© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

Social Media Monitoring Metrics

The Sound and the Fury

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

Who is Converseon? Founded in 2001 out of the Innovations Group at a division of

Y&R (fully independent); providing listening solutions since 2005

We provide an end-to-end social media solution -- listening/engagement technologies, organizational consulting and engagement services

Awarded inaugural SAMMY for “Best Social Agency”

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

You Do Need to Listen

You will find that some of the conversation about your brand is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

But don’t be discouraged.

There are plenty of good reasons to listen and measure that conversation despite the pointless chatter. And you need to listen and evaluate before you can engage.

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

What’s Monitoring Good For?

Reputation management Crisis management Influencer identification, customer identification Brand engagement, humanize, community/trust building Product/service development (R&D) Media planning, inform customer targeting, drive traffic,

campaign effectiveness Inform creative, enhanced ad targeting, framing Customer service Thought leadership

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

Who Offers a Tool?

Ascent Labs, Inc. Attensity Attentio Backtype Betaworks Bivings Group Biz360 Inc. Brands Eye Brandtology Brandwatch BuzzGain Buzzient BuzzLogic BuzzNumbers BuzzStream Cierzo Development S.L Cision Collecta Collective Intellect Converseon Conversition CoTweet Crimson Hexagon Crowd Favorite CustomScoop Digimind DNA13 Dow Jones eCairn e-CBD Echometrix Effyis Emerge Technology Group Expert System Facebook Filtrbox Flaptor Frank Westphal Glam Media Google Hubspot Icerocket iMooty Infegy Inifinimedia Insttant Inuda Innovations Iterasi JamIQ JD Power Kaleidico Klout Linkfluence ListenLogic Macranet Market Sentinel MediaBadger MediaMiser Medimix Mindlab Solutions GmbH Monitter Moreover Technologies mReplay MyFrontSteps Networked Insights New Media Strategies Nielsen Now Metrix Onalytica OneRiot Overdrive Interactive Overtone Pidgin Technologies PR Newswire Radian6 Raven Rees Bradley Hepburn Ltd RepuMetrix Reputation Defender ReputationHQ Samepoint ScoutLabs Sensidea Social Mention SocialMetrix Spiral16 Sports Media Challenge StatsIT StreamWall SWIX Synthesio Sysomos Tealium Technorati Techrigy The Search Monitor ThoughtBuzz TipTop Technologies TNS Cymfony TraceBuzz Trackur LLC. Twazzup TweetBeep Tweetlytics Twitter Twitter Analyzer uberVU Viralheat Visible Measures Visible Technologies Vocus, Inc. Web Analytics Demystified White Noise Inc. Who's Talkin Xerocity Design Group YackTrack … and more

Source: http://wiki.kenburbary.com/social-meda-monitoring-wiki

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

But Most Of Them Are The Same

Enter your keyword into the tool, it searches its list of feeds and then you generally get back charts and tables showing:

1. Volume (of you, your competitors, your category)

2. Venues/Authors

3. Influence

4. Sentiment

That seems pretty easy, right?

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

Look Ma, I’ve Got Charts!Se

ntim

ent S

core

My sentiment (or is it volume?) was up in April, yay!But what does that mean?

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

Let’s Step Back a Bit…

What is volume really measuring? What keywords did you enter, are they unambiguous?

“Ate apple for lunch. Not the computer company, btw.”

Are there high levels of spam associated with your brand?

“Get ringtones for you iPhone. And cheap Viagra!”

Are all mentions of your brand relevant?

“The dude next door ran into my mailbox with his BMW.”

If social media is growing, shouldn’t volume always increase each month? Does that mean a flat line is actually a decrease?

If I see a spike in volume, was that because we launched a campaign or did our tool simply add more sources or get more spam?

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

OK, So Maybe Volume Isn’t That Important, I’ll Concentrate on Influence…

But how is influence being measured? On a scale from 1-100, what does 100 mean? Is a venue influential or is an author? Or both? Twitter.com, myblog.blogspot.com, huffingtonpost.com, someforum.com

are all venues, but are wildly different On what topics are they influential? In what way are they influential? Do they influence all readers the same way?

So overall, what does influence actually mean? Is it a valid measure or is

it just the closest thing we could find to a traditional advertising metric?(Don’t worry, I promise to answer this later)

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

Ok, But Sentiment is What Really Matters…Right?

The hard truth: automated sentiment doesn’t work(Forrester puts it at 50% accurate -- a coin flip essentially)

Machines don’t get sarcasm or slang, and in fact generally are just looking for sentiment words that are within a certain proximity to your keyword; and even when they use a more advanced algorithm (NLP, etc.) it’s nowhere near a mature technology. Don’t believe the hype.

But even if automated sentiment worked, what would sentiment toward your brand really mean in aggregate? Is it actionable?

Does “positive” mean: they are going to buy it, they already have bought it and love it, they are recommending it, or something else?

If they are both negative and positive about different aspects of your product does it get scored as neutral at the record level?

Most importantly: what are they positive about? The brand or a product, and what aspect of the product?

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

So Now What???

1. Don’t panic.

2. It’s not a problem with the data, it’s a problem with the approach.

You don’t need a hammer, you need a scalpel.

(most of the time)

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

Sometimes All You Need is a Hammer

If you have a relatively low volume of conversation about your brand

If you don’t have the resources to actually do anything with the information, yet

If all you want are some pretty charts or a cool interface to show to the boss

If you have your own team of expert social media data analysts

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

But You Probably Need a Scalpel

Which would allow you to solve all of the problems we’ve exposed Accurate measurements of relevant volume, not just mentions of your

keywords, with the ability to understand what caused any spikes or dips Influence measures that are tailored to your specific industry and with

the goals of your social media engagement in mind, so you can actually do something with the information

Sentiment measured accurately with human analysis, and coded with respect to topics associated with your brand

Additional metrics available: What type of conversation is it (product review, support, endorsement, rant)? What is the role of the author in the conversation (consumer, industry expert, detractor)? Custom analysis built according to your needs

When all are combined, the ability to get accurate, deep, granular analysis of your conversation is possible

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

And You Can Still Get Cool Charts

Obtaining Proper

Diagnosis

PAH Community

Diagnostic Tools

Co-existing Conditions

AdministrationSymptoms

FDA Approval

Side Effects Treatment Effectiveness

Treatment Mentions

60

100

80

120

Coun

t of I

ncid

ents

40

20

Conversation about a new drug, including volume of topics, sentiment, and related conversations:

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

What You Should Do Next

Most importantly – decide what questions you want answered about your conversation, and be specific as possible

If you don’t know what questions you want answered, call an agency who can help you figure that out

If you aren’t monitoring your online conversation, start today, even if it’s just Google Alerts

Then try one of the low end monitoring dashboard tools so you can (a) see if you can answer your questions and (b) determine what more you would need that the tool doesn’t offer

© 2010, Converseon, Inc.

Thanks!

Jeff Doak

CTO, Converseon

jdoak@converseon.com