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)

Vietnam seems to understand Government 2.0

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Government 2.0 is a citizen-centric philosophy and strategy that believes the best results are usually driven by partnerships between citizens and government, at all levels.  It is focused entirely on achieving goals through increased efficiency, better management, information transparency, and citizen engagement and most often leverages newer technologies to achieve the desired outcomes. Government 2.0 is bringing business approaches, business technologies, to government. (as defined by me )

Vietnam is launching a program next year, investing $90 million dollars which, beginning in 2015 they expect to create annual returns of up to $1.5 billion.  Dr Phung Van On, Director, IT Center, Office of the Government, states that “To make it work, the government has proposed a comprehensive plan to ensure there is the appropriate legal framework, the right financing, human resources and implementation strategy.”    A top down goal-oriented approach that recognizes the following is key:

• You must invest money in training, technology, and people if you are to drive real change.
• Laws must be clarified for all those working to drive change.  In some cases laws may need to be modified, through proper channels of course, to support growth.
• Technology will often be a key enabler.  In fact, the majority of the savings Vietnam expects to see will come from a shift to the web for everything from citizens paying taxes to government acquisitions.

While we must wait a few  years before we know if the ROI being predicted is achieved it is clear that the country is already benefiting from the government 2.0 philosophy.  The Vietnamese tech sector, as noted in the article,”.. grew by 20 per cent (to US$6.26 billion) in 2009 despite the global economic downturn, and the government is targeting three times GDP growth through to 2020.”

Are outcomes guaranteed?  No, nothing in life is for sure.  However, a strategic approach with intelligent investment will deliver results. 

John

Related Articles

• It’s time for a new version of government (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
• Steve Ressler: New Snapshot of Gov 2.0′s Evolution (huffingtonpost.com)
• Transcript of an interview about Government 2.0 (clubtroppo.com.au)
• The Five Branches Of Government 2.0 (rohitbhargava.com)

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)

  

VistaPrint is generating revenue through social media

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Want to learn more about Twitter? Check out Laura Fitton’s book, Twitter for Dummies (affiliate link):

Companies still don’t get social media ROI, but do it anyway

Great post with great information. If you have time make sure to give this a read.

 Most companies these days do social media today (In a recent survey, nearly 72% of marketers say they use social media – see survey below). Now, don’t get me wrong, I know the tangible benefits that social media brings to a company, but not having clear goals before engaging in social media nor having an accurate way to measure it is probably one of the main reasons for companies to abandon social media when they find “it’s not working”! Companie … Read More

via Mario Sundar

The Social Ecosystem: The biggest barrier to success? Education

The biggest barrier to organizations being successful within The Social Ecosystem is simply the need for education.  The lack of awareness, the lack of knowledge, is holding back many organizations.  In chatting with organizations across the public and private sector I am constantly encountering confusion.  People know the problems they are encountering.  These are real, these are personal, and people struggle with them daily.  However:

• Organizations often do not understand that solutions exist for these problems.
• Organizations often have the wrong information about the solutions that exist.  As examples:
  • The recent report stating that Facebook has cost Britain billions.  The article goes so far as to state “Despite the negative effects on the economy in the midst of a fragile recovery, many workers polled were in denial about the ill-effects of social media on their efficiency.”   The assumption, of course, is that all time spent on social networks, or within social communities, is unproductive, lost time.  Even if this were the case, which it is not, this kind of thinking should also go towards banning bathroom breaks, the possession or personal cell phones at the office, and, for those that are easily distracted,windows.  I digress…
  • However,  people often go too far the other way.  There are no silver bullets, social business strategies, tactics, and tools  cannot be used to solve every problem. 

Alright, what are some good ways to educate people on the benefits of using social business strategies?

• Find case studies that are relevant to the goals of the organization.  While I have many case studies and interviews there are clearly others out there.  The case studies should be for similar organizations trying to meet similar goals.  Anything else will lead to confusion.
• If your competition is using these strategies and techniques, point out what they are doing and try to quantify how that is differentiating them in the market, the value they are achieving.
• Create a business case.  Yes, a business case.  People in leadership positions will take you seriously if you have done your homework.  Put together a business case (my template is here) and present it professionally.
• Share books on the topic, pointing to information from those who have done this for a while.

Understand, however, that there are some people that will not be convinced, regardless of the strength of your case.  When this does happen you have a couple of choices.  You can either accept that things will not change or you can move onto something new.  Either way, if you try to make the case, providing the education, you have made a great start.

John

If you need help from The Lab, give me a call.

Podcast with Michael Wu on Social Anthropology and The Social Ecosystem

Michael is a Principal Research Scientist at Lithium Technologies and spends his time focused on the dynamics of communities, the roles of influencers, and social anthropology.  Michael and I caught up to discuss how this all fits together and his insights can be heard on this 30 minute podcast.

John

If you need help from The Lab give me a call..

A checklist: Engagement Guidelines for The Social Organization

We have explored the attributes of  The Social Organization earlier in this series and I now wanted to take a moment to give guidance for any Social Organization on how they are expected to behave, their rules of the social networking road.

• All accounts on all channels must identify their relationship to the Social Organization.  In other words, be honest, no guerilla marketing where you praise the company you work for without admitting you work for that company.
• Accepted Use Guidelines must be clearly posted on all channels.
• An ongoing training program must exist for all employees who engage with The Social Customer.  New channels and evolving norms require The Social Organization to regularly train their employees.
• All channels must be treated the same for customer service, no line jumping can occur.
• Leverage processes and/or tools to distribute knowledge throughout the organization to increase the speed at which information is delivered through the social units and to the social customers.
• The Social Organization must measure customer satisfaction at each touch point.  This information must be used to modify internal practices as needed.
• Publish customer satisfaction data publicly so that it is available on all channels.

I am sure this list is incomplete, what would you add?  What would you change?

John

If you need help from The Lab, drop me a note. If you would like to view more case studies and interviews, or just want to read about The Social Ecosystem, click on the links and let me know your thoughts.

An excellent video, Social Media in the UK in 2010

The folks at SimplyZesty.com have done an outstanding job with this video and you should watch it.  The statistic that caught my eye?  Users coming from Social Media sites are 10 times more likely to buy something on your site than those coming from some other place (71% versus 7%).  The Social Customer lives.

John

If you need help from The Lab, drop me a note. If you would like to view more case studies and interviews, or just want to read about The Social Ecosystem, click on the links and let me know your thoughts.

Getting started within The Social Ecosystem, a checklist

Last November I built a short series to help organizations with their 2010 Social Media Plan.  The series was well received and I think we all learned a lot in the process of writing and commenting back and forth.

Sometimes, however, it really helps to boil things down to a simple checklist, keeping it simple to execute and simple to understand.  I was really excited when I saw Andrew Wilson, Web and New Media at Federal Government – HHS – SAMHSA, post a really good checklist for getting started with Social Media.  I immediately reached out to Andrew to see if I could build off of his checklist to give something to help people within The Social Ecosystem and he was nice enough to agree (Thanks Andrew).

Before we construct the checklist it is important to keep in mind that you must always define your goals up front.  No checklist is perfect on its own.  While it is a great guideline, it is only that, it needs to be modified  to meet the goals you have set forth.

The target audience for this checklist is individuals, groups, or organizations that have no real social media presence and who are seeking to get started.  This is a great starting point for this audience because it focuses on no cost tools and minimal time investment while seeking to maximize your return.  Now, it is true that you get what you pay for and that, as  you progress within The Social Ecosystem you will outgrow this checklist and the tools we discuss.  However, since we are including measurement and goal setting you will be able to decide when you are growing out of this framework and need to move into the Advanced Checklist

Goal Setting

• What are you trying to do?  Are  you just trying to learn about the platforms or is this part of an individual or organization effort.
• What does success look like a month from now?  What does failure look like a month from now?
  • At the beginning focus on simple measures like # of retweets, number of followers, number of fans.  Do not focus on lead generation in month one, you will fail.
• Check out the Social Media Guidelines put together on Mass.gov as the State of Massachusetts has done a nice job providing toolkits for various social media accounts, for security, and for legal guidance.

Setup

To minimize daily execution time you want your social media channels and monitoring setup at the beginning.  I urge you to set up the following channels and, if possible, use the same account name, logos, and profile descriptions throughout. Each channel is simply a way for you to interact with your audience, your customers, your citizens, and they expect a consistent experience.

• Create an account on Twitter.  Andrew notes “The Government Social Media Subcouncil Wiki has links to many good guidance docs, including EPA’s Twitter guidance which can be found at http://govsocmed.pbworks.com/EPA-Social-Media-Guidance-Documents“
• Create an account and page on Facebook. If you are a B2C Organization or a Local Government this is a must have in my opinion.  Others can skip this.
• Create a YouTube account.  Check out the great Youtube toolkit put together by Mass.gov. If your organization is not yet ready to deliver content on YouTube skip this setup.  Most organizations at this stage are not ready so do not feel bad if you fall into this category.
• Create a Slideshare account. Andrew’s post does a great job of leveraging Slideshare for sharing a Word document. You can leverage Slideshare for PowerPoints and other content as well.
• Create a Foursquare and Gowalla account.  If you are a B2C Organization or a Local Government this is a must have in my opinion.  Others can skip this.

Andrew nails it when he discusses setting up free monitoring solutions.  Simply copying what he has already proposed for completeness:

• Google Reader: Set up a Google Reader account for your organization (http://www.google.com/reader).   This will be used as the hub to monitor social media activity
• Twitter Search: Search on three terms relevant to your organization & add to Google Reader (http://search.twitter.com/). 
  • These terms could be the name of your organization, its acronym, issues relevant to your mission or issues that are of particular relevance or importance. Multiple word searches should use quotes. Click the “Feed for this Query” icon at the top right to add each of these to your Google Reader account.
• Google Alerts: Search on three terms relevant to your organization & add to Google Reader (http://www.google.com/alerts).These could be the same words as for the Twitter search but it alternate terms can be used. Relevant settings should be: Type: Everything – this will catch news, blogs, video, etc.Deliver to: Feed

Personally, I still rely on Google Reader as I have set up feeds for dozens of my favorite blogs and scan this at least twice daily.

Execution

Minimize execution time, that is part of the focus of this checklist.  Andrew proposed a 20 minute daily process which is perfect for starting out.  As you begin to see results you will want to double this, spending 20 minutes just before, or just after, lunch and 20 minutes at the end of the day.

• Monitor (10 min): As Andrew suggests, “Read through feed items in Google Reader.   If you don’t get through everything, mark the remainder as read. Watch for and note individuals that are getting significant attention or appear to be either strong advocates or critics of your organization or work.”
• Post (5 min): As Andrew notes post at least once daily on the accounts you have set up (most likely just Twitter).
  • If you found an article in Google Reader that is relevant to your audience share it.
  • If your organization is already blogging and has posted something new, share it.
  • DO NOT tell your audience what you had for lunch everyday either.  In time you want to personalize your efforts but when starting out focus on adding value in terms of sharing great content.
• Engage (5 min): I agree completely with Andrew when he notes “Find ways to interact and begin building community.  Example could Retweeting (RT) other accounts, finding new accounts to follow, thanking new followers, thanking people for mentioning your organization or your work.”
  • If you find other news sources that you should monitor add them back to your Google Reader feed.

Measurement

At the beginning of this process  we discussed the need to define your goals, define what success and failure looks like.  Every month, take 30 minutes to review:

• Are you executing as planned?  If you are going over the suggested time,  or not executing daily, than you are failing.  Correct this immediately. 
• Review what success and failure is supposed to look like, in terms of real numbers, at this point.  Set your targets for next month.
  • For the first three months only focus on simple measures, only focus on following the checklist above.

Every three months step back and have a longer review session and ask yourself:

• Is this effort worthwhile?   In the majority of cases the answer will be Yes.  However, the answer is not YES for every individual and every organization so answer this question.
• Are you ready to become truly strategic in your approach?  In the beginning of this process you are not truly strategic in the sense that you have not yet mapped  your efforts to higher level individual or organizational goals.

Some will never need to go beyond this level of investment.  However, through goal setting and measurement/review you will be able to make an informed decision if, and when, it is time to take this to another level.

John

If you need help from The Lab, drop me a note. If you would like to view more case studies and interviews, or just want to read about The Social Ecosystem, click on the links and let me know your thoughts.