Tuesday, January 20, 2009

At the Detroit / Novi Tweetup


What: Novi Tweetup
When: Monday, January 19 2009

I didn't know what to expect in attending this event, since I had never been to a tweetup before. It turned out to be a good time and a good learning experience - different perspectives from a lot of different people.

It included marketing and PR people as expected, but there were a number of IT people there, as well as a group of folks who do CG animation, and at least one Detroit radio voice.

I met a number of people I'd like to hang out with again, and will certainly make the next gathering.

For more information, see Brandon Chesnutt's twitter stream - he should have the complete list of attendees posted sometime soon. Thanks much to Ken for putting it together, and Shannon for getting the word out to so many people.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Social Media Marketing: ROI, Engagement and Influence


If you need to make the case within your organization for spending more on social media channels, or if you want some ammo when the dreaded "ROI" topic comes up, this pdf by David Meerman Scott is worth a look. The language is somewhat hyped and the discussion is almost entirely anecdotal, but it does serve up some good food for thought.

Scott's initial case study is Matt Harding's YouTube video of himself doing a goofy dance in places all over the world. Whatever your take on the video and it's coma-inducing soundtrack, it does beg the question, "What is the ROI of 11 million happy people?"

Scott's points are:
  • Measuring only "sales leads" is counterproductive, since requiring contact information from people downloading your content significantly reduces the number of people who bother.
  • The whole point is to get your ideas (and by extension your message and your brand) in front of as many people as possible, which means being less obtrusive.
  • You can measure how many people view your content and assume some percentage will buy your products.
  • Giving away content and encouraging sharing of it vastly increases the number of people who will see it.
Another quick read is Aaron Uhrmacher's Mashable post on ROI. He includes some resources (such as Google Analytics) that allow you to quantify the things you can, and offers some qualitative metrics to consider as well.

Finally, Jeremiah Owyang and Matt Toll's whitepaper on "Tracking The Influence"captures a more in-depth discussion about the differences between "participation" and "influence". While you can find ways to track the number of people who are engaged with your ideas/message/brand, determining how much your efforts influence them is much more slippery.

If you just skim Owyang & Toll's paper, be sure to check out the resources section at the end. It includes a link to their wiki from the roundtable, as well as a number of other resources for in-depth study.

(Photo credit: Christopher Thomas)

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Up and away...



The blog is now up & ready for posting! This post is just a placeholder so we can verify that the blog summary is showing up on Feedburner and on the Midwest Social Media Group site.