Twitter or TV?

At the iMedia conference in Brighton this week there was a good deal of discussion about social media and how best to measure it.

Oddly though, there was little consideration of the fact that different verticals will be able to benefit from social media in very different ways.

One way of looking at verticals is to place them on a grid where one axis runs from low to high emotional importance and the other axis runs from low to high rational importance.

Verticals with high emotional importance contain products that we buy because they “say” something about us. Verticals with high rational importance contain products that we buy because we need them.

Using the emotional-rational grid we can divide verticals into four sectors:

High rational, high emotional (HRHE) verticals like travel, motor cars and electrical devices. These are verticals where the functionality needs to be right, where we are risking relatively large amounts of money, and where part of why we buy is because we feel comfortable with the brand

Low rational, high emotional (LRHE) verticals like fashion, print media and charity. These are verticals where we are not risking a great deal, where we don’t really need the products but where we do feel emotional engagement because the products we buy “say” a lot about us

High rational, low emotional (HRLE) verticals like banking, retail and utilities. These are verticals where the functionality needs to be right, where we are risking relatively large amounts of money, but where we are not emotionally engaged with the brand

Low rational, low emotional (LRLE) verticals like washing powder and petrol. These are verticals where we are not taking great risks and where there is no emotional involvement with the brands. While products in these verticals are important the functionality they deliver is generally simple.

HRHE verticals can use social media very creatively. As well as using social media to research the marketplace by listening to conversations and to manage their reputation they can actively “campaign” messages through social media.

LRHE verticals are in a similar position – able to exploit their emotional connection with consumers through social media, although they may need to work harder as there is little they can say about rational benefits.

HRLE verticals however will find it far harder to exploit social media for campaigning. They have little emotional connection with their consumers and proactive use of social media platforms will frequently be considered intrusive – who wants to hear from their bank on Facebook? They can however use social media for market research and importantly for managing their reputations. For instance few people are likely to praise a bank’s service to their friends but many will criticise it if something goes wrong.

The LRLE verticals are the Cinderellas of social media. No one is interested in them: why would you blog about washing powder or review a cleaning fluid? For brands in these verticals social media are far less important. While they should monitor conversations just in case a big issue starts to brew, they need to do little more than that.

Both HRLEs and LRLEs need to employ advertising techniques to add a layer of emotional connection to their brands. But for HRHEs and LRHEs that are considerable opportunities to enhance their brands through social media.

The lesson here is that brands should consider whether they are in a vertical that can usefully use social media for active campaigning or merely for research and for more reactive communication.

A failure to understand this can result in wasted budgets and in losing the opportunities that more powerful media activities can deliver.

Jeremy Swinfen Green, Digital Director
jeremy@mcand.co.uk

Adding some rigour to social media measurement

Measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing is a fairly fuzzy activity. Putting a little structure around it can therefore be useful.

There are three main types of measurement you can consider. There's absolute data – data that measures size. There is trend data – data that measures change. And there is comparative data – which you could use for benchmarking.

Absolute data is factual – I might have 5000 Twitter followers, or 37 people might have commented on this blog post. Or perhaps 6000 people viewed my video on YouTube. Or my brand was mentioned 5000 times in forums. Etc etc. Some of this can perhaps be assigned a value in media terms. And while it isn't always easy to assign an appropriate value (what is a Facebook fan worth?) at least you can make a start.

Trend data is also factual – but as you are comparing two sets of data, as you can with tools like Alterian's SM2, the important fact is the change in the data. Thus if there are 10,000 positive mentions of my brand through social media in August that may or may not be good: it's hard to know. But if there were 9000 in July and 12,000 in September I can be pretty confident that I am going in the right direction and that the value of those mentions in September is 125% of the value in July.

And there is comparative data. I might have 12,000 positive brand mentions in September. But if my competitor got 50,000 that month I'm not looking so bright!

We can also separate the results of social media conversations into four areas: views, conversations, actions and effects.

First there are views. Sometimes it's possible to measure the number of people who have seen some of your social media conversations – for instance by measuring visitor numbers to your blog. You won't always be able to measure that – but where you can this may be a helpful metric.

Often these numbers will be small – perhaps too small to be relevant in media terms. But they might not be. If Sony Bravia gets a couple of million views of its ad on YouTube then that's worth something. Probably more in fact than 2 million OTSs on TV.

Then there are conversations. These are simply mentions of your brand or your competitors in various places – forums, blogs, file shares etc. They can be good, bad or indifferent (and you should be measuring that). At its simplest it equates to your PR agency counting the press clips.

Next there are actions. This is when people have done something – taken an action of some kind, perhaps signing up to follow you on Twitter, or responding to a comment you have made in a forum.

Again often the numbers here will be very small – and the real value may not be in terms of media but in terms of the opportunity they bring to engage with brand advocates.

And finally we have effects. This is when you can see that social media activity has had an effect on something else you are doing. For instance, and at its simplest, you could measure the effect (or at least some of the effect) of social media on web traffic by tracking people from appropriate sources such as social networking sites.

Other effects might only be measurable through data analysis, for instance identifying links between social media campaigns and calls to a call centre or online sales.

Of course the effect might well be softer than a measurable and identifable action. It may be a shift in purchase propensity or brand favourability on the part of people exposed to your social media. That's harder to measure although not impossible using standard quantitative research techniques.

So there you have it. A little 3 by 4 matrix that should help you put some rigour into the process of evaluating social media.

Jeremy Swinfen Green, Digital Director
jeremy@mcand.co.uk

More Power to King Fry’s Elbow

Earlier this week I wrote about how I been intrigued by Trafigura’s ability to gag the Guardian and their failure to gag online comment. I have come across another interesting example of how the Twitterati are influencing the media.

Last week an article appeared in the Daily Mail, written by journalist Jan Moir, which discussed the recent death of Stephen Gately at the age of just 33. The article was originally titled “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”. Although the article has now been amended in several ways, the original can be read as a (Google Doc.)

Within a few hours of the article being published, a furore had grown around Twitter and blog sites buzzing with anger at the perception that Moir was implying the ex-Boyzone singer’s death was intrinsically linked to his lifestyle as a homosexual.

‘King’ Fry tweeted "I gather a … nobody …has written something loathsome and inhumane," whilst Charlie Brooker blogged a scathing riposte to the article on the Guardian website .

The online backlash was so immediate and effective that by the time I became aware of the offending piece last Friday afternoon, merely hours after it had first appeared, the Press Complaints Commission had already received 1,000 complaints. At the time of writing that number has risen to a record 25,000, whilst the Daily Mail has been forced to remove adverts from around the article, after the advertisers too were bombarded with complaints.

Both this example and my earlier example about Trafigura demonstrate how people like Stephen Fry and other members of the ‘Twitterati’ have realised the potential of social media as a tool for socio-political comment.

The enforced climb-down by Carter Ruck and their ultimate failure to gag the Guardian struck a blow for the supporters of free speech and freedom of press. The reaction to the now infamous Jan Moir article however has sought to make the press more accountable and raised questions about press regulation – it could even be suggested that Moir’s freedom of speech has been curtailed! Certainly, last week was a compelling week on Twitter.

Kyle Seely, Planner Buyer