As I’ve mentioned before, measuring the ROI of social media on a campaign level is pretty tricky and as Sandrine pointed out a couple of weeks ago, companies may need to take a long term view in order to fully reap the benefits of social media.

However, in theory, working out the ROI of a social media programme is easy (assuming you’re measuring it over a long enough time period), as Olivier Blanchard shows us in this presentation:

Of course, there’s a lot more more to it in practice (even without resorting to econometrics, which is of course why our consultancy services may come in handy):

• In step 3 (slides 44-46), you should also consider measuring other things like:
  • Customer retention/loyalty (to understand why this is important, have a read of Chris Stephenson’s overview or his entire paper on the subject)
  • Net Promoter Score (see Paul Marsden’s study around NPS and how advocacy drives growth)
  • Brand equity (Andrew Sharp sharp gives a good overview of why you should be thinking about this).
• In steps 6 & 7 (slides 54-55) it’s possible there will be a significant lag between your efforts in social media and their potential effects so try to take this into account when looking for them

Yesterday evening the shortlist was announced for this year’s BIMA Awards. We’re pleased to say that we’ve been shortlisted 4 times, for the This is Now campaign we did with Ford and for our work with Skype, helping them listen and respond in social media.

We’re chuffed to be in such great company, with AKQA leading the field with 6 shortlisted entries, DDB in second place with 5, and us in joint 3rd with LBi, ahead of others like Wieden+Kennedy and Agency Republic. Keep your fingers crossed for us on the evening of the 19th November, when the winners will be announced…

Update: We’ve been shortlisted for the 5th time, this time in the Best Blog category, which is being decided by a public vote.

Social Media is a conversation. That seems to be one thing that we all agree on

Last week, Nathan, Sandrine, Leila, Simon, Seb and I went along to the launch of IPA Social, where Neil Perkin presented their 10 conversation starters:

You can read all 10 in full here (which I highly recommend doing):

1. Mark Earls – People not consumers
2. Le’Nise Brothers – Social agenda not business agenda
3. John Willshire – Continuous conversation not campaigning
4. Faris Yakob – Long term impacts not quick fixes
5. Katy Lindemann – Marketing with people not to people
6. Neil Perkin – Being authentic not persuasive
7. Jamie Coomber – Perpetual beta
8. Amelia Torode – Technology changes, people don’t
9. Graeme Wood – Change will never be this slow again
10. Asi Sharabi – Measure and evaluate

As the IPA’s President, Rory Sutherland says:

At a time when the population of Facebook is now greater than all but three countries in the world, and when BT is delivering customer service via twitter, this is an area which forces us to question many of our ingrained assumptions about advertising, brands and intangible value.

and from Mark Earls’ scene setting essay:

For all the excitement today around the Twitters and Facebooks, the tougher problems for the advertising industry to get to grips with are all rooted in the way social media – the stuff that connects humans with other humans – changes the game for our clients and society at large.

IPA Social is an admirable initiative, one which we’ll continue to participate in, and their 10 principles are an excellent overview of how brands need to come to terms with social media, representing the thinking of some the greatest minds in modern advertising (all of whom are good friends of ours). The launch event was also a great evening, focused on starting conversations rather than presenting a revealed truth.

However, it still was very focused on traditional ‘advertising’, with a large proportion of time spent hearing about VCCP’s Compare the Meerkat campaign. We split out into groups towards the end of the event and in the group I led, we discussed whether campaigns like Compare the Meerkat are really social media campaigns. Although the campaign has rich presences in social media, we’re weren’t sure that was a factor in it’s success. We felt it was the strength of the creative idea and the media spend at work here – and the fact that Oasis’ Rubberduckzilla has substantially more fans than Aleksandr the Meerkat on Facebook, despite no attempts to engage with social media helps re-enforce this point. It was felt that real social media campaigns are ones where the conversation itself drives the success of the campaign (like our This is Now campaign for Ford).

I also couldn’t miss joining in the discussion about which types of agency were best suited for social media. The point I made was as follows. Over the last ten years digital agencies stole a march on above the line agencies by building bigger, better and more motivated specialist teams. This let them innovate faster and develop a critical mass of best practise that accelerated the skills gap between them and their above-the-line competitors. Specialist social media agencies will do the same to digital and other agencies. To use We Are Social as an example, who else has a team of twenty experienced practitioners, entirely focused on innovative, creative and effective social media marketing and communications? Each day and each new hire widens the gap between us and those in pursuit.

Overall, I left feeling comforted that the specialist agencies’ lead in social media was safe for some time to come…

We’re looking for a generally awesome graphic designer to join the team here at We Are Social towers, to work alongside our resident coding genius Chris (as seen above – please don’t let the fedora put you off), designing and building cutting-edge conversation platforms (blogs, online communities etc.) for our clients – you can see some recent examples of our work in this area here, here, here, and here.

You’ll be a recent graduate of a graphic/multimedia design related degree, perhaps with a year or two’s worth of experience in the industry on top. You’ll have a portfolio that makes Smashing Magazine’s collection of ‘50 beautiful blog designs’ pale in comparison.

Not only will you be shit hot with Photoshop, but you’ll be an expert in turning your designs into elegant and compliant CSS and XHTML. You’ll be a dab hand with WordPress, not only being able to design and build themes but also happy setting up, configuring and maintaining installations.

In an ideal world, you’d also bring one or more of these things – experience with BuddyPress or being comfortable with PHP and MySQL, or you might be an accomplished video editor with experience of turning hours of footage into a polished two minute short, or you can create entire visual identities from scratch.

Just as importantly as the above, you’ll be passionate about social media in all of its forms, probably running a blog or two of your own, and spending way too much of your free time on Facebook and Twitter. You’ll also understand the commercial context of your work, being comfortable with the principles of branding, information architecture, usability, user experience design and designing for community.

If you’re successful, you’ll be joining a growing team of people from a variety of backgrounds who are entirely focused on innovative, creative and effective social media marketing and communications – and are having a lot of fun along the way.

Essential:

• Awesome web and blog design
• CSS and XHTML
• WordPress

Desirable (1 or more):

• PHP and MySQL
• BuddyPress
• Video editing
• Visual identity origination

If the above description sounds a bit like you, please drop us an email with an introduction to you and why you belong at We Are Social, attaching your CV and a link to your portfolio. We’re interested in seeing how you currently use social media so remember to include links to your blog, Twitter, delicious and other profiles…

Having worked client side for over 10 years before joining We Are Social, I totally get the ROI culture of most companies – this is how things work, especially in these recessionary times when every penny counts.

The frustrating thing is that measuring the ROI of social media is tricky (as Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media famously said “What’s the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning?”). However, I joined a social media agency not only because I am passionate about social media but mostly because I am 100% convinced that social media 1) will become a core activity for businesses of all shapes and sizes and 2) it will transform the way companies operate. To me, social media is a long term commitment.

With that in mind, Chris Lake draws a very interesting parallel between social media and e-commerce:

We’re still hearing a lot of hype about something that is unproven, in ROI terms. That remains true, although some companies are generating ROI today, whereas others may take a hit before seeing a return. If you buy into the idea that this might work, then you need to be prepared to wait in order to see some positive results.

There are parallels with the great leaps into e-commerce a decade ago (amazingly some retailers have yet to dip their toes into the water). The cynics at the time doubted that selling things online would ever become a mass market no-brainer, as it is today. I wonder if the same applies to adopting social media?

There’s no doubt that the internet has done wonders for many companies. Tesco may pull in around £2bn of sales from its online operations this year, and perhaps £100m in clear profit. And John Lewis now counts its website as its biggest store, ahead of the huge ‘flagship store’ on Oxford Street. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is. Not that it happened overnight. ROI obviously wasn’t generated immediately. Both Tesco and John Lewis needed to pony up a large wedge of development money in order to set up their websites, and to recruit appropriate people to run them. They had to pay to play, in order to transform their businesses.

The next decade will be the age of customer engagement and customer satisfaction. Don’t want to miss out on the next big revolution? Then start engaging with social media now.