Social Media Wish List for 2012

January 1, 2012 2 Comments

Wish List

Photo courtesy of Plindberg on Flickr

While 2011 was a banner year for social media growth in the business world, those of us in the profession are still struggling with measuring the results of our efforts. In the hopes that 2012 will bring us functional tools for analyzing all that data, here’s my early wish list for Santa in 2012. If you have a recommendation for a tool for any of the items mentioned on my list, feel free to comment and post your links. I welcome your suggestions! And Santa, I promise to be good all year.

Fan Interest Graphing

Facebook insights, for example, gives us information on our fan page demographics such as age, gender, where likes came from (external referrers) and such, there’s still no good way to see and graph the interests (likes) of our fans. Say for example, a majority of your fans are interested in skiing. Providing content on the topic could help keep them engaged and sharing. So far none of the free services I’ve found give us a way to access this data so it’s included here on my wish list.

Social Media Dashboard

While tools like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Social Mention and Google Alerts allow us to track and analyze Key Performance Indicators (KPI), I’d like a tool that allows me to aggregate all my social media accounts and posts on one dashboard and then share that dashboard with fans and followers. If you’re interested in tracking dashboards, Barry Hurd’s blog post on Social Media Dashboards give a good outline of the tools available now for tracking conversations. Here’s your chance to make a suggestion if you have a favorite tool for tracking, or for setting up a magazine-like page for all your streams.

Trending Data

I’d like a way to see what was trending in, say, New Orleans, for a date in the past. Twitter’s trending tools allow us to see what’s trending now, and what’s trending in a particular location, but not both location and date specific. At least, I’ve not yet found a good tool to do this. Any suggestions?

Ranking System by Industry

Even though there’s a lot of eye rolling when it comes to discussing metrics like Klout in the social media communities, it does offer some valuable insights. The problem lies in measuring everyone against everyone else, Justin Beiber included. I’d like to know how my clients measure against others in their industry. Since Klout uses the influence of your followers as part of the metric, B2B companies looking to engage with small, niche businesses will naturally have lower Klout scores than B2C companies able to engage highly influential followers. Again, if you have a suggestion feel free to let me know.

Social Media Workflow Tools

I know that Hootsuite allows for post coordination under its paid version, which I’ve not tried. I have heard good things about BufferApp.Com and it looks like collaboration tools are included in the free version. Scheduling posts to fan pages is part of the paid version. While the free dashboard Tweetdeck does allow scheduling to all accounts collaboration tools are absent. Any suggestions?

As the year progresses I’m sure my list will change as fast as the landscape of social media changes. As always, I welcome your comments and ideas here, on Twitter @suereynolds or on Facebook.

Happy New Year!

Filed under Business, Facebook, social media Tagged with , , , , ,

Social Media Trends for 2012

November 16, 2011 5 Comments

Now is the time when the media folks start making their predictions for 2012 so I’d better get on board.  Based on the trends I’ve seen in 2011, the conversations I’m having with clients and the widening gap between what we need and what we have, here are my thoughts on what will be trending in social media in 2012.

Content Curation

This was a trend for 2011 and I don’t see it going away. As social spaces become more crowded and filled with noise (and those pesky Klout seekers,) content curators will become a more important part of the stream. Curators that take the time to review the content before passing it on will become a valuable resource for peer reviewed articles. Taking cues from these curators, brands will become part of the de facto news media as they curate and stream relevant content to their followers.

Social Media Analytics

I’m amazed that we still don’t have a good way to track and analyze the data available to us in social media. As social media budgets increase and more time is devoted to these spaces, demand for analyzing all that data will become more pronounced. The problem is we’re still relying on APIs that are flawed and even (as Twitter admits) purposely throttled. Manual tracking is still the most accurate. While tools like Crowdbooster and Hubspot are promising, it is still very difficult to analyze the data and the trends well enough to structure spending decisions around it. I predict we’ll make progress toward a solution in 2012.

Tech Marketing

Many businesses struggle with where to house the social media team. Many land in the marketing department, which can cut them off from access to the technology they need to do their jobs effectively, not to mention run the risk of becoming too “marketing” in their messaging. As social media becomes more integrated into business I believe we’ll see an integration of marketing and IT. In my corporate position I’m housed with IT, which I believe is crucial. I have access to designers, SEO analysts, programmers and WordPress developers, so if I need a Facebook tab, help with optimizing a blog or the latest keyword research, I can just turn around and ask. Many social media professionals are housed in marketing departments, siloed away from IT functions. Some are dealing with an IT department housed offsite or even overseas. Time differences and lack of access to data make it difficult for these professionals to work quickly and effectively so I think we’ll start to see a convergence of IT and marketing as we increase our social technology.

Decentralized Social Media

Rather than siloed in one department (marketing or IT) I envision social media becoming part of many roles in business. For example, expect to see more customer service departments using Twitter with accounts like @name_brandname monitoring the brand with keyword analysis and intervening when needed. These folks will report to a social media strategist overseeing a team of tweeters. This is a move toward what I call the social transformation of business. Although I’m sure I didn’t coin the term, it describes a paradigm shift in the way businesses will organize in the next several years. As consumers demand less traditional marketing, more access to immediate feedback and better service, businesses will answer the call by incorporating social principals into their practices.

These are my predictions. What did I miss?

Filed under Business, Marketing, social media Tagged with , , , ,

Have Social Media Analysts Gone Crazy?

June 22, 2011 5 Comments

Sometimes I think if I hear the word “engage” one more time I’m going to scream. Please understand. I’m in a unique position where I interact with social media “experts” selling their services daily. I’ve seen their bios and I’ve read their tweets. There’s a lot of excitement over “engagement” and sentiment analysis and there’s a “wild west” sort of mentality where self proclaimed experts are rushing in to fill the void.

In some ways we’re all guilty of it, we social media professionals. We use words like “engage” and “connect” and “brand relationship.”  There are legitimate firms out there taking good money for building Facebook pages and developing Twitter strategies and then reporting back to their clients on sentiment, number of followers and “engagement.”

There is some truth to these numbers so I don’t want to completely minimize their importance. These tools allow us to measure our fans’ and followers’ interaction or *wince* engagement with our brand. We can see, in granular detail, what people click on, what they comment on, when they visit, what they “like.”  Social media firms put together glossy reports on this stuff and tailor their strategies to it and it looks and feels like important information and in some ways it is. In a lot of ways though, it isn’t.

Snake Oil

Image courtesy of rankmagic.com

It’s snake oil.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Numbers of followers and sentiment can’t measure the success of your social media strategy. Clear through the hysteria and hype and remember that there is a person at the other end of that tweet or Facebook post. That person represents a potential or current customer or in a B2B environment, a representative for a business prospect. What do they care about? What can we do to help them? Of course, the most important question is, are they going to buy from you and then tell their friends about it? How do we get them to do that?

Businesses need social media analysts with a deep understanding of social media tools and how to use them to foster these relationships. They need people with a business background and an understanding of marketing principals, search engine optimization skills, good grammar and spelling (yes that matters) and a genuine passion for people and their profession. They need specialists that can measure how all this can and will translate into more business.

There are lots of talented social media professionals out there that can offer this to their clients. Whether it is training on the tools or a session on strategy, these professionals can help businesses succeed in this “wild west” environment. If you do decide to take the plunge, make sure you’re working with one of them. Make sure they’re offering you real bottom line value.

I’d love to hear your stories. What, as a business owner, are you looking for in a consultant? Comment here, or send me a tweet @suereynolds or leave me a post on my Facebook page.

Filed under Business, Facebook, Marketing, social media, Twitter Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

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