Advocacy / we are social

Proving the ROI of social media

by Robin Grant in News on 20 October 2009 at 16:13

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

tagged: advocacy, Andrew Sharp, brand equity, Chris Stephenson, customer loyalty, measurement, Net Promoter Score, Olivier Blanchard, Paul Marsden, presentations, ROI, social media

From consideration to advocacy

by Robin Grant in News on 20 July 2009 at 17:08

If my post on the purchase funnel and the consumer decision journey was a little too academic for you, then meet Dave, and follow his idealised journey from initial consideration to becoming an advocate:

tagged: advocacy, consumer decision journey, presentations, purchase funnel, social media, social media marketing, Word of Mouth

Social media is not media, it’s social

by Robin Grant in News on 11 January 2009 at 16:46

A controversial titbit from our friend and firestarter, Mark Earls, author of Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature:

Social Media – blogging, tweeting, facebooking and so on – is not (primarily) about information (what we write, say or read – just as advertising and all those things we criticise are not either); real communication is gestural in nature – it’s about what you do and what you see others doing.

Of course, it seems like the crafting the information bit is important and of course we’d all like to believe that the information processing bit shapes those big and well-considered opinions we carry around. Sad thing is the info bit comes second in terms of shaping our behaviour: most of our thinking is after the fact (as Eliot Aronson puts it, we are more rationalizing than rational); most of our opinions attempts to make sense of what we’ve done not the wise and considered precursor to action.

So, this new landscape can’t be about information and broadcasting, albeit in a way that’s less wasteful or more credible; it’s not about advocacy and brand advocates making the case on behalf of your brand; it’s not about the 1-in-10 or any other minority group who will tell the rest of us what to do; it’s not about “talk” or WOM or any of these poor substitutes for the old TV transmission model – sending messages out to change minds in order to (somehow, eventually) change behaviour. It’s not media at all (as in a medium down which we can send information to folk).

It’s about people. People watching and listening and interacting with other people (that’s why Hugh’s championing of the Social Object is spot on).

It is at heart profoundly human.

We’re not ready to throw away awareness, consideration and recommendation as objectives and measures just yet, but we do agree with his main message – we are inherently social, and social media just lets us be social in new and different ways (even if we’re still restricted by Dunbar’s number).

tagged: advertising, advocacy, Eliot Aronson, Herd, Hugh MacLeod, Mark Earls, media, social media, social objects, Word of Mouth