We all have our bucket list items. For me one of those items has always been writing a book. Now, I’m actually going to do it. I’m excited to be able to announce that I’ll be writing a book, co-authored with my good friend Chuck Hemann. There are few people I respect more within the digital analytics, social media and digital marketing worlds than Chuck, so when this opportunity arose I jumped at the chance. What are we going to be writing about you might be asking? Well, digital analytics, of course. The title of the book is still being finalized, but the premise of the book is that companies are faced with a mountain of digital data and in a lot of ways that data is being underutilized. Similarly, those same companies struggle to find and utilize tools that help them gather and analyze data, turning it into actionable insights that drive business results. Those are just a few of the items we will be tackling in this book. Some of the other issues we will address include:

• Measuring social media – This book will be covering multiple digital analytics topics, but we would be remiss if we didn’t tackle the 800lb gorilla in the room. Chuck and I approach analytics from different backgrounds, but similar perspectives so you should assume to see very practical measurement advice in this book. How do we create integrated measurement plans? What are some metrics companies can use to measure success on paid, earned and owned channels? Is there more to the world of measurement than ROI? These are just some of the questions you will see answers to in this book.
• Elevating listening within the organization – The first time Chuck and I worked on anything it was back in October 2009 when we introduced the social analytics lifecycle. The premise then was that listening data has utility beyond public relations and marketing. I think I can safely speak for Chuck when I say we still feel the same way now. That being said, the number of organizations capitalizing on listening data in this way is small. This book will give you some tips and tricks to elevate listening within your organization.
• Understanding, measuring and defining influence – This isn’t a book on influence, but to not tackle some of the tools, processes and algorithms available on the market would be a miss in our opinion. There is a lot of misunderstanding about this topic and our hope is that we can turn the boat around.
• Paid media analytics – The book is far from written, but there’s a very good chance that we will be preaching INTEGRATION throughout. While the world has been hyper-focused on social data (rightfully so in a lot of respects), we have missed an opportunity to bring in paid data to make the social story stronger.

That is just a quick sneak preview. We will be covering these topics and more in great depth in the book. For those of you wondering when it is going to be released, it is tentatively scheduled to be released in early January of 2013. Both Chuck and I are very pleased to be working with Pearson on this title, especially after it has worked with people we respect like Jason Falls on other successful books in this space.

I would be remiss if I left off perhaps an important aspect of this book. Chuck and I have decided to follow the lead of Michael Brito and donate the proceeds of the book to charity. My charity is the Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association, and Chuck’s is Superhero Kids. Chuck provides details on Superhero Kids in his own post. I’ll share a bit about my choice.

RSDSA is an organization dedicated to promoting public and professional awareness of CRPS and to educate those afflicted with the syndrome, their families, friends, insurance and healthcare providers on the disabling pain it causes. CRPS is a a chronic and volatile neurological syndrome that causes severe and unmanageable pain in many cases. My father suffered from this condition, and I learned first hand the damage that it can inflict on the patient and their family. Given how little awareness and treatment options exist for RSDS sufferers, I cannot imagine an organization more in need of funds to help with its mission.

There are too many people to thank for pushing me toward this pursuit. Needless to say if you are one of them, you’ll be hearing from me throughout this process with many words of thanks. We’re looking forward to this book, and hope you are looking forward to reading it! Thanks for all of your support!

We’re in the era of building the infrastructure necessary for social business to succeed. Eventually it will bring benefits and rewards to both brands and consumers alike. However, there are some steps brands can take now to ensure they don’t confuse consumers as they evolve from social media to social business. One important perspective that can get lost in the buzz over social marketing, social crm, or social innovation initiatives is arguably, the most important one: the customer perspective.

Here are some tips to ensure you’re making sure customers are informed and aware of what your social business initiatives WILL and WILL NOT do for them.

Tell Your Brand’s Social Business Story

There are many departments and groups within a company. It’s now common for each of them to have social initiatives of their own, albeit they may be independent of one another, in a silo away from the rest of the organization. Do these provide value to the customer? Sure, but how does an individual really know about everything a company is doing in social that they may benefit from?

Companies have long published directories to help customers get in touch to the department they need via phone. In digital, they produce sitemaps on their websites for the same purpose. What can they do to help people understand their fragmented landscape of social outposts? Tell their social business story! This will educate consumers, raise awareness of their efforts, and remove any confusion over where/what/when their social business initiatives are.

An example of a brand that is telling their social business story well is Dell. Just visit the ‘”Dell in Social Media” section of dell.com and you’re able to learn everything about Dell’s social business activities, with links and descriptions to their social outposts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, Slideshare, Xing), their communities for owners and clubs, or even Dell’s official global social media policy.

Share Service and Support Expectations

Many companies are realizing the benefit of social technologies for customer support and developing formal social business initiatives for doing so. It can be a great benefit, and provide better/faster/cheaper service to customers under the right circumstances. However, it’s easier said than done. Especially when consumer expectations are rapidly moving closer to instant gratification.

Social platforms never sleep. They don’t turn off (usually). They are constantly moving forward, with a seemingly infinite stream of activity, discussion and sharing. That preconditions consumer expectations when dealing with a formal brand presence via social, into near real-time resolutions of customer problems. And when a brand cannot live up to such a high standard, it sets the stage for a negative customer experience.

Brands can avoid this by setting expectations for service and response times up front. For example, if you’re supporting customers via Twitter, define hours of operation. The Microsoft Xbox and the Bank of America customer support teams have done a terrific job of this, providing support hours directly in the Twitter profile description, as well as the background image for their profile page.

Curate Conversations About Your Brand

Consumer trust is has evolved. Consumers are actively seeking “people like me”, to understand their opinions, preferences and perspectives on brands, products and services. Brands all have a story, and tell that story through branded content through paid and owned media. What can brands do to help provide consumers with what “people like them” are saying about the brand? Curate conversations that meet the consumer need and make it easily accessible for them to consumer and digest.

Ford recently launched the new, redesigned Explorer SUV. While they have been curating consumer reaction and conversation about their products for awhile now, I point you to the Explorer home page as an example of a brand curating content that matters. Visit the Ford Explorer Buzz page to see the curated results of reactions from media sites, blogs, forums, etc… about the new product.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending and participating in Social 2011, the first ever Radian6 User Conference. I’m happy to report it was a smashing success, on many levels. Don’t jump to conclusions, this wasn’t an analyst / data geek event. While social listening platforms like Radian6 are certainly used by these roles, this conference targeted marketing executives, strategists, brand managers and community managers as well. It was a terrific blend of practical know-how, detail combined with strategy and insights for operationalizing social business. Radian6 spent time announcing some big news, and launching new products that enable putting social business to work more easily. The event also included stellar keynotes from Mitch Joel and Paul Greenberg in particular, along with informative and entertaining panels (the panel I was on about ROI turned into some heated debate) through the day. To give you an idea how active and enthusiastic the crowd was, in the 2 days that the event spanned, there were over 15,000 mentions on Twitter using the #social2011 hashtag.

The main highlights of course centered around product news about the Radian6 platform. Let’s take a quick look at them and the impact they will have.

Insights Platform – Radian6 launched a full blown insights engine. It extracts more relevant meaning from the mountains of social data that are harvested via social listening. Instead of being limited  to knowing share of voice or total volume(s) of relevant conversation, one can now easily (with a click or two) drill-down into the data on a relevant topic and get much more granular, to answer very specific questions about sub-topics, themes, etc… on a given bit of conversation. I’d never do it justice in a paragraph or two, so take a look at the product overview video found here, as it will surely impress.

My friends over at The Community Roundtable, Rachel Happe and Jim Storer, have just published their 2011 State of Community Management Report. It chronicles best practices and discussions related to the of field community management. The Community Roundtable, a leading resource for community management practitioners, and is based off of conversations with representatives from over 60 different companies within the TheCR Network held over the span of the past year.

TheCR has been an invaluable resource to me in my work with online communities, especially their Community Maturity Model Framework (seen below).

I’d advise anyone who plays a role in an online community effort to download the report for detailed reading. It’s packed full of insight and information on the current state of community management within businesses both big and small. The key findings fall into these four themes:

• Social Business Has Become A Strategic Imperative
• Interest in Community Management Continues to Increase
• The Community Management Discipline is Evolving
• A Lot of Confusion Remains in the Market around Social Business

That said, I’m just scratching the surface of the knowledge and tidbits in the report. Get a copy and you’ll see for yourself!

Approximately a year ago, I published "Dispelling the Youth Myth – Five Useful Facebook Demographic Statistics" on this blog. It’s been one of the most visited posts ever since, so clearly there is a lot of interest in understanding the demographics of the Facebook user population. A year later, Facebook is bigger than ever, now the most visited site on the internet. So, I’ve updated the statistics below, and included some new ones, so that we can all be informed, and dispel any myths about Facebook user demographics. Like the original post, I’m writing this one to help avoid the need for us to explain over and over again, who uses Facebook, and instead direct people to this post. Here is the most recent data on Facebook that you can use to enlighten yourself and others on just who uses Facebook and where they come from.

1) Facebook.com average user figures and facts:

• Average user has 130 friends on the site
• Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
• Average user spends an average 15 hours and 33 minutes on Facebook per month
• Average user visits the site 40 times per month
• Average user spends an 23 minutes (23:20 to be precise) on each visit
• Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
• Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
• 200 million people access Facebook via a mobile device each day
• More than 30 billion pieces of content are shared each day
• Users that access Facebook on mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook compared to non-mobile users
• Facebook generates a staggering 770 billion page views per month

Source: facebook.com, pingdom.com

2) Breakdown by country: More than 70% of Facebook users come from outside the United States

Global User Population: 629,982,480

Sources: checkfacebook.com and facebook.com

3) Global User Demographics: The global breakdown of users on Facebook by gender and age

Sources: insidefacebook.com

4) Breakdown of US users (gender and age):

As the chart above illustrates, the total US Facebook population is made up of millions of people across a range of ages groups. While young adults (18-25) lead the way with a combined ~50 million users (almost double the size from a year ago), the 26-34 group is now well behind with ~29 million users. According to the data from Facebook there a combined ~28 million people over the age of 45 active on Facebook. These are impressive user numbers from an older demographic that continue to grow. It’s important to note that the 55-64 age group is almost the size of the 13-17 group, further evidence that Facebook isn’t limited to "young" people.

A visual look at the US users by age (using data from above):

Sources: facebook.com

5) Facebook.com – a top destination site for the majority of online Americans, but some states more so than others.

Source: Socialbakers

The most important takeaway from the list above is probably the degree of penetration Facebook has relative to the population of each state. Over 50% for many!

Identifying influencers is an important part of social marketing, and becoming big business for some companies like Klout . Yet, influencer identification and analysis isn’t well understood, or easy to optimize. That’s because no two influence analysis efforts are the same. Like fingerprints or snowflakes, an influence analysis program is unique, specific to the goals and priorities of the organization executing it.

To date, automating influence analysis has relied heavily on quantitative measures (example: like followers/friends, RTs, mentions/replies). While these metrics can be valuable inputs into determining whether or not someone is influential, they aren’t worth much at all without their counterpart, qualitative metrics. If influence is a coin, then the 2 sides are quantitative and qualitative. Focusing purely on quantitative metrics tells you if someone is popular, not influential.

A recent and fitting example of this is the news of celebrity Charlie Sheen joining Twitter. Sheen amassed 1 million followers in approximately 24 hours. An impressive feat, no? Is he popular? Definitely. Is he influential? Well, according to Klout he is. Sheen currently has a Klout score of 88 (higher than most people, including industry thought leaders like Chris Brogan (81), Jason Falls (72), and Brian Clark a.k.a Copy Blogger (73). Does this mean Sheen is more influential than any of those 3? It depends on the topic.

Enter relative influence. Relevance brings the qualitative perspective necessary to complete the influence picture. Without it, you cannot be sure that you have an actionable list of influencers. The 3 individuals mentioned above are respected, trusted voices on topics such as marketing, social media and blogging. If you were to take a simple quantitative approach, and rely on Klout’s score, you could make the argument that Sheen is the more valuable influencer to focus on. Would you take his advice on any of those topics over Brogan, Falls, Clark? Absolutely not! Relative influence should be the focus on influencer analysis. You’re looking for individuals with deep, strong ties to the community on specific topics, not individuals with weak ties to many communities. Don’t confuse popularity with influence, they aren’t the same.

In addition to using automated tools to improve the effectiveness of your quantitative influencer analysis, here are some tips to gain a more robust qualitative view and gain a balanced perspective.

Finally, if you’re interested in a rich, in-depth perspective on influencer analysis, take the time to read this eBook, authored by @chuckhemann and @radian6. It will enlighten you on the finer points of influencer analysis, including specific methods and metrics to consider in yours.

Radian6_JAN2011_Book

Facebook continues to experience explosive growth, recently pushing the total number of worldwide users past 610 million, according to checkfacebook.com. An incredible accomplishment considering 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day.  Facebook revenue continues to climb with its user base, surpassing expectations by finishing 2010 at $1.86 billion, largely credited to a boost in growth between August and the end of the year. Some people may be surprised to learn where all that revenue is coming from…….Advertising.

A few interesting statistics about Facebook Advertising:

• Approximately 60% of revenue comes through their self-service advertising platform – http://www.facebook.com/advertising/
• Facebook is now serving more than 50 billion display ads per month
• 60% of advertising revenue in 2010 came from SMBs (small & medium businesses)
• 740 million in 2010 revenue came from big brand advertising (companies like Coca-Cola)

Facebook has gradually increased the different types of social ads that companies can choose to run on their platform. Currently, here is the run down of different social ad types for 2011.

• Standard Ad Unit – This basic ad unit can be used to drive visitors to either a page within or outside of Facebook.
• Like Ad Unit – This ad unit can be used to drive engagement to pages within Facebook and visitors to owned media properties outside of Facebook. It provides social context to the user, indicating any friends that have already liked the brand. If none have the total number of Facebook users that have liked is shown. It increases the likelihood that the user will trust and engage with the ad/brand.
• Poll Ad Unit – This ad unit can be used to capture user feedback on any desired topic, while then driving traffic to any page within Facebook. The poll generates a story on the poll’s brand page, and can appear in news feed of the users that liked the brand. When a user engages with the ad, the poll story can appear on the user’s wall and in their friends’ News Feeds.
• Event Ad Unit – This ad unit is used to increase awareness about events created in Facebook. Friends who are attending the event are listed in the ad unit, as well as the total number of Facebook attendees. Responding will automatically create a story on a user’s profile page and may also show the story in their friends’ News Feeds, increasing distribution and reach.
• Video Ad Unit – This ad unit is used to drive user engagement. It allows for users to watch a video inline, read and share comments, and even like the video. The interaction (commenting or liking) is public and automatically appears on users’ page and may also show in their friends News Feeds.
• Gift Ad Unit – This ad unit can be used to increase user engagement, and drive visitors to pages within and outside of Facebook. It allows users to send a gift to a friend within Facebook, along with a custom message. Messages are public and can appear on the user’s page, as well as in their friends’ News Feeds.
• Sampling Ad Unit – This ad unit can be used to drives product trial and adoption. It prompts the user to provide information to receive product samples, and then publishes a notification allowing the user’s friends to see they have requested a sample, which increases trust and likelihood of further sampling.
• Sponsored Stories Ad Unit -This ad, the newest, has raised some controversy by turning user interactions with brands into ads. Currently defined into 4 different types: application plays, likes, location check-ins and page posts. It can be used to drive engagement and visitors to brand pages within Facebook. It can best be described as taking the interactions happening across Facebook every day, and extending the life and distribution of them as display ads.

This is the most comprehensive list I could find to date. I would like to segment spend by ad type (if you’ve seen such data, please share below in the comments). Or if you’ve seen an ad unit/type not listed here, let me know and I’ll be happy to update the list (which is bound to happen eventually as Facebook is constantly changing the platform). Which ad units are you using? Which have worked best, or not? Feel free to share with the community.

A coworker pointed me to what seems to be an interesting change on Quora today (h/t Donna Tocci). Lowes is the first “business account” sighting I’ve seen on the platform, and one that if confirmed, would be a change in direction from their previous statements about supporting businesses on the Quora platform. Take a look at the screenshot below, which I took from this URL: http://www.quora.com/Lowes-Home-Improvement

This is relevant for a few reasons, all which benefit both consumers and brands. This gives Lowes an opportunity to collaboratively build a knowledge base with consumers about their products, services, and the category they serve (home improvement). In a way that continues to get better, optimize and more answers are contributed and shared. As a homeowner, I can think of the usefulness of this when tackling home improvement projects. Ask questions here, and get answers from both Lowes and community experts on relevant topics. For more information on the uses and benefits of Quora, read this post by Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media.

Have you seen any other businesses on Quora? Any news from Quora directly? If so, please share in the comments below.

UPDATE: Robert Scoble chimed in with this response.

Social Media participation continues to mature and evolve the ways in which we connect and deepen relationships with one another, and the brands we choose to let in our life and interact with. However, despite all the efforts thus far, our ability to monitor and understand what happens in social media isn’t keeping pace with usage.

eMarketer recently published findings from a InformationWeek Analytics survey of Enterprise professionals about their current Social Media Listening efforts, and the results were disappointing to me.

The most common method of monitoring is to rely on basic notifications, like Google Alerts, as a rudimentary brand monitoring solution. Despite the shortcomings of this method, 44% of respondents aren’t even doing this, the most basic form of social listening.

After this comes outsourcing to a full service vendor or using specialized social media listening tools (like Radian6, SM2, ListenLogic) with internal resources at 16% and 15% respectively. A full 40% of all respondents didn’t know what, if any, approach their company is taking when it comes to social listening. Either the survey respondents aren’t plugged into what’s happening in the company in this area (a possibility), or there is evidence of a problem within the organization (most likely in my experience).

The survey also looked at a company’s process for responding to specific types of online responses by consumers. Unsurprisingly, the number of organizations that have developed specific processes and capabilities to handle online responses like customer complaints on social networks, inappropriate employee comments, comments on official owned-media sites is also very low. Just 14% of companies have defined how to appropriately handle a negative customer comment on their Facebook page(s). Only 12% have done so for Twitter (probably something Kenneth Cole could stand to do given the uproar over their recent tweet).

What does all this mean? Several possibilities:

1. Companies still lack the necessary education and knowledge of how to leverage the wealth of listening solutions to accurately monitor and understand online customer interactions and responses
2. Companies still lack the resources required to properly staff and implement adequate listening capabilities
3. Companies are struggling with “shiny object syndrome”. There is no lack of social listening solutions/providers (full list here at the SMM Wiki). Understanding listening goals/objectives, needs and mapping them to the potential set of listening vendors requires time and effort. It’s much easier to sit through product demonstrations full of social metrics eye candy, and be wowed by their reporting and analytics capabilities rather than do the less glorious but essential planning work.

Fear not though, there is light at the end of the social listening tunnel! Creating a strategic listening plan isn’t impossible, nor difficult if the right steps are taken. Adopt a comprehensive framework to guide your social listening efforts across the company. Several options exist, like the Social Analytics Lifecycle.

The most important point I can emphasize to get social listening to mature within your organization, is to start with specific business processes that listening will support and improve. Almost every organization has sales, marketing, customer support, human resources, etc… Each of these departments can benefit from social listening, if done correctly. Want examples? Check out the 6 Areas of Your Business That Should Be Listening post by Amber Naslund over at the Brass Tack Thinking blog. It will help set you out on the right direction to  get started, but what if you’re already doing “something” and want to optimize or improve it. Then go read Six Steps to Better Social Media Listening by Chuck Hemann at the Analytics is King blog. Finally, THEN go down the tool path if you’re going to take on social listening yourself, or find a full service partner that has the diversity of experience in platforms and top notch analysts that deliver meaningful insights and information (remember data is worthless unless it is transformed into insights through analysis).

What is your organization doing in social listening? What are your most difficult obstacles to overcome?

Facebook is huge. Depending on the day, it is the most visited site in the US (an accomplishment that Facebook recently achieved for the first time during Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Years’ Day at the end of 2009). Yet despite all the Facebook success and its integration into mainstream culture, there are still some misunderstandings about the people that use facebook.

Just yesterday I was having a conversation with someone about Facebook in which a comment was made that “kids and younger people are the ones that really use Facebook”. It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this perspective come up in conversation. When it does, I do my best to dispel the myth with the most recent demographics statistics and trends. Often times I’m asked to share that information afterwards. So,  I’m writing this post to help avoid the need to explain myself over and over again, and instead direct people here. With that all out of the way, here is the most recent data (as of 1/1/10) on Facebook that you can use to enlighten yourself and others on just who uses Facebook and where they come from.

1) Facebook.com average user figures:

• Average user has 130 friends on the site
• Average user sends 8 friend requests per month
• Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
• Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
• Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
• Average user becomes a fan of 2 Pages each month
• Average user is invited to 3 events per month
• Average user is a member of 12 groups

Source: facebook.com statistics

2) Breakdown by country: Just over 70% of Facebook users come from outside the United States

Sources: checkfacebook.com and facebook.com statistics

3) Breakdown by population saturation: The % of country population that are active on Facebook

Sources: allfacebook.com

4) Breakdown of US users (gender and age):

As the chart above illustrates, the total US Facebook population is made up of millions of people across a range of ages groups. While young adults (18-25) lead the way with a combined ~27 million users, the 26-34 group is close behind with ~21 million users. According to the data above there a combined ~18 million people over the age of 45 active on Facebook. These are impressive user numbers from an older demographic that continue to grow.

Another look at the US users by age:

Sources: allfacebook.com

5) Facebook.com a top destination site for everyone, particularly the 65+ age group

Source: Nielsen 2010 Media Fact Sheet

I’ve aggregated data from several different sources for this post, and as you can see there is considerable participation on Facebook from all age groups. Hopefully you can use this information going forward to dispel the youth myth too.