Game Change: Moneyball And The Reality Of Social Business.

While the new site is being built and I am on a well deserved workation, here is a piece from the vault that you will find just as relevant today as it was when I first posted it. Back by popular demand, Game Change: Moneyball and the reality of social business.

I finally watched Moneyball over the weekend. I’m not a big baseball fan but it held my interest, partly because it was based on a true story and partly because the movie really wasn’t about baseball at all. It was about old thinking vs. new thinking, about industry politics vs. the heresy of innovation, about dinosaurs desperate to hang on to a failing model that sustains their livelihood even when that model is clearly broken, ineffective and no longer relevant.

The scenes in which Oakland As’ general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) locks horns with his cadre of coaches and scouts over how to do more with less, about how to break the cycle of mediocrity plaguing their organization, about how to get results again is brilliant, not because of the writing or the acting but because it is spot on target. How do I know this? Because I have been in that meeting hundreds of times. Well, not that particular meeting, but in others exactly like it. And every week that goes by, I find myself sitting in that meeting again and again and again.

In the US, in Europe, in Asia, the same meeting goes on almost daily. The conference table is always basically the same, the fluorescent lighting too. The players, they’re the same as well, everywhere I go. Only the vocabulary changes, the industry lingo, but the meeting, it’s the same and it goes pretty much like this:

Billy Beane: Guys, you’re just talking. Talking, “la-la-la-la”, like this is business as usual. It’s not.
Grady Fuson: We’re trying to solve the problem here, Billy.
Billy Beane: Not like this you’re not. You’re not even looking at the problem.
Grady Fuson: We’re very aware of the problem. I mean…
Billy Beane: Okay, good. What’s the problem?
Grady Fuson: Look, Billy, we all understand what the problem is. We have to…
Billy Beane: Okay, good. What’s the problem?
Grady Fuson: The problem is we have to replace three key players in our lineup.
Billy Beane: Nope. What’s the problem?
Pittaro: Same as it’s ever been. We’ve gotta replace these guys with what we have existing.
Billy Beane: Nope. What’s the problem, Barry?
Scout Barry: We need 38 home runs, 120 RBIs and 47 doubles to replace.
Billy Beane: Ehh! [imitates buzzer]

What we see in this scene is a roomful of insiders with a century and a half of industry experience between them, and yet they haven’t figured out that their model is outdated, that their “experience,” is no longer enough to keep moving forward. They carry on day after day, season after season, doing the same thing over and over again, half-expecting a different result, but then again, maybe not. Worst of all, most of them have no idea what the problems plaguing their organizations actually are. A lot of it is just operational myopia. Some of it is also ego: they couldn’t possibly be wrong. All that experience and intuition, the entire industry’s decades-old model… how could things have changed that much, right?

And yet they are wrong, the model isn’t working anymore, and instead of listening to the guy in the room who sees it and knows how to fix it, they treat him like a punk. When he wants to do something about it, they push back. Hard. In Moneyball, he’s their boss. Imagine when he is just a Director or a VP, or even just an account manager. Imagine how quickly he gets overruled then. I’ve seen amazing people get shut down and pushed out of organizations over this sort of thing. I could give you names and dates. I could make you ill with true stories of stupidity and petty politics, of wasted opportunities and complete operational failures that turned what could have been huge wins for companies that needed them (and customers who demanded them) into case studies in wasted potential. And as tragic as  these stories would be, they are no different from the opportunities that will be wasted this week, and the next, and the one after that, always for the same reasons, always because of the exact same thinking and business management dynamics.

I see that scene, that meeting, that discussion being played out almost everywhere I go, especially when it comes to social media and social business: guys sitting around a table, treating social like it is just an extension of the same old traditional digital marketing game they all understand and desperately want to stick to. And so they make strategy decisions based on models that don’t apply at all to the social space, they insist on using measurement schemes that aren’t the least bit relevant to it or the business as a whole, and worst of all, they make hiring decisions that absolutely make no sense at all for the new requirements of social communications. Why? Because even though the game has changed, no one in the room wants to accept that it has. No one in the room wants to adapt. No one in the room wants to look reality in the eye and do what needs to be done to actually win. Talk about it, sure. Use cool new words like earned media and engagement, definitely. But actually change anything and adapt to a new model? Nope. Not happening. The change management piece that comes with social business integration, the piece that is absolutely vital to it actually working, that piece is still DOA.

Here’s another conversation that also goes on “offline” at every company (agency or brand) around the world right now in regards to hiring decisions that touch on social media management. Here it is again, through the filter ofMoneyball:

Peter Brand: There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening. And this leads people who run Major League Baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams. I apologize.
Billy Beane: Go on.
Peter Brand: Okay. People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players. Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players, your goal should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs. You’re trying to replace Johnny Damon. The Boston Red Sox see Johnny Damon and they see a star who’s worth seven and half million dollars a year. When I see Johnny Damon, what I see is… is… an imperfect understanding of where runs come from. The guy’s got a great glove. He’s a decent leadoff hitter. He can steal bases. But is he worth the seven and half million dollars a year that the Boston Red Sox are paying him? No. No. Baseball thinking is medieval. They are asking all the wrong questions. And if I say it to anybody, I’m-I’m ostracized. I’m-I’m-I’m a leper. So that’s why I’m-I’m cagey about this with you. That’s why I… I respect you, Mr. Beane, and if you want full disclosure, I think it’s a good thing that you got Damon off your payroll. I think it opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities.

Every company has a Peter Brand either on staff or sitting in a stack of CVs. Not necessarily in the sense that they are geniuses with statistics  but in the sense that they see the forest from the trees, that they see what needs to be done, but every time they open their mouths, they get shot down. Worse, if they open their mouths too much, they’re gone. And if their CV doesn’t have the bullet points and keywords that hiring managers were trained twenty years ago to find relevant, they don’t even get considered for the position.

If I see one more social media leadership position go by default to candidates with “big agency digital experience” or “big brand digital experience,” I am going to throw my pencil at somebody’s head. There is the medieval thinking in action, right there. There’s the primary reason why almost every social media program on the planet is failing to produce results, why three fourths of companies still can’t figure out how to calculate the ROI of their social media programs, why most brands see less than 1% of engagement from their followers and fans after the first touch, why “content is king” is failing, and why increasingly, “social media” strategy and budgets are shifting to ad buys on social networks. That’s right: For all the talk about earned media and engagement and conversations, social media account roles are starting to go to media buyers now. (Here’s some insight into it.) Everyone loves to talk the talk. Almost no company is willing to actually walk the walk. That sound you’re hearing is the banging of traditional marketing hammers pounding nails into social business’ coffin.

You want to know why most big brand social media programs aren’t gaining real traction? Why they don’t work without a constant influx of ad spending? Why nobody sticks around when the “free iPads for likes” promotions are gone? Start there: no one in the room gets it. No one in the room wants to get it. And when someone in the room does get it, he or she doesn’t keep their job for very long. You think most companies are going to hire, promote and support change agents all on their own?

So the real question is this: Do you want to actually score some real wins or do you just want to spend big marketing budgets and play at being a digital big shot?

It’s a real question. In fact, it’s the most important question you might ask yourself all year. Because the answer to that question will determine whether or not you still have a job in two years. No wait… I misspoke. The answer to that question will determine whether or not you have the job you want in two years, and yes, there’s a difference. A big one.

When you find yourself looking for your next gig (and you will eventually,) do you want to just be the guy who was SVP digital at (insert big brand/agency here) or do you want to be the guy who took (insert big brand/agency here)’s theoretical social media and social business programs, and turned them into the new industry standards, into the business model that everyone will be copying and basing theirs on for the next decade? It’s a real question. Which guy do you want to be? The dinosaur or the pioneer? If the answer is the latter, then are you going to have the huevos to go against the grain? To take chances on whom you hire, what kinds of programs you launch, where and how you invest your budgets? Are you willing to stick your neck out and do it right? Or is it more likely that you’ll just play it safe, hoping that the system will just carry you for another decade or two, that the CEO or CMO you will interview with next won’t notice that your job was basically to spend ad dollars and shuffle digital board pieces for the CEO’s monthly show-and-tell meeting?

Who do you want to be? What do you want to build? Do you want to just wear the jersey or do you want to win? Hold that thought. Here’s another key piece of dialogue from the movie, after Billy Beane’s gamble has paid off, after he has started turning some wheels in a big way. He responds to an invitation from John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, who tells him this:

John Henry: I know you’ve taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall. It always gets bloody, always. It’s the threat of not just the way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. But really what it’s threatening is their livelihoods, it’s threatening their jobs, it’s threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it’s the government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people are holding the reins, have their hands on the switch. They go bat shit crazy. I mean, anybody who’s not building a team right and rebuilding it using your model, they’re dinosaurs. They’ll be sitting on their ass on the sofa in October, watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.

And a couple of years later, they did.

So let’s talk about our world again for a minute. Let’s talk about what’s coming, about tipping points, about momentum: Ford not only hired the right guy (Scott Monty) a few years back but gave him the authority to build a solid program there. The result: some serious wins on just about every front, from customer perceptions to purchase intent to customer loyalty and recommendations. Evencar design was impacted in 2010 by the importance of social communications in the Ford organization. Edelman Digital seems to be doing something similar (I keep running into some pretty solid folks there, notably Michael Brito and David Armano). Want to see something cool? This is one of the things they’re working on. Starbucks caught an early train with that too. So did Dell. What sucks is that in 2012, virtually no one else has even tried to keep up with them. For all the money being spent and all the “case studies” being pushed around the conference circuit, most companies are still fighting it, still refusing to accept that the game has changed – worse, trying to keep playing with old methods, with old thinking, with old, outdated skills and CV bullet points. But there will come a day when someone will be given the authority to build out this new model, when it will blow everyone out of the water, and when the blindfolds will have to come off. That day is coming. What side of change do you want to be on then?

Old thinking will not score wins here. Old tactics, old hiring, old measurement, they’re all wrong for these new marketing, communications and business models. They just don’t work anymore. If you don’t believe me, that’s fine. Keep watching your margins erode. Keep watching your digital dollars go to waste. Keep laying people off and outsourcing every last business function you can’t afford to keep in-house anymore. Keep pretending the world is the same today as it was five years ago, and that what you were doing five years ago will still be relevant five years from now. Whatever makes you feel better. Keep doing the same old thing that used to work, back before people carried smart phones and iPads. Keep thinking that the guy you just hired because he spent ten years managing digital for a fast-food brand knows fuck-all about building capacity and traction for a social media program, let alone produce concrete business results for you. Keep coloring the same old boxes with the same old crayons and see how far you’ll get.

_ Okay good. What’s the problem?

We need to fill a VP Digital role.

_ Nope. What’s the problem?

All right… Whatever. We need to fill a VP social media strategy role.

_ Nope. What’s the problem?

We need to hire someone with proven global digital management experience, Billy. Someone with Disney or Nike on their CV. Someone with serious digital campaign experience.

_ Nope. What’s the problem, Barry?

The problem is, we’re not growing our Facebook community fast enough, and our content isn’t seeing the numbers we want. We need a…

_ Nope. [Imitates buzzer]

Get unstuck. Watch Moneyball and let the light bulb go off in your head. Then go find your Peter Brand and hire the shit out of him before someone else does. If you’re lucky, you’ll save both your career and your company in the process.

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Here it is. A whole book on how to make social media work from a business standpoint. ROI is covered, along with a lot of process elements that tie back to it. If your favorite social business “expert” doesn’t seem to get this stuff yet, don’t feel bad about sending them a copy. Knowledge is never a bad gift.

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

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Why it worked.

During the Superbowl on Sunday, there was a little glitch with the lights. They went out. We’re talking blackout. Within minutes, Oreo released the above image across several key social media channels. Not Duracell, not Energizer, not G.E…. Oreo.

Clever. And it paid off for the brand.

Why was this a win? Four interwoven reasons: Velocity, relevance, wit and execution.

Wit, relevance and execution, most ad agencies can handle. Velocity, on the the other hand (generating ad-quality content and publishing it as meme-like social content), not so much. That’s still rare.

I want you to think about obstacles vs. enablement.

I want you to think about culture and operational agility.

Something like this doesn’t happen by accident. You have to have the right people in place, the right presence on key channels, the right support from management, the right kind of relationship with your community, and an eye towards real-time community management and content creation.

How many levels of approvals and sign-off do you think that image had to go through before getting the okay? Judging by the speed with which it appeared on the interwebs when the lights at the Superdome went out, not many. How did Oreo pull that off?

1. At some point, Oreo decided it needed a nimble, agile, self-sufficient social media team.

2. At some point, Oreo decided to trust that team to do its job without having to micromanage it.

Easier said than done? Sure. But only by fine margins. Want to guess what separates Oreo from other companies that haven’t been able to do this yet? They hired the right people.

Instead of assigning social media duties to some intern or the cheapest content creation team they could find, they made sure that the people running that piece of their digital business were witty, capable, professional people who understand brand voice, who understand their fans, and who understand how memes and social marketing work.

This happened because the right people were hired and then allowed to do their job.

We can talk about tools, we can talk about processes, we can talk about platforms, but Oreo’s real genius can be traced straight back to having the right people in place.

If you want to celebrate brand management and superbowl advertising secret sauce today, the two words you should keep in mind are velocity and competence.

 Here’s how they did it. (via Buzzfeed)

Whether or not this ultimately translates to business growth, well played, Oreo. Well played.

Let’s close with two simple graphs:

1. Immediate impact on Twitter:

(Feel free to compare this graph with those of every Super Bowl advertiser.)

2. Impact of Twitter on conversations about the Super Bowl:

See that enormous horizontal blue line up there? That’s the volume of Twitter mentions against Facebook, Instagram, blogs and news for the same time frame. [source]

Long term, platforms like Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram are probably stronger bets for stickiness and reach, but in terms of real-time impact (especially during events), Twitter matters. It matters a lot.

PS: You’ll want to read this too. (Real-time marketing) by David Armano.

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If you’re interested in how to make something like that happen, then convert that attention into real sales, pick up a copy of Social Media R.O.I.: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. The book is 300 pages of facts and proven best practices that explain how to do what Oreo just did – and then some. (Go to smroi.net to sample a free chapter first, just to make sure it’s worth the money.)

And if English isn’t your first language, you can even get it in Spanish, Japanese, German, Korean and Italian now, with more international editions on the way.

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

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Edelman’s Trust Barometer Report 2013: Our Global Leadership Problem.

 

If you aren’t familiar with Edelman’s Trust Barometer project, you should be. I can’t think of any other organization out there that has been able to peel back the layers of trust in the business world as effectively.  (If you know of other work I should be looking at, please leave a link in the comments.) Anyway, I want to share some of their findings here because understanding them will help everyone build and grow better companies. This isn’t just a PR topic. It affects everything: Brand management, communications, operations, retail, customer service… everything.

First, the checklist. Below is a graphic that shows 16-trust building attributes every organization needs to be aware of (and gauge). It looks like this year, Edelman added categories (what they call trust performance clusters): Engagement, Integrity, Products & Services, Purpose, and Operations. I can’t poke a hole into this. It’s solid.

Since I am as much a fan of best practices, brand strategy and change management as I am a fan of data, insights and infographics, you can imagine how stuff like this makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.

Here’s another piece of the Trust Barometer project: shifts in trust around the world year over year (YoY). To be clear, the graph does not illustrate consumer trust in the countries listed, but rather how consumers in each of these countries tend to trust companies, media, government institutions and NGOs. (If you think of it as a sort of cynicism graph, the US, the UK, Germany and France are a lot less cynical about all four sectors today than they were a year ago. We’re not out of the woods yet, but it’s a good sign.)

Edelman’s Trust Barometer report for 2013 is summarized really well in this video. (If the link below doesn’t play, click here.) It’s less than 3 minutes long and packed with a ton of really fascinating info, so keep your finger near the pause button. And no, I wasn’t paid by Edelman to push their report or say nice things about them. I ran into this yesterday on the Facebook. I was impressed by it and thought it was well worth sharing with you guys.

What’s particularly fascinating to me:

1) Tech companies seem to inspire the most trust and banking/financial institutions the least amount of trust.

2) Leadership and corporate culture are cited as the primary causes of corporate wrongdoing. (And rightly so.)

3) Globally, CEOs have less than a 50% approval rating. Only 18% of people expect business leaders to tell the truth, and 13% of political leaders to tell the truth. That is execrable.

What it means: a) we have a global leadership problem, and b) people are no longer blind to it. If that shouldn’t trigger a wake-up call, I don’t know what will.

Interestingly, people tend to still trust institutions far more than the leadership of said institutions. In the US, for instance, 50% of people trust business institutions, but only 15% trust their leadership. That’s a  35 point gap. When it comes to government, those numbers fall to 38% and 10% respectively, for a gap of 28 points.

Our trust in people – particularly in those who should be our leaders – is eroding. Fast. This is a major problem and it needs to be addressed. And no, cool Superbowl ads and cosmetic rebrandings won’t fix this. It’s a deeper problem and it is going to take serious, grown-up, deliberate work to fix it.

The only thing I wasn’t super impressed with was the “diamond of influence” and the media clover leaf thingamajigs at the end of the video. It isn’t that they are wrong (they aren’t) as much as they attempt to fix a leadership problem by addressing an operational problem. To use a medical analogy, it’s a little like trying to cure someone’s brain tumor by enrolling them in a social graces class. The solution just doesn’t match the problem.

Here’s a thought: Before you can address changes in operational models, you have to address the gaps in leadership that are the root causes of said operational problems. For instance, if you focus first on working with the organization’s leadership on baking the 16 attributes of trust into their vision for the company and then operationalizing them, maybe you have something that might work. Then and only then do you bring in the diamond and the clover leaf – to address the how of your why and what.

Always match the right solutions to the right problem. Otherwise, your business solution runs the risk of being little more than the corporate version of a cargo cult: a lot of mimicking and parroting, but absolutely no hope of generating real results. If you have a leadership problem, address that. Don’t beat around the bush. Don’t skirt the issue. Address it and fix it. Start with an audit of your organization, using the 16 trust attributes as potential areas of improvement.

Food for thought. Discuss.

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Looking for straight answers to real questions about value, process, planning, measurement, management and reporting in the social business space? pick up a copy of Social Media R.O.I.: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. The book is 300 pages of facts and proven best practices. (Go to smroi.net to sample a free chapter first, just to make sure it’s worth the money.)

And if English isn’t your first language, you can even get it in Spanish, Japanese, German, Korean and Italian now, with more international editions on the way.

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

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Facebook Graph Search explained in 15 seconds

 

Facebook Graph Search explained in 15 seconds. It’s really simple. Ready?

Think search your community/network instead of search the web.

That’s all it is.

If that doesn’t work for you, think about search in terms of degrees of separation. Remember David Armano’s influence ripples? Imagine search working the same way. It’s basically search coupled with social relevance.

If that still doesn’t work for you, here’s Zuck:

Also check out Christopher Penn’s insights here. (Relevant to marketing, digital and bizdev pros.)

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Looking for straight answers to real questions about value, process, planning, measurement, management and reporting in the social business space? pick up a copy of Social Media R.O.I.: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. The book is 300 pages of facts and proven best practices. (Go to smroi.net to sample a free chapter first, just to make sure it’s worth the money.)

And if English isn’t your first language, you can even get it in Spanish, Japanese, German, Korean and Italian now, with more international editions on the way.

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

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Some more thoughts on Social Media and ROI [Infographic]

Yesterday, the above infographic popped up on my radar (thanks, V. Harris). At first, I thought “here we go again: another crap social media ROI infographic.” But then I took a closer look and I got it. It’s actually not bad. Well… up to a point.

Part 1 – Showing that basic business literacy is still lacking in the digital marketing space:

Verdict: Good.

Here’s what this part of the infographic tells us:

1. Marketers still mistake metrics like net followers/fans, web traffic, and social mentions (all essentially reach metrics) for ROI. Less than 30% of them consider sales to be an element of ROI. Still.

2. 73% of CEOs think marketers don’t understand basic business terminology and objectives.

3. Is it any surprise that CEOs think that marketers are essentially dumbasses and that social business is bullshit?

If that part of the infographic doesn’t perfectly illustrate the urgent need for an infusion of actual competence on every level of the social business management scale, I don’t know what does. This situation is absurd.

The silver lining: Over 70% of marketers still haven’t read my book, so we still have a lot of potential sales there.

Okay, all kidding aside, the fact that over 70% of marketers still qualify followers and fans as a measure of ROI is… shocking. Seriously. Web traffic? Social mentions? Here’s a fix: Send these people back to school. It’s almost 2013. We should be over this by now. Anyone who still thinks that way needs an intervention. It might have been acceptable in 2008, but not anymore.

Part 2 – Showing some financial outcomes that can be tied back to social media activity (and budgets):

Verdict: Good.

Here, we see examples of social media activity having a direct impact on sales. The cool thing about it is that if you go back and look at how much that social media activity cost (man hours, technology, etc.), you can assign a specific cost to it. If you have the gain figures and the cost figures, you can calculate ROI.

Thumbs-up. More of that, please.

Part 3 – “Last Touch Conversions” and the problem with last-click attribution models:

Verdict: Last click attribution is too limited a model to illustrate the full impact of social media activity on sales.

Here’s where the infographic runs into a wall. We’ve talked about this: It isn’t so much that last click attribution is wrong in assuming a cause and effect relationship between clicking on a link and making a purchase. Clearly, there’s a strong connection there. There’s intent, if anything, and that’s important, so we need to track that and put numbers to it. But focusing too much (or at all) on last click attribution is a lot like looking at consumer behaviors through a simple, robotic, kind of binary lens that only accounts for a very small fraction of the customer journey. It completely ignores the dozen (if not hundreds) of other triggers that led a consumer to eventually click on that link and decide to make a purchase.

Last click attribution doesn’t take into account the full scope of discovery (that is to say, how a consumer found out about the brand and/or product). It doesn’t take into account the impact of advertising, marketing, PR, media exposure and word-of-mouth recommendations. It doesn’t take into account the months, weeks, days or hours of research done by the consumer before clicking on that link. In other words, the entire decision process that takes place before a purchase (discovery, research, preference and validation) is excluded from the last click attribution model. Months of social interactions: gone. Customer service experiences: gone. We’re down to attributing a transaction to the very last thing a consumer did before pulling out a credit card. That’s a lot like a military unit attributing a victory in battle to the last bullet fired. Focusing only on the final few minutes of a long and complex customer journey is terribly-short-sighted, and that sort of methodology (and mentality) drags us into a ditch of assumptions as to cause and effect that generally leads to poor consumer insights and ultimately investments in the wrong types of activities.

Last click attribution is easy, sure, but since when does easy trump smart or relevant? The truth is that it’s a lazy mode of thinking. That’s right, I said it: It’s lazy.

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at how Ohtootay helps companies move beyond last click attribution (and last touch conversions) to map how consumers actually behave – that is to say how they shop. It’s a good start. We need more of that kind of thinking and more of that kind of insightful application of technology. The objective for businesses and marketing teams has always been this: to understand consumer behaviors and how to affect them in a way that leads them to notice, want, buy and ultimately recommend products. Last click attribution doesn’t do that. It’s a snapshot of the final step in a long transaction funnel. That’s all. You want to measure ROI? You want to know what’s working? You want to fine-tune the way your traditional marketing, social channel activity, customer service, product design, packaging, retail experience and competitive landscape work together (or don’t)? Great. Then you’re going to have to work a little harder to figure out how all the pieces fit, and how to make them fit even better.

Personally, I think that’s half the fun of the marketing profession: figuring out what works and what doesn’t – and why, solving those kinds of problems, fine-tuning and then fine-tuning some more… That’s what marketing is about: making it work. Understanding how to move all of those needles so your company or product team gets what they want, and your customers do too. Do it right and everyone walks away happy. That’s the goal. Happy customers, happy product managers, happy investors, job creation on the back end… That’s the big picture, one piece of the daisy chain at a time.

So a word of caution: If you’re not into asking questions, doing research, or caring enough to bust your ass to do real work, hard work – sometimes tedious work – to kick ass, maybe you shouldn’t be in the marketing business. There’s a reason why 73% of CEOs think that marketers lack business credibility. It’s because of laziness and apathy. Every marketing pro who still hasn’t learned how to explain the relationship between ROI and social media contributes to that credibility problem. Every marketing pro who still uses last click attribution as their go-to metric to gauge the effectiveness of a social channel contributes to that credibility problem. Every marketing pro who isn’t working in concert (hell, in tandem) with a product group and a sales department contributes to that problem.

Give that some thought. And if that isn’t enough to give you pause, maybe this will: If you work in marketing, 73% of CEOs right now can’t figure out why they’re paying you. And you know what? They’re looking for someone better.

Fix that.

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Social Media ROI – Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in your Organization was written specifically to teach managers and executives how to build and manage social media friendly business programs and incorporate social technologies and networks into everyday business operations. The book is divided into four parts: social media program strategy & development, social media program operationalization, social media program management, and best practices in measurement and reporting. If your boss doesn’t yet have a copy, time to fix that. If everyone on your team doesn’t yet have their own copy, fix that too. It makes for a great desk reference.

(Now available in several languages including German, Korean, Japanese and Spanish.)

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

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Want to measure the ROI of some of your social business activities?

Good news: A sizeable piece of the Social Media ROI question seems to have just been answered by tech company called Ohtootay. Here’s what they offer:

According to this story in TechCrunch, “the solution lets companies track their efforts on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and elsewhere. But one of its more unique features in this crowded space is something which allows businesses to track their posts all the way through to website conversions, even when the original post didn’t point directly to their e-commerce site.”

This is big. And it only gets bigger.

It also goes beyond last click attribution, which has been a sticking points for all of us working to a) attribute transactions back to social activity when that activity is followed by a daisy chain of pre-transaction behaviors, and b) clearly map these paths to purchase. For instance, say that an investment in a social media program results in specific social activity that, in turn, enables discovery of a product for potential net new customers. (Lead generation.) That discovery may not trigger a purchase for days, weeks, even months. It was just the initial hand shake, the first of a succession of triggers that eventually culminated in a first transaction for that new customer. To prove ROI as it relates to social activity, you have to be able to connect all of those dots. Easier said than done, right? Most tools work backwards from the transaction to the point of origin just before the click that led them to an e-commerce site. That’s last-click attribution.

Most of the time, Google is going to get the credit for that last click attribution even though it really was just the last step in a daisy chain of purchase triggers and touch points.

Let’s look at Pinterest, for instance: Ohtootay lets companies “track Pinterest pins all the way through to website conversions and associated sales.” So far so good, right? But then there’s this: “This works even when a client shares a pin that doesn’t point to their own e-commerce site. […] What if a customer clicks on your pin that points to a relevant infographic not on your own site, later Googles you, and then decides to buy? Other analytics software will mistakenly tell social media managers that ‘Google’ caused this sale even though the customer’s first contact was through content you curated on your Pinterest boards.”

How does it do it? Well, it’s kind of simple, actually: “Ohtootay generates custom URLs (a company can use their preferred URL shortener as well), and then uses cookies to track the user. When that user arrives on the company’s e-commerce site, custom code embedded there will tell Ohtootay when a conversion actually happens.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is the exact same principle you have heard me describe for years. These guys actually built an app around it, and for that, I thank them.

A word of caution though: Ohtootay doesn’t do everything you need it to in terms of calculating the ROI of your social activity. It doesn’t necessarily track offline purchases, for instance, which is a pretty big piece of the social media ROI question. (It’s hard to connect offline and online purchases 24/7, though it is pretty easy to run tests at regular intervals.) It also doesn’t get into the cost-savings piece of ROI. But for those types of limitations, Ohtootay is a huge step forward for companies looking to a) justify their social media program spending, b) connect specific social activity to specific financial outcomes (especially digital ones), and c) understand what channels and activities are having positive effects on transactions and which ones are not.

In terms of helping companies determine the ROI of their social programs, this may be the most important tool out there yet. The price tag may be a bit of a hurdle for smaller businesses though, so an SMB version with a more appropriate price-point wouldn’t be a bad idea. (Hint. Hint.) I will definitely be giving them a shot to see what’s what. (I haven’t yet.)

Okay, that’s it for today. Go forth and kick ass. Oh, and feel free to check out some of my other blog posts over on the Tickr blog (different kind of social media solution altogether: that one is all about monitoring).

Cheers,

O.

Disclosure: I have no material connection to Ohtootay whatsoever. They aren’t a client or a partner, they haven’t reached out to me, I haven’t received as much as smile from them let alone a single shiny peso. I wrote this post purely to share with you this little find because it’s a bit of a game-changer in the context of the #smROI discussion.

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Social Media ROI – Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in your Organization was written specifically to teach managers and executives how to build and manage social media friendly business programs and incorporate social technologies and networks into everyday business operations. The book is divided into four parts: social media program strategy & development, social media program operationalization, social media program management, and best practices in measurement and reporting. If your boss doesn’t yet have a copy, time to fix that. If everyone on your team doesn’t yet have their own copy, fix that too. It makes for a great desk reference.

(Now available in several languages including German, Korean, Japanese and Spanish.)

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

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Lecture: “Beyond Social Media ROI: Engineering Social Media Wins”

2010 MIMA Summit: Featured Speaker – Olivier Blanchard from MIMA on Vimeo.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve released a video (well… one that doesn’t involve hanging out with an octopus or trying to crash my bike on mountain descents), so here’s one fished out of the vault by @KrisColvin that might come in handy. It hails back to the 2010 MIMA summit, but everything in the video is fairly straightforward and still applies to your social business programs today, so it’s well worth another pass.

If the embedded video at the top of the post doesn’t launch, watch it here.

Also, some news:

You know by now that I am generally pretty guarded about who my clients are, but my latest project calls for a little bit of transparency since I am giving them some visibility on Facebook and Twitter and helping manage some of their accounts. I have recently started working pretty closely with the folks at Tickr. They’re the folks behind the one-screen multi-channel aggregator you’ve probably seen in videos of social/digital control centers – like the one PepsiCo built for Gatorade. It’s kind of hard to run into a mission control center that doesn’t have a screen dedicated to Tickr now. Anyway, they’re launching a free version and a pay-as-you-go version to complement the enterprise version that big brands are already using, so they’ve asked me to help out for a few months. Check it out and tell me (or them) what you think.

Aside from the shameless plug, you may be interested to know that I’ll be blogging there as well as here for a bit, so if you are looking for more basic social media how to stuff than what I usually post here, news about the world of digital monitoring, digital brand management, and the rise of digital mission control centers, look for some of that there. The short list:

The blog

The Facebook page

The Twitter account (@TickrUS)

The website

You can start a free account and test drive Tickr in minutes, so give them a shot. It’s a pretty cool little app that works super well with the Radian6’s, Alterians and Spiral 16’s of the world.

Cheers. Let me know if you want more videos. There are more in the vault.

*          *          *

Social Media ROI – Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in your Organization was written specifically to teach managers and executives how to build and manage social media friendly business programs and incorporate social technologies and networks into everyday business operations. The book is divided into four parts: social media program strategy & development, social media program operationalization, social media program management, and best practices in measurement and reporting. If your boss doesn’t yet have a copy, time to fix that. If everyone on your team doesn’t yet have their own copy, fix that too. It makes for a great desk reference.

(Now available in several languages including German, Korean, Japanese and Spanish.)

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

Read Full Post »