PostRank Connect

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I learned about PostRank Connect at the recent Monitoring Social Media conference in Boston and decided to give it a try as it meets my key criteria:

• It promises to provide me with insights about my content through the PostRank Analytics application (free, for now, when you sign-up for PostRank Connect).
• It promises to connect me with brands that could lead to mutually beneficial relationships.
• It is FREE.

How do you sign up?

Navigate to the sign-up page and enter standard information like your username, password, and location.  Now identify your content sources, your blogs and your social media accounts.  Important points:

• It is critical that you identify the attributes of your blogs as you set them up, making it easier to do the matching of brands and influencers.
• When you identify your blog you must also prove ownership, like you do with Google Analytics and other similar tools, by either adding a page, an image, or making a networking change through DNS.
• When you add a new contact source you can link it to a Twitter account.  Ideally you should also be able to tie in Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and any number of other accounts as well.
• To achieve the best results you should use Google Analytics to your site.  This will enable you to see how engagement and traffic tie together.

Alright, what else?

Well, return to business as usual for a couple of days, running any planned campaigns or just letting the sites run as you normally do.  After a few days log back in, select the My Sites tab and then click upon the View Analytics button.  I set this up for a brand new community that I am very slowly tweaking and very slowly rolling out.    When I view analytics for this site I see the following:

You can view, side by side, the page view information and the social engagement information associated with this site.  If you scroll beneath this first chart you will also see all Facebook status updates and Twitter messages that are related to content or pages you are tracking for this site.  By default all blog posts (tracked via RSS feed) are tracked.  Other content must be added manually as part of the setup process.

Deeper analysis?

You can click upon the Analyze menu to download a CSV file which I am, at this point, unimpressed with.   You are not given the option to choose a date range or fields to include in the CSV file and the data, at least for my test site,was not useful.  I am looking for, and hoping to see, PostRank put a lot more into the reporting for this solution.  This offering is not significantly more powerful than Google Analytics alone.

My verdict?

The product is easy to set up and requires a minimal effort to interact with.  If you are already making use of Google Analytics and investing in Twitter and Facebook than you should give this product a try.  If you are not using Analytics, however, I would not both using this product.

John

Related Articles

• Analytics For Social Media (outspokenmedia.com)
• Social Graph, Influence and the Social Web | PostRank Blog (postrank.com)
• Which News Sites Get the Most Social Media Engagement? (adamsherk.com)
• PostRank adds Google Chrome extension and soft launches new service, PostRank Connect (techvibes.com)

Email, social media, and coupons makes the CFO smile

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While attending the Monitoring Social Media Conference I had the opportunity to listen to Mark Schmulen, General Manager of Social Media for Constant Contact (affiliate link), discuss a case study centered on the combination of e-mail plus social media.  The study focused on how Dingo, a pet product company,  leveraged Facebook plus Constant Contact to achieve impressive revenue growth.

In searching the web I found a good overview of the social media accomplishments from this campaign. However, those are but part of the story and miss the real business outcomes.  I will summarize the article and add the rest of the story to help you better understand what took place.

Their goals?

• Capture more Dingo users, adding to their existing database of power users.
• Find dog owners who haven’t tried Dingo and drive trial of their product.
• Utilize the power of Facebook to build a community in which Dingo could have easy, real-time interaction with consumers.

Their Tactics

Dingo began the campaign with 330 fans on their Facebook page and around 9000 users in their mailing list.  Dingo added the Constant Contact tab to their Facebook page and offered a $20 coupon to the first 5000 fans that joined their mailing list and liked the page. 

The Outcomes

In just three days they had passed the 6000 fan mark and their mailing list surpassed 14,000 users.  Even more important, however, than these metrics, were the sales numbers.  During the month of this campaign they grew monthly sales by 22% (3 or 4% was their normal monthly growth) and 45% of this growth came from new customer accounts.  That’s right, 45% came from new customers.  The strategy proved itself to work very well in driving revenue and customer acquisition.

After the promotion ended?

Mark did not go into the life after the campaign as he had other studies to discuss.  However, in checking out their Facebook page they now have 7,445 fans so we can see the growth rate has not continued.  The coupons plus the use of social media probably provided the largest incentives.  Also note that they are running a new campaign which ends on October 29th, pushing to reach 25,000 fans.  I’ll keep an eye on how this progresses and let you know.

John

My concerns with not feeding the trolls

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One of the laws of social media that I regularly hear is “don’t feed the trolls“.  There is, to be honest, many good reasons for this, including, but not limited to: 

• They waste precious resources, often driving focus away from real issues, real goals.
• They can never be pleased.  They are people that simply want to complain about something.

Alright….  They are noisy, they waste time, and you’re simply going to ignore these trolls anyway….  

However, sometimes people confuse not feeding the trolls with not listening to negative feedback, with those that disagree with their message.  The next time you begin to turn your back on the trolls ask yourself if there is any truth in their message.  Good luck out there. 

John 

The infamous McDonald’s Foursquare Pilot

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I came across a few post about McDonald’s recent experiments with Foursquare so I was curious to dig in and went straight to the source.  I know Rick Wion so I dropped him a note to see how he was doing and what the real story was from his perspective.  While I only know Rick informally I can tell you that, while Rick made a mistake in language when describing the pilot, it was accidental.  In trying to simplify Foursquare he gave the wrong impression leading to some very confusing data.     

However, his approach on this campaign can be learned from as a lot of great work was done that others can leverage.   

The Approach   

Foursquare, GoWalla, Scavngr, Facebook Places, and all the other geo-social applications are new technologies for marketers.  Heck, they are new technologies altogether.  Any organization beginning to use these solutions should take an iterative approach:   

• Learn if customers would benefit by doing a pilot, measuring check-ins. This is simple to setup and is a good starting point.
• If there is interest, setup a second pilot with a larger audience and measure revenue. Does the organization see sufficient return on their investment?
• If the metrics show value to customers and the organization than deploy fully.

As Rick told me the only goal for this first pilot was “…this was a pilot program to gauge how the foursquare community would react to our joining their community”.  Could it have been more?  Yes, but it was not intended to do more than that.   

The results   

McDonald’s achieved a 33% increase in check-ins on Foursquare Day, the day they ran this pilot.  Since the pilot the number of check-ins have increased above the previous average but have not returned to the number seen during the pilot itself.   

Revenue.  Rick could not give me an exact number but it’s fair to say that McDonald’s did not see a 33% increase in revenue, even from those checking in on Foursquare.  However, McDonald’s has seen revenues increase week over week throughout this entire year.  The real question in my mind, which cannot be answered for this pilot, is did they make a positive ROI, was the effort worthwhile?   

This was the first pilot, others will come and in those we will be able to better see if ROI was achieved.  The goals of this first pilot were clearly achieved, however, and I can’t wait to see the next round.  Rick, if you need help setting it up to measure the revenue returned, give me a call, as I know you’re on the right track.  Keep up the great work.   

Related Articles

• McDonald’s Actual Foursquare Test Numbers: 2,865 Check-Ins [Voices] (voices.allthingsd.com)
• Sorry, But McDonald’s Did Not See a 33% Increase in Foot Traffic Because of Foursquare (e1evation.com)
• The Real Story Behind McDonald’s Foursquare Campaign – (by @baekdal) (baekdal.com)
• Sorry, But McDonald’s Did Not See a 33% Increase in Foot Traffic Because of Foursquare (nytimes.com)
• Sorry, But McDonald’s Did Not See a 33% Increase in Foot Traffic Because of Foursquare (readwriteweb.com)
• McDonald’s Actual Foursquare Test Numbers: 2,865 Check-Ins (Christopher Heine/ClickZ) (techmeme.com)
• McDonald’s Foursquare Day Campaign Brought in 33% More Foot Traffic (seome.me)
• McDonald’s Foursquare Day Campaign Brought in 33% More Foot Traffic (mashable.com)
• Case Study: McDonald’s ups foot traffic 33% on Foursquare Day (econsultancy.com)
• McDonald’s social media chief: Foot traffic and check-ins are not the same (econsultancy.com)