V/Speak

There are many debates among industry experts on the practice of measuring social media success.  Over the last several years, we’ve run some pretty successful social media-based programs in our local market at the technology company I work for.  Personally, I look beyond the standard web metrics of unique visitors, total visits, page views, etc.  From my perspective the more valuable measurables are somewhat less tangible.  That’s not saying that we don’t measure the number of comments by the audience in the experience itself or the number of listings we see in Google when doing a search on the keywords for our program – those are important. 

More important to me, is the tenor and tone of the conversation.  What, specifically, are those consumers engaged in our social media program saying about the experience itself?  Are the comments favorable?  Are we seeing an easy flow in the conversation between our participants and the community?  Have we seen a positive change in emotion and favor during the extended conversation?  Those are most important to me because from that pepspective, I can see if we are actually making a difference in how people feel about us and the products we are discussing.  In addition – are we being recognized by credible resources within the industry as approaching our social media efforts in a thoughtful, credible, and collaborative way? 

If we are being recognized positively by the community we are interacting with and by objective industry experts, that spells success in my eyes.  Your definition of success may be different.  Regardless of where your definition lies, remember this important step in your program development: have a goal of what success looks like to you.

David Veneski Social Media Jeremiah Owyang, measurement

Being a marketer that works for a very large technology corporation, Intel, part of my job is to identify places where conversations about our products and technologies are happening.  In my opinion (disclaimer: not to be mistaken as the overall opinion of Intel as a corporation), there are several ways to intersect those conversations, effectively.  My goal is to always ‘listen’ first.  What are people saying about our products, our technologies, and our importance to their lives.  That’s an important point.  It provides you with the very tenor of the conversation and sets the tone for if, when, and how you participate in their conversation.  I believe, as a ‘guest’ to their watercooler discussion, we join the conversation on their terms and have a responsibility to be informative, helpful, and most importantly – not disruptive.  In the last several years, we have done this with a high degree of success – and they have all been paid sponsorships of conversations in specific communities, such as Slashdot and Arstechnica.  I’ve had several conversations with Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester about this very topic.  You can find his perspective here.  Moving forward, I believe we find a balance between paid conversations and also enabling our workforce to speak effectively about the products and technologies we market on their own, unpaid, personal social media efforts.

David Veneski Intel, Social Media Conversation, Forrester, Intel, Jeremiah Owyang