Measures of engagement - convincing the disconnected

Ever been asked for the ROI on social media by someone who actually uses it?

Just a thought, but I'm making a wild guess that those that use it understand its value in spades - and don't require the numbers. It's those that don't, who fret over each micro response - failing to see the bigger picture.

So your best strategy for getting someone to buy social media is to get them to buy-in to social media with a little DIY. I often recommend that everyone should blog, join a social network and build their own widget, for precisely that reason. Don't just witness the network. Be part of it. (image by burnblue via flickr)

Traditional media people and investors, for example, are happy to spend cash on TV ads, or interruptive online ads, or print ads. Because they get them. They understand that they are to be broadcast and consumed by audiences. And they are part of the audiences that do the consuming.

The other stuff - the clever, engaging (and we'll come back to that word in a bit) stuff is co-created within communities. And those that you want to part with their cash are not part of those communities.

Is it any surprise that Fred Wilson's outfit (Union Square Ventures) invests in socially engaging projects from twitter to disqus, del.icio.us, etsy, feedburner, tumblr and beyond. He lives in the social digital realm. He is therefore at an advantaged position to see the value. And Fred is famous for his hit rate. Maybe others could learn?

If you can't actually convince your would-be meal-ticket that they should blog, widgetise and generally get themselves connected before you pitch them, you face a tough gig. You'll have to play by their rules.

Luckily, we're finding a way to meet them halfway.

I tweeted yesterday: "Consumers value brands. Engaged people are valuable to brands".

ROI can't come down to increased traffic. Traffic is just eyeballs - it's just the page impression number. ROI has to get closer to and be more comfortable with the smaller, but more important numbers, of engagement.

For me, engagement with a community means you contribute something to it. Youtube's audience is valuable in a page impresssion sense. Youtube's contributors (particularly those forming groups, commenting and uploading video) have a much higher per capita value for youtube. (Total communities are ones in which to take part you must create part).

Enagagement should be measured by actions. All the rest is passive consumption.

Both have value of course. But what is the relative value? We feel engagement has higher value. Fred Wilson feels it well enough.

But where are the spreadsheets to convince the disconnected? SociallyMinded.co.uk colleague Matthew Brazil is working on exactly this with Radion6. I'm hoping to help him along the journey as is Dan and the organisers of Measurement Camp are striving for similar.

Matt is carefully testing the impact of using social media on actual business done for his consultancy.

That's exactly the kind of clincher the disconnected needs. And filling this hole may be just the blue touch paper required for more companies to get and use social media.

And as they do, they will become better - more fit for the networked world. More human. And that will be great for all of us - and for them..

So, if you have thoughts, any methodologies... post away!

And to try to get this rolling along and even more brains set workign on it, let's try it as a meme: Measures of Engagement.

John Carson has added his take.

I'll tag a first five to join in please: Alan, Dan, Joseph, Matt and Will

P2PR theory into practice

Bauer Media (the company I work for) has a neat social media play called ditto.net (I would say that, wouldn't I? I've had a light-touch advice-and-support role throughout).

It's a human sorting engine, enabling crowd-sourced entertainment ranking through the simplicity of voting on lists. For the full story, listen to Colin Kennedy.

Anyways, a couple of months back Community Marketing Manager Dan Thornton and myself got our heads together to think of ways we might spread the word about ditto.net (image by Thomas Hawk via flickr)

What we came up with was a list to rank 'The RockStars of Web2.0'.
(You can read Dan's take on all this here).

We figured the inhabitants of this list would be people equipped to discover it and either be sufficiently intrigued/excited/embarrassed by it to perhaps point it out to the many people in their own networks of trust.

They, like all of us, will only pass on what they think their network will think is cool. That's a basic principle for me for how brands can adapt to the networked world.

Rather than bung them all a basic press release, we stood out of the way so they could (at least in some cases) make the discovery themselves.

And in a recent meme (emerging after we started this) that discover-it-yourself approach to PR seems to ring the right bells with the likes of Scoble, Arrington and, most explicitly, Steve Rubel (Does the thrill of the chase make PR obsolete).

We hoped they might even investigate beyond the list they appeared on - more discovery of their own. We trusted they were bright enough to make their own decisions about this - they certainly didn't need us to either lead them by the hand or tell them what to do.

Some I did contact directly, using networks of trust I have built up over time. That's the more traditional side of PR in a networked context. But others discovered ditto through P2PR - friend-adapted-pass-on.

Dan and I both blogged and tweeted about the intitial gathering of the list. We hosted posts where our own networks could contribute suggestions before the list for ranking got created on ditto itself. That stirred a little initial buzz.

And when the list went live, he and I posted and tweeted again. We didn't take it, or ourselves too seriously. Neither did those we contacted directly in the good old fashioned way.

And one way or another the list, and ditto.net, got pointed to by and on Stowe Boyd's /Message (that one really was down to my personal network - I also blog at /message!), by Joseph Jaffe, Euan Semple, Jonathan Macdonald, Richard Millington and, today, by the legend that is Doc Searls.

(Dan's list is way more complete than my own).

And that's without tracking the twitter retweeting (of which there has been plenty) or other social sentiment measures.

Even Jason Calacanis has involved himself in a discussion about it - after discovering (there's that magic word again) that he's languishing at the bottom end of the list!

On each occasion, the conversation continued. And continues. This isn't a boom-bang flash-in-the-pan firework display, it's the release of a (spin-free, upfront) message to be spread in the way the adhoc communities of purpose who discover it choose to adopt and adapt it. It's up to them if they find it useful and how they find it useful.

P2PR is working right here, right now. We haven't done the marketing to them, they choose to do it to themselves.

From broadcast PR to P2PR

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