Social Media Measurement, Actionable vs Vanity Metrics

Many companies use the wrong metrics to measure their performance, especially when it comes to social media. I've done many training on Engagement and ROI, and often companies like to focus on what many call, "Vanity Metrics". Pageviews, unique visitors, registered members, conversion rates, email-newsletter open rates, number of Twitter followers, or Facebook likes -- Do you think they are important? Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, does not think so.

Vanity Metrics look good, and is easy for a fan to see how popular you are, but there is a question that is hardly asked, "So What?"


These are 4 "Actionable Metrics" to focus on.

• Relevant revenue. Note the word "relevant," which refers to recurring sales in your core business. Don't count revenue from one-time or stagnant sources.

• Sales volume. This can be a number like units sold or active subscriptions, something that shows whether or not enough people want to buy what you're selling.

• Customer retention. Metrics like "new customers" can hide the fact that although you may attract 1,000 new users a month, you're losing 900, which means you're not going to scale.

• Relevant growth. Too often, companies compound the stupidity of their choice of metrics by creating a metric tracking the growth of vanity metrics. You should be looking for a traceable pattern in which the actions of your existing customers create new customers. That's what Ries calls an "engine of growth."

 These metrics are valuable because they measure success at your core business. To measure the value of your social-media activities, you have to look at the results the company is getting overall and track how social media was involved in moving the needle.

Social media is a big-picture, interdisciplinary concept that covers an evolving set of digital methods through which stakeholders interact. These methods can become major marketing channels, customer-service delivery channels, and new ways of gathering intelligence. Internally, your team can use social technologies to share information, build relationships, and get work done. Much of this is profoundly important, yet intangible. Intangibles are the enemy of actionable metrics.

To use Social Media effectively,  a company has to discover its actionable metrics and act on them instead of the vanity metrics.

-- Robin Low

Tips to pitch a story

As a small business or an entrepreneur, it is important to learn how to pitch an interesting story or ideas to the media (influential bloggers or mainstream media)

Here are some tips to make you pitch like a pro. Always consider your audience.


Newsworthiness (CITPPM)
(List is from Carol Howard, On Deadline — a good book about media relations.)

Come up with newsworthy ideas to pitch, based on CITPPM —

C - Consequence - Is the story of any consequence to your readers?


I - Interest -  Is the story interesting to your readers?

T - Timeliness - Did the event just happen or is it going to happen?

P - Proximity - Is the story a local or national story?

P - Prominence - Prominence of the coverage?

M - Magnitude - Does the story have magnitude?



After getting a good newsworthy story, think about your pitch.

What constitutes a good pitch email? 

Visual. Many people read the news online because there is a catchy picture. If you have a nice shot of your product, (screenshot for software), include a few good ones for the editor to pick (make sure they are not too big) and the pics you send catches their attention too.

Concise. Make sure you are concise enough to sell your company in one or two sentences in the email copy and title. It's like pitching to an investor, really.

Detailed. Include as many information about the company and the founders in your attachments. It makes our lives 10 times easier.





Good luck with your pitches!

-- Robin Low

Shift in Engagement.

Many businesses in Mexico are now shifting their engagement, from Brian Solis's blog, "Touch points open and close whether a customer stands on the stage of awareness, consideration, purchase, or post purchase. It is in those moments that engagement, regardless of source or shape, affects the next steps and impressions of customers."

With customers owning multiple screens, laptops, tablets, TV, smart phones, engaging customers in the journey of decision making process does help a lot as each stage has different needs.

The customer journey management (CJM) is now getting common, and Hotels, Restaurants, Art Galleries, Artists are now not only interested in the social side of engagement, many of them are also thinking of ways of making the decision making process of a product or service more hollistic.

You get to meet, socialize and know more about the businesses you visit, and they are also interested in going further to engage with you online, and sharing information across the different mediums and screens you use.

With such a competitive world, you have to get in the engagement or be obsolete!

-- Robin Low

Things to look out for in 2013

There are many new changes which I think will affect us much and these are a few things I believe will change the way we do things in 2013.


1) Touch Screen computers.

With the introduction of tablets, and now Windows 8 laptops, it seems very natural to just touch your screen than to use a mouse.With the Windows 8 Lenovo touchscreen notebook costing less than $1,000, it just makes good sense.

2) More photos on Facebook.

With Instagram being bought by Facebook, I would expect better integration and more photos being shared. Perhaps Facebook Photos with filters?

3) Screen based media on the rise.

With people carrying more screens, and owning more screens from Smartphones, tablets, notebooks and TVs, there will be more media interaction on the screen.

Long gone are the days where phones and computers are just used for work.

Computers Keep Us Productive and Informed

24% of our daily media interactions occur on a PC
40% use PCs to find information
29% use them to keep up to date
69% of use is at home and 31% out of home
Usage is productive and task-oriented
It requires significant amount of time and focus
The mindset is serious with a research intensive attitude

Smart Phones Keep Us Connected

38% of our daily media interactions occur on a smartphone
60% of this usage is at home and 40% out of home
54% of attention is dedicated to communication and 33% is entertainment
People use smart phones to communicate and connect in short bursts of time. And, they need information quickly and efficiently.

Tablets Keep us Entertained

9% of daily media interactions occur on tablets
79% use tablets at home and 21% out of home
63% of usage is for entertainment purposes and 32% is for communication
Tablets are mostly used for entertainment and browsing
Consumers loose their sense of time as tablets inspire a relaxed and leisurely approach

We are now a society of multi-taskers and multi-screeners

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These are the few things I can think of that will be significant, if you can think of anything else that may change in 2013 that we should look out for, please let me know.

Have a Happy New Year!

-- Robin Low

Memorable moments in Social Media -- 2012

1) Twitter has 200 million active users -- no longer considered a fad.

Watch out of live tweeting at events which may yield results faster than even live TV.

2) Facebook is really big!

• Monthly active users now total nearly 850 million
• 250 million photos are uploaded every day
• 20% of all page views on the web are on Facebook
• 425 million mobile users
• 100 billion connections
• Zygna’s games revenue is currently 12% of Facebook’s total income
• 2.7 billion “likes” per day
• 57% of users are female

3) MySpace is back!

Watch the video.

4) Gangnam Style -- 1 Billion!!

-- Yep, there can be 1 billion views on Youtube.

5)  Social Media users have POWER

Instagram declared that they can use your photos for ads and angry mobs online threatened to boycott Instagram and delete their accounts and guess what?

-- The mob wins!

-- Robin Low

Digital Partnership

There are many reasons for partnership to happen, on the digital front, smaller businesses can also benefit from online partnerships, promoting each others products, sharing news and perhaps doing other collaborations.

So why is digital partnership important?

For one, with social media, increasing reach is very important. Sometimes, sharing good links to various articles and having various other partnerships will definitely boost competitiveness.

There are also many other reasons for partnerships.

1) Shared Economics
 -- Lower cost by possibly sharing research, technology or infrastructure.
2) Economies of scale
 -- Take advantage of supply chain, shared buying, volume discount, etc
3) Money and Resources
 -- Bigger = better access to resources.
4) Access to customers
 -- Access each others customer base/ mailing list
5) Access to Marketing / Brand
 -- Facebook partner, leverage on the other's brand.

If you are planning to do more with possibly less, partnership may be the way to go.

-- Robin Low

Bootstraping your startup

So, you have your killer business plan, lined up mentors and assembled the best team you can find. You have your financials down and you know where you need to hire. Now you need money -- the question is always where do you get it from?

In my experience from starting multiple companies and mentors many other, getting money from your customers is the best -- by selling things to them. If you can Bootstrap. Bootstrapping introduces strong discipline around management of costs and cash flow. Cash is King!

An innovative way to raise money quickly from your customers is by crowdfunding using Kickstarter.com. This website, and others like it, are going to completely disrupt early stage venture capital by allowing companies to take pre-sales quickly.

Don't dilute your shareholding and lose control. Keep your operating costs low and get your business to "Profitability quickly". Finding out how much you need is the main job of a startup CEO. You need to keep the company healthily funded -- running out of money and the game is over. A Savvy investor can smell your weakness and will wait till you run out of money and then will "renegotiate" the terms. The less money in the bank, the more desperate you will be.

If you have a cashflow negative business, one or two unexpected runaway cost will become very toxic very fast if you have investors, and the pressure will build up and if you cannot deliver expected results, things easily turn sour.

Many good businesses find their markets fast and start selling to create revenue in their offerings and learn and adjusts their products and services before selling more. For a cashflow positive company with a list of customers, it is easy to show investors that you understand the market and you have a desirable product. You can always raise a lot more money to expand and go regional than just to start, and give up less as well as you will be negotiating from a stronger position.

-- Robin Low