There Are Still Too Many Social Media Phantoms Out There

September 26, 2011 By Mike McGrail 28 Comments

My views on people (and agencies) posing as social media ‘experts’ are well known. I’m not about to go on another rant about ‘gurus’ I promise. Bear with me on this one.

Social Media Week has just wrapped up in Glasgow. It was a great week, with a really diverse range of events (massive respect to the organisers for running it so well). During the week I attended an event that focussed on ROI from social media and how you can measure it. It was held by a ‘full-service’ digital agency based in Glasgow and London. I always enjoy hearing other people’s perspective on social media as a marketing channel and the ROI debate is one that appears to have some serious mileage left in the tank. The speaker from the agency in question took the stage and ran the audience through a typical intro to social media (cliché after cliché). After this, the topic changed to measurement and trying to prove ROI…

We were taken through a talk on some very basic metrics that can be accounted for. That was about it. No insight in to how these are used to prove value, assess effectiveness and shape the way a business uses the channel. The speaker used the old ‘social media is not about sales’ line which we all know is accurate to a certain extent, although I believe there has to be business actions coming from social media activity or serious questions will be asked. I think this speaker and the agency the speaker works for are likely hiding behind this excuse. I judge this on what I saw in front me and nothing else, to me, I think if you are given the opportunity to speak to an audience about such a well-versed topic, you need to get up there and really go for it, get people thinking and give solid advice and examples.

He is a Good Phantom. (image - www.freeonlinemovieworld.com)

After the show was over, questions were invited from the floor. There was a barrage and not in a good way. The type of question that was being asked pointed to an audience that felt severely un-enlightened by what had unfolded before them. One person asked ‘are you guys tracking clicks through to websites and the outcome of those?’ The answer – ‘no that’s not possible at this time, it’s in beta with Google’. Really? Dear lord. Oh and did you know that Brandwatch is exactly the same as socialmention.com?

I’m not attacking the speaker here. The agency should never have put the individual on the stage. At one point the boss of the agency asked the speaker two questions that the speaker really struggled to answer. It was painful. The whole thing got me thinking, how many agencies are delivering true value to the clients that decide to spend their no doubt tight budgets on their services? If an agency is happy to work on a basis that ROI is ‘very difficult to prove’ and the client is happy to pay on that basis, then good luck to them. For me, this approach just devalues the work of people and agencies that are really pushing to de-mystify the social media channel, ensuring they are on the cutting edge of the game and ultimately delivering value that not only does all the nice fluffy engagement and brand building stuff that all and sundry preach about, but also actual bottom line results.

Will the wheat eventually be separated from the chaff? Or will businesses continue to be blinded by the ‘ROI is so hard to prove’ line? Thoughts would be appreciated…

Mike

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Filed Under: Anti-Guru, Online Measurement Tagged With: metrics, proving ROI, social media measurement, social media roi

About Mike McGrail

Mike McGrail is the owner of The Social Penguin Blog. He is in the process of setting up a digital marketing and communications consultancy. He likes scotch and leather-bound books. Follow Mike's ramblings on Twitter. He also resides on Google Plus here.

http://twitter.com/Phil_Adams Phil_Adams

Hi Mike. I was one of the judges for the Social Buzz awards. It was a privilege. Partly because the other judges were of calibre that made me question my own right to be there – the interrogation of the papers was an education in itself. But mainly because amongst the hundreds of entries across the various various categories there were some superb papers. I can tell you categorically that, for quite a few enlightened organisations out there, social is very much about (demonstrable, measurable) sales. A substantial number of entrants went beyond proxy measures of success such as likes, views, retweets etc, and pointed to significant increases in conversions, average transaction value , repeat purchase, or other hard commercial measures of positive behavioural change as a direct result of well-executed social programmes. In other words, it (social media ROI analysis) can be done. Phil

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

Hi Phil,

Thanks for taking the time to comment. There are many great examples of people proving ROI from social media activities, I think that has led to me being even more riled, as too many are still convinced it is not possible. As a person who works with social media on behalf of clients, I would be embarrassed to be hiding behind the ROI force-field.

It must have been great going through all of the entries, look forward to seeing the winners!

Cheers,

Mike

http://twitter.com/Webuccaneer Alex Murphy

I went to the Bright Digital Marketing Festival a few weeks ago and whilst it was a great day in particular, there’s still too much “this can be done” and not enough “this is HOW” – attribution modelling, deep social media activity analytics integration, and other excellent topics were touched on, but I still felt like I was watching people hawking services – not phantoms or shysters, but knowledgeable people jealously protecting “secrets”.

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

Hi Alex,

Thanks for commenting. I agree, people should be willing to show how it can be done, this would actually improve the standing of social media among business owners if more were pushing in the same direction. The issue can be client confidentiality of course.

Cheers

Mike

http://twitter.com/CockyYoungMan Adrian Knoll

So true! So good to hear someone saying it out loud!

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

Thanks Adrian!

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

Hi Kelly,

Fair points. I think that people have look at different types of ROI when it comes to social media. The bottom line is clearly important, but there are other areas that feed in to this above raw sales. Social media is great for customer retention. That can be measured. I’ve seen potential purchases gone wrong and then saved by social media use. Again measurable and effects the bottom line. What gets me is when people preach about engagement and improving sentiment. Yes that is important, but the people at the top only buy that for so long. Fact!
http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

I wouldn’t say the people there that night were numpties, far from it and the questions asked proved that. It’s just a bit off billing your event as a chat about ROI when nothing was really put across that was particularly helpful or new. Same old, same old and full of excuses.

http://www.andrewburnett.com andrewburnett

I didn’t mean to insinuate that the audience were all numpties.

The issue, as I see it, is that, in social media, there are those who have spent 1,000s of hours on their arses in front of their screens, and, then there are those who see a fast buck / glamourous ‘agency’ job. There is, of course, a soupçon of overlap.

Those that have done their 10,000 ‘Outlier hours’ have, to my mind, every right to be guarded, though, in this case it doesn’t sound as if there was much to guard!

The greatest naïvety is in the title of the event, which was the point I was making when I linked to the event that was held in social media week Chicago.

I counted 118 events in Glasgow’s Social Media Week, that’s a LOT more events than there are people in the UK who HAVE done their ‘Outlier hours’. I’m not at all surprised that there was an event where ‘puffin poo’ was on the menu, frankly it was inevitable with so many events and so few with a clue.

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

It’s a cliche, but there are many who can talk the talk, but few who can walk the walk. I totally agree that people will never want to give too much away. I guess a basis is fine, but an ‘expert’ or whatever should always be able to answer questions in an authoritative manner. This wasn’t the case here and I feel a little for the speaker. Not so much the agency who put the person up there and did very little to help out during the car crash. What was quite scary was looking at the hashtag stream during the event, people were quoting parts of the talk as if they were incredible nuggets from social heaven.

http://twitter.com/FrancisB_ Francis Burns

I think this is partly true, its massively brand specific; if you sell product online then tracking pixels, cookies, referring site/conversion rate etc. come into play, but even then you are looking at last click/last action and does not take into account actions later in the day, next week and so on. As you say, if you’re an aspirational brand it becomes more about hard numbers on reach and target demographic and is more ambiguous than straight conversion.

The real objective should be looking at ways to quantify what is possible to track and then displaying a suitable amplification based on research and historic numbers (key indicators of whatever your objectives are). “Magic numbers” are not new in advertising, above the line have used benchmarks such as advertising value equivalency for years and to say this is a little subjective is an understatement. Social (or more broadly digital) actually allows you to track far more than is possible with above the line; so I do think its important not to get too caught up in arguing where you can’t show ROI, but actually highlighting where you can visibly see more than ever before.
Dennis

Am I missing something? Google analytics shows all referring links and obviously other relevant traffic stats. One of my clients pays £100 PCM, at the end of month one, sales coming from twitter and Facebook totalled over £300. Happy client.

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

Yup it can be done and has been being done for ages! Sales tracking is the easy part.
Sent from my iPad

Rufus Evison

I remember when the same thing was happening with the web. Phrases like “it is all about trends” were rife. Just like the web it will all settle out when people who understand the technology interpret for the marketing people to get them what they need to know. It is not rocket science just hard work and good data. And byhard work I do not even mean difficult work just a lot of Ts to be crossed and i s to be dotted.

At the risk of posting spam if you need to measure your ROI come to EYC not because we are the best (though reading this article I do wonder if maybe we are) but because our whole business is about the tie to the purchase data so we will work from there upwards. There is no real substitute for real data and as marketing interacts with new media the need becomes even more clear.

This is not to say there is not more to Social Media than trade driving just that if you cannot do ther basics then you pobably will not do the rest right either. Success in this game is about two things:
1 Doing the right thing
2 Doing it right.
If you are not measuring what is happeneing what are the odds that you are really ding the right thing?

If you are doing it right your revenues wil rise measurably as a reflection of whatever else you are acheiving.

Rufus

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

“If you are doing it right your revenues wil rise measurably as a reflection of whatever else you are acheiving.”

I like this Rufus!

http://www.openplus.co.uk/news/uk-retail-consultant Killian @ Open Plus

Hi Mike, thanks for this. I wouldn’t have minded a rant about gurus! One of the most common tangible benefits (not sure if ROI is right for this) is the use of Twitter by online retailers to handle customer queries. This has the dual benefit of allowing customers to easily contact the business and of allowing the business to manage their online reputation at the same time. I’m sure a sophisticated business could put an ROI on that. But the reality of discourse about social media is that, like everything that seems to get carelessly tossed at me by StumbleUpon, most of it is just another person saying the same rehearsed stuff, taking up our valuable time!

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

There are a few guru rants on TSPB! Totally agree, customer service success is ROI, perhaps not in the traditional sense of course. Like you say, too many people happy to rest on their laurels.

Rufus Evison

Link tracking to completion online is easy. The fun stuff starts when you track it through to in store purchase, It can be done for socuial media just as much as for the rest of online and mobile but it is more work so most people do not do it. The tangible benefits of watching and understanding your customers are fairly well proven but people still seem to be saying there is a mystery here. I too find it difficult to believe someone stood on stage and fudged around *whether* it could be done! I would hope for a talk like that to be talking about how it can be done under various different circumstances but it seems not…
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/edward-harkins/15/40/635 Edward

Mike thanks for this great little ‘telling-it-as-it-really-is blog posting. I’ve posted something similar to this elsewhere and just want to repeat it.I’ve been gradually become an enthusiastic convert to social media for business. However, the amount of mince that is thrown around the topic kept me away from it for a long time. I still find myself in scenarios like you describe. Difference now is that I sit there realising that it’s not me that is ‘IT-challenged’ and that doesn’t get it – it’s that the presentators or ‘facilitators’ themselves often have a limited grasp; and certainly do not know how to impart what tangiable (and beneficial) business impacts can be generated.

Many such presenters and facilitators are in fact sellers, ‘selling’ something; something that they say is not about selling. All reminds me of past evangelisms such as TQM, MBO and, of course, cost-benefit analysis… the enduring early warning sensor is when the evengelists ‘need’ to invent new jargon and then a new language (only becuase, you know, it’s all to difficult to display in ordinary plain English).

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

Hi Edward,

Thanks for taking the time to comment, glad you liked the post!

People will really struggle to grasp this area of marketing if events continue to offer very little value for money. Conferences etc can be very valuable, but not without spending time getting to know the tools and working out what you want to achieve with them – speakers etc can augment this but it’s not often that one can really challenge.

Cheers

Mike

http://mmacleod.tumblr.com Michael MacLeod

I live in Edinburgh and was up for coming through to a fair number of the events at SMW Glasgow, but the more I read the event descriptions, the more I feared they would be as described in your post Mike. Jargon packed vagueness all over the shop. Not beating around the bush, much of the week stuck me as a b/s-bingo convention. Really glad I saved the tenner I would have spent to get the train through each day and just used the Livestream to watch the main events I’d have gone to.

That’s not to say it wouldn’t have been useful to meet lots of people as always happens at these gatherings. But I got work done at the same time.

I should also say that the events I did watch online (discussions on future news and practical workshops on multimedia, podcasting etc) were excellent and hats off to organisers for pulling the livestreams off very well.

So with zero investment, lots learned and money earned from working at home, my ROI for SMWeek was 100%. Thanks Livestream!

Keep up the good work on the blog Mike. Your blog’s a refreshing read on my bookmarks toolbar alongside the likes of dry public sector contracts and the council meetings schedule.

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the kind words!

SMW was very well run and there were many great events, I don’t want to take away from that. As you say, there were some events that didn’t really break the mould or offer real advice/insight. I think that’s probably inevitable when there are so many events going on.

Cheers

Mike

http://twitter.com/boyddigital Boyd Digital

Hi Mike, The agency with the best sales guy will win and always has, look at Big Mouth Media, by far an average SEO agency but great branding, PR and sales people which makes them win.

http://www.thesocialpenguinblog.com Mike McGrail

Hello,

Controversial! I guess there is an angle there, however I’d like to think that good work will always shine through. Thanks for having a strong opinion, refreshing!

Cheers

Mike

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