The new digital divide: consumer expectations vs brands activities in social media
A study (.pdf) from the CMO Council of 1,300 consumers and 132 senior marketers revealed a profound difference between what consumers want from brands in social media, and what marketers think they want.
The bottom line?
[...] consumers want more — more experiences, more engagement, more rewards, and more reasons to connect with each other and brands through social media. And brands are missing the boat. They see the benefits of reaching out to customers through social channels, but they aren’t yet fully invested.
The report sees 4 ways to narrow that gap:
- Enable peer-to-peer interactions. 9% of brands think their Facebook fans want to connect with each other. 60% of consumers say they like brands on Facebook in order to connect with other brands. Your consumers want to talk to each other. Make it easy for them - open a forum, put Q&A on your Facebook page, launch a customer community.
- Get serious about social support. 63% of consumers search online for others with similar problems when they need help - 19% of brands think that's the case. 47% of consumers expect a response to an online service request in 1 hr - 30% of brands use social media to improve service and responsiveness. 50% of consumers expect to find service and support on Facebook - 10% of brands provide it. Consumers want to help and get help from other customers and they do a bang up job of it. It costs between $6 and $75 to resolve customer issues over the phone. It costs as as little as $.05 to help customers find answers online. Social support is a no-brainer for 2012.
- Ideate with social customers. 41% of social customers expect to share product ideas on Facebook. 9% of brands ask customers to help them innovate on Facebook. With few brands actively asking fans for feedback and ideas, smart marketers can leap ahead in 2012 by running idea exchanges - and you'll get a real-time, always on focus group that will drive better, faster innovation for the brand.
- Gamify the social experience. 67% of consumers expect special treatment when they like a brand on Facebook. 7% of brands reward their most active contributors. 46% of consumers expect incentives and rewards when they connect with brands online. 7% of brands offer social customer incentives and rewards. Give social customers something to work for, a reason to level up. Reward them for their contributions, give them rank and reputation, let them take it with them as the move about the social web.
Altimeter: the average corporate Social Media Team consists of 11 members
Altimeter’s recent survey to 144 global national corporations with over 1000 employees has some interesting insights on how today’s social media teams structured.
They found a trend of four key groups within these teams:
- Leadership team, focused on leadership, vision, the overall program ROI, and driving business results.
- Business Unit Facing team, helping multiple business units get on board.
- Marketing Facing, focused on customer interaction, but shifting towards advocacy or enabling customers to respond to each other.
- Program Management: developers and analysts who conduct reporting and brand monitoring programs.
Further reading:
- Data: Composition of a Corporate Social Media Team @ web-strategist.com
ComScore: In Belgium 93% of online population uses social media
In their annual report global management firm comScore released some striking stats on the penetration and usage of social media platforms throughout the world.
Regardless of how open or closed a society may be, it is safe to assume that more than half of local online populations are engaging in online social networking, making the practice comparatively ubiquitous around the world.
In Europe, for example, 98% of the online population in the U.K. is active on social networks.
Further reading:
- It’s a Social World: Top 10 Need-to-Knows About Social Networking and Where It’s Headed @ comscore.com
- ComScore’s 2011 Social Report: Facebook Leading, Microblogging Growing, World Connecting @ techcrunch.com
Which social media metrics are most often used?
From mdg advertising's The ROI of social media infographic:
Marketers can put a price on increased sales or decreased costs, but far trickier is identifying the value of social media beyond dollars and cents.
Tangible metrics for social media efforts
- 68% Site traffic
- 66% Conversion
- 63% # of fans/members
- 63% # of positive customer mentions
- 50% Revenue
- 50% # of contributors
- 43% # of page views
- 42% # of posts
- 41% # of mentions
- 23% Average order value
- 16% Reduced returns
- 15% Increased channel sales
- 11% Reduced call volume
- 7% Other
- 7% Do not track metrics
There is clearly no standard measurement, but at least the majority tracks whatever metrics they have at their disposal.
Which type of Facebook Page update works best?
Social media statistics service provider socialbakers looked at the top 100 Facebook pages to see which type of content is posted most often:
Then they looked at the Engagement Rate of these posts. This is the kind of analytics you get as a Page admin, but services like socialbaker's and FanGager do the same on either post or page level. The results from socialbaker's research are interesting:
Google Analytics adds social-media-related data to its reports
From Google Analytics Adds Social Data @ practicalecommerce.com:
Google Analytics has added social-media-related data to its reports. Google +1 button data is available by default. Facebook "Like" and Twitter "Tweet" sharing statistics can be added with some setup and additional tracking code.
To access, click on the "New Version" link in your Google Analytics dashboard.
Further reading:
- Social Interaction Analytics @ code.google.com
- Google Analytics Social Tracking Demo @ analytics-api-samples.googlecode.com
Fmeme tracks what’s “Hot On Facebook”
From sharing is more than fans friends and followers @ blog.joelrubinson.net - based on a March 2011 scan of 7 billion pages that use the ShareThis widget:
Sharing is bigger than fans, friends, and followers. Facebook accounted for 38% of inbound traffic driven by sharing activity. [...] Sharing is big. It accounts for nearly half of the referral traffic that search accounts for.
But how do you track what's being shared on Facebook around a specific topic?
Fmeme tries to map that, by displaying the Hottest Links On Facebook in several categories, like Arts, Entertainment, Gaming, Lifestyle, or Offbeat. It also has a pretty decent search function, but no ways of "following" the content with e.g. RSS feeds or email alerts.
To give you an idea, the most popular BMW related content on Facebook in the past week is:
- BMW 1M - Helipad - MPowered Performance Part 2 @ YouTube.com
- BMW Museum ArtCar Exhibition Videoclips @ bmw-artcartour.com
- BMW logo evolution @ logodesignlove.com
- BMW Museum ArtCar Exhibition Videoclips 40 minute video @ bmw-artcartour.com
- BMW 5-series commercial is remade on the Shell Ferrari ad of 1997 @ usa.indiandrives.com
Dan Zarella: measure your social media efforts’ ROI against the bottom line
Hubspot's social media scientist Dan Zarella in his recent blog post Need to Justify Social Media? Use Real Numbers About Real Money:
Measuring stuff like “engagement” or “reach” is great, and I recommend advanced social media users do it. But you must understand that those numbers are merely proxy metrics for what really matters: the bottom line.
Or, in other words: if it doesn't make money it doesn't make sense.
Some advice from the same blog post:
- Use coupon codes, referrer analytics, tracking tokens, special offers and landing pages. Get a baseline for how much cash social media is bringing in. If you miss a few sales here or there, that’s not a big deal. In fact if your efforts are only producing barely enough sales to be worthwhile, you’re doing something wrong. Obsessively track the up or down movement of that dollar amount.
- Don’t let customer service or PR users of social media off the hook either. Customer service on Twitter can be faster than on the phone or via email, so calculate the cost per ticket saved, and the customer loss prevented.
- For the PR folks: ask customers how they heard about you. Again, it’s about accuracy not precision here. Your work should be bringing in overwhelming numbers, so a few missed decimal places shouldn’t be the end of the world.
Social CRM: the time of the passive customer is history
Two quotes from Chess Media Group's Guide to Understanding Social CRM:
"Social CRM is based on the simple premise that you are able to interact with your customers based on their needs, not your rules."
"[T]hese customers are more engaged than ever before, and are setting the tone, pace and direction that companies must go. Companies must begin to collaborate with and engage the customer, but need to be respectful, and therefore must also deliberately decide on the proper response to each interaction with her. This will require greater internal collaboration with finance, operations, innovation, and other departments within the company."
Further reading:
- Chess Media Group's Guide to Understanding Social CRM (.pdf 4.3 MB)
Social Media Metrics: What can Facebook,Google tell you?
Facebook recently released a new version of Analytics that will track not only Page activity like posts, interaction quality, and fans, but also domain activity. The Facebook Developer's Blog explains "domain activity" as "what your audience finds most interesting" on your website.
But let's not forget Google Analytics. Sarah Worsham of Sazbean Consulting has shared her insights of how to use Google Analytics to Measure Social Media Success on Slideshare.
Slide #6 is particularly interesting:
Further reading:
- Facebook Analytics: http://www.facebook.com/insights/
- Using Google Analytics to Measure Social Media Success @ slideshare.et