Search and Equivalent Value
Jason Falls is considered to be one of the premier listeners in social media. He has written many detailed comparisons of the monitoring tools as well as documented best practices in social media monitoring. Today he wrote a great post which outlines how to determine the value of your social media conversations based on paid search keyword equivalent values. Jason demonstrates the equivalent value of search traffic equivalency (organic value compared to paid search cost per click) with his own blog as an example. By applying the paid search costs to actual traffic garnered from all social media conversations, Jason has determined the equivalent value in website traffic from social media. With some simple arithmetic and further work with web analytics, once could determine actual conversions or goals resulting from social media. This is very encouraging as it helps to put a quantifiable dollar metric on social media and further the ROI conversation.
Lift9 clients are probably nodding their heads as we've often discussed this type of analysis. One thing that we usually provide is a spreadsheet which shows the social media equivalent value as Jason describes above, but we break the keywords out by social media channel.
Social Media Equivalent Value by Channel
Thus, in the above example, we can determine not only value attributable to Twitter and other channels, but also which keywords. This helps clients to understand relevant conversations within the social media channels and how to better prioritize their resources. In the above example, 1/3 of the value of all forum conversations is around pre-sales pricing questions yet customer service conversations are more impactful on Twitter. By using equivalent value, clients can assign pre-sales people to focus on relevant forums and customer service specialists to answer questions on Twitter. Thus, the right experts (and conversations) can be applied to the right channel.
How else could you see equivalent value utilized?
Our Listening Work at Lift9
As part of our sales process, sometimes we create an analysis report to present to our prospect. We'd like to share one so that you can get a better feel for our analysis and how we actually provide the "So What" that gets beyond the pretty graphs. Here is a report that we prepared for Nordstrom focused on a recent promotion they ran tied to the Twilight movie.
We've found that fashion, Twilight or otherwise, is very visual. There is so much opportunity to really engage and measure in this space. Integrating all social media channels works very effectively in promoting an event. Twitter and blogs were excellent channels for marketing the Twilight movie sweepstakes and the New Moon Fashion collection introduction. However, in such a visual environment, results would have been even more impressive if video and imagery had been an integral part of the campaign.
As part of the analysis, we manually compared the activities of a few major retailers(Nordstrom, Macy's, Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue) on Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook. Some retailers are stronger in one channel than another, but none seems to have mastered usage of them all, particularly when the platforms are integrated.
Some of our conclusions:
- These retailers have all taken the first step in incorporating social media as part of their ongoing efforts and should be applauded.
- Fashion is a highly engaging, emotional, consumer oriented category. It is the perfect match for the participatory, engaging nature of social media. Thus, the retailers should be at the forefront of this activity with more dynamic videos, images, blogs, tweets, Facebook and MySpace pages.
- However, all activities must be integrated across the social media platforms and websites.
What do you think about the analysis? What conclusions can you draw from the report?
Timing and Teamwork
John Song of Lift9 presented his thoughts of 'Timing and Teamwork' at the Reinvention Forum last week. Here is a summary and further thoughts by Pam Hoelzle, the founder of the forum.