TV Really Is Easier to Measure than Social Media

KMart’s CMO made waves recently by saying TV, and other traditional channels, are easier to measure than social media.

Social media proponents responded, defending social media’s measurability and highlight the data social media provides. My favorite was this tweet from Jay Baer (who I have a tremendous amount of respect for and I don’t disagree with lightly).

http://twitter.com/#!/jaybaer/status/93742009034084352

The problem is, most social media measurement is myopic.

When Measurement Misleads: A Lesson From Triberr’s Downtime

I’ve have been using Triberr for about two months. Last week, Triberr was down for upgrades. All of a sudden, my posts, normally shared by 25 to 30 tribe members, didn’t have any automated support.

What’s Triberr? It’s a platform for forming tribes of bloggers that support each other by tweeting the posts of other tribe members.

Over the last month, the traffic here from Triberr has steadily increased. I was hooked on the numbers and started to see the increasing traffic numbers as success. But it wasn’t my success, it was Pam Moore’s and Michael Brenner’s success. I was simply fortunate to have been invited into their tribes.

Suddenly, despite the warnings I give others, it happened to me. I was focused on the metrics and forgot why I started blogging. I let measurement trump purpose.

Online Media Needs Innovation, Not a TV Standard

This is my opinion about the recent IAB, ANA and 4A’s principles for online measurement. If you don’t like rants, or think the advertising associations can do no wrong, stop reading and go back to Lycos. Otherwise, read on and share your reactions in the comments below.

The IAB, ANA and 4A’s recently outlined five measurement principles as part of Making Measurement Make Sense. The objectives, outlined below, are admirable:

• Define transparent, standardized and consistent metrics and measurement systems to simplify the planning, buying and selling of digital media in a cross-platform environment.
• Drive industry consensus around a solution.
• Establish a governance model to support ongoing standards development, manage change and ensure compliance.

The problem is, as someone that has spent the last ten years (gulp) in this industry, the principles and their intended impact are mostly nonsense.

Three Questions for Measuring Social, Not Media

You Manage What You Measure.

This should be a call to ensure you measure your social media activities, and to measure them correctly.

One of the challenges of measuring social media ROI is the return comes in many different forms. As companies develop social media plans and programs, anticipating the ways social media will deliver ROI is a challenge few have addressed. Most companies quickly implement traditional media measurements, slightly adapted for social media.

Before you continue, ask the following questions:

A New Way to Understand Your Social Media Audience

Audience research is invaluable and well developed personas provide a broad array of insights into the lives and minds of your target audience, insights that form the basis for your social media plans.

Then, you put your social media plan in place, including sharing great content from others and creating your own. And you hit a fundamental disconnect. Your planning is based on your target audience, but you are measuring activity from everyone. Here are two questions that are difficult to answer.

• Is the content you share via social media resonating with your target audience or a random audience?
• What content is most popular with your target audience?

Email Marketing 2.0 is Facebook and More

The Changes to Email Marketing will Not End with Facebook.

Jay Baer proposed in a blog post on Monday that Facebook for  Business is Email Marketing 2.0, and that email can then be used to value marketing efforts on Facebook. It is an excellent approach, and I think most comments missed the point. Facebook marketing and email marketing are both about developing an audience that allows you to engage over time.

Facebook is (part of) Email Marketing 2.0.

The most important part of the heading isn’t Facebook, it is Email 2.0. Both Facebook and email are used by companies to distribute information. But email marketing is a one-way blast channel.

Email Marketing 2.0 should look vastly different from today’s email marketing. With all due respect to the email providers integrating social sharing into email, that does not make email marketing a platform for sharing and discussing. It continues to be a one-way channel, at times simply promoting discussion or sharing elsewhere.

Is Anyone Left to Click Your Ad?

Who is Clicking Your Ad?

In 2007, 68% percent of internet users did not click banner ads in a given month. In 2009, that number increased to 84%, and only 8% of internet users represented 85% of all clicks. These results are from ComScore research.

Now Collective Media released new research showing 99% of internet users do not click ads. If your marketing plan is dependent on a click, your audience is getting smaller. A lot smaller.

Two things are particularly notable about this trend for marketers.

Do You Need to Stop Measuring Marketing?

Measurement Love

I’m a bit of a nut for measurement. In fact, I spent the first eight years of my career focused on improving and applying digital marketing measurement.

I believe everything needs to be measured. But just maybe, we should stop measuring for a moment. Measurement has gone too far, expectations of measurement are too great, and measurement has clouded our judgement instead of informing it.

These days, all to often measurement has become the purpose, not a tool. One thing I learned in those first eight years

Three Ways Click Rates Are Killing Your Brand

Despite numerous calls for the demise of the click rate, it lives on as a standard fixture in nearly every benchmark and performance report. It lives on, its very existence reducing the effectiveness of your brand campaign.

Click rates live on for a simple reason. No other metric is (1) common across all advertisers and publishers and (2) accessible by publishers. Until an alternative performance metric can broadly be measured by those selling advertising space, click rates will remain a fixture.

The problem is, click rates hurt brand campaigns.

Making Your Social Media and Your Garden Deliver

You slave over getting it started. You carefully tend to it as it grows and matures. Then you realize it isn’t big enough to feed you. What you harvest is great, but is isn’t enough to make a difference in your budget.

Yes, your garden. That corner of your yard dedicated to growing edibles. It has a lot in common with your corporate social media program. It is nurtured as it grows, everyone loves seeing results, but it just isn’t enough to drive your business.