Via http://zygote.egg-co.com/social-media-roi/

I snagged this slide from one of the most valuable presentations about social media I’ve read online. Read it. Right now. It’s long-ish, but worth it. Thanks to Dave McClure for sharing it.

Here’s the deal: teaching people how to tweet on twitter.com, blog on blogger.com, or belch on belcher.com, makes not an effective social media campaign.

There is no silver bullet.

You need to evaluate business problems.

You have to know the right solutions to solve those problems, relevantly to the business in question.

And you need to design and execute against metrics to measure the success of your decisions.

It’s not simple. It’s not quick.

Which is why I find it so hard to believe how many “social media experts” are out there.

My sincere hope it that people read at this really well constructed deck and presentation content, and take it to heart, and put their “social media consultant” cards in a drawer for a day when you actually can provide value to the people paying them money. (And maybe use those spare “SEO consultant” cards you’ve got laying around in the mean time so you don’t have to waste money on new ones).

While doing some more research for case studies, I came across a research report by the Online Community Research Network from March 2008. Less than a year old, I think it’s still relevant and extremely telling about the effects of the themes we’ve been discussing. Furthermore, like the Cluetrain Manifesto before it, it’s a quantitative prediction based on historical trends of things to come. I cannot tell from their website if they have more current reports than this one available, I’d love to see the results of the year to change.

Anyway, some relevant results from the report that relate directly to the Cluetrain.

One of the questions in the survey was: What were the 1-2 compelling sources of value from your community or social media efforts that you constantly communicate? The answers followed the themes below, which also include direct pull quotes from the survey responses. There’s some solid stuff in here.

1. Community helps problem solve faster and more efficiently than Customer Support, saving our company time and money: • “Customers are able to get faster response and answers to their problem utilizing the community over contacting Customer Support.” • “Knowledge share, and hence problem solving, is more efficient due to the community model.” • “The ROI on employee time devoted to the forums far exceeds the returns on the usual support methods.” 2. Availability of information and content for specific areas of interest: • “Niche communities, focused on specific areas of interest. Market leaders on-line and in print with high cross over traffic.” • “You won’t find this content anywhere else – written by our members to raise best practice within vendors.” 3. Increases site traffic / more engaged relationship with us: • “The more we invest into community, the more organic traffic we get.” • “Our community sites get more than 3 times the engagement for solutions, capabilities and use case content than our traditional sites.” • “Views of photo albums remain the most popular area of the community. Members may not wish to participate in discussions, but they do want to see photos of their events.” • “An online discussion moderated by subject matter experts that followed an in-person event with the same moderators achieved the most participation of any attempts to engage our users.” 4. Idea Creation / What we learn from members of the community: • “We will have the opportunity to get first hand feedback on products and ideas for improvements and enhancements.” • “We discovered some problem areas in usage and service adoption that caused us to change our materials and strategy.” 5. Lead Generation / Conversion: • “Converting contacts, acquaintances, and other informal relationships into donor relationships.” • “Converting contacts into activists and issue leaders.” • “When we enlist our community members to represent us physically or virtually, our reach and conversion metrics dramatically increase.” 6. People are saving time / building skills by using our site: • “People creating and building productive relationships with people that help them improve their practice or do their work better.” • “Our community members credit participation in our community with their increased skills in using our products.” 7. Build customer loyalty: • “Community members are more likely to volunteer their time, services, advice, and financial support than non-members.” • “Employees who belong to the community almost never ‘turn over’. They are consistently the best performers out in the stores.” • “Offering a community to your clients where they can speak to you and each other significantly increases customer loyalty.” • “More connected members spread the word and come back frequently.” • “If you want to understand your stakeholders and develop the relationships, you have to think in communities.” • “Online dialogue creates a more open environment that deepens trust and team work throughout the organization.” • “Research shows that customers in a community can have a sense of involvement with the company as long as we make sure they are heard and that involvement can lead to great loyalty.” • “Our community members are actively engaged with the brand and don’t hesitate to tell us what they like, and don’t like. They feel a real sense of ownership of the brand.” • “Our ability to personally communicate with future users of our product substantially influences their perception of our company.” 8. Online community is growing our membership base: • “Our blog has increased community participation by 80% over the past year.” • “We have doubled the size of our community membership in the last 6 months. 2 years ago, only 34% of our Company’s upsells and renewals were also members of the Community. In 2007, 75% of our upsells and renewals were Community members.”

So ROI is alive and well in Social Media…

And we see a solid reinforcement that Cluetrain theses are a driving force behind the value being noted.

For more details on this report, see Bill Johnston’s blog post.

Shit moves way too fast for anyone to be an authority on anything long enough to be “expert”.

By the time you’re “expert”, the thing you’re expert in is no longer relevant. Deal with it.

We’re all students. Every single one of us. We’re students of each other, and students of the collective. That’s what’s magical and different about the internet; it’s not hierarchical.

Instead of a classroom where the teacher hands lessons down to the students, everyone is encouraged to be a teacher, sharing knowledge and experiences.

And everyone is encouraged to be a student, gaining knowledge and experiences.

Admittedly, in the “classroom” scene we’ve painted, I’m that pain in the ass kid in the back always questioning the teacher. But somebody needs to keep the teachers on their toes, and I hope that people are out there trying to keep me in check as well.

So, “social media experts”, I call your bluff.

There aren’t any social media experts, at least not yet.

And you (yes, you) certainly won’t be the first one.

Thesis #10: As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.

We know that participation in these smart, organized, and informed markets is changing people.

News breaks differently.

I cannot remember the last purchase I made without first checking consumer reviews.

I no longer have to ponder the risks of trying a new restaurant.

Talent recruitment has changed.

Even the latest US presidential election set new precedents, and the president elect continues that leading up to inauguration.

Unfortunately, businesses are still operating under the same old presumptions that information travels wherever they direct it.

Press releases turn into press.

Advertising dollars turn into goods and services sold.

Except they don’t.

I mean, they do, but people’s attention to their markets have fundamentally changed, now that they are participating in them.

Consumers’ participation in a networked marketplace means that less of what businesses pump out is being seen when .

People have direct access to information that’s been organized organically, by people they trust more than the companies that have old school expectations.

People no longer rely on the businesses press releases, advertising campaigns, etc for discovery.

Eyeballs are still there, and they are still important. But they’re looking someplace else. They’re looking at each other, instead of upstream.

Businesses are scrambling for tools, sources, any “magic” they can find. Those businesses are falling behind every day.

It’s not about the tools, sources, or magic. It’s about participation.

There is no way for businesses to experience the benefits of the changes their customers have undergone…without participating in those markets themselves.

On the call, I caught myself spout off one of the important bullet-points for me: “Raising the Intrigue”.

I liked that meme and while it was fresh in my mind, I wanted to riff here.

So the conversation we were having identified that one of the more common uses in social media is the more obvious one: customer service and feedback. Social media excites companies because they have the ability to monitor mentions of themselves, even their competitors, and respond. Unfortunately, in many cases, this gets out of hand quickly and runs the risk of becoming big-brother-y.

Remember, it’s better to guide than to impose.

But what’s this about intrigue? We’re getting there. Hang on to your (tomorrow)pants.

So the other side of the customer service angle of social media is the “open kitchen” marketing affect: in a business, like in a restaurant, I like an open kitchen because a) it’s entertaining and b) it lets me see where my food is being made. People don’t connect with brands or companies, they connect with other people, and the ability to get some insight into the people who make the company “tick” provides value for the customer.

So that’s a reason to initiate with a company’s social media presence. But why would I continue to subscribe/follow/listen? Because that company has done things to “Raise the Intrigue”.

I think this may be one of the many elusive variables to that nasty, nasty concept of something being “viral”. We all know and agree that you can’t manufacture “viral”. But we know what the end goal is: we want people to say “OMGWTF…I have to show my friends”.

But how long does that viral “moment” last? Most viral campaigns quickly hockey stick, and then vanish into the portfolio of the PR company that claims responsibility for it.

Most companies don’t really want to shock their customers into being interested. It’s got the potential to cast shrapnel all over the place (citation: the recent “MotrinMoms” debacle). Are there ways to Raising the Intrigue without shocking the audience? How do you make an experience worth sharing?

STORY TIME! How a little red fish made a big impact

My friend and one of my business partners, Matt Cohen, is the CEO of ChoiceShirts, a respectably large online t-shirt store. ChoiceShirts has always put a huge emphasis on customer service and responsiveness, so getting Matt involved on twitter was a natural move. But that’s not what this story is about.

One of the things that Matt made mention of in his early musings on twitter was his love of Swedish Fish. After a handful of responses from followers about that being their favorite, and Matt got a great idea.

By including a single-serving Swedish Fish and the note above, Matt did two things: One, he created an opportunity to connect with the PERSON behind ChoiceShirts, which is a memorable (and sharable) moment.

Two, he raised the intrigue. By providing some insight into himself, the customer has an opportunity to ask more questions, about Matt or ChoiceShirts. Maybe even about themselves.

That’s even better than a memorable moment.

There’s nothing sustainable about a memorable moment, especially with how short our memories are these days.

Intrigue, however, is easily sustained. So long as you’re continually growing and innovating as a company, there will always be opportunities to intrigue.

What makes you, and your company, intriguing?