The image shimmers out of focus and disappears – an image of your accountant materializes and tells you that you’re a business burning through a million a month and when you get visitor to your site, there is nothing more than a form to fill-out for a call back.  The phone number on the ‘Contact Us’ page leads to a ‘Dell Hell’ kind of experience and no human being can be reached from outside.   Zombies?  Yeah – they get through, but only because they’re brain-eating, persistent monsters randomly pushing buttons on their Zombie-phones.

The final chapter in this scary tale is that you have no idea whether that $1.12 pay per click campaign has driven ANY traffic to cover your costs or whether the visitor has even been to your site before.  Scary huh?

It’s a horror story being repeated a million times in a million companies all around the world.  In spite of all the automated counters, data collectors and postings in the social web, businesses leap to use the technology that has been promised to get hundreds of customers to walk through your door.   Most businesses have no idea how or if the investments in marketing you’re made are panning out.

The hero in this horror story is that it’s not an unsolvable equation and making better decisions about where and when to invest is possible – more so than has ever been possible.

How to Escape the Nightmare

Start with the small things – listen first… listen like the mummy is somewhere around you – quietly and intently.  Find out where your customers are congregating like a crowd of brain-eating zombies.

Next, understand what your audience is saying and what they’re talking about.  Knowing that Dr. Jeckle is also Mr. Hyde will help you craft and time the message so that Mr. Hyde is prompted to connect with your Facebook page, leaving Dr. Jeckle out of the community of followers and friends.

Now reach out to connect. The tentacles of human-hunting aliens should have nothing on you.  Once you know what’s being said , who is saying it and to whom they are saying it means that you can regularly and easily participate in the discussions going on and not been seen or treated as the Monster from the Black Lagoon.

Now take a step back every time you post new content and see if you’ve put out what speaks meaningfully to your audience.  Include a call to action, a link and most of all, make sure you’re participation is relevant to the audience.  For the hard cost that goes into an installation of Google Analytics, you can see the correlation between postings and visits.  If you have a product that can be purchased online, even by using a Gift card or eGift card, you can then start tracking how visitors arrived at you site, where they came from and what they did after they left your site.

Is this all you need to do? Maybe… but I’d bet that this implementation would only be the start of the journey to improving the payoff of your online and social marketing investment.

Beginning with these steps will help keep you off the Elm Street of marketing when Freddy is prowling for a new victim.  As you participate in the discussions and communities relevant to you your product and company you’ll uncover what content drives participation and engagement – the first step in stopping what doesn’t work and what does.  Following these simple steps will keep next year’s Halloween Haunters away from the doorstep, out of the cellar and vanquished from the creaky attic.

Related posts:

• Payola in the Blog-sphere – ReadWriteWeb’s Proclamation
• Twitter’s Social Capital is Unlimited – Joe Jaffe is wrong…
• The Trinity of Social Media Explored Further – Microblogging

Working at the intersection of ROI, marketing and social media in particular has been a topic that has drawn my interest since the early development of social media as a connecting consumer technology.

As social media came onto the scene, a debate cropped up that social media was a ‘tool of the people’ and that to propose its use as a business tactic was heretical.  We still see vestiges of that debate now and then, but by and large, we do not see much of it I think because the flood of early practitioners has subsided and the bar for entry as a social marketer has been raised past the point that creating a Facebook page and opening a Twitter account suddenly launched a new consultancy.  The discussions by marketers has risen to a point that business people recognize that marketing has an ROI that can be associated with it and that social media marketing can have a VERY high ROI indeed.

Social marketing ROI is not a dark, foreboding concept that only technocrats understand, at it’s base is the correlation of information from multiple points that helps us all understand how a marketing strategy that includes tweets or Facebook posts can impact revenues and costs.  The red-herring discussions of the ‘ROI of your phone’ or a ‘return-on-influence’, or ‘return-on-engagement’ are getting more and more hollow by the day.  I think it’s because we’re recognizing that these metrics are made up and promoted by evil minions of misdirection who may not know how to speak otherwise.

Truly savvy marketers are realizing that the only ‘I’ that matters in ROI is ‘Investment’ and that if marketing is going to get increased funding for their efforts, the rest of the organization (particularly those that manage budgets) speaks in business terms like these – so marketers are learning the particulars of ROI or facing the prospect of being replaced by someone who can talk the talk of the executive suite.

Just how much longer do we need to allow these minions of demonic misdirection to suck the life out of marketing initiatives and render them useless to management? *sigh* obviously longer than we should, but in order to get the conversation back on solid ground, I know we need to start with committing to a broader conversation about 1) where your customers are congregating and 2) then asking how best to reach them, always 3) seeking the genuine ROI along the way.  Either that or 4) drive a wooden stake thought their evil little hearts.

Steven Groves is co-author of “ROI of Social Media: How to improve the return on your social marketing investment” and your host at www.ROIofSocialmedia.com

Related posts:

• What if the ROI was higher by being nice?
• Using Social Media For Product Concept Development – a Case Study with a 3D Perspective
• Social Media Here, Social Media there, Social Media Everywhere!

I was not sure if his question was for a survey, if he was looking for engagement or if it was a professional question he is trying to answer for CoursePark,  but his question made me think for a moment to a blog post series from July 2009 on ‘The Trinity of Social Media” that suggested the trinity should be a blog, a micro-blog and a social network.  I have thought of the post often and continue to wonder if the trinity might need an update eventually.  The 2011 edition of the Trinity I think does warrant a refresh and this will be the first in the series.

Let’s put the construct of the Trinity in context here for a moment; we’re talking about a business presence, not personal and we’re talking about spanning two of the relevant media networks; Owned & Operated (O&O) media and Earned media, which relies heavily on social media.  There is no distinction at this level of a B2B company presence or a B2C.

What’s changed for 2011 and beyond?

The objective has not changed – we want to drive traffic to the O&O site or network of sites.  Eyeballs on pages, not revenue at this point, but traffic – which is a proxy for awareness of our product, service or brand.   What has changed is the social technology and the features and capabilities of the various platforms.

Do any of the changes warrant a change in the model?

Yes – in one particular area: the social network component.  When the original Trinity model was introduced, Facebook Groups were supported and Business Pages were not yet introduced.  Are there be other changes?  Yes – but not in the tool selection I do not think.  The fundamentals are holding and IMHO the foundational tools and technology for an effective social presence are still a blog, micro-blog and social network.  The tactics we deploy however are different today than they were in 2009 and as we cover the new state of the Trinity, we’ll discuss the changes.

Audience Participation Notice

I’ll write the articles, but I’d like to include your comments.  Whose comments – you, the person reading this right now.  If I could reach through the screen and point at you I would.  Comment below on what you think the changes might be for you or send me an email with whatever your thoughts are.

Related posts:

• Social Media Continues to Grow (and Gray) Globally & Mobile Access Matters
• The Trinity of Social Media Explored Still Further – The Social Network
• The Trinity of Social Media

First item at hand is that NPT did not make it easy for me to participate in the discussion on their topic – here they are espousing social engagement and then THEY do not allow a conversation on their post or article.  It may be that as it is a reposting of the content from print, they thought may never occurred to them to support a discussion on this very hot topic.   In my experience though, it is not unusual to see this kind of behavior – a lot of organizations see social as just another form of media and treat it like it was print, radio or TV which is all one-way.

Beyond them apparently not really wanting to engage, my sense of the article is that the writer seemed to be taking issue with stats that show MySpace is declining (it is), that ROI in nonprofits is somehow different from other businesses (it’s not) and that there is work involved in correlating the data that can show an ROI that is meaningful (and there is!)  They present a spreadsheet calculator for nonprofits (from Care2.com) that delivers a projected ROI of some kind of online effort. 

IMHO, projected ROI vs. actual ROI are often two very different numbers and using a tool like this is maybe helpful, but if you deliver results that are wildly off, what then? Imagine that for all the money finance puts into treasury services they’re somehow off on their figures?  What if they’re off 10% – heads would roll I think, but somehow we’re expected to allow marketing projects to be off to an even greater degree.  The travesty to me is that most organizations spend far more on items like banking to measure and track their money (already in the bank) than they spend on measuring their marketing (impacting future revenue / donations).

The article is just a bit too off for me to say that I think it’ll be helpful to NPO’s, but if it gets them thinking about how social can support their mission then it’s a good post.  What’s possibly more relevant is a discussion that every outreach effort needs to be tracked, just like a marketing campaign anywhere else.  An ROI model that considers all aspects of media and marketing is what really relevant here – the burden of suddenly asking social-based marketing to prove an ROI when previous marketing efforts have is somewhat disingenuous.  All marketing should be aligned with ROI; the really cool part about social marketing is that it is by far the most measureable form of media we have right now.

So whether your an NPO, commercial entity with regional, national or global reach you should be demanding and working towards a relevant ROI model for all your campaigns and marketing efforts.

Related posts:

• Social Media Here, Social Media there, Social Media Everywhere!
• Logo icon for the ROI of Social Media
• The Death of Social Media – Long Live Media That is Social!

2011 will be the year that focuses on who really owns the data about the consumer though; the ramifications will be felt throughout advertising and marketing from now on.  The vendors that support transparency in the consumer dataset will prosper; those that do not give consumers access and control over their data will diminish.

The drivers for this initiative are varied, but let there be no mistake that the consumer will want to be in charge of their data.  I’ve been following the posts in the ProjectVRM usegroup that Doc Searles and a number of others have generated on Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), which in it’s simplest terms is CRM stood on it’s head – the conversations are very forward leaning in terms of where we’re going and what’s possible even today. 

A Wall Street Journal series has been tackling the issue and the article by Emile Steele outlines a new initiative from several industry data collecting companies.  It is going under the name of the ‘Better Advertising Project’ (BAP) and the Open Data Partnership (ODP).  The partnership is promising to provide consumers the ability to:

• get a snapshot of the information that companies have collected about their interests

• gain more control over that information, from editing to opting out

It looks like they are trying to get in-front of  the rising consumer sentiment around their privacy by providing an opt out capability; notably absent from the list of participants are Google and Microsoft / Yahoo however.

I think BAP will be successful in providing consumers an opt-out capability in alignment with the FTC guidelines, but I think there will be a good deal more noise in 2011 and businesses will want to make sure they dodge this bullet by making their involvement with BAP noticeable from day 1.

Related posts:

• The Big Idea – Give customers what they want!
• Facebook and Your Personal Privacy – Whose Job Is It?
• Social Marketing Conversations Privacy Policy

In this episode Ellen talks about how they use mobile to connect to their audience.  Their first iPhone app was developed around the Top-Chef shows and they shared with the consumer, the restaurants and shopping venues the contestants liked to eat at and shop in.  The app evolved into ‘Guides by Bravo’ where Bravo celebrities (‘Bravo-lebrities’) share their preferences for shopping, dining and entertainment in various cities like LA, NY and Atlanta.

Subscribe to the RSS or notices via email, if you want to make sure you do not miss a minute of this series with Ellen Stone and other social-marketing savvy business marketers.

The #1 goal for Ellen and her team is to have a high level of engagement with the audience – there are a lot of quantitative metrics, but not as many qualitative.  The qualitative metrics are very important and include –

• how many people become fans of the show
• how often Bravo becomes a top trending topic on Twitter
• # of Bravo-lebrity tweets get comments or are re-tweeted
• what are fan talking about
• how long the topic stays alive
• page views during the shows

The Bravo team took the idea of a TV Viewing Party and produced an idea they call the ‘TalkBubble’; which a multiplatform (online / offline / broadcast) media event that uses Facebook connect and Twitter to help fans enjoy Bravo shows when they are debuted.  The events include Bravo-lebrities, which encourages audience participate and features real-time interactions.  Bravo can see in real-time how the audience is responding to the show while it is being broadcast.

The metrics for TalkBubble vary a bit, but it includes page views, # of tweets, and other qualitative criteria that are somewhat proprietary.  As they see it, TalkBubble is taking social media to the next level connecting the audience and show celebrities in a unique and immediate way.

With capabilities like TalkBubble in place, the Bravo team can focus on the key elements in crafting a successful campaign – for Bravo that means they take more time with the message content and how it is crafted; it cannot be too corporate and it needs to mimic the tone of the show / brand and not push selling. 

Ellen and the team feel it is important to monitor and understand the # of messages being posted and what’s already trending.  If they try to compete with news, they want to make sure that to audience doesn’t perceive Bravo posts as spam; Bravo knows they need to break through the clutter and noise of the message stream. 

Play / Download Ellen Stone / Bravo Networks – Episode 2 Podcast Here

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to SocialMarketingConversations.com via email or your RSS Reader.

ROI of Social Media Community Site

Guy Powell and I are avid about uncovering the ROI of marketing.  It’s work we are both passionate about and enjoy.

To support our work in exploring the question of ROI in marketing and social media, we’re launching a community site using the Ning platform at www.ROIofSocialMedia.com where we will be posting a wide variety of content for our readers and fulfilling our commitments we made in the ROI of Social Media book to provide fresh and updated content around the question of ROI in marketing and social media.

We have set the community as open for anyone, but a membership is required to access content like the complete episodes of all the podcasts and as comprehensive a list as we can possibly generate of social media monitoring and measurement technology and tool vendors. 

Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

Related posts:

• How to Give Consumers All They Want From Your Social Presence – Ellen Stone / Bravo Networks
• Making Content That is Inventive and Influential – Ellen Stone / Bravo Networks
• The Vampire of Social Media Purity Deserves to Die

In previous episodes we met Michael Buck, who is the Director and General Manager for the Global Small and Medium Online Business at Dell, responsible for the overall online business and strategy for Dell SMB worldwide.  He spoke with us from his offices in Stuttgart Germany and first told us about the Four Pillars of the online effort at Dell that are a part of everything they do.

In our last episode, Michael shared how the approach differs for a business-to-business (B2B) customer versus a business-to-consumer (B2C) customer and how they make sure the top Customer Value Drivers are embedded in their tactics.  In that episode he also shares what the top five metrics are that they apply to their online marketing and social media efforts – all really great information.

In this episode, Michael declares that ‘Marketing is the New Finance’ because with the power of social marketing, Dell is able to affect both the revenue and the expenses of the organization.  He tells us that eCommerce is not the beginning of a relationship with their customers – it is an outcome of the relationship they build via the online elements they deploy to connect to their customers.  Michael goes on to share that they have been benchmarking social tactics versus traditional and find that social elements are so powerful that, in the SMB education they provide to their customers, in some cases social elements warrant a clear consideration to perhaps flat out replace some traditional components.

He explains that it is very important to start the relationship with the customer from a level of trust, a trust that is earned from customers; it is not a given for Michael that customers will engage with Dell online just because they produce a campaign to helps them do so.  He suggests that without that trust, the customer will not engage regardless of the tactic used.

A campaign that he refers to in the interview is the ‘Take Your Own Path’ campaign that leverages actual Dell users from a variety of industries to tell their own story and how Dell has supported them in their computing journey.  They encourage customers to share their stories and in this campaign, Dell has melded the online and offline components to present a consistent look, feel and message to the audience.  What you see in airport signage, magazines, billboards and online all mesh to share the message that Dell is a good partner to count on for your business computing needs.

To encourage user interaction for the Dell team, consumer choice is key in the Dell presence and they strive to support a broad offering of community and communications options that lets the consumer dive into the Dell experience as deeply as they wish.  An invitation to connect in social media though is not with out a caveat however, Michael suggests that if a company does adopt a social presence, they need to take the presence online seriously and to participate willingly; he suggests that if the online presence is perceived to be a gimmick to pump the same content and marketing message they can get offline and that there is no intention of engaging, elements of the audience will call you out and they 1) will not engage and 2) they will tell others that your presence is hollow.

Play / Download Michael Buck / Dell SMB Episode 3 Podcast Here

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to SocialMarketingConversations.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the work in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

Related posts:

• Why Social Media is Not Just a Gimmick for Dell SMB
• What the 5 Customer Value Drivers and Top 5 Metrics are for the Dell SMB Social Presence
• How Dell Does Online Media – The Four Pillars

In this episode Michael suggest that while there are distinct differences in employing social media to connect to the business-to-consumers (B2C) and the business-to-business (B2B) audience, both groups benefit from the engagement between the vendor and other customers.

What Michael shares with us is that the B2B sector is not as active or engaged in popular social media platforms as B2C and that B2B requires a bit more facilitation to get them to interact and participate.  What he also tells us is that there is a much broader set of influencers and decision makers in a company setting that need to be addressed and that Dell deploys a broader set of communication tools in the effort to reach them.

The adoption of metrics that demonstrate success however is never an issue; Dell is a very metrics driven organization.  As important as the metrics are though, they first examine the Customer Value Drivers that support the communication tactics they deploy to connect with the audience.

Michael shares the Customer Value Drivers for Dell –

1. Provide a meaningful connection with customers based on shared interest
2. Provide the customer the ability to express themselves
3. Provide recognition for contributions the customer provides
4. Support the customer in getting advice, validation, or assurance of their decision making
5. Help solve the customers problem

The Customer Value Drivers relate to 5 particular metrics -

1. Customer Insights That Drive Innovation
2. Marketing Spend Efficiency
3. Conversion Rates
4. Customer Lifecycle Value
5. Cost Savings / Support Call Center Avoidance

Play / Download Michael Buck / Dell SMB Episode 2 Podcast Here

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to SocialMarketingConversations.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the work in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

Related posts:

• How Dell SMB Supports Customers in Diving Deep in Social Media
• Why Social Media is Not Just a Gimmick for Dell SMB
• How Dell Does Online Media – The Four Pillars

One of the big names that always comes to mind for social marketing success is Dell Computers.  They adopted social media early on for a number of reasons, primary of which is the belief that listening to a customers wants and needs is the best way to market to them.  It has not always been perfect – the ‘Dell Hell’ posts by Jeff Jarvis on the BuzzMachine.com was a wake up call back in the 2005 and it seemed to get Dell to invest more heavily in tools like Twitter.

The headquarters for Dell is in Round Rock, Texas, just outside of Austin.  Austin is the host city for an annual event that showcases the best in social media, South by Southwest (SXSW), which is an art & technology event that many social media participants and technology providers launch new products and capabilities – Twitter was debuted there in 2006.  So being near ground zero in social media may have had an impact as well.

Dell has been regularly referred to in case studies too,  many of which point at the $19M in revenue they attribute to the social media effort and others point at the call deflection that saves them millions in customer support costs – with all that history, we could not wait to get a chance to talk with Dell about their social media programs.

Our co-author Jerry Dimos of LiTMUS Group in Singapore helped set up the call and it was a great pleasure to talk with and interview Michael Buck who is the Director and General Manager for the Global Small and Medium Online Business at Dell, responsible for the overall online business and strategy for Dell SMB worldwide from his offices in Stuttgart Germany.

In this episode we meet Michael and he outlines what Dell has been doing around online communities and social media since the early 90’s.  Back then Dell knew the value of connecting directly with customers and they started with forums and blogs and since then Dell has been pretty near the front of the line in implementing and using online social technology.

To support their efforts online, Michael introduces the Four Pillars of the Dell effort -

• 1st Pillar is Dell.com where they have their ecommerce platform, which includes chat, ratings & reviews and feedback from customers
• 2nd Pillar is their own communities like IdeaStorm and other branded communities
• 3rd pillar is the external communities like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.
• 4th pillar is the 100,000+ employees that can act as Brand Ambassadors as they talk to customers everyday in messages, communities and forums

While Michael does not see any real big obstacle in the growth in the use of social media by the company, the only real barriers is the migration of the organization from one of an in-bound / out-bound company to one that listens and responds to feedback from a wide variety of channels, but he is confident that they will continue to grow into the effort.

The debates they have to contend with are like those in almost every company: funding projects, the best way to measure their effort and defining what success looks like.  The real benefit for Michael Buck and his initiatives are that from the top of the organization down, from Michael Dell to the front line employee, everyone is empowered and able to use their voice and fully engage in social media.

Play / Download Michael Buck / Dell SMB Episode 1 Podcast Here

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to SocialMarketingConversations.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the work in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

Related posts:

• What the 5 Customer Value Drivers and Top 5 Metrics are for the Dell SMB Social Presence
• How Dell SMB Supports Customers in Diving Deep in Social Media
• Why Social Media is Not Just a Gimmick for Dell SMB

In this episode, Esmee tells us that in the food world people tend to use traditional media because the format (print) is ideal for use in the kitchen and for casual reading – the typical consumption pattern for food and entertainment content.  Esmee and the team are keeping an eye on devices like the iPad and how they impact that model.  What Esmee sees is that there are two modes of use the device bridges – one mode of usage is the casual reading we just covered and the other is when a user makes a search on specific ingredients, usually indicating they are looking to prepare a meal for those ingredients.  Both are common with their member / user base and they want to make sure they address the different user models regardless of platform.

The future of social media in the food area is very exciting for AllRecipes.  Esmee suggests that the evolution of content on the web related to food and entertaining will be relative to the interactions available with other cooks and the quality of the recipes provided.  She asks us to imagine the blending of social media, recipes, video and the utility provided by grocery loyalty programs and smart appliances.

If you tie all that to recipes behaviors and by using collaborative filtering, you could feasibly get meal plans provided relative to what you actually have on hand in your refrigerator automatically delivered.  Smart appliances support that paradigm via the emerging Stickybits.com technology that are now being placed on food and a smartphone can scan that sticker and provide recipes using the ingredient related to the season.

As we conclude, Esmee shares more about how AllRecipes has been expanding overseas in 15 different countries that embrace the local food culture.  The impact will expand the user base in those countries and provide am expanded recipe base of authentic preparations; while a French cook may not be too interested in what a hoe chef in Mississippi says about preparing éclairs, a cook in Mississippi might be very interested in how a French cook prepares a genuine éclair.  Likewise if a consumer decides they want a real taste of Mexico, they’ll be able to get a recipe from a home chef of Tacos al Carbone.

Play / Download Esmee Williams / AllRecipes.com Episode 5 Podcast Here

To get a hold of the AllRecipes.com team look at their website, www.AllRecipes.com of via Twitter (@AllRecipeNews) and their Facebook Fan Page at www.Facebook.com/AllRecipes.

Here are links to material related to the interview that you may find useful; the entire conversation in one extended recording and a transcript of the conversation

Play / Download Esmee Williams / AllRecipes.com Entire Interview Podcast Here

Read / view the Esmee Williams / AllRecipes.com Podcast Transcript at Scribd.com

We’re very interested in your perspective on the topic and, if you have a great interview who can add to the conversation, please let us know – we’re looking to interview them and put it up here!

Thank you again to you our listeners – hope you enjoyed the effort and work we put into it!

The Podcast and Credit For Where Credit is Due – This podcast / transcript was developed from a live recorded interview on April 13th, 2010 between Esmee Williams, Vice President of Brand Strategy for AllRecipes.com, Guy Powell and Steven Groves.

The podcast interview was downloaded and processes in Audacity, which is available from SourceForge.net, and with ‘4toFloor.wav’ music loop from member ‘Rooks’ and posted at SoundSnap.com.

The transcripts are sponsored by Social Marketing Conversations and the introduction Voice Talent is Ms. Cynthia Propst.

Related posts:

• How AllRecipes.com Became the Worlds Largest Food / Recipe Site
• Why Consumer Brands Tiptoe in Social Media and How AllRecipes.com Helps
• Why the Best Metric is Not ‘Unique Visitors’ – Esmee Williams of AllRecipes.com