of social media, like you said. It was neat to hear about how Steven has been able to connect more than 1,400 local professionals in just a few months through a LinkedIn group or how Megan has been able to increase membership in NYSBA by just giving the member attorneys places to network and communicate online.
Your point on local TV news is an interesting one and I think that few would dispute, even those in the TV industry, that fewer and fewer people are getting news from local 6 p.m. broadcasts. I think marketers and advertisers need to figure out where and how consumers want to interact with brands and products and figure out how to reach them there – whether that’s on the Web, on a mobile device, or somewhere else not even thought of yet.
I definitely agree that measurement and ROI would be great topics for a future Social Media Breakfast. We’ll make it happen.
Thanks for stopping by the blog!
Sound like a great panel, wished I could have attended. Thanks for inserting the link to Katie Delahaye Paine’s blog on measurement and her post on Nokia. I think that just as utilizing social media requires rethinking communication conventions, measuring results also requires a little retooling. First thing is to identify key performance indicators for each SM channel you’re using. For example on Twitter a company might want to measure reach, influence, response, and results. There are a number of measurement tools that companies can use to track these things: Twitterholic helps you understand your ranking and your growth over time; Google Analytics can help you measure how much traffic your tweets might be driving to your website or blog or special offer; URL shortening utilities like bit.ly gives stats so you can track clicks your links on twitter are getting, as well as tracking other criteria; Twitalyzer analyses things like influence, signal-to-noise-ration, etc.
Companies can also track who is tweeting about them and what is being said. Companies can use the results of these measurements not only to create a picture of their social media standing and success, but they can use that information to shape and improve what they do online, e.g., increase personal engagement through commenting and speaking directly to followers or retweeting.
Unlike traditional media the metrics for social media are evolving, but there is still enough out there to get a clear idea of performance.
Linda – appreciate you weighing in with some great insights. I agree that there are a lot of measurement tools and “things” to measure regarding social media (number of followers, number of clicks, number of page views, etc.). I think the struggle is how to translate all of that activity measured into behavior changes that result in either increased revenue or decreased costs, which is the heart of what companies are really after. You certainly can measure social media, but the real holy grail is how do you take that measurement data and show that it affected the business goals?
Monitoring conversations on social media is certainly important and crucial to warding off potential crises or issues, and building strong relationships with customers is something that companies have seen the value in for years and continue to do. Heck, it’s practically the crux of the trade show an convention industry. But I think many organizations are, for whatever reason, wary of how an investment in online relationship building offers a return.
It’s interesting to see how social media measurement is evolving and reading about how organizations struggle to define its value. It’s not terribly different from trying to justify ROI on traditional PR or marketing activites. How do you calculate ROI of landing a cover story on Time Magazine? The intangible nature of some of the benefits that social media interactions provide can make it a hard sell to some skeptics.
Thanks for stopping by – heard about your blog from Millie and I’ll definitely be checking it out!
“how ROI in social media is a lot like ROI in sales”
Funny, I just had a discussion today about incentivizing marketing staff by putting them on commission just like ad sales reps. Once your income is directly tied to your results, ROI becomes a much less vague concept.
It’s also worth noting that a lot of the old-fashioned relationship-building aspects of sales — golf, dinner, gifts, etc. — are being stripped away as T&E budgets are slashed and sales reps are shifted to full commission. Relationships are increasingly about actually adding value through consultation.