Analytics Is King

Understanding Motivations in Social Media

4 Apr 2011
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Influence Tom Webster online influence radian6 social 2011 user conference social media social media influence

We're all a mixture of different skill sets. Some of us come from an analytical background. Others come from a pure communications background. Still others come from a political science background. The fact of the matter is that we all need to be a little bit of all things. What's the ideal make-up look like?

Sociologist - Understanding how offline societies interact often helps us determine how online societies will perform.
Psychologist - This goes without saying, but understanding human behaviors is critical. If I put out a piece of content, how is someone going to "feel" about it? (full disclosure: my dad was a forensic psychologist. I tried to major in psychology but, well, quickly changed after the first class. :) )
Communicator - Obviously, right? You don't need to come from the traditional PR background, but you need to have strong interpersonal communications skills to succeed in social media (really any profession). This also includes the ability to write, and write well.
Ambassador - You aren't going to come up with a solution that makes everybody happy. Building on the wisdom of Solomon, finding a way to split the baby is often how you survive in this business.
Hard ass - I was looking for something creative to say here, but "hard ass" was the only thing that came to mind. Listen, there is going to be someone along the way that challenges you. When that happens, you have to be a mixture of all of these things, including hard ass, to survive.

I hesitate to rank any of those in order of importance because I honestly believe it is a blend of all, but my intuition says, particularly in social media, that being a part-time sociologist and psychologist are most critical (probably followed by communicator). We have to be able to answer the "why." Why is someone talking about our brand online? Why do they have such a negative opinion about a member of our management team? Why are they turning to Facebook instead of a forum where the rest of our community lives? Said another way, we have to understand the motivations of our online community. Nowhere is understanding the underlying motivations more critical than when developing and then implementing an influencer program. This week, I will be participating in the Radian6 Social 2011 User Conference on a panel about the value of influence. We're going to be talking about everything from the metrics used to define influence, to how to utilize an influencer list to even something as fundamental as whether influencer lists are necessary. There has been a lot written on the subject lately, and I'm under no delusion that we're going to solve all of the issues associated with influencer analysis, but hopefully we can make a dent. One of the issues we'll likely be tackling is determining the influencer analysis output. What I mean by that is understanding how we want the list to be used, and what the heck do WE actually mean by influence. In a post a couple of months back, my friend Tom Webster pointed out that one of the ways influencer analysis could be improved is understanding motivations. I couldn't agree more. We have to know what influences people, why they are talking, what messages they respond to and how they want to interact with brands. If you can't answer those, your influencer analysis output is going to be flawed. You'll never completely answer the "why" using listening data, as Tom noted in his post. The only way you truly know is by asking (and yes, I know, people can lie). So, as you start working with influencers what can you do to fully understand the "why" when asking your community may not be practical at that stage? A few things:

Use your listening data - Yes, I know I just said you can't rely on this solely, but it can be helpful in gaining a basic understanding of why people do what they do online when referencing your brand.
Asking the influencers themselves - In theory, you should know through your research what types of content communities react to from these influencers. But, why (there's that word again) not ask them? You might find a totally different answer from the blogger/forum poster/mainstream press member, etc... then what your research is telling you. That's valuable intelligence.
Surveying the online community - No, social media listening is never going to fully replace surveys. They have value. No, they may not be a truly representative sample of your online community. Yes, there is valuable intelligence to be had from using a survey instrument.
Knowing your motivations - Why do you want to interact with influencers? Is it to increase awareness in the form of share of voice? Is it to improve sentiment about your brand? Is it to build long-term brand value. Not only should we understand the motivations of our community, but we need to understand why we're doing what we're doing. Only then can you truly grasp the entire landscape.

We have to be one part psychologist, one part sociologist, one part communicator, one part ambassador and another part hard ass to succeed in this social media world. Whether that's participating in social media more broadly, or developing an influencer identification program answering the "why" is critical. We're not going to solve this dilemma during our panel at the Radian6 conference, but likely through more informed conversation online and off. Think back to the programs you've built using social technologies... Have you sufficiently answered the why internally and the why within your community? If not, it isn't too late to course correct depending on your findings.

Dazed and Confused: The Story of Online Influencer Identification

19 Jan 2011
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#pr20chat Influence Jason Falls heather whaling justin goldsborough radian6 social media influence

Hopefully you'll permit me a quick shotout to a pretty ridiculous movie with that title...You'll understand why in a minute. Defining and measuring influence in social media is definitely the hot topic right now. Heck, Jason Falls' blog covered this topic at length last week with posts about how to improve online influence measures, revealing a new online influence tool (mPact) and then providing some background on the influencer identification tools marketplace. Radian6 also joined the party by releasing an eBook on defining and measuring online influence on Monday (co-authored by yours truly).The opinions about how to tackle this problem are varied. The varying opinions about an area this (relatively speaking) new is only leading to confusion in my estimation. People are confused about how to develop a process of identifying influencers, what tools to use, what's the appropriate amount of rigor you should apply to your analysis, is there a common set of influencers we can identify for all brands (put that one to bed right now - the answer is no). There are even those who openly are wondering if influencer analysis is even necessary. Let me be totally clear -- not only is it necessary, but it is absolutely imperative that we get the analysis (and the framework) right. And by getting it right I mean some combination of quantitative and qualitative. I'm a self-professed data geek. The more data the better (as long as there are actionable insights, of course). We need data to develop strategy and then ultimately tactics that make us look amazing to our bosses. My love affair with data doesn't mean I'm going to throw qualitative analysis out with the bath water. Quite the contrary. Influencer identification needs, and is currently crying out for skilled analysts who understand the brand(s) better than any computer possibly could. What the appropriate balance is will really be dependent on the brand or agency. My preference would be close to 50/50 (I'm not going to play Solomon here), but you have to make that call based on avalaible resources, which includes budget and people obviously. I think we can all agree that this combination of qual and quant is necessary, yes? It's interesting then to follow along with chatter (aside from the posts linked above) about how lists are developed, let alone used. I don't get an opportunity to participate in Twitter chats as much as I'd like, but one of my favorite ones is #pr20chat hosted every Tuesday night by Heather Whaling and Justin Goldsborough. During this week's chat, they asked a question (posed by yours truly) about how the participants come up with their influencer lists. Check out the conversations around the topic here if you'd like. What you'll notice is that of the 10 (I'm making that up for the sake of conversation) people who responded to the question, the majority outlined different approaches. Interesting, huh? I'll grant you that there are likely to be different ways to slay the dragon, but a majority with different methods? The number of varying methods must make a client's (or boss') head spin. I know it does mine and I live this stuff... With that as a backdrop, I thought it might be helpful if I gave you a couple of "standard" things you should use for any influencer analysis you're conducting. Yes, it is my contention that some of these more "structural" things can be implemented across brands. I'm hoping you'll drop in a comment if you disagree.

Be tool agnostic - We all know that there are a lot of tools available in this space. Jason outlined several of them in the post linked to above. Don't be hampered by one tool or algorithm (unless it is one you've developed yourself). If you want to use one of the tools that are available to measure Twitter influence or blog influence that's great. But, don't get into the habit of relying on their metrics as anything more than a gut check.
Develop your list of metrics - I mentioned above that every influencer analysis is a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Before you go digging for people to identify, make sure you spend a little time upfront identifying the types of metrics you want to use to judge people's influence.
Create a method for defining brand relevancy - This is absolutely critical, and it is something we mentioned in the white paper linked to above. Some of the world's largest blogs are great, but chances are that they've never talked about you. That isn't to say that they will never talk about you, but how much time do you want to spend on a site that doesn't seem to be talking about you or the subject matter you are most interested in? Probably not a lot (at least I hope).
Set your influencer timeframe - There are a lot of places where influencer analysis falls down, and the amount of data you gather tends to be the largest offender. Listen, there's a lot of "gut feeling" in any kind of influener analysis but please don't make the cardinal mistake of pulling in too little data. Spend the extra time to get six months worth of information instead of three. Your output will be significantly better.
Understand what your list is going to be used for - This is a pretty common misconception in the digital marketing world - everybody identified as an influencer MUST be an outreach target. *Cue ridiculous game show buzzing sound here.* That is just simply not true. If you have a list of 100 people, you might have 20 who are direct outreach targets, 20 who would only receive a press release, and 60 that are listen only. That might be an extreme example, but I think you get the gist. There are going to be folks who are influential to the online community that you may not be able to reach. That doesn't mean the intelligence they are providing you by talking online isn't valuable. Listen to those people's conversations, and don't worry if you can't engage directly with all of them.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts from me. I tend to think there is more confusion than ever around online influence. Hopefully through more educated dialog we will come to some sort of consensus. However, knowing the online space as I do I wouldn't look for that anytime soon...

The Klout that Stole Christmas

10 Dec 2010
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Influence klout online influence social media influence

The world of social media never ceases to amaze me. Just when you think you have things figured out, you come across something that is totally mind blowing. Like, for example, announcing a Christmas party by issuing a release that indicates you are throwing a "first-of-its-kind party" with people specifically chosen by their "social media influence and engagement." Listen, I couldn't care less if someone throws a Christmas party. In fact, I think they should. Being around people during the holidays is important. I'm hoping that we can all agree announcing your Christmas party via release is pretty over the top ridiculous, right? Yikes. I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about the event, but I have to get a couple of things out of the way. A large network on Facebook means you are influential? Listen, any moron with a dream can create a Facebook page in about 30 seconds. There are over 500,000,000 people on Facebook. If you create a page that's mildly interesting you'll gather fans. If you don't have a fan page how does having a large Facebook presence mean anything other than you have pretty loose standards when accepting Facebook friend requests? Or, better yet, if you've created a Facebook fan page for yourself how ego-maniacal are you? Seriously... get a hobby. Yes, there are legitimate reasons to create a Facebook fan page. A fan page dedicated to your own ego aint one... Twitter and Facebook represent influence on the social web? This is one of those things that drives me nuts over almost anything else. THERE IS MORE TO THE INTERNET THAN FACEBOOK AND TWITTER! Because you have 5,000 followers on Twitter DOESN'T mean you are influential on the Web. It means you could be influential on Twitter! If you really wanted to have an event of the "social media A-listers" how about trying to define influence from participation across a wide variety of channels. Perhaps that's the way it's actually happening and the release is too narrowly written, but it sure doesn't seem that way. Anyway, if you take those two things away, my larger issue is with how these people are being selected. I think my record is pretty clear about off-the-shelf influencer algorithms. Generally speaking, I think they suck (and not just a little). Where do they go wrong?

There are so many intricacies of influencer identification that a computer (no matter how smart you make it) can decipher that I'm generally distrusting of the output. Maybe there are some smart humans on the back end of these tools, but how much do they know the brand/topic area? About as much as your dog Fred.
The tools that are available typically only measure one channel -- usually Twitter. We have this love affair with defining influence on Twitter. Why? It's a big channel, but it's only one. What does 5,000 followers really get me? The CHANCE to reach 5,000 people? Excellent. Guess what? The first person to talk about "opportunities to view" on Twitter is getting a knuckle sandwich. We don't need the issues of traditional PR measurement seeping into social media, thank you.
Similarly, platforms like Klout tend to overvalue the volume of posting. Yes, someone that's relatively inactive on a particular channel would likely not be considered an influencer, however there have been enough analyses by people showing how important frequency is to your Klout score. I'd much rather contribute a smaller amount of content and have it be useful to people then just be a chatter box on Twitter. Check out my man Kasey Skala's post from Monday about the inflated importance of volume on influence if you don't believe me. For the record, I probably post too much on Twitter but it isn't because I'm hoping my Klout score goes up.
These are all big concerns, but the biggest has to be relevancy. Now, that's less of an issue here because the folks putting on this event are only looking for people like them, so obviously they are highly relevant. What I worry about, though, is that some unsuspecting brand gets a hold of that release and tries to identify influential people through services like Klout. Instead of taking a list of people who have a lot of followers and dropping them into a service like Klout, how about spending some time with a cup of coffee, a search engine and a list of key terms and try to identify some people who are RELEVANT! I'd never say reach doesn't matter. However, it takes two to tango and reach and relevance go hand-in-hand.

By the way, this isn't a reflection on Klout. Do I think they are one of the better off-the-shelf solutions? Yes. Would I utilize them to define influence in the current form? No. Anyway, I'm hoping these folks have a great time at their "over-the-top" holiday bash. I hope they have a great time in New York City. However, the event only serves to confirm two thing: If these people are influential, it's likely only influential to each other; and their "score" is based on a flawed system of popularity and NOT influence.

The Difference Between Influence and Popularity in Social Media

16 Sep 2010
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Influence Matt Ridings hashtag social media social media influence

Several weeks back I had the opportunity to host a #socialmedia chat (#sm75 to be exact) on the differences between influence and popularity in social media. First of all, forgive the fact that it has taken me this long to write a recap. I had planned to write this several weeks ago but, as usual, duty called. We covered a wide-range of topics, but some of the core questions included:

How do you define influence and popularity?
What metrics can help define influence or popularity?
Which (popularity or influence) is most important?
How does relevance factor into influence? Popularity?
What did Fast Company do well? What could’ve been improved?

It’s always been my feeling that we should be looking for people to talk with online who could, potentially, influence others in a meaningful way. We’ve talked about it some here, and anyone who’s seen me speak knows I rail against the notion of chasing the big numbers online. I don’t care if Ashton Kuchar has a kagillion (technical term) followers if he’s not talking about anything relevant to my brand. If someone has a large network and is also relevant to my brand then that is what’s golden. That being said, this chat opened my eyes to the possibilities of leveraging popularity and the question as to whether popularity and influence are mutually exclusive terms online. Matt Ridings, known to most everybody as techguerilla on Twitter, raised a couple of great points along these lines. His point was that the two items – influence and popularity – can both be used in any social media effort. What it really boils down to are the campaign’s goals. That’s not necessarily an angle I had ever considered before, but think there’s definitely legitimacy to the point. Are we attempting to reach the most eyeballs online (lets save the philosophical debate on whether that’s appropriate online for another time, thanks)? If so, maybe we want to find someone who can (potentially) reach the most people. What if we’re trying to change behaviors? Then, we might be looking for someone who has a large network, but could also influence someone into doing something. That brings us to our other key takeaway: Are popularity and influence mutually exclusive terms? Does popularity make up one component of influence, or do we want to target people who are either popular or influential? My inclination is to say we need to be targeting both, and that they are terms that definitely intertwine. Admittedly, though, my preference would be for us (social media practitioners) to target those who are influential. Again, our primary goal should be altering behaviors. After 60 minutes, 96 participants and 537 tweets I’m not sure we answered anything completely but I think we’re furthering the discussion on the importance of both in social media. What say you?

Size Doesn't Matter...In Social Media

2 Aug 2010
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AVEs Dell Influence amber naslund bob pearson impressions social media social media influence

Stop me if you've heard these before:

We're going to calculate the total number of impressions
Then we're going to apply the famous PR multiplier to the total number of impressions
Maybe we can apply advertising value equivalencies. Because, you know, advertising and PR carry the same value for a brand (sarcasm)
Lets find the total number of fans a person has
Then lets find their total number of Twitter followers
I'm also interested in how many posts have been written about my brand/industry
They write for the New York Times, or Wall Street Journal so they must matter to my brand.

Guess what? All of that is bullshit. OK, maybe just PR multipliers and AVE's. The rest aren't total BS, when placed into context. We know that a brand engaging in social media, at its core, is attempting to influence a consumer, or potential consumer, into doing something. Most often it is buying your product, but you could be using it to respond to customer service inquiries. Or maybe you are using it to just gain market intelligence (read: listening only). Or maybe even using it as an employee recruitment tool. Or, finally, using it as an internal communications vehicle. No matter what your purpose in using social media is, looking at raw numbers (like the ones listed above) is pretty meaningless (just like in traditional PR, actually). I mentioned during the #DellSTU SMaC Unconference last week that one day I hoped we would get over our love affair with size. The anecdote I used was that just because Amber Naslund (she was sitting next to me at the time - I wasn't picking on her) has 20,000+ followers on Twitter doesn't mean she's relevant to your brand. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, the magic word: relevancy! If Amber has written 10,000 tweets, or 500 blog posts in the last year, how many of them relate to my brand? If only a handful are related, then how is she influential for me/my brand? On the other hand, if you take Joe Smith who has only 5,000 followers, half as many blog posts and half as many tweets but is writing more on topic content than Amber isn't he more influential? I would postulate that he is. Taken another way in traditional communications.... We love the big name writer from the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or Forbes, but what we're not taking into consideration is how much they write about us, or our industry. Just because their content is widely syndicated, or their publication has several million impressions (gag me, please), does not make them influential for you. My boss, Bob Pearson, is fond of saying that there are likely only 50 or so people shaping your brand online at any given time. Underlying that is the notion of relevancy. Just because they have a lot of followers, impressions, etc... doesn't mean they are relevant. Before your boss asks you to reach out to someone via traditional media or social media, take a second to figure out whether or not they are relevant to your brand. It might just save some swings and misses down the line

Influence: The Hardest Easiest Concept on the Web

14 Jul 2010
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Influence amber naslund fast company measuring influence online influence social media analytics

I’ve been amazed watching the sheer volume of conversation around the Fast Company Influence Project. Can’t we all agree once and for all that it’s a really poor representation of influence online? I mean, spreading a unique URL in the hopes that someone clicks on it, signs up and starts the project themselves is an appropriate metric for influence? In the words of my friend, David Mullen, “hogwash!”

Amber Naslund wrote a truly excellent post (please check out Brass Tack Thinking if you haven’t already) in response to the project that received a lot of fantastic comments and sparked a question in my own mind: Are we making the definition of online influence harder than it needs to be? I tend to think the answer is an emphatic yes! I’ll agree that it’s very difficult to make sweeping generalizations on who (or what) is influential across verticals. I’ll also agree that it’s difficult to make assumptions on influence given the diversity of goals that every brand has online. However, I think what we’re talking about can be boiled into a relatively simple equation: Individual Influence + Outlet Influence = Overall Influence. Let’s hit each of those individually… Oh, one quick note – I’m only providing metrics for demonstration purposes. These shouldn’t be used in your campaign unless you feel that they align with your program’s goals. Please don’t cut and paste otherwise I’ll hunt you down :-). Anyway…

Individual Influence – Each brand is going to have a different definition for how influential a person within their micro community is on other members of that community. What we’re really wanting to know is how relevant is their content (related to a particular), how many people are they (or could they) reach, how much content are they producing (without spamming us) and how often their content is picked up by others. There are metrics you can obtain pretty easily that underlies each of these categories, but I think it makes sense for you to start at that level and match metrics to each category that also align with your goals.
Outlet Influence – Again, every brand is going to place varying weights of importance on the different channels. Some will place more emphasis on blogs, while others will think forums are most important. Ideally, to define influence within your online community, you’re taking into account a variety of channels, but understand that most aren’t going to go to that level. Whether you’re looking at inbound links for a blog, or total visits for a mainstream news outlet, or total authors on a forum, your goal is to quantify (ideally you’re looking at a bunch of metrics) how strong that Web site's strength

The trick, in the end, is bringing those two areas together to provide a meaningful overall metric or score. I know there are a bunch of metrics underneath each of those categories, and I know I’m not giving them to you, but I think this easy categorization can help you start to get your head around influence online. Happy to try and answer specific metrics questions underlying this in the comments.

Understanding Motivations in Social Media

Dazed and Confused: The Story of Online Influencer Identification

The Klout that Stole Christmas

The Difference Between Influence and Popularity in Social Media

Size Doesn't Matter...In Social Media

Influence: The Hardest Easiest Concept on the Web

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