Social Media Blog: Conversational MarketingA blog that disects conversational marketing via social media.

I came across this excellent resource (thanks Beth) this morning on several methodologies to measure social media.

Rachel Happe, who blogs over at the Social Organization put together this quite awesome list of metrics used to measure social media in the enterprise. This list goes beyond the common metrics used to measure the effectiveness (or not) of marketing activities. One metric that is not on the list – and I think we all struggle with this - is the ability to measure conversations. I mean, really, how do you attach a metric to a two-way dialogue? There are some really cool tools available that monitor conversations and brand mentions online though. Some even use algorithms that rate these conversations based on where they are taking place. Expensive but might be worth the investment.

Tags: measuring social media, social media metrics

Well, personally I think that conversations are the core of social media, but don’t take my word for it. I just launched a new blog authored by several internal marketers from industry leading companies like Intel, HP, Cisco, Yahoo, Yum Brands and Cadence who think the same. The blog, titled “Conversations Matter: Bridging the Social Media Gap” is focused on providing a unique perspective of social media; one that I believe is not well represented on the internet today. Unlike the Blog Council, everything we share on the blog is open to just about anyone who is interested in learning, listening and even contributing. We do not require membership or registration to have access to this information. We also take it one step further and discuss a holistic view of social media strategy; with corporate blogs being one element of that strategy.  If you would like to contribute to the blog, please give me a holler and we can discuss the next steps.

Remember G.I. Joe and those pretty awesome public service announcements, where one of the Joes would give an important safety lesson to a group of kids engaged in questionable behavior? They always ended with the famous exchange: “Now we know!” “And knowing is half the battle.” Well I say that “listening is half the battle” but I am willing to compromise. How about:

“Knowing when to listen is half the battle”

However you arrange the words, it makes complete sense when you apply it to social media. Listening and responding are only half the battle when engaging with consumers online. The other half of the formula is acting. It’s like being in a relationship. If my wife is upset that I leave my dirty socks on the living room floor every night; and I listen to what she is saying but continue to leave my socks there … well, you catch my drift. There will be hell to pay if I don’t “act” on her politely spoken “recommendations”. ; )

… and maybe, just maybe you will be hitting home runs in no time.

I agreed to review this ebook back in late 2007; and I just finished it last night. Sorry it took me so long (Darren & Julie); but life has sure been hectic transitioning to a new job, computers crashing, etc. It literally took me a few hours to get through the entire book. It was an extremely easy read and Darren and Julie did an excellent job articulating the basics of social media.

The target audience for this book is just about anyone who dabbles with social media in any capacity (internal marketers, agencies, consultants, small business owners). It is filled with tips, tricks, strategies, tactical elements, and case studies.  By reading this book, you will:

1. Understand the landscape of social media
2. Learn how to launch a social media relations campaign
3. Learn how to optimize your web site for social media (SMO)
4. Discover new ideas and inspiration for social media
5. Understand the risks/challenges of social media

Let’s see … is social media about conversions, traffic, click though rates and sales; or is it more along the lines of conversations, authenticity, transparancy and building a sense of community? I guess it really depends on who you ask. My colleague at Intel, Bob Duffy, who works on my team came up with this awesome cartoon that illustrates my point precisely (his post also touches on this subject).

Last weekend my laptop crashed. When I restarted it, it said that the systems.32\hll.dll file was corrupt and that I need to reinstall it. I called Dell, they couldn’t help me. I stressed about it all night because I have some really important data there. So Sunday morning, I brought my laptop to Best Buy/Geek Squad so they could at least save my data. Someone had told me that they were awesome and can fix anything.

I got a call this morning from the Geek Squad and they told me that they couldn’t retrieve my data; and that they could send my laptop to their offices in Kentucky and use advance data retrieval techniques but it would cost me anywhere between $400 - $1600. Ugh.

So I posted my no-so-rant on Twitter.

I just finished reading, “Digg is Not Social Media Marketing” and I’d have to agree that using Digg alone is not social media marketing. While this may be an important tactic in the overall scheme of things, there is much more to social media than Digg. And, It is quite apparent that many marketers spend a considerable amount of time trying to game the Digg algorithm, grow their friend’s list, and seed content in hopes of achieving front page placement.

The new blog is launched! Please tell me what you think and be honest. I actually designed the look and feel myself in Photoshop; and then hired the guys over at Unique Blog Designs to program it and build in the functionality. We ran into some problems with the latest version of Wordpress not being compatible with the version of MySQL database on my host; and we were locked out of the control panel for a few days because the license expired on Plesk (I hate Plesk by the way). Customer support was horrible; well…a good friend of mine was hosting the site for free so I should be nice (even though he was so darn non-responsive for like two days). Nonetheless, we moved hosts and everything seems to be working properly.

To my trusted friends, family and the 137 people (and I am sure there is overlap) that subscribe to my blog; I wanted to let you all know that I am in the process of having my blog redesigned by my good friends over at Unique Blog Designs. Hence, the reason I haven’t posted in a while. Speaking of not posting in a while, I have already written several articles/posts and created an editorial calendar that should keep me honest in posting at the minimum of once per week once the new site is launched.

Also, for those of us not connected on LinkedIn, MyBlogLog, Twitter or Facebook, I have left Yahoo! for Intel. Yes, you heard it right; the boring chip company that powers most of the world’s computers, laptops and servers. Why you ask? Well, I was actually laid off from Yahoo! last November and I was really bummed that all the marketing, product and engineering resources were taken away from Bix. I was able to find a role on the Yahoo! Messenger team but it was not really what I wanted or expected; no disregard to the Messenger product team; they were quite awesome individuals.

Read this eBook now - Customer Service: The Art of Listening and Engagement through Social Media - written by Brian Solis. You can download for free (PDF or Word). It’s short, sweet and gets straight to the point.

One of the key takeaways was what many refer to as conversational marketing. Here is Brian’s take from the eBook (page 6):

However, marketing needs to be clarified as I am not referring to the traditional marketing that typically “speaks” at people through “messages.” In Social Media, this is about dialog, two way discussions that bring people together in order to discover and share information.

I wholeheartedly agree that participation through two-way conversations is a form of marketing; and I would argue that it’s probably one of the most effective methods of marketing today. As Brian suggests, consumers don’t want marketed to anymore. They are sick and tired of us (yeah, me too) shoving our marketing messages down their throats. It’s about conversations; and not necessarily about conversions anymore; my direct marketing friends would scarcely disagree with me!