The Elusive ROI of Social Media

Social media ROI doesn't have to be elusive. Seriously.

Google Analytics has recently made it even easier to measure it. I promise.

Rather than seeing traffic sources you can now see "Acquisitions." Upon clicking on that head to "Channels" where your view should default to the default channel grouping. These are your sources such as, organic search, direct traffic and what do you know SOCIAL!

When you click on the social grouping you will see this beautiful table below.

1. Set up your goals
2. Apply a value to each
3. Take your "goal value totals" - "your costs for social media (salary/rates for a community manager maybe, social ads, etc)"/"cost"

VOILA ... you have social media ROI!

Ok, Maybe It Isn't That Easy

Not in a bad way there is another factor that should be taken into account. Social sharing plays hugely into search engine optimization (SEO) [insert plug to post from a couple weeks ago about that exact topic] . From that default channel grouping you can review the same dashboard as above for your Organic Search and see how that also affects your goal values. This isn't to say social completely plays into your Organic Search, but it is a big driver.

AND we also have to think about the fact that someone may already be a customer, reached out on social media, had a pleasant experience and continues coming back (not necessarily through social channels) that can add to your ROI. Again, can't note that through Google Analytics, but I bet it happens. 

Who's with me that we should add an additional 20% to the values indicated above? Just kidding. Don't do that, but do be sure to mention to execs how SEO and brand/reputation building aspects of social media are valuable too!

The Great Native Advertising Debate

The debate on native advertising is, like native advertising, multifaceted. Even without fulling grasping what it is, people are debating if it useful for digital marketers. Let's take it step by step.

What is Native Advertising?

DigiDay posed this question to some digital execs. The responses are riddled with industry terms, like organic, monetization and ad units. Even worse, some used the word native in describing it; that would be an automatic DQ in Catchphrase.  However, I thought Ben Kunz’s response was wonderful. He says, “The intent is to have a paid message break out of the advertising clutter in a new way, by elevating it to appear like the real unbiased content users are seeking.” I think this is excellent because it covers native advertising on both social platforms and digital publications.

On Social Media

On social media, native advertising comes in the form of sponsored stories and promoted posts/tweets. This content is just like any other content a user would post to the platform/medium, except that the content owner PAID (so now we consider them an advertiser) to reach a larger audience.  

In a Spin Sucks article Gini Dietrich used an example of an Instagram campaign where users tagged photos of Jay Peak ski resort to #jaypeakresort. User-generated content is NOT native advertising. That is earned media. Initially, I thought that if a business had paid users to post the "user-generated" content that could be, but after analyzing more for this post, I decided that is still not native advertising. The native aspect means it, as Kunz explained, must appear like the content users are seeking on that platform. Because the medium is the one that controls the way content is displayed (and thus can be the one to manipulate it), they must be the one selling the native advertising. In the Jay Peak’s example, it would only be native advertising if Jay Peak paid Instagram to show photos tagged with #jaypeakresort higher on feeds (not just chronologically) for other similar tags, such as #ski and #snow. (Instagram, five percent of all profits from this new revenue-generating plan is a great way to say thank you.)

On Digital Publications

Digital publications’ native advertising is an advertorial. I’m sure you’ve seen them in magazines. An article about how a brand name pharmaceutical helped someone get their life back on track. It appears like a human interest piece, except that somewhere it must identify that it is paid content. Rather than the publication (the medium) selling reach, they are selling the space that appears like the content the user is seeking—articles in this case.

Is Native Advertising Deceptive?

For social media, native advertising is always clearly marked as a sponsored story or promoted tweet, so I don’t think it is deceptive in that aspect.  In the Facebook example image above, using a user's name walks a fine line, but Facebook offers you the option to opt out of being used in ads. As for digital publication’s native advertising, The Atlantic got some heat following a sponsored article from The Church of Scientology. It was marked as Sponsor Content at the top,just as an advertorial in a print publication would. However, the comments section seemed to be the rough spot for this native advertising. Would it be less deceptive if comments were turned off and another notice indicating that it is an ad (thus no comments necessary) replaced the usual comment box? 

Does Native Advertising Work?

As Dietrich said in her article,  nearly everyone knows how to “click past banner ads, watch the required five seconds of an ad before skipping it to go on to a video, click out of pop-up ads, and fast forward through commercials during television programs.” But having your ads appear where the audience is “listening” doesn’t necessarily mean they will attune to it. For instance, Pepto Bismol ads on my Facebook news feed are incredibly disruptive. This could be because the content choice for the medium was bad or just the wrong medium altogether. Using Pepto Bismol, let’s see how both of these matter in using native advertising.

Choosing the right content

Their picture of a big ol’ bottle of the pink stuff on my Facebook newsfeed turns me off, because I see it for what it is, an ad. A picture of an empty pizza box and someone holding their stomach may have pulled me in. My friends post status updates about their latest food conquests, so sharing similar content makes sense.

Choosing the right medium

Had I been on WebMD reading up on symptoms of heartburn, a sponsored article about Pepto Bismol treating heartburn would definitely be relevant. Seeing that big ol’ bottle of the pink stuff would almost be comforting to me in that medium.

Now that you know more about what native advertising is and how it works, will you try it?

The 4 Vices of Social Media

I LOVE social media.  I find the technology fascinating and continue to be amazed by the ability to make proximity meaningless in building relationships and making news. However, even from a young age (and before the days of social as we know it) when I frequented chat forums, I was aware of the dangers of social networking.  I’m not here to tell you about all those terrible things you can see on Dateline or Catfish. Instead, I’m going to talk about some of the social media vices many are afraid to talk about, because they do it a lot themselves … myself included.

Self Righteousness
The recent tragedy at Sandy Hook really opened my eyes to this behavior on social media.  As with any tragedy lately, everyone seems to get super sensitive to what everyone else has to say. Suddenly, my feed starts filling up with social media “experts” grilling a company or person over its unknowingly less-than-tactful tweet (those who are deliberately impolite, trolling, not included). What made this case even more eye-opening for me was that a well-respected social media expert posted a tweet later that afternoon referencing his team shooting their eye out like in The Christmas Story. He quickly deleted it, apologized and admitted it was in poor taste (and that it wasn’t automated). He asked people to go ahead and rake him over the coals (as many are so quick to do to others in similar situations). Instead, the one reply I saw come through read, “it’s okay; it happens to the best of us.”

Ad-hominem attacks
With so much information literally at your fingertips, why must people fall back on attacking a person rather than their ideas? I’d say that the name calling is no better than the childhood playground, but on the playground the kid has the gall to say it to the other kid’s face.

Automation
Deliberately taking the “social” out of social networking. Along with this you get those who are only concerned about the numbers in their network. See #1 in 5 Reasons Social Media is Ruining Marketing.

Glamification
Life isn't always fabulous, but we tend to lead people to believe that via social media. I believe this is what Jenna Wortham discusses in “Digital Diary: Facebook and the Tedium of Success Theater” and this mother describes in this Facebook post that went viral:

Would you like to fess up to any other social media vices? Admitting is the first step!

Can Social TV Succeed?

My boyfriend doesn't get my social media addiction. He posts to Facebook once in a blue moon and doesn't have an account on any other social network. In fact, we've had discussions on what hashtags are and why they are necessary (he hates them) on more than one occasion. One such discussion occurred when we were watching Glee and the song title/segment hashtag appeared in the corner of the screen.

Yet, the other night when Peter Griffin from Family Guy tweeted during the episode and I called out the handle while it was on the frame, my boyfriend insisted I look up the account immediately. Turns out, the show had been tweeting to the account for about a week, and the one from the show was "live tweeted."

So it was a success ... right? My boyfriend, the anti-social media poster boy, engaged with a brand/product on social media (sorta) after seeing it on TV.  He didn't convert and join Twitter, so at most he just crystallized his love of Family Guy's cutaways.

Oddly enough, he was intrigued by The Glass House in which the audience decides the outcome of a Big Brother-style reality show and are able to tweet questions or challenges to the cast. Did he vote or submit? No.

I know what you are thinking. My boyfriend is a bad test case for social TV. Well what about me? I LOVE social media, and like 77% of Americans, I'm usually using another device while watching TV.

But there is still a problem.

I don't watch TV shows live.  According to Nielsen, live TV viewing dropped 2% from last year. With many young adults "cord cutting" to get their entertainment cheaper on Hulu or Netflix and many others using DVRs, this will continue to be a problem for social TV.

If TV execs think social TV is the answer to the drop in live viewing, think again. I won't give up my freedom to watch on my own time and freedom from commercials (more bads news for the TV business). I tend to watch only a few hours at most behind the airtime, but I've seen many people tweet/post that they will be signing off until they can watch a show the next day just to avoid spoilers.

Live events, like sports and presidential debates, have an edge and clearly mix well with social media. As for other TV going social, doesn't seem like the recipe to success.

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Facebook Funny Business Part II

When I wrote my original post about Facebook advertising, I hadn't planned on another. However, with so much buzz about the drop in post reach, I just had to weigh in.  Since the change to Edgerank has occurred, the amount of people my page posts reach is only about 58% of the amount before the change. Thus, I decided to test out a promoted post again. This past week, I ran a promotion on a post from the week prior. That post had reached even less people than others as of late. 

I was very happy with the results. The paid reach was nine times that of the organic reach. We also got about 18 new page likes in that time, with only 10 showing as coming through the promotion. My concerns from last time were that many global fans didn’t seem connected to our brand. The two post shares seemed shady in that manner (no comment just a straight share to their timeline which had many other shared posts), but the new page likes were legitimate and tied back to employees at our global affiliates/business units.

 I didn’t run for the full ad spend, so it only cost $4.45. Unfortunately, that price is not what large brands will be able to get, as Mark Cuban shows.

FB is blowing it ? This is the first step.. The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or to new Myspace as primary site twitter.com/mcuban/status/…
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) October 27, 2012

Sure he and many other marketers are upset, but as another blogger put it do we have much room to complain about the drop in reach when it is a free service. I tend to agree. Do people complain about LinkedIn’s premium membership pricing options? No, because those have been established from the beginning. Had a sophomore in his college dorm thought about how to monetize and build out advertising packages for a college who’s hot or not site, we may not have even had a reason to be upset.

Regardless of if we should be angry or not, a new workaround is being tested to allow page fans to get notifications/alerts whenever the page posts new content. Until it is officially announced as other updates to Facebook are to all users (do most even read those?), will you ASK your fans to do this to receive all of your page posts? Will the average Facebook users truly understand the necessity or think it is just another loop to jump through?

Bad Customer Service and Social Media: A Volatile Mix

I've noticed some rants on Twitter about some people not receiving responses by companies for customer service and then not having a social media presence to even try to reach, which got me thinking about a blog post I wrote for my company blog in June 2011. Sadly for consumers, the data I had pulled regarding customer service was updated in March 2012 and nothing has changed.

According to Consumer Reports' Customer Service Buying Guide:

• 64% of respondents said that during the past 12 months they had left a store because service was poor
• 67% had hung up on customer service without having had their problem addressed
• Only 16% of respondents preferred to deal with a customer-service problem face-to-face.

The report urges consumers to try reaching out to brands on social media for responses. However, as my Twitter feed shows, some companies still don't see the value in monitoring those accounts.

As I said in my original post, once a consumer has exhausted their avenues to reach the brand, they will seek out information from other consumers. What's worse than one unhappy customer venting to the world with no response or engagement? A whole gaggle of them seeking each other out to crystallize their disdain for your brand by sharing in their tribulations . As from my old post...

"Let’s not lose sight of the fact that brand loyalty hinges on maintaining that relationship beyond the initial transaction. If I’ve exhausted all of the brand’s resolutions with no positive results, I’m not too keen on buying into that brand in the future. More likely since I’ve already located a sounding board for the product concern, I’m going to tell others how bad my experience was with the brand. Due to the far-reaching and quick dissemination of information via social networks, one nasty tweet could easily turn into a PR nightmare [haven't there been enough of these in the past year to get companies to take notice?!]. Companies need to seek out user-generated content based on their brand/products and take appropriate action to resolve issues (or just take an interest if not needing to respond to negativity)."

Don't give customer's a reason to complain about your lack of service on social media. First you should make every effort to not let a customer leave your store, website or hotline without a resolution. Then get a social monitoring tool, get Google alerts and/or Twilerts and be responsive!