Tag Archives: Social media marketing

April 9, 2015 · 11:29 am

Signal To Noise

One term you might have seen when you’re looking at stereo systems is Signal To Noise Ratio. It’s exactly what you’d think – the relationship between the desired signal and whatever background noise is present. I like what Wikipedia has to say about a variation on the theme: 

Signal-to-noise ratio is sometimes used informally to refer to the ratio of useful information to false or irrelevant data in a conversation or exchange. For example, in online discussion forums and other online communities, off-topic posts and spam are regarded as “noise” that interferes with the “signal” of appropriate discussion.

Part of what we do as marketers and business people generally is to gather information. We listen (at least I hope you do) to all of the sources of data, especially social media. In theory this allows us to gain insight into the concerns of our customers, the opinions of our brand, and the actions of our competition. However, as it turns out, these social signals have a huge signal to noise ratio, at least when it comes to brands.

The folks at Networked Insights did a study for Fast Company.  You can read the results here but the fact that blew me away is that in some cases as much as 95% of the social buzz on Twitter about a brand was spam.  They defined spam as tweets from fake accounts, social bots, coupon offers, the brands themselves or celebrity endorsers – basically anything that isn’t a true consumer writing.  The categories most weighed down by spam are those in which consumers make a lot of purchases, such as shopping, finance and tech. Significantly less spam occurs in categories such as religion, sports and science.

Most importantly, the nature of the conversation changes dramatically when the signal to noise ratio improves as the spam is removed.  More granular and nuanced topics emerge from the background noise (spam) and you get a better sense of what really is important to consumers along with how they’re feeling.

It’s critical to listen.  It’s just as critical to do whatever you can to improve the signal to noise ratio so that you’re gaining valuable insights and not just more data.  That’s true whether it’s social, analytics (is your data filtering out bots, your own employees, etc.?) or any measure you use to make important business decisions.  Got it?

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March 25, 2015 · 11:36 am

Get Out Of My Face

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of going to a web page and having a video autoplay. It’s one of the most annoying things publishers do, in my opinion. Putting aside that it can be a bandwidth hog, chew up your mobile data plan and hang a page as it loads, inevitably you’ve forgotten to mute your machine or phone and a blast of unanticipated noise can be startling at best and embarrassing at worst. Yecch.

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Fr...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s in that context that I read something this morning from an AdAge and RBC study on marketing. I’m sure you’re aware the Facebook has rolled out autoplay video ads. Oh joy. Well, according to the study (as reported via eMarketer):

While just 9% of US marketers said they already purchased autoplay video ads on the social network, the majority were somewhat (33%) or very (21%) likely to purchase such placements in the next six months. This put the percentage of respondents who viewed autoplay video ads positively at nearly two-thirds. The strong interest supports RBC research released at the end of August 2014, which estimated that Facebook would sell $700 million worth of autoplay video ads this year alone.

I love that 2/3 of marketers view the ads positively.  Where is the research on how consumers feel about them?  Yes, I’m aware that you can turn off the autoplay (click here to learn how) but the default on both the web and the app is to let them play.  It’s not just Facebook either.  Twitter, YouTube, and others are testing the same thing, albeit just autoplay videos (no ads – yet).

Maybe it’s my New York attitude but to publishers offering autoplay content or ads and to the marketers who buy them I say “get out of my face.”  Make your content interesting and engaging, not intrusive and annoying.  Romance me, don’t assault me.  I’m sure I’m not the only person who longer visits certain sites due to their use of autoplay nor the only one who has disabled the feature wherever I can.  I’m still not sure why I should have to do that in the first place.

What are your thoughts?

 

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February 25, 2015 · 9:02 am

Flying Blind

The latest edition of the CMO Survey from the Fuqua School at Duke is out and it’s baffling, at least to me.  You can read the data here if you care to but here are a few points that caught my eye.  Maybe which raised an eyebrow as well.  

The good news is that there seems to be an awareness that we live in a data-driven age.  The report shows that CMOs expect to nearly double the share of their budgets spent on marketing analytics over the next few years. That said, current levels of spending are actually down. Unlike computer chips, it hasn’t been my experience that you can buy more for less in the analytics field so that’s kind of baffling.  In addition, there may be more data around but it seems as if it’s getting used less.  Overall, CMOs reported that just 29% of projects used available or requested marketing analytics, down from 32.5% a year earlier and representing the lowest figure since August 2013.  Huh?

The strange news doesn’t stop there.  Despite the fact that we’ve been using social media in marketing for at least 5 years, social media remains poorly integrated with marketing strategy.  When asked “How well is social media integrated with marketing strategy?”  23%  reported a 1 or 2 on a 7 point scale.  That lack of integration isn’t restricted to social media either.  When asked “How effectively does your company integrate customer information across purchasing, communication, and social media channels” the average score was  3.7, down from 3.9.  In other words, flying blind.

That has an effect on how well CMO’s can track results.  They were asked about the impact of their social media spending, the same social media that isn’t properly integrated into their marketing strategy.  14% reported that they have proven the impact quantitatively.  41% said that they have a good qualitative sense of the impact, but not a quantitative impact.  Nearly half – 45% – said that they haven’t been able to show the impact yet.  Anyone wondering why?

One final rant.  Most marketers have low levels of concern about the use of online customer data.   When asked “How worried are you that the use of online customer data could raise questions about privacy?”40%  answered either a 1 or 2 on the 7 point scale.  Not very concerned, in other words.  Really?

I find much of the above indicative that many marketers are still flying blind.  What’s your take?

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