You might have heard about the traditional 5 key metrics in measuring your marketing and online marketing success:

1. Awareness
2. Influence
3. Attitude
4. Response
5. Value

But what if there was a different approach we should be taking in our measurement?  One that will clearly define whether or not we need to rework and refine our own messaging and positioning in the marketplace?  The 6^th Key metric, in fact, encompasses them all, and lies in the term we (not so) loosely term: Customer Value Management.

So let us explore…

1. Awareness
   Getting awareness right in the sense of volume to your site, your brand name and your social presence, is a great way of measuring your marketing success.  In terms of Customer Value Management (CVM), though, this does not clearly indicate our success in getting our message across.The measurement here is to ensure that your brand persona or messaging clearly outlines your value proposition, and that it is interpreted this way.  People build trust relationships, and if they do not understand what you’re representing and understand your positioning, they won’t trust your brand and interact.

   It’s not about what you say, but about how they interpret it.

2. Influence
   To measure your influence in understanding that people believe in you so much and enjoy the influence you have in their decision making process, that they want to keep you close. They want you to not only influence them, but also the people around them continuously.
   
   
3. Attitude
   Oftentimes we measure attitude by what we hear people say about our brand or marketing messages.  Let’s turn it around and start by looking at our own attitudes.  If our attitudes are right, if what we say and do make people want to draw near and feel the need to connect and affiliate, then we got it right.  If not, we need to go back to the proverbial drawing board and re-assess where the attitude pointing outwards should or could be adjusted.
   
   
4. Response
   Traditionally response is seen as the response to your message.  Increased sales, increased revenue and more likes and fans in the social realm.  These are all good principles to measure response and have been the driving force behind charts and graphs for years.  And they work.But in terms of the customer and their value, we need to look at our own response to their response.  When faced with a challenge, do we respond with an open mind, or do we react arrogantly?  Do we welcome their opinions on our brand, or follow the regiment ways of mass media, not allowing them to form part of our ethos?

   People don’t care what we know, until they know that we care.
   

5. Value
   And finally – instead of seeing our clients and marketing as just the impact on our bottom line, seeing what value we are adding to them. This is exactly the shift marketing needs to make when we look at our brands becoming interactive instead of trying to dictate to the mass media and enforcing our ideas on the predominantly ‘prosumer’ market.

   Our measurement in engagement value should provide the flexibility and insight to measure whether or not the market is letting us in.

Most of us love the idea (still) of speaking or broadcasting our ideas and values.  The world has changed and is changing as we speak.  New measurement metrics are key to keeping abreast of our client partners, and in this measurement, crucial to our realignment of voice and strategy.

Influence and Collaboration: Robin Pullen, BCI

As I sit down to write this article, it occurs to me that this will conclude an unintentional 3 part article series on the impact of social search (the newly introduced Google algorithm basically) and my thoughts on the future of SEO. This topic has grabbed my attention since the start of 2012 and although I plan on continuously monitoring it, this will be my last post on the topic. I do however plan on reflecting back on this article in about a year’s time.

As mentioned in my previous post(s), it seems that Search Plus Your World has caused quite an uproar. When Twitter accuses Google of manipulating search results and not having the best interest of users at heart, you should take notice. In this article I will attempt to wrap up my thoughts on this issue.

Will Google Plus survive?

I have not touched this issue before in depth, but it has been lingering in my mind for quite a while now. Last month Larry Page announced that Google Plus reached 90 million users. Facebook has about 800 million users. To the casual observer this might seem that Google Plus is gaining significant ground on the social giant (it has managed to get more than 10% of the amount of users in less than a year!).

For the following reasons, I do not think that this is the case…

There are a few problems and gripes I have with Google Plus. As much as I love Google and what they do, I’ll quote a post I read from one of my ‘friends’ on Google Plus (just before he abandoned using the Social Network) : “I do not want all my eggs in one Google basket”. This however, might be a personal thought process and not the consensus of the majority. What bugs me personally though, is that although I have a significant number of people in my circles – my news feed is basically empty. When I scroll down for a couple of seconds, I already start seeing posts from weeks ago. I am sure many people will echo my conclusion : there is nothing going on on Google Plus. You might be asking yourself – ‘Why do they then have 90 million users?”. The answer is simple. Because every person with a gmail account got signed up to Google+ automatically when it officially launched. I have a Google Plus account, I am part of the 90 million, do I ever use it? The answer is no. Technically, there is nothing wrong with Google Plus – but when no one uses it because there are no others using it, it creates a vicious cycle. I predict that Google Plus will die slowly (although I hope not). Facebook is just too big and established.

The only saving grace will be if Google Plus fills a different segment of the market – perhaps a social network focused on businesses…

SEO in 2012 and beyond

One cannot predict what changes Google will make to their algorithm in the future, perhaps links will play a smaller role, perhaps social search will dominate or (as discussed above) Google Plus will fade away.

I cannot foresee search evolving into something inherently social unless Facebook, Twitter etc decides to play along and open up all public content for Google to index. This will in turn depend on Google to position results in an unbiased manner. If and when this happens on large scale, SEO will be a totally different ballgame. As I have mentioned in the past, SEO ultimately boils down to ensuring that a website is optimised for the user. This aspect will never go away. Websites will always need relevant quality content, the site will always have to be user friendly and designed in such a way to deliver a great user experience.

At this point in time however, an SEO specialist cannot ignore the social aspect of search, it should benefit your SEO client noticeably if you include social in your SEO efforts.

Although he delayed it as long as he could, on Wednesday 1st February 2012, Facebook Founder & CEO Mark Zuckerburg filed their S-1 Documents[1] disclosing the company’s plans to seek $5 Billion ahead of an I.P.O.(Initial Public Offering) which will beat Google’s 2004 offering to become the world’s largest initial public offering of an Internet company. Facebook stocks, & those of companies with even miniscule associations to Facebook went, “soaring in trading”[2].

The release of their S-1 Documents revealed interesting information about Facebook’s business operations. Most of the Social Network’s revenue is generated from advertising & associated fees, their payment infrastructure enables users to buy virtual and digital goods from their Platform developers. Of the $3.71 Billion[1] revenue generated in 2011, $445 million was made through virtual goods sold by Zynga Games who account for approximately 12% of Facebook’s revenue with Facebook taking 30% of all Virtual Goods sold by Zynga Games, such as FarmVille and CityVille.

Facebook’s public offering will make it a public company, enabling anyone to buy shares in the company. Though this means huge amounts of cashflow for the company to further their visions, it also means monetising the company which could compromise Mark Zucherburg’s idealistic & user based approach to running the pioneer social network. Just as Apple challenged Microsoft for Software supremacy, Facebook now challenges Google for Internet supremacy. To strengthen this challenge, they will have to begin to split focus as their users, who have always been at the fore of their business and who form the basis of the business value proposition will now become the product of their business, firstly, and secondly the shareholders will now also need to see returns on their investments.

The company is expected to be listed on New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq in a few months and investors from around the world will be watching eagerly to see how this long awaited listing performs. Internet advertisers will be looking to see what this does to the performance of their ads, especially in comparison to long dominant Google.

References:
[1]: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/d287954ds1.htm
[2]: http://mashable.com/2012/02/02/facebook-ipo-tech-stocks/

As 2011 draws to a close, Facebook published Memology 2011, a list of statistics regarding global topics, trends and cultural phenomena. These statistics are generated and compiled from the over 800 million Facebook user’s status updates. The top 10 global topics identified by Facebook, quite accurately represents the media highlights of 2011. However, the top 10 global topics make it clear that the majority of Facebook users reside in the USA, with ‘Packers win the Super Bowl’ being the 2nd most popular global topic of 2011.

Quite understandably, especially from the perspective of the United States, the top global topic of 2011 was the death of Osama bin Laden. The deaths of Apple’s Steve Jobs and singer Amy Winehouse were the 5th and 7th most popular topics respectively and Charlie Sheen’s antics landed him as the 4th most popular global topic on Facebook in 2011. The Royal Wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William, which happened in April, is at position 6. The massively popular Call of Duty game franchise, was the 8th most talked about global topic of 2011 with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Other topics in the top 10 include: ‘Casey Anthony found not guilty’, ‘Military operations begin in Libya’ and ‘Hurricane Irene’.

Facebook also provides country specific status trends of 2011 (you can take a look by following the second link below). Unfortunately South African topics are not provided (I am sure the Rugby World Cup would have featured in one form or another). Some interesting status trends from other countries include: UK Riots (United Kingdom), Skrillex (Canada), Planking and Skrillex (Australia), UFC and Slipknot (Brasil).

2011 has certainly been an exciting, tragic and strange year for the 3rd rock from the sun.

Learn more about Social Media Marketing

Links:
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150391956652131
http://www.facebook.com/facebook?sk=app_271705986210152

Why are companies with Facebook profiles on the hunt for more “Likes”?
It could be one of the following reasons or in most cases all of them:
To gain more social media fans, to gain brand exposure, to position their brands in the eyes of the consumers, and ultimately to effectively utilise this medium to run competitions and promotions.
As the Social Media Expert at SAbest it intrigues me as to why Facebook users do not want to like a Company or Brand on Facebook. I did some research to see why and what expectations people have when they do interact with a Company or Brand socially.

There are various reasons why Facebook fans don’t “Like” a Company on Facebook:

• 54% don’t want to be bombarded with messages or ads,
• 45% don’t want to give any companies access to personal profile information,
• 29% don’t want companies to contact them through Facebook,
• 23% don’t see the benefit of it,
• 4% don’t understand what it means to “Like” a company.

If a Facebook fan likes your Company page, it is very important to observe that they do so with an expectation. People don’t just “Like” every page on Facebook, they “Like” it for a reason. Fans like Company pages to gain access to exclusive content, events, sales or promotions.

47% of users “Like” a page to receive updates about the company, persons or organisation in their newsfeed. 26% want to interact with the page owner. The survey also shows that only 24% want to be contacted through other social media channels such as Twitter once they have interacted with a company on Facebook. 37% do not expect anything to happen.

Media such as photos and videos always perform well on Facebook. It grabs attention in newsfeeds and it is easy to share.

Just ask. People like to interact with each other so ask for those opinions on topics, and if you want your fans to share favourite content, go ahead – ask them.

One of a fan’s expectations is that the page owners will thank them for their replies and for sharing their opinions. From time to time, talk about things other than your products. Wish them happy holidays. Ask them fun questions or to share their personal stories.

Remember, if a fan likes your page; interact with them, because it’s one of the biggest expectations any Facebook Fan has.