Tales From the Social Media Front Line

Moving the Needle: Showing the Impact of Your Work

31 March, 2016 | Karen Snyder | No Comment

You can work your butt off posting awesome social media promos, but if you can’t demonstrate the impact of what you’ve done, why should anyone believe that you’re worth your paycheck? It’s challenging to show a direct impact sometimes with social media. The nature of these platforms is that people are browsing, having some fun, and not seriously considering buying anything or registering for something. It’s hard to actually do stuff on your phone (if you’re over 40).

Get creative. Think of all the ways you might be moving the needle. I’ve been diligently tagging URLs with Omniture code to show how much traffic social media is driving to our website. Normally that’s good enough to demonstrate ROI, but we had a situation that was a bit different. We needed to raise awareness of a registration process, and we wanted to try to show that our promotions helped drive registration. Unfortunately, the Omniture data was showing only about 5% of registrations as a direct result of a social media promo. (Which makes, sense, see above.)

The data WAS showing that more than half of traffic was driven by search engines. So I told everyone, “We’re raising AWARENESS of the registration process, and people are then searching for it later to register.” Everyone seemed happy with that explanation, but I needed more. I NEED a chart to prove my point! I can’t prove that the search engine traffic was a result of anything we did. Anything less makes me vaguely uncomfortable. (Note to self: Create a chart for husband’s “Honey Do” list.)

So I thought, “I wonder if we can show some kind of correlation in the number or reach of our promotions to the number of registrations.” I was not optimistic because the weekly results that I had seen didn’t seem to show an impact. Apparently I was only checking the last 2 weeks of the campaign.

The final result chart is impressive but you’re seeing the result of hours of work. We compiled over 200 promos and Press releases to complete the chart. Don’t be discouraged if your first “hunch” doesn’t pay off. Many times it won’t and you’ll end up with a chart that doesn’t make any valuable point at all. Keep trying! It’s worth it in the end.

Posted in enterprise social media, social media metrics, social media ROI, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Why in the World do people use Snapchat?

23 March, 2016 | Karen Snyder | No Comment

I had dinner with my nephews the other night and the topic turned (as it usually does with Aunt Karen) to social media. Snapchat came up. I was interested to learn about the “Faceswaps” because I’ve seen some wacky Buzzfeed posts about those lately. I didn’t realize they are a Snapchat thing. They are pretty freaking hilarious.

creepy snapchat face swap

They remind me of the “gene machine” creepy face merge photo booth from Dave & Busters.

dave and busters gene machine

Here’s the primary reasonwhy the “young’uns” are using Snap Chat: “My parents are on Facebook, I don’t want to post anything there.”

And to my protests of “but snap chat disappears” my younger nephew responded:

“I don’t need to save my memories, because I’m not using it to communicate anything important.”

Part of me wonders if this is a phenomenon of the “participant trophy” generation? I’m competitive, I like to see how many “likes” and “shares” I can garner. But I confess that what I tend to post on Facebook is not very real…I tend to gloss over life’s daily disappointments and only post Glamour Shots.

My nephew uses Snapchat the way that my husband and I use text. To send casual comments or images that aren’t “important” enough for Facebook. When I asked how brands make money on Snapchat, my nephews showed me some interested “branded” filters. They both seemed to like the “Batman vs. Superman” filter. From what I could tell, branded filters are the best way to reach the snapchat audience, although there’s also local lists. And wouldn’t you know it, today I saw an article from Ad Age:

To Big Brands, From a Millennial: Snapchat Filters Are Where It\’s At Three Steps Companies Can Take to Sponsor Snapchat Filters

And now there’s even another platform that I hadn’t heard of, “Yik Yak” (I’m afraid to Google it since I hear it’s also a fave of child predators…)

Yik Yak is anonymous, so no one even knows it you who is posting. When I asked why this is appealing, my nephew responded “I like that it’s anonymous, there’s no pressure.” I confess I do see the appeal in those creepy Face Swaps, though.

Posted in fun, New platforms, social media case study, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Don’t Just Measure, Measure Everything

1 February, 2013 | Karen Snyder | No Comment

OK, maybe Ivana wasn’t talking about social media metrics, but I like saying the title to this post in my best Ivana Trump accent.

Managing a large federal social media program has been a learning process. It’s all well and good to think up clever posts and tweets, monitor daily, and engage with fans. But if you can’t demonstrate the value of your program to management, then eventually nobody will see the point in keeping your program around.

There are lots of conferences and Web seminars that promise how to teach me how to demonstrate ROI to management (for a hefty price tag). I’ve been to some of these, and they’re a waste of time. There is no “one size fits all” method to metrics, it’s really all about what matters to your management.

For example, one of our clients is all about numbers, she really likes the solid quantitative metrics. Her boss is more interested in the larger buzz trends and the top influencers. And yet another program has very high visibility (and is a critical client for us.) We always need to be ready to show wins there.

So, how do we prepare for the periodic (inevitable) call to present our success? We keep track of everything. Because you never know exactly where the wins are going to show up and what trends are going to emerge. One month we might see a record number of Facebook clicks. The next month might be the biggest jump in YouTube views ever. Another month might be the highest Twitter reach…you get the idea. And those are just the quantitative metrics, there’s also the anecdotal. We constantly take screenshots of interesting user comments. Sometimes we’ll use them, sometimes we won’t, but we never know what we will be able to use.

I have a monster Google Doc spreadsheet that I keep updated every month. Some of the running metrics I tally are:

Number of tweets per month
Total reach of tweets that month
Average Reach Per Tweet
Number of Facebook Fans Talking about us this month
Reach of Facebook Posts this month
Facebook clicks
YouTube minutes watched
YouTube engagement
Bitly clickthroughs

My monster social media metrics spreadsheet: it keeps growing!

Posted in enterprise social media, social media metrics, social media planning, social media ROI, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Advanced New Media Strategies Conference

10 December, 2010 | Karen Snyder | No Comment

I recently attended the “Advanced New Media Strategies Conference” for Federal agencies in Alexandria, VA. There were lots of great Social Media case studies, both internal and external.

Here are my notes from some of the highlights of the conference:

Why Use Social Media?
• To be alerted when the organization is mentioned
• To create a dialogue with the public
• To join the conversation and bring credibility
• To increase workforce engagement and knowledge transfer

With social media you cannot control the conversations, you can only hope to control the effect of the message by staying in the conversation

EXTERNAL SOCIAL MEDIA: SUCCESS STORIES

CDC
Last year CDC was actively listening and monitoring to correct misinformation about swine flu. Now, Facebook fans of the CDC page step in to correct misinformation, for example, myths about autism; CDC doesn’t even have to respond.

The FCC
• Participates on a dozen social networks. 650,000 people have engaged with them online in the past year. They’ve fielded over 45,000 comments on their platforms

Building Developer Community / Open Gov
• FCC.gov/developer: build community around data and people engaging with data. Get feedback from developers.
• They crowdsource the data and enable the API for people to build apps from it. (e.g., app people could download to measure their broadband speed.)
• Opened up rulemaking for enlightenment from the public.
• Publish content into HTML and Blogs instead of PDFs
• Restructure the way the gov. shares information online “measure by participation and impact”

Bureau of the Census used Social Media channels to correct myths and respond to controversy.

IRS is leveraging Social Media for recruiting, targeting a younger audience.

FDA leveraged podcasts, videos and mobile phone apps to share their messages about Tobacco – messaging across as many platforms as possible. (65% of Adults need to hear a message 3-5 times before they believe it)

US Airforce
• Significant presence: 150 Facebook accounts, 90 Twitter accounts, 15 flickr accounts. Decentralized: “let the airmen tell the story for them.”
• They have been engaged so long they’re trying to avoid going into a “Sophomore Slump”
• Social Media Team responsibilities:
o Research (identify the “next Facebook”)
o Reputation Management (monitoring, responding, outreach)
o Assessment: Metrics analysis (helps drive strategy)
• Problem: Executives fear that Social Media poses a security risk and is a waste of time Solution: Counter with education, workshops and conferences

US Navy: Best Practices
• 230,000 Facebook Fans
• “Micro Content” – break existing Web content into pieces
• Custom content created for social networks
• Relevant stories from other sources
• Photo of the week – vote for your favorite photo
• Recognition of individual contributors – highlight on a weekly basis.
• Historical events
• Question of the week
• Status update, updated at least weekly
• “Interviews” with top executives – send them 5 questions and post the answers verbatim
• Need a team approach to publishing (for backup)
• Use google calendar for a content calendar
• Spread news out throughout the day, post in AM then in afternoon.
• Sometimes repeat the same messages.
• Make external social media as personal as possible: people want to be a fan of a person, not an agency (from Steve Ressler of Govloop)

Dept. of Labor: Outreach Ideas
• Sec. of Labor blog, video diaries of travels use Facebook to answer email FAQs in 24 hours: use as a customer service tool to better connect with people
• Embed a Flickr URL in press releases, makes pics available to reporters
• Use a FlipCam to do on-the-spot interviews
• Instead of traveling for speeches: record them and put them on YouTube (a 9-minute video got 13,000 views)
• OpEds: Customized 91 OpEds with a link to the speech, special custom flash page with video, map of OpEds, Radio Shows and Print Interviews
• Create “a day in the life of” video series

INTERNAL SOCIAL MEDIA

Success Stories:
• DoD Used and Internal Wiki, “Intellipedia” to develop their social media policy – Someone said “it’s going to take 2 years.” Within 24 hours had 200 subject matter experts collaborating on the document. Within 76 hours had the bulk of the core document finished. After 5 months of reviews the bulk of the core document had not changed.

• Nuclear Regulatory Commission had 3900 collective years of experience leaving the agency every year, needed to capture that knowledge – so they started an Internal Social Network. They are #1 best place to work in Federal government.

• State Department created an internal collaboration platform
o Foreign service officers move every 2 years — needed institutional knowledge
o 12,500 articles on the internal Wiki
o 45,000 pageviews a week (after 3 years)
o Professional Networking: you can identify expertise and link to your content
o Reverse mentoring with millenials
o Beta group of 300…”invite 10 friends

• “NASA@Work” is an internal collaboration tool. When it comes to suggestions about internal business process improvement, they need to plan for resources to move the ideas through the system.

Failures: “If you build it, they may not come”
• Air Force built an internal social network but NO ONE IS USING IT — Demonstrates the importance of a community manager.
• NASA Spacebook is widely considered to be a failure

Choosing a Platform: Evaluate Culture and Objectives
• If you’re going for “discoverability” and want random people to join the community, then it should be more Web based and agile.
• If you need locked-down documents and version control then you’ll want Sharepoint, which has latency issues for remote users.

GovLoop: Best Practices for Building Community
• Building audience and engagement is very difficult
• “Spend as much on community management as on the technology”

Tags: case studies, external, federal, internal
Posted in social media case study, Uncategorized | No Comments »

“Do Social Media” = “Collect Underpants”

31 January, 2010 | Karen Snyder | 4 Comments

The hype around social media just seems to be growing. But as the initial glow of this new medium wears off, it’s going to be up to us to prove the ROI of social media. (Thanks to Steve Mann for showing me some great case studies about smart companies who are doing it right). But the trick is finding the formula that clicks for each individual company. There is no “one size fits all” when it comes to social media – you need to tailor the solution to your particular needs. This is not an easy task and it’s not easy to demonstrate ROI while you are formulating and executing your strategy.

Have fortitude, my social media kindred. Refuse to let your stakeholders consider number of HITS a metric (they are “How Idiots Track Success,” according to K.D. Paine). Help them understand the real social media metrics like buzz volume, buzz sentiment and engagement (Mike Manuel, social media genius, can teach you more about metrics). But at the same time, realize that as cool as it is to show how many followers you have on Twitter, how many fans you have on Facebook, and how much buzz you’re generating, at the end of the day, the people who write your paycheck will want to see the impact to the bottom line.

**Speaking of one size fits all…

The daily influx of invites to Webinars and conferences promising to show me the Holy Grail of Social Media Success remind me of the South Park episode about the “Underpants Gnomes” that are stealing Tweek’s underwear. One of my favorite South Park moments is the Gnomes’ business plan:

We all get the endless invitations to paid Webinars claiming to teach us how Social Media will make us successful. The truth they don’t want you to know is that nobody can give you the magic formula to “do social media.” STOP WASTING YOUR MONEY. You just need to figure out how to listen to what people are saying about you, and then how to join the conversation. Yes, there are lots of ways to do this, and it’s not always easy to figure out which way is the right way. It takes some time and effort. There is no quick fix or easy salvation — if anyone suggests you do a “viral video” run the other way – FAST! With all the tools and technologies out there, the task is daunting. But if you go for the quick fix, you may as well use this as your business plan:

Tags: K.D. Paine, Mike Manuel, South Park, Steve Mann
Posted in social media campaign, social media metrics, social media planning, social media ROI, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Capturing Leads and Tracking Conversations on Twitter

19 July, 2009 | Karen Snyder | 2 Comments

Here at VeriSign, we’ve proven that Twitter can be used to capture sales leads and make sales. But we are also seeing all kinds of other interactions that happen on Twitter. These include:

Requests for information / help with products
Suggestions for product features (e.g., “VIP iPhone app should work on iPod Touch!”)
General industry questions
Media inquiries and commentary
Customers needing some TLC
Interesting news articles or Tweets to share

Getting Started

Before you start, you’ll need to do a search on your brand to see what kind of mentions it is getting. http://search.twitter.com will find all mentions, which you may want to catalog in your own spreadsheet because it only seems to archive about a month’s worth of data. But you can still find a Tweet using more specific keywords on Google to find tweets, because, much like a diamond, a Tweet is forever! (even if you delete a Tweet from your Twitter stream, it’s going to show up on Google!)

Tools for Tracking Conversations

1. Bit.ly: Bit.ly can be used for shortening any URLs. You can even create custom Bit.ly Urls, but keep track of what you create because Bit.ly won’t track those for you. And beware the inflated Bit.ly stats which do not filter out hits from bots / spiders, etc. More on that here from Hutch Carpenter. And Tac Anderson is a great blogger to follow if you want to keep up on the latest cool tools – he is great filter for the (too much) information that’s out there.
2. Tracking Codes: We use Visual Sciences on our VeriSign.com so if we append an “SL code” to a URL that we send out, and someone visits the VeriSign.com site, we know where they came from. So, the URL we send looks like this: www.verisign.com/industrybriefs?sl=12345. Using these helps us keep track of traffic that we send over from Twitter.

Capturing Sales Leads

Our leads from Twitter were getting lost in the Siebel Sales database becuase we had no way of tracking. The “traditional” way of capturing leads is that a prospective customer fills ut a landing page. We persuaded the Direct Marketing team that people engaging with us on Twitter are in no mind set to fill out a form if they wanted more info, and they are allowing us to fill in the form ourselves, as long as the potential customer approves it. Now that’s progress! Now all we need is our own cool little “Twitter Leads” form. I’ll keep you posted on how it’s going.

Keeping track of Resources

Many of the interactions I mentioned above need to be shared internally with the right people, and then communicated back out. We’re talking a serious time commitment here. But how to show the “higher ups” what resources are necessary? I’ve worked with my colleague (@AllenKelly) to come up with a system that should help us with this. More on this after we try it out for a bit.

Tags: tracking conversations, tracking leads, twitter
Posted in social media metrics, social media planning, social media ROI, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Reaping the Rewards of your Blogging Efforts

6 July, 2009 | Karen Snyder | 3 Comments

You’ve been valiantly foraging through the social media wilderness, publishing blog posts and Tweeting your heart out. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the fruits of your labor? Here are a few tools I use to track blog success. I started using these methods for our Corporate Social Media efforts but they work for personal blogs and Tweets, as well. Don’t forget: the key social media metrics are sentiment and level of engagement (e.g., number of blog post comments, trackbacks.) Or are you simply wondering “why do I need a Web site, a blog, and a Twitter account?”

Tracking “Micro-Metrics” for Blogs

1. Feedburner allows me to see how many subscribers I have, enable blog subscription via email, and add the “share this” feature for each post. They provide a snippet of code for me to insert into the blog template, and instructions for Moveable Type and WordPress.

2. Google Analytics offers a myriad of data, but I usually focus on the following data points:

Percentage of readers arriving through search. If it’s below 30% we need to better optimize the blogs for search: I remind bloggers to focus on the keywords in the post title and body, leverage the “categories.”
Keywords bringing people to the blogs. This data usually provides a nice ego boost for our bloggers, since the primary keywords bringing traffic to each blog are usually the bloggers’ names. Ideally the top keywords would be industry / product terms. Or simply “VeriSign.”
Time spent reading posts. Less than a minute means the user found little value in the content. I like to see readers spending at least 2 minutes on each post. One blogger had readers spending about 6 minutes on each post, which I shared with all of our bloggers. Another blogger (jealously?) pointed out “his posts are really long.”
Referring sites. Is there some site helping you out that you did not know about? Where are users coming from? This will help you tailor your content to appeal to those folks.
Bounce Rate and Exit rate. A high bounce rate means the content on the page the user landed on was not interesting to them. They came, they saw, they left your domain. Conversely, the exit rate is the measure of how many people left a page, and then went elsewhere on your site – that particular page was not too exciting, but they were interested enough to look further. You should worry about a consistently high bounce rate and consider how to make that landing page a little juicer. This is why it helps to know what keywords people are searching on, and what the referring sites are. There is a nice explanation of these terms on SEOlogs.com.

Coming soon… “Capturing Sales Leads and Tracking Conversations on Twitter”

Tags: blog metrics, micro-metrics
Posted in social media metrics, social media planning, social media ROI, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

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