Measuring Social Media. Does it Really Matter?

February 13, 2010 By

I’m no Social Media pundit – there are thousands of them that describe themselves as such.  Just yesterday I was followed on Twitter by someone who had a bio of “Twitter Marketer Extraordinaire”. I have no clue what that means, but I won’t pay for it.  Won’t follow it either.  It seems like rubbish to me.

I have no such illusions or delusions about my ability to use, and find useful, this new tool-set we’ve been given.  Twitter is but a knife in a culinary set though.  It is not a full set of utensils.  We have an ever-growing set of tools and utensils.  And I don’t think the tools matter much – at least not as much as how we decide to use them.  A knife can be used to cut.  Or it can be used to butter a shared loaf of bread.

Yes, the tools change – but the way they are wielded has been unchanged for decades.

So let us ignore individual tools for now, since they are so varied, and they have a different level of usefulness depending on your company and industry.

The bigger question is, “Can Social Media Be Measured?”.  I ask a smaller question – “Should it be measured”?

I’ve effectively used social media in a number of ways.  But that doesn’t make it a replacement for meeting people face to face, or using more traditional methods to target a specific audience.

Social Media is a shotgun approach to meeting and conversing with those that you are interested in; or might be interested in you.  It is, if done well, an invitation – and that should be enough.  For me, and my company, it is enough.

But behind that invitation to a conversation you need real people – people that know your business, and your product – and that are empowered to affect  change.  Otherwise you are talking to a wall.

Social Media has been useful to me, and to the company I work for, because we don’t just listen and respond with useless banter.  We have a team of engineers behind us that actually CAN make change happen.  In fact – our entire Social Media Team IS engineers.  We have also been customers.  WE know what the pain points are – and this was done by design.

When you have that level of understanding of your customers – and what they really need – well, measurement takes on a new meaning.  A less significant one.  We use “social” to be helpful – with people empowered to help.

I am not overly concerned about “measuring” Social Media – as long as we keep it relevant.  If it is relevant to your business – as long as it causes conversations and resolves customer issues – well, I don’t think it needs to be measure more than that – today.  Over time measurement will become more important.

But if you work for a company now that is MOST concerned with measurement – and NOT as concerned with your impact – be afraid.

Focus on just making a difference.  The tools will catch up to us.  If you try to catch up to the tools you will take your eye off the prize – customer engagement.

So I have ONE measurement this year – only one.  How do my social media outreaches affect customers.  How involved are they where I post, with what I care about, and in a context that makes sense to me and my business?

Do they care about what I care about?  DO I care about what they care about?

If they respond in any way, I can measure social media.

If they do not respond, I can also measure social media :)

But I am not keeping score beyond, “Are we doing more good than bad”.

I think many are over-thinking this right now.

Are you talking to your customer or not? If you are – you can measure that – just by the number of conversations.  If you are not – don’t waste your time in measuring in.

But don’t focus on the numbers.  Focus on the conversations.  The REAL conversations you have with customers.

Rob

Filed Under: Customers, Management

Social Media – The Double-Edged Sword

January 6, 2010 By

“Social Media” is amazing in how it lets you meet your customers – on their terms.  It has changed the way business is done.  There is no hiding from your flaws.    Everything is “open”.  Social media is very much the open sourcing of traditional PR and Marketing.

And as powerful as it is – you need to realize what it means.  If you want to “control your brand” then social media will scare the crap out of you.  If you want to understand your brand, it is invaluable.

When my employer suffers even a small failure in even a fraction of a percent of one of our data centers we see Tweets that say, “Rackspace is down”.  While this is often 99% untrue we realize that for that 1% it is 100% true.  So we treat it as if we are down.  1% isn’t acceptable and we don’t disagree with those that paint any outage as a significant outage.  Our goal is perfection.  We know we cannot achieve it, but we also realize we can most closely approach it by simply expecting it of ourselves.  And letting our customers demand it of us – even encouraging them to do so.

Does that get painful at times?  Certainly.  Do we sometimes feel as if we should be more defensive – absolutely.  It would be nice to minimize the concern to shareholders, employees, and customers when only a fraction of customers are affected by an issue.  But that also requires that we minimize the pain that affected customers feel – and we aren’t willing to make that trade.  There aren’t many successful companies that minimize or marginalize their customers.

Most of us at my office run our own websites – and we know how painful downtime is.  In fact, many of us were Rackspace customers before we came to work here – and we chose to work here because we know that the good far outweighs the bad.  Especially compared to the industry as a whole.  We are expected to be perfect in an imperfect technology.  Failure is in our future.  We know we can’t be perfect.  So we plan for when we aren’t.  But we are here because we love to help.  We feel most successful when we give others the ability to succeed.  And we can’t do that unless we know how and when we are failing them.  So we really appreciate that social media allows us to have those conversations early, and often.

But a failure is a failure – and they all hurt.  And social media may make that failure more apparent to more people – and frame things in context that sound ominous.  But we would rather hear about our failures than hide from them.

And social media makes damned sure that every failure is heard.  But it also makes sure that every success is shared.  So it is a double-edged sword.  Once you realize that you don’t wield the sword you start to think more pragmatically about things.

Then social media becomes what relationship management has always been about.  Add more value than noise.  Be genuinely concerned.  Do better.  Learn.  Get better.  Invest where your customers tell you to invest.

Be honest, and don’t be afraid.  Embrace the chaos.

Filed Under: Customers, Management Tagged With: , , ,

Why Twitter Lists Matter to Business – The Magnifying Effect

November 9, 2009 By

I dismissed Twitter lists as a toy at first – something interesting that would be made useful later by Client Software.

I was wrong.  Twitter lists matter NOW– regardless of client support.  They are both searchable and subscribe-able.  That makes them important.

Why?  Because companies own and cultivate “brands” – a personae.  And Twitter Lists may just disrupt that in interesting ways.

Example – it is fairly easy for me to find “lists” of companies I use (or compete against, or admire – whatever).  The point is – there is no longer such a thing as a “Corporate Twitter Persona”.  It is now the total of the personas of all of your employees.  For good or bad.

Now I am not following the corporate entity alone – I am watching everyone associated with the entity.

Your corporate brand is now affected by every person subscribed to, or added to a LIST about your brand.

This is a bit of a game changer.

It’ll take a different mindset.  Not sure it can be “managed”, but pretty sure it needs to be acknowledged.

Filed Under: Community, Customers, Management, Politics, Privacy

Some good traits for “online media” people

September 20, 2009 By

It’s been about 8 months that my primary role has been something “social media” related.  I make the role work for me, and that includes a lot of business development, social networking, and “social marketing”.  You need to find your own path.  As long as it is focused on customers, I imagine you can make it work.

But you have to start with loving to be “helpful”.  That is a powerful word that your customers will respect.

Anyway, here are some of my pointers:

  • You are hyper-connected, and loving it that way.  You are “always” online, even when it isn’t really appropriate.
  • You know your customers.  Better yet, you used to BE one of your companies customers!
  • You know the customer community.
  • You love fixing things.
  • You don’t mind “being the bad guy/girl” if that’s what it takes to satisfy a customer.
  • You are technical in the field you are supporting.  If it’s a writing site/company, you should be a writer.  Know your audience and you will have a respectable voice.
  • Develop an online persona for yourself/company .  It can be your own, if that is appropriate.  It can be a merging of yours and your companies core values.  But it must be genuine, and it must be constant.
  • Make friends with your customers.  Work for them more than you work for anyone else.
  • Remember that you are also changing the way your company thinks/feels about customer outreach.  Don’t forget to reach within early and often.  Get advocates on your side.  Find those others that are already doing your role in an ad-hoc way, and embrace them.  Educate them.  Encourage them.  USE them :)

If you aren’t having fun – you are definitely not in the right position – get out of it quickly!

Filed Under: Community, Customers, Ideas, Management

I prefer “people businesses” – OR – Why Amazon bought Zappos

August 18, 2009 By

Wow – that title seems to be a mess, doesn’t it?

It actually is a mess.  Amazon, a company that doesn’t talk to their customers bought a company that is renowned for talking to their customers.

What?

Why would they?  Perhaps they know they have something to learn about being a “people business”.

Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon made that pretty clear to me with this blog post from several days ago.  Link is at the end of this post, excerpt is as follows:

Once a year however we take a moment to make sure that everyone who wants to give their input into the direction of the Amazon Web Services has the opportunity to do so.

Once a year?  Really?  That is not a “people business”.  That isn’t really even trying.  That is a poor effort at outreach – even by Amazon standards.

How often does my employer measure engagement and or satisfaction?  After every chat, or call.  Or ticket.  By being active on Twitter – because our customers are there.  By providing real people to talk to 24/7 – people that can actually help.  People.

By answering the phone when our customers call.  By caring for each of them as if they were our largest customer.

We also bring a lot of customers to the Rackspace HQ every year to help us learn how to get better.  And our CEO puts his number out on Twitter.  People.

You can build a business on technology – I’ve learned that.  But you build a following through people.

Tony Hsieh knows that.  Perhaps Amazon is looking to learn something here.  Let’s hope!

Good luck, Zappos – you got a lot of educating to do!

“Feedback for Amazon Web Services“

Filed Under: Community, Customers, Management
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