• 35 social media KPIs to help measure engagement – eConsultancy

A widescreen approach to social media measurement ultimately looks at the things that really matter: sales, profits, customer satisfaction and loyalty. Besides, honing in on the detail might not be the best use of your time, given the obvious difficulties that arise, particularly with attribution.

• What Social Media Monitoring Won’t Get You – Social Media Explorer

Almost all the social media monitoring services mine Facebook for data and present results when they happen. Unfortunately, Facebook is still a bit of a walled garden and a good portion of the activity there goes unseen and unreported by the monitoring firms.

• Where Measurement Falls Short – Altitude Branding

What we need to keep exploring in social media is conversation pathing. Online gives us the best shot at refining measurement that we’ve had, really. The notion that we can trace all of the digital breadcrumbs – conversation points, recommendations and commentary, discussions including a brand within a larger conversation, content marketing, reviews, capturing of offline experiences – and create a weaving, meandering path through the social space in order to move the needle from separate influence points to an overall sense of how the profile of the aggregate conversation drove the customer to the finish line.

• Is PR Ready for the Digital Analytics Revolution? – Context Analytics

Communications professionals are becoming increasingly savvy about digital media, but far too few companies take the opportunity to tie their PR efforts to business outcomes that can easily be measured through web analytics (e.g., website traffic, new business leads, white paper downloads, online sales, etc.).

• Twitter, Customer Service, and Good Brand Management – Conversation Agent

Online monitoring is broader than Twitter. WebWorkerDaily pulled together some advice on how to make a monitoring dashboard to track online conversations. As Dawn explains, the real magic is in the content you’re monitoring – your strategy and goals should come first.

• Best First Step into Social Media — Monitoring Your Nonprofit’s Reputation and Issues – Getting Attention

Making sense of all the content and conversation out there is challenging, but the right listening strategy and tools enables you to filter out the key conversations.  That’s the first step in any effective social media strategy.

• Why Are Marketers So Bad At Measuring Social Media? (And How Can They Get Better?) – Forrester

The fact is, social media marketers are drowning in a sea of metrics. Every social platform and vendor offers its own metrics, and there are literally hundreds of ways to measure the success of social initiatives. With so many numbers to choose from, and so little insight into which metrics are important, it’s not surprising that marketers feel overwhelmed.

• Working Toward the Solutions for Online Brand Measurement – eMarketer

After conducting 24 phone interviews, five video interviews, several round-robin Q&As and an online survey among industry movers-and-shakers—not to mention poring over reams of data from studies and surveys—eMarketer sees the following five broad approaches as key to moving forward on the online brand measurement front:

• Behind Closed Doors: What’s On The Mind Of Chief Marketing Officers? – Jeremiah Owyang

Beyond monitoring, insight from the social sphere is untapped. Social media monitoring is just the first baby step, and most companies haven’t tapped into what the data actually means.

• Social Media Metrics – Information Today

Social media—the most popular are blogs, wikis, social network sites, and microblogging—offer both opportunities and difficulties in the establishment of metrics: Social media adds a level of qualitative information to the quantitative data traditionally made available through web analytics. However, the quantitative information is often restricted and not easily comparable among sites.

• A holistic approach to measuring social media return on investment – Pizza Marketplace.com

You’d think many business people wouldn’t dedicate time or paid personnel to a media initiative unless there were some way to track its progress. And yet, a recent study suggests that willy-nilly approach is the norm for social media adoption among many firms today.

• 5 Useful Yahoo! Pipes to Monitor Your Brand – Search Engine Journal

This post is meant remind us of some huge possibilities behind the tool: here are 5 great Yahoo! Pipes that can be used for brand monitoring for competitive research and reputation management:

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Social Media Monitoring Tools and Reviews

5 must have tools for social media monitoring – Social Web School

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Slides and Presentations

The Future Of Social Media Monitoring Marshall Sponder – Web Metrics Guru

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SEE LAST WEEK’S TOP POSTS

The Royal British Legion is trying to appeal to the young generation (nicknamed the “Afghanistan Generation”) this year by promoting their Remembrance Day poppy campaign through social networks such as Twitter.  With a hefty donation goal of £31.5 million, the Legion hopes that by reaching out online they will be able to target the younger demographic.

They also have an iPhone poppy application, an online social hub (http://legionlive.org.uk/), and heavily encourage soldiers to use Twitter to stay in touch with their loved ones.

The Two Minutes of Silence is a way for people to wear a ‘virtual poppy’.  On November 11, at 11AM, the Legion asks users to refrain from tweeting for two solid minutes.  It’s an interesting approach to the campaign, similar to the Earth Day campaign to go without electricity for an hour.  They are hoping that people will help spread the word beforehand with the simple #2minutesilence hashtag.  I certainly bet that two minutes of no activity on Twitter would be noticeable.

Another timely way Twitter is used to inform the masses is by simple one-shot accounts aimed at specific news items.  Statesman.com created a Twitter account to follow the tragic Foot Hood shooting that occurred recently.  They also created a list to capture all the national attention the shootings were garnering.  This kept families and loved ones informed of what was happening with hourly information and up-to-date news.

Personally, I think it’s wonderful to see these two recent examples of Twitter used to have a positive impact and keep people informed of important issues.  It bolsters my opinion of the platform quite a bit after realizing last week that the most followed and listed people were nearly all celebrities.

Not much for this week, which just means less to distract you from the brilliant interview I gave to Murray Newlands…

• ImpactWatch Social Media Monitoring and Measurement – an Interview with Hannah Del Porto – Murray Newlands

Which media monitoring service is best? There is an enormous variety of features available, so I think the most important thing is for people to sit down and make a written outline of their objectives and the data/metrics needed to achieve them. It is essential to do this before doing any product research. With list in hand, customers won’t be overwhelmed by the abundance of offerings and can make sure they find a service that fits their needs.

• HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI - Mashable

Measuring social media ROI isn’t impossible, but it can be difficult because many of the pieces that need to be evaluated are difficult to track. This guide is designed to help you track down those pieces and determine the ROI you’re getting on social media.

• Is the Promise of Social Media Enough? What About ROI? – Jacob Morgan

The common excuse among many social media folks is that “you can’t measure the direct ROI of a billboard or a television commercial — so why all the fuss about social media ROI?”  Just because companies have trouble measuring offline ROI does not mean that we should dismiss online ROI.

• Stop pretending PR is worth the same as advertising space – MuMbrella

In this guest posting, Millward Brown’s Sarah Emerson says the old-fashioned PR formula of adding up column inches and equating it to what the ad space would have cost needs to be killed off.

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Media Monitoring Tools and Reviews

12 Free Social Media Monitoring Tools & Tips – In Seattle News

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Slides and Conferences

Social Media Monitoring Tools – Wendy Goldman Scherer

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See Last Week’s Top Posts

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Twitter recently opened up a new feature for Twitter users: the ability to lump users into ‘lists’.  Users can then add or delete their friends from these lists as they see fit.  Following a thousand users, but only want to see your 15 close friends’ tweets?  Done.  Just create a list of them (may I suggest the title ‘bffs4ever’?), and then view that list within your account.  AS of now, more than 50% of users have access to lists, and a full rollout is imminent.

Another positive feature of lists, as noted by TechCrunch, is that new users can follow a well-created list to get them started on the platform.  A potential downside, suggested by eWeek, is that lists may tarnish the open feeling of communication that Twitter champions.  Will users start looking at their lists after they login instead of their whole buffet of tweets?  We’ll have to wait to see the fallout.

One interesting question that popped into my head was whether the most-followed Twitter users would also be the most-listed.  At this point, the same celebrities and organizations are going to stay on their high follower pedestals, but now there’s a new metric in town.  Some of the popular kids may lose their lunch table and have to eat in the phone booth (schools still have those, right?).

Twitterholic.com provided me with a cohesive list of the most-followed Tweeps.  I went through each of the Top 50 accounts in order to get an updated amount of followers as well as the new listed metric.  Before looking, I assumed that the rankings would be nearly the same.  I was very wrong. (Please note that I ranked the 50 most-followed people against only the other most-followed.  The data does not represent a list of the 50 most-listed, at large.)

I uploaded a full spreadsheet of the data below, so check that out, and I’ll note the highlights.  Apparently there’s a big difference in being followed and listed in a Twitter list (‘Twist’?).  Taking a peek at the actual people, they are all very recognizable (except for Lily Rose Allen, who I had to Wiki-stalk even after reading her tweets).  Why would there be a difference in their rankings?

Taking a look at the actual tweets provides some clues.  The people that have a higher listed ranking than followed ranking provide frequently (but not too frequently) updated tweets that are well written and either witty, news-worthy, or interesting.  People who don’t provide good content have a much lower listed ranking as compared to their followed ranking (Looking at you, Kim Kardashian).

Users aren’t going to un-follow people often after they have started to follow them, but Twists are a different beast.  Those can change at a whim and other users would have no control over them.  Also, when they are being created, only those Twitter users that have provided good tweets in the past are likely to be thought of.  Think of the amount of followers one has as the kind of popularity a HS cheerleader has, and the amount of lists one is on as the popularity one has in college with closer friends and colleagues.

Top 5 Users by Followers

Ashton Kutcher

Britney Spears

Ellen DeGeneres

CNN Breaking News

Twitter

Top 5 Users by Times Listed

Barack Obama

Pete Cashmore (you know, the Mashable guy)

CNN Breaking News

Ellen DeGeneres

Taylor Swift (though Kanye rarely lets her finish her tweets)

Felicia Day and Pete Cashmore are the two users listed in a far bigger proportion to their followers (both ranking 29 places higher) while the biggest drops from followers to lists were 50cent (down 23 spots) and Kim Kardashian (down 22 spots).

Of course, lists are still very new so this could change as more users have access to them and begin using them.  Let’s hope lists do their jobs of making Twitter slightly more organized and perhaps spurring better content from some important users.

50 Most Followed and Listed Twitter Users

AVE’s Are Dead. Or Are They? – Chuck Hemann

• However, just because the Commission has proclaimed them DOA, doesn’t mean the education stops. We need to keep working to provide the framework by which communications pros can determine, and then ultimately use the metrics that make the most sense for their campaigns.

Understanding Natural Language Processing – Social Media Explorer

• Social media is chock full-o-typos and other truly natural human language quirks that the machines can learn, but only if they’re told to do so. Plus, there are dozens of sentiments around brands, not just positive, negative and neutral, so NLP has its limitations. Still, as Catlin said, with a large amount of information, it can give you a broad brush stroke of look at what’s out there.

Keyword Generation with Mind Maps – Radian6

• People don’t always search for what you might want them to. You need to get outside of the company for a moment and think about what someone who has no idea who you are or what you do would type into a search engine to find you.

Print vs. Online: The Same and Different – Burrelles Luce

• Here’s a question I’ve been pursuing since this summer: “To what extent is the printed content of a newspaper duplicated on that paper’s website?”

Is Social Media Monitoring Ready for Prime-Time? – Jay Baer

• Microsoft’s entrance into the social media monitoring software category will have two mid-term consequences. First, the percentage of companies using some sort of social media listening software – LookingGlass or otherwise – will skyrocket. This pattern is as familiar to long-time Web watchers as the Cowboys choking in the playoffs. Small start-up companies innovate and create categories, and then the big guys jump on board and expand the user base.

Is Social Media Marketing Measurable? The Big Debate – Social Media Examiner

• I gave myself a mission: Find out the best way to measure social media return on investment (ROI). I queried marketing executives at major corporations, scoured all the leading thinkers’ writings and contacted my peers. What follows is an important discussion on measuring social media return.

Monitoring – alerts are free, but context costs – Morgan McLintic

• The social media monitoring space is rapidly evolving, and no service covers all the channels for all geographies. The good news is that costs are falling and the free services are becoming increasingly rich. Regardless of the tools you use, the most important thing is to set up your system, refine it and then determine your engagement plan.

Social Media Measurement 101 – University Business

• So how do you make sure you don’t waste your time? Start by following these steps to set up a simple social media measurement system for your institution.

Social Media Monitoring Software: Welcome to the Emerald City – ImpactInteract

• After four weeks of evaluating social media software vendors, we’ve come to some conclusions about the reality of these tools versus the hype that we heard along the way. Let’s just say that the parallels to the Wizard of Oz are pretty interesting…

Social Media Optimization: Metrics to Measure – HPSEM

• Social media is a powerful force and represents either the biggest marketing shift since television advertising or the most colossal waste of time since, well, television. If it is positive, how can you define ’success’? The answer is different for every business. What follows are some metrics you might consider measuring.

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Media Monitoring Tools and Reviews

5 Free Fantastic Social Media Monitoring Tools – Canadian Marketing Blog

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See Last Week’s Top Posts

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Two days ago, Bing announced that they were partnering with both Twitter and Facebook to provide extensive search capabilities for their users.  In simple terms, the searches would mine for keywords entered by the user for all the ‘public’ posts on Twitter and Facebook.  According to a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project, at least 19% of users post and read status updates.  This searching power could prove very useful to those 19% and perhaps cause more users to use status updates.

On October 21^st, when the announcement was first made, well over 1500 tweets were linking to various articles about the announcement.  Most Twitter users seemed more surprised than anything else.  Nearly all of the tweets were a simple headline and URL link.  On October 22^nd, the number of tweets about Bing and its inclusion of social media search were down to approximately 1350 tweets.  As of the writing of this post, October 23^rd tweets on the topic are around 250.

In contrast, Google partnered with less and garnered more attention than its competitor.  There have been over 1500 tweets every day since the announcement on the topic of Google’s deal with Twitter.  Bing may have prepped the user base for Google’s announcement by letting the public know only hours before Google did.

The vast majority of the tweets were simply passing along the information in the form of links and headlines.  Approximately 20 tweets were negative, fearing privacy issues, especially with Facebook.  Below is one such example.

Social networking users have some reason to be concerned about privacy.  After all, Jeremiah Owyang makes a very good point that Facebook is going to have to make more content public in order to compete as these two search engines wage war.  Jared Newman expresses eight big concerns about the process; my favorite of which is how Bing and Google will filter out this information in searches for people who don’t care about social media.  Most of the time, I probably won’t care what the Twitter-world is saying about the topic I want.  I can see that being easily the most frustrating thing to filter out.

Overall, it’s no surprise that these search features would eventually come to light.  Twitter user-ship has increased by over 700% in the past year.   With more celebs and non-celebs picking up the habit, most ways to search for them were inevitable.

As a sidenote, people forget that Google and Bing aren’t the only search games in town.  18 other useful (and in many cases, MORE useful) search engines are listed in this fantastic article.

• Listening and Monitoring Panel at Inbound Marketing Summit – Cheryl Harrison

You need to understand WHAT you’re listening for. Why do you want to listen? What do you want to learn? What are you going to do with that information?

• Beyond guesswork: Companies work to measure the impact of social media – Finance & Commerce

As companies are wading into the dizzying world of the social Web, they don’t have any of the familiar metrics to judge whether efforts to reach customers are successful. There’s no gold standard — no equivalent of Nielsen ratings for television, Arbitron for radio or circulation numbers and ad ratios for newspapers.

• The Case of the Missing Social Media Metrics – Rikin on the Web
  

When it comes to online advertising and web analytics, there are plenty of concrete metrics. Most of these have been tested for over a decade and are now ubiquitous. More importantly, there are many tools and resources that can meet our needs and provide these metrics.

• Measure social media efforts with quick, free and easy tools – Fletcher Prince

If you’re a small business owner or nonprofit organization manager who has been handling your own social media outreach, then you’re probably wondering at this point in the year if your results are paying off, especially if you started using these new marketing and engagement techniques in 2009.  I have a practical approach for you.  The beauty of this approach is that all these tools are free and easy to use.

• New Metrics: Some Tools for Plotting a Social Media Strategy – Utah Pulse

In the three step process to involving your organization in social media (listen, measure, engage), last week’s metrics will help you begin to build some useful data sets through listening and measuring. This week, let’s focus on engaging in social media.

• Social Media ROI: no different than traditional measurement – Damien Basile

Most brands in the social media space want to be able to define Social Media Return On Investment (smROI) and for good reason. They’re putting in money to the medium so they should be getting more money out of it ideally. In this respect there is NO difference between traditional and social media measurement.

• Asking the So What of Social Media Monitoring Reports – Lift9

That is why when I really want to have a meaningful conversation, it is usually one-on-one or in small groups, and not at a party. For social media reports, ask the “so what?” and make the information come alive and actionable.

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Social Media Monitoring Tools List and Reviews

18 Essential Tools for Every Word-of-Mouth Marketer – Mashable

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Slideshows and Presentations

IPR Measurement Summit, Integrated PR Measurement – Tim Marklein

Social Media Measurement 2009 – Katie Paine

Demystifying Social Media: Tools and Techniques – Dawn Foster

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See Last Week’s Top Posts

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.
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One of the most universally used features on Facebook is the status update.  Status updates let me know everything from what my friends had for dinner (NOTE: I normally do not care what you had for dinner) to legitimate life announcements.   Users are updating them in greater frequency as well.  The current statistics on the Facebook press room page count 40 million user status updates a day, up from 20 million in April, 15 million in February, and 13 million in December 2008, according to Digital Beat.  Of course, the exponential increase is certainly due, in part, to the inclusion of the app to allow tweets to be Facebook status updates.

While most status updates are little more than time-wasters on the bus ride home, several have made national headlines.  Let’s look at a couple:

The Trapped Girls – Two adolescent girls were trapped in a drain for hours.  Rather than call 911, they updated their Facebook status about the situation.  A friend noticed the update, contacted the authorities, and the girls were saved.  Oddly, they could have easily called 911…seeing as how they used their smartphone to update their status.

Status: Robbed – According to a report by Belinda Goldsmith, many users post their holiday plans on Facebook, including times that they are not at their residence.  Being that it’s incredibly easy for criminals to target people using social media, Goldsmith likes to call it “Internet shopping for burglars”.  Might I suggest “iBurgle” for that Web 2.0-y flair?

Diamonds are Temporary – In September 2009, a robber broke into a house, pocketing a couple of diamond rings.  Before he left, he checked his Facebook page…and forgot to log out.  Police followed the trail of the obsessed social networker all the way to the big house.

Updates from my Vaca! – Criminals should really just not use Facebook.  This week, police followed the trail of Maxi Sopo through Cancun after he commited bank fraud.  They got a break in the case when they realized that one of his Facebook friends worked for the Justice Department.

The Pursuit of (Virtual) Happiness – Recently, Facebook introduced a Happiness Index.  Working with psychologists and users, the social network created a list of happy and sad words. The list of positive words includes “happy,” “yay” and “awesome,” while negative words include “sad,” “doubt” and “tragic.”  This really isn’t news, but it’s certainly creepy.

Since Facebook status messages can now save kids, catch criminals, and rate intangible concepts, it’s not long before they get a full-blown book deal.

I’ve talked to several people who ‘de-friend’ or ignore colleagues who updates their status too often.  Do most people feel this way, or our those annoyed by it in the minority?  I personally subscribe to the “once-a-day but no more than three-times-a-day” school of thought.

Social Media Monitoring Isn’t Sexy. But it isn’t negotiable – Chuck Hemann, Dix & Eaton

• Wherever you are on the social media spectrum – kool-aid drinker, personal user, strong understanding of the business applications – you should know that, for companies, participation in social media is negotiable. Not EVERY company needs to be using these tools to reach external audiences.

Social Media ROI Part 1: Framework and  Social Media ROI Part 2: Research Approaches Don Bartholomew

• Here is a simple, five-step framework for developing a social media ROI measurement program.

Social Media Monitoring Tools – A buyer’s guide – Murray Newlands

• Social Media Monitoring Services enable you, your company or your brand to listen to and participate in online conversations. They have gained popularity over the last few years and their insight and analysis they offer can be crucial to being a meaningful part of the online conversation. But if you are starting from zero, where do you begin?

PR Metrics Evolve to Show How Discipline Drives Sales – AdAge

• Measurement is still very client- and industry-specific. But PR professionals say more and more they are finding commonalities across verticals that allow them to standardize a majority of their measurement programs. Here are three components an agency and client need to have in place in for effective PR measurement.

Aggregated Stats Are Key to Social Media ROI – TippingPoint Labs

• I’m talking about the real, hard stats already collected on almost any platform; and I’m talking about bringing them together in a way that allows a human (or eventually the machine) to draw correlations between channel activity and something like e-commerce sales.

Six quick steps to start watching the web for you and your company – Cheryl Harrison

• Here are six steps that will get you started with monitoring. This is not a comprehensive monitoring system. It’s simple, it’s quick (10 minutes time) and it’s better than nothing.

The Myth of Social Media Monitoring – CrapHammer CA

• I don’t think we need to agree on how to measure social media yet.  First we need to understand how to find the “signal in the noise”.  How do we filter out what is of value to an organization?  How does an organization engage with its audience and customers?  And can this be truly automated into a dashboard?

The tact of social media monitoring – BookBlog

• There is another important concept from city and village living – the concept of tact. In coffee shops and restaurants every day, people converse about the matter of their lives – their kids schools, weekend plans, sports injuries. This doesn’t mean that it’s socially appropriate for the person at the next table to jump in and express an opinion about how to treat tendonitis.

Always Listening: A B2B Social Media Dilemma – Destination CRM

• “[B2B companies] have to pay very close attention to social media,” Pergolino says. “It really comes down to being responsible for your brand and monitoring what’s happening — even if there aren’t a lot of brand mentions — then finding the best course to deal with it.”

7 Considerations for Tracking Social Media Success – Top Rank Blog

• With more and more marketers jumping onto the social media bandwagon, a lot of questions come up. Is it possible to track metrics and ROI? What are other companies doing? Why isn’t it working? Being prepared to answer  questions like these can make a difference in how a company interacts with social media and if they can succeed.

Slides and Presentations

7 Business Reasons for Social Media Monitoring – Connie Benson

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See Last Week’s Top Posts

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.

Photo:

This week my husband asked me for tips on live-tweeting some conferences he would be attending.  As with pretty much all forms of communication, how you interact depends on the circumstances, who you are and who your followers are. But unless you’re Obama or Bono, most of this advice will apply to you.

General Guidelines:

1.    Don’t overdo it. Tweet only what you would expect to interest most readers.
2.    Attribute quotes. If a presenter or attendee provides good information include their name or twitter handle as the source.
3.    Help non-attendees follow the event. Tweet to announce what is about to happen.
4.    Watch for responses. Regularly check for responses to your tweets or questions about the event so you can respond in a timely manner.
5.    Use an event hashtag (set it up ahead of time) so people can easily follow tweets about the event.
6.    Retweet useful information and insights from conference attendees.
7.    Don’t miss the conference with your face stuck to your Blackberry. Connected with someone at the conference? Meet them by the front door to continue the conversation in person.

Good example tweets:

-    Mr. Smith’s presentation on How to Increase Occupancy During a Recession in 10 mins Room F #hospconf
-    Mr. Smith: Customer service is important but a quality product is still key #hospconf
-    Stop by our booth to pick up new property brochures and free refreshments #hospconf
-    @questioner Our presentation is tomorrow at 2pm in Room B #hospconf
-    Great day at #hospconf tomorrow’s focus is on hospitality in developing countries.
-    After #hospconf cocktails at 8pm. Meet at La Cantina on New York Ave and 16th Street.
-    RT @confattendee Just learned that our company is up 15% in reservations for Oct! #hospconf

Bad example tweets:

-    Eating lunch  [no one cares]
-    Unacceptable response time accounts for 40% of dropped calls [where did you learn this?]
-    Just talked to an important client, wow is he boring [he can read your tweets!!! Don’t do this!]
-    Leaving the conference to hit the bar [Keep it to yourself unless it’s a networking opportunity for conference attendees]
-    [where are your hashtags?!?!]

Live tweeting is meant to enhance the experience of a conference, not replace it. Keep most of your interaction to fellow attendees and, unless you are doing something *extremely* exciting, keep it to around half a dozen tweets per hour.

Remember that your followers who are not interested in the event may be put off by the stream of event-related tweets. Consider what proportion of your followers are in your industry or potentially interested in the event before deciding how much event coverage to send out.

If you want to share comprehensive coverage of an event, consider live blogging with ScribbleLive , CoverItLive or your own blog, so fans aren’t held hostage to your updates. Post a link in Twitter to your liveblogging stream so those followers who are interested know where to go.

Another trick is to leave off the event hashtag when sending tweets that aren’t important enough to share with the crowd, like “@chuckfitz Where are you sitting? I can’t find you!” While the tweet will still annoy your personal followers, it will keep the tweet from reaching people following the event through the hashtag and from appearing on the big screen.

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Follow Hannah on Twitter.