The My.ComMetrics 2011 trend briefing series, consisting of 25 blog posts and 7 webinars about trends to watch and social media monitoring DOs and DON’Ts, has addressed some of the pitfalls we need to watch out for in 2011, including:

- 2011 trends: Mobile communication and ROI (return on investment),
- 2011 trends: Web lovers and privacy
- 2011 trends: Social networking and ROI, and
- 2011 trends: Risk management and social media ROI

One school of thought is to measure everything. While this may work in direct marketing, we have previously addressed why this may fail when it comes to mastering social media measurement challenges.

When you start putting together your social media activities, you have to take a realistic look at your costs and the benefits that will be forthcoming if you do it right. We present the social media cost-benefit pyramid that helps you show the ROI your bosses want to see.

Article source – 2011 trends: The social media cost-benefit pyramid

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1. You have to find your own way to success

Many companies are still experimenting with social media, but their experiences may not be very useful for you. Accordingly, just because Industrial Marketing thinks it is the coolest thing does not mean that Texas Instruments’ approach to client communities makes sense for your firm.

Tip 1: Becoming social media savvy and leveraging it effectively for the company requires a lot of practice. Many small and frequent steps are a great beginning.

2. Navel-gazing metrics are useless

Often we conclude that if you cannot measure it, do not try to do it. This is the direct marketer method and there’s no doubt it can work. But often, it fails:

- On buying unmeasurable media
- Why FeedBurner statistics cannot tell you much

Another silly way to measure the value of your webpage or blog is by using some idiosyncratic things to determine its value:

- ComMetrics.com has been valued at US$4087 per customer
- ComMetrics.com is getting 3522 pageviews per day and making US$12.57 daily
- ComMetrics.com Estimated Worth US$9176.10 by website outlook

Since the above fails to help me figure out how I could improve things, it is of little use to me. What is your take?

Tip 2: All things being equal, more traffic is a good thing since it means more exposure for your brand. It also helps fighting off the out of sight out of mind syndrome. Nevertheless, if all this new traffic does not result in more sales or help improve key metrics top management cares about, what is it good for?

Alert – Our 2011 trendwatch webinar: More useless social media measures on Thursday 2011-01-26 further addresses these issues.

If you missed it, click on the link to watch the videos, listen to the podcast and view the slides – you will be surprised.

3. Strategic versus social media analytics and engagement metrics

This social media cost-benefit pyramid shows how following through from operational to strategic parameters ensures top management’s buy-in.

Management and shareholders are most concerned about operators from social media, such as using Twitter, and do strategic monitoring to find out how they affect key drivers that impact sales and more revenue.

Mid-level managers focus on getting social media analytics, such as how many regulars act on a tweet we publish about today’s special and a discount coupon for lunch (e.g., number using the coupon, number of re-tweets).

Community managers and agencies focus on analyzing engagement data to learn how social media might influence the information that interests management. This group of managers wants to find out if sending a tweet at 10:45 gets a better response than sending at 10:15 and so forth.

Other examples include how well a 10 percent discount with a deadline works versus just offering a free soft drink, or how using Twitter or a Facebook fanpage compared to other social media efforts drives customer traffic to a brick-and-mortar store.

By contrast, top management focuses on strategic issues: one or two key operating metrics and how these relate to ROI. This means tweeting must be linked to how it alters measures that your executive care about. An example might be how participating in a community like Quora helps reduce calls to the customer hotline.

We also discuss this in an upcoming blog post:
Why the boss thinks 125,000 monthly pageviews mean failure – 2011-01-27

Bottom line and take-aways

Addressing the above issues using the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) enables management to get a better handle on social media activities and how they can help reach strategic targets.

More Resources

– ComMetrics social media cost classification model

I would love to hear how you have used this framework in your measurement efforts. I hope you will join the discussion in the comments below. Please share this with your organization, partners and staff!

Almost three weeks ago we launched our ComMetrics blog checklist from CyTRAP Labs GmbH with

1. Social media definition: 3 essentials

You can still look forward to

9. 8 guidelines for fostering social media engagement (2010-10-27)
10. 5 corporate blogging trends for 2011 (2010-11-03)

A while back I wrote, Launching a blog – ropes to skip #1: Reputation management, which contained the following five tips:

1. Know your target group.
2. Long haul – it is all about serving a need.
3. Long or short-haul – it is all about branding.
4. Usability is the key – keep it simple, stupid (KISS).
5. Post whenever you want.

But since then, I have learned a few things, so here comes an update.

1. Reputation is key to managing image and brand

In short, reputation is how people talk about you when you are not in the room. No matter what a brand campaign tries to bring across, it will not succeed if your reputation is bad.

More specifically, reputation is often a consequence of a triggering event. Examples include someone’s experience with your customer service, and other visible actions and mistakes regarding environmental damage (e.g., Nestlé – KitKat vs. Greenpeace fiasco or BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster) or human rights violations.

Reputation is based on judgments made by the company’s clients, sharholders and bystanders (see also Barnett, M. L., Jermier, J. M., & Lafferty, B. A. (2006). Corporate reputation: The definitional landscape. Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 9(1), p. 26-38).

2. People don’t know what they want until they see it

If you manage to make the experience feel different, customers do not use prices at Ryanair or Swiss as a comparison to Virgin’s offerings. Instead, we are open to the new anchor that Virgin Atlantic prepared for us – being cool and cheeky (see commercial below).

Based on the image an airline has, consumers may be willing to pay more for being cool – a better experience. To illustrate this further, a customer may go to Starbucks for an overpriced Latte because of the experience, thereby failing to rationally compare this offering to another store’s cheaper and better coffee.

Starbucks’ or Apple’s respective reputations have little if anything to do with the price of the product, but primarily with ‘the different user experience’ these companies have managed to communicate to consumers.

3. Be clear that image can influence reputation

Image is what comes to mind when one hears the name or sees the logo of a particular company (e.g., Coca-Cola: Real thing or myth). These are the impressions one has about the company and the firm may play on this image, as illustrated by Virgin Atlantic’s latest advertisement.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The commercial plays on the catchphrase, ”Your airline’s either got it or it hasn’t.”  With the help of Virgin’s long-legged flight attendants, the commercial sells Virgin as a cheeky airline, more glamorous than EasyJet and more fun than Lufthansa. There is no plot and the sign-off gag is cute, if not hilarious.

However, the image of being cool can change and be replaced by something less positive the next time customers experience lost luggage thanks to Virgin Atlantic.

4. Failure-elimination helps improve reputation

I have a coffee machine from a company that uses Roger Federer as its brand ambassador, playing on Federer’s image as a sports star and family man with two kids.

But my opinion of the Jura brand has been formed primarily through its customer relationship management, not its image or the brand it promotes with the help of Roger Federer. To illustrate, I recently had trouble with our machine and sent a request for help via email. By the next morning somebody from the company’s customer service help line had called to walk me through some procedures, step-by-step. And yes, that fixed the problem.

I have had this experience with Jura’s customer service more than once. It always saves me time and hassle – a simple 10-minute phone call with a knowledgeable and friendly customer service representative does much good for a company’s reputation with a client. But if we have a bad experience with a product, the supplier’s reputation suffers, and we are unlikely to purchase again from the same supplier.

5. It takes years to build a reputation, but only a few weeks to destroy it

Starbucks can define and communicate its corporate brand and image. Nevertheless, its image and even more its reputation are the result of how clients and shareholders perceive them based on experience, so the company painstakingly builds its quality image over the years.

For instance, Toyota’s image for quality cars positively affected the resale value of used Toyotas for several decades in some markets like the US. Using maintenance and repair costs from thousands of users, Consumer Reports (an independent US publication) has published annual cost of car ownership figures in which Toyotas have done remarkably well for more than a decade. This and its stellar quality record helped Toyota build its ‘quality’ image and the value of its brand.

But that all changed drastically when in November 2009, Toyota acknowledged potential dangers from out-of-position floor mats on some models. In February 2010, Toyota recalled another 1.5 million vehicles in the US, Asia and Europe – including some of its priciest models (e.g., Lexus IS and GS) after discovering flaws in their brakes and fuel injection systems.

The way Toyota handled this recall crisis illustrates that one can manage a brand, but once customer experiences negatively affect the company’s reputation, including a large recall as in Toyota’s case, the damage to the company’s bottom line is substantial.

It will take Toyota and BP years to rebuild their respective brands and fully regain customer trust.

What is your take, what reputation strategies work for you? Please share your thoughts with a comment below!

Article source: 5 critical steps for reputation management

While co-moderating the Xing Social Media Measurement group, I discovered that our members’ definitions of social media and social media marketing differ quite a bit. After some extensive discussions in the forum, I tried to summarize the findings.

1. Social media definition: 3 essentials
2. Social media marketing definition: 2 essentials
3. Why PR fails with social media marketing

Still to come in this series:

5. 4 ways to foster dialogue with corporate blogs (2010-10-06)
6. 4 strategies to leverage usability tests (2010-10-17)
7. 4 tips for crisis management through social media (2010-10-20)
8. 5 critical steps for reputation management (2010-10-26)
9. 8 guidelines for fostering social media engagement (2010-10-27)
10. 5 corporate blogging trends for 2011 (2010-11-03)

In this post we focus on issues such as whether weblogs are corporate tools that can help with client relationship management or just confused personal ramblings.

What is a blog or weblog?

In short, a blog is a website where a person or a team of employees write and share content that is relevant to their target audience (e.g., friends, customers, suppliers, shareholders).

More specifically, some time ago people defined a weblog as a personal journal. This could take many forms, including but not limited to an online scrapbook for pictures, ideas, musings and stories.

=> How the urban dictionary defined a blog in 2003 – what a difference!

Today, a weblog can be much more – or less. Put differently, blogging software such as WordPress is simply a content management system (CMS), meaning a company could use it to manage its webpage or a different CMS that also allows for blogging (e.g., Drupal).

A blog also allows an individual with limited technical skills to post content on the blog/webpage with hyperlinks, allowing readers to download white papers or view videos.

Weblogs have become accepted sources for information, however, an effective corporate blog requires that management address these four issues:

a) Assess whether your blog meets the criteria to be classified as an organizational blog (includes any not-for-profit, self-employed or charity blog); make changes accordingly to transform it into a corporate blog.
b) Spell out your reasons and objectives for having a corporate blog - entertainment or professional value.
c) Identify and spell out the blog’s target audience and what constitutes valuable content for your desired readers.
d) Develop a set of performance targets using the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principle.

Please ensure you don’t miss any post in this series by registering your email with us to get the latest updates first in your inbox – you’ll be glad you did.

Bottom line – usability is fine but usefulness is critical

Based on our definition of social media marketing it is obvious that a weblog does not really sell a product or services. Instead, it helps build the blogger’s and/or company’s credibility and reputation, while gaining the trust of your audience.

To illustrate, if your company is organized according to business lines such as green energy (e.g., renewable resources), the blog might focus on a topic such as solar energy.
However, as a solar cell manufacturer, you may want to reach out to two vastly different groups, namely:

- direct clients (e.g., solar panel manufacturers or electric utilities owning wind ’farms’) and
- indirect clients (e.g., architects, home-owners and regulators)

In fact, it could be that the weblog serves its purpose best by providing targeted content for indirect clients or ultimate users such as home-owners and investors (e.g., government programs supporting the use of solar energy, energy savings, pay-back periods, etc.).

Another alternative is to have a separate blog for each group. This will make it easier to provide each with useful content.

Take away: An effective Internet presence is the ability to communicate and demonstrate expertise. It is what causes people to talk about you and your brand online. A weblog is an effective tool to help this process along if useful content is provided to targeted readers.

Previously we also published a series of posts about the ropes to skip when launching a blog, to help you avoid making the mistakes that most hamper your efforts.

1) Lessons 1 – 4: Starting your blogging off on the right foot
2) Lessons 5 – 7: Setting the stage – ready – go
3) Lessons 8 – 11: Whatever domain, home you choose – beware
4) Lessons 12 – 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right
5) Lessons 14 – 17: Authenticity and quality are key
6) Lessons 18 – 20: Improving blogging effectiveness

What is your take, what worked for you? Please share your thoughts with a comment below!

Article source: Corporate blog definition: 4 essentials

Watch the video for this post:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Late on October 14, blogging directory and rankings site Technorati discontinued its Technorati Rankings and related data. ComMetrics used Technorati Ranking as part of its ComMetrics Footprint calculations.

Due to Technorati’s decision, we had to remove this measure from our ComMetrics Footprint.

Technorati Authority still exists, but now focuses much more on data from the last 30 days. The given Authority rank is somewhere between 1 – 1,000.

Scoring factors that are considered in this metric are:
- posting frequency,
- context,
- linking behavior, and
- ‘other inputs’.

This results in more volatile score, since blogs can frequently move up or down on the 1 – 1,000 scale.

Technorati explained the decision in a recent blog post:

“With the new algorithm, the resulting Authority will better reflect the fast-changing nature of the blogosphere. Its new inherent volatility will also show which blogs are rising and falling in authority, rewarding authors on posting frequency, context and linking behavior, as well as other data inputs.”

Currently, Technorati provides little, if any, information about how it calculates its Technorati Authority score for the blogs in the ranks. Furthermore, the Application Programming Interface (API) is still unavailable (difference between a widget and an API explained in plain English).

We have therefore removed Technorati rankings from our calculations, at least for now. We will consider re-introducing them as soon as Technorati again makes this feasible.

Get Your API Right – ropes to skip, API 101 #things2read#tips2follow

Recently a gung ho client wanted to benchmark his social media efforts right away, but there were some crucial questions we posed that he needed to address before embarking on a benchmarking exercise. Below we share the first set with you.

1. Size of firm really does matter
If you run a micro-business you have to focus your limited resources on a few activities that will make a difference to your bottom line.

We advised our client that posting to the corporate blog once every two weeks might work in terms of time required and costs. Unfortunately, having two staff members monitor the Twitter account and respond to customer inquiries seven days a week may be too much to ask.

The client took our hint and decided to save costs by focusing on the corporate blog for the first year, and not putting too much effort into the Twitter account for now.

2. B2B vs. B2C – Different social media marketing channels…right?
Cadbury’s 2007 Gorilla marketing campaign was a YouTube hit, in spite of breaking most golden rules for effective chocolate advertising. For starters, there were no images of people eating or making chocolate in the ads. Instead, a gorilla was seen hanging on a drum.

The above example and many others focus on B2C (Business to Consumer) cases by global brands. But selling toothpaste (e.g., Crest) for a global brand (P&G) requires different skills than selling printing or graphic design services to a professional clientele, such as media buyers from large advertising firms. Plus, the social media challenge is different for a company with a staff of five than for ABB, GE or inContact.

In short, getting a consumer to purchase chocolate is quite different than an industrial buyer trying to find a chocolate supplier or even computer software for an airline catering firm.

Being in B2B, our client understood that 1,000 readers might be all she needed, as long as they included some of her most important clients. As well, Digg or StumbleUpon traffic would be of limited value, since it was unlikely to bring industrial buyers to her company’s blog.

3. Social media means quick success – or not
We all know that prosciutto ham and great wines take time to ripen and develop their full-bodied flavor before going to market. Similarly, some of the most innovative products took years until they became a success, such as:

- the Qwerty keyboard: known for the first six letters from left to right on the English keyboard, it was created in 1868 by newspaper editor Christopher Sholes. He called it “Type Writer” and it is still used today, even on computers.
- Erno Rubik invented the Rubik’s Cube in 1974. He applied for his Hungarian patent in January 1975, got approval in early 1977 and the first Cubes appeared at the end of 1977. These days Rubik’s Cube is widely considered to be one of the world’s best selling toys (see image at right).

While we all know about cases of companies that did great within a relatively short time such as Google, Facebook and FriendFeed there are many more that are still working hard to achieve success.

As a wine connoisseur, our client understood the concept of aging something to perfection and agreed to give her blog venture at least twelve months. Most importantly, she committed herself to creating one blog post every month to provide value for her clients, her main target audience.

Take-aways
The above post would suggest the following:

Social media is not scalable: Focusing on a corporate blog should be the core activity of any social media strategy to begin with – here you can build a responsive audience over large distances for building your firm’s social network. Thereafter you may have the know-how and resources required to join and succeed with other social media channels, such as Facebook or Twitter, Naijapulse or Identi.ca.
Building success takes time – better start today: Finding your voice and generating feedback or conversation does not happen in three months, so perseverance and quality content are key.
B2B is a different ballgame than B2C : Things that might work for B2C global brands such as Starbucks may fail miserably for a mid-size firm in the B2B domain.

P.S. – To help you devise the right strategy that will help you get a bigger return on your blogging efforts, we prepared a list of 20 lessons one should follow, or the 20 mistakes you definitely do not want to make with your corporate blog:

1) Lessons 1 – 4: Starting your blogging off on the right foot
2) Lessons 5 – 7: Setting the stage – ready – go
3) Lessons 8 – 11: Whatever domain, home you choose – beware
4) Lessons 12 – 13: Getting the basic SEO issues right
5) Lessons 14 – 17: Authenticity and quality are key
6) Lessons 18 – 20: Improving blogging effectiveness

What is your take? What needs to be done differently when using social media in a B2B context? Please share; we love to dialogue more in the comments.

By the way: HowTo.ComMetrics.com provides the straightforward answers you need to use your social media tools more effectively, while saving time and improving your social media tracking and brand monitoring.

Why not register yourself right now – it’s FREE!

Article source: 3 golden rules for social media marketing

ComMetrics, a division of CyTRAP Labs GmbH, focuses on competitive benchmarking and social media analytics (e.g., developing the FT ComMetrics Blog Index – the industry standard for ranking corporate blogs of FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 companies).

Through My.ComMetrics.com, ComMetrics offers its clients the use of web-based software for social media monitoring, including Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are valuable in enabling teams and companies to quickly evaluate the progress made against measurable goals, such as the ComMetrics Footprint. Effective KPIs for social media monitoring and tracking are:

specific, measurable, achievable, result-oriented & relevant, as well as time-sensitive.

By using My.ComMetrics.com you can easily visualize answers to your KPIs for social media tracking and analytics:

What social media measurements and metrics am I ahead or behind on?
How far ahead or behind am I in reaching the competitive benchmarks?
How do my competitors perform against these KPIs?

Actionable metrics help with data collection through My.ComMetrics.com to answer these questions and, most importantly, take necessary actions while tracking improvement.

Without key performance indicators, such as a 110 percent increase in your ComMetrics Footprint or other distinct objectives, your social media optimization will not reach its full potential.

HowTo.ComMetrics.com provides straightforward answers you need to use our tools more effectively, while saving time and improving your social media tracking and brand monitoring.

Why not register yourself right now – it’s FREE!

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wisdom, “Build a better mousetrap and the world will make a beaten path to your door.”

A good and insightful saying, to be sure, and the modern equivalent would have to be convincing the boss or a sceptic of the value of social media or blogging.

While blogging may be an effective way to reach many of the company’s customers and suppliers, and reduce customer calls if the help or FAQ section delivers, that may not be enough to convince a boss who neither reads nor writes a blog.

Hence, one needs to demonstrate that current and potential clients are making use of these technologies. Finding competitors or industry leaders that blog will also help convince a budget committee to assign a project manager and get started.

The  2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index rankings can help you build a case for using social media in your organization (see the statistics at a glance at FTindex results). It illustrates how the largest companies are doing in comparison to their competitors and other large companies around the globe. It provides a tool for tracking success through hard numbers: how big is your company’s social media footprint? In particular, how does it stack up against your competitors’ ComMetrics Footprint and so forth.

Accordingly, deriving value from non revenue-generating activities means demonstrating the sometimes hidden values of blogging and social media activities. This is what the FTindex results can help you with. Findings indicate how blogs are being used to improve consumer relations, recruiting efforts and handling a takeover without ruffling too many feathers.

Download white paper (expanded version of 2004-05-14 FT article)

You can also get a complete report with the results as a free download (just register, and voilà):

Log in ➡ Download the 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index report

Additional posts and download of additional materials provided as PDF files:

Download press release
Download Financial Times case study
FT ComMetrics Blog Index published
Financial Times May 14 – by Urs E. Gattiker – Corporate blogs: New way to engage with stakeholders

Relevant blog metrics for diary, personal and business blogs
Please subscribe now so you can claim your personal and/or corporate blog AND trace those that you want to compare yourself to.
For Twitter, please use #hashtag ➡ #FTCBI

Five steps to turn buzz into sales
Which FT Global 500 and Fortune 500 blogs made the FT ComMetrics Blog Index
Financial Times – is blogging good value?

What is the FT ComMetrics Index?
ComMetrics has developed a detailed methodology to benchmark corporate blogs. The FT ComMetrics Blog Index uses the same methodology, but a less-detailed version.

Why create such an index?
We thought creating this index this would help promote good practice as far as corporate blogging is concerned.

If you want to find actionable insights, you need to segment your benchmarking data: pinpoint the various sources, user behavior and outcomes. The FT ComMetrics Blog Index helps corporate bloggers achieve this objective.
More issues below.
Who is included?
Companies included in the Index are taken from the FT Global 500 2008, ranked by market capitalisation. Where possible we have indexed the top 25 from the following categories: the US, Europe and the rest of the world. In some cases we were unable to find a corporate blog. In other instances, the blog may be owned by a subsidiary.

This is the case with Berkshire Hathaway: its subsidiary Business Wired has a successful blog that we included in the list. A similar case is EON: its UK division has a blog, but we found no active corporate blog published by its German headquarters (see also Social Media Marketing in Deutschland).

The 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index will appear in the Financial Times newspaper’s regular Digital Business supplement and its webpage (www.ft.com/digitalbusiness) on Wednesday, May 13.
Please subscribe now so you can claim your corporate and/or personal blog AND trace those that you want to compare yourself to.
For Twitter, please use #hashtag ➡ #FTCBI

Our next stop was the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki. It has a few blogs that qualify using the criteria we developed for identifying corporate blogs. Really great job these people did in collecting all this important information, have a look.

Another big help was Peter Kim, who put together A List of Social Media Marketing Examples, (Bernhard Warner also recommended this list). Kim has an impressive list of a vast number of social media marketing examples. Sometimes it mentions brands (not necessarily the corporate owner of the brand) and other times, as in the case of IKEA, customer blogs are listed. This is no obstacle, however, and the list is just plain impressive. By the way, another blog that you have to read, his other stuff is impressive too.

The next step was a tweet to Twitter followers, which garnered a nice response from Michael E. Rubin. He suggested Alltop – all the corporate blogs and Feeds of the Blog Council. Of course, this should have been done earlier, since we ourselves are a member of the Alltop Social Media blog crowd.

We also found a ‘white paper’ (five pages but not much detail) and some presentation slides of a survey that included 132 Nordic companies, all with a market capitalization of more than 1 billion euro. There were a few only that had blogs, most we had included already. Check out Corporate blogging amongst listed Nordic companies, it is interesting reading.

Are we still looking for more blogs?
Yes, we are. Please tell us about yours. Companies often have several blogs listed in our database. For instance, all of Hewlett Packard’s numerous blogs are being tracked; naturally, the best one will be included in the Index.

If you want to check out who is already included, visit the
FT ComMetrics Blog Index

If you have a blog that we should track for the Index, tell us about it by leaving a comment below with the blog URL(s).

If you want to see how you compare to others, check out FTindex.ComMetrics.com (you must be registered to view data/statistics).

When will it be published?
The 2009 index will appear in the Financial Times newspaper’s regular supplement on Digital Business and its webpage (www.ft.com/digitalbusiness) on Wednesday, May 13.

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More resources:
FT/ComMetrics Blog Index

We have tried to keep our Alpha users and the other readers of this blog posted on our progress toward releasing a Beta version of our My.ComMetrics.com blog benchmarking tool.

Things are coming along nicely and the Beta release is just around the corner. In the meantime, we have opened a Twitter account to keep our users informed about:

- new features, and
- progress

So far we have succeeded in keeping the number of tweets down to one or two each week, as promised in one of our early tweets:

MyComMetrics: Dear, reminder, this account keeps you POSTED about software releases/changes on http://My.ComMetrics.com 1or 2 tweets each week #tools2watch

Almost two months have passed since that message was posted and the account is enjoying a steady growth of followers.

My.ComMetrics.com bio on Twitter

Usually the messages we send out look something like the examples listed below. They focus on the web-based software, including providing links to new features or showing screen-shots of the results:

MyComMetrics: Simplified our offerings, 3 service levels is what we offer,still FREE for testers http://howto.commetrics.com… #tools2watch
MyComMetrics: Fixed the descriptions and the sign up procedure so people have an easier time to understand http://short.to/ke2 #tools2watch #smMetrics
MyComMetrics: NOW change profile,get alerts when stats change & start benchmarking against YOUR blog => view image => http://snipr.com/abycz #tools2watch
MyComMetrics: UPDATE | login | http://My.ComMetrics.com | click Profile http://ad.vu/9x4t | change info & customise ALERTS http://ad.vu/9x4t #tools2watch
MyComMetrics: UPDATE | login | http://My.ComMetrics.com | click Profile| blog rankings & key metrics change | get ALERT http://ad.vu/rd73 | #tools2watch

Exclusive Newsletter for Subscribers
Our monthly newsletter appears every four to six weeks, something which associates and Alpha testers are automatically subscribed to receive. It keeps people informed about the most important stuff and alerts them to developments in the blogosphere that might make a splash.

The first issue was: This Month in Blogging Effectiveness – January 20, 2009

The next one will be coming your way soon: This Month in Blogging Effectiveness – February 26 2009 (watch your inbox for it!)

Why we love our Alpha users
We believe that Alpha users are special people; they test our tools and provide us with extremely valuable feedback about how it works.

In return, our Alpha users deserve special treatment, which means that they get the full experience without paying a cent. Even better, people who are Alpha users, AND actively use the tool get a free subscription when we release Beta version 1.0 sometime this Spring. In order to qualify for the freebie, you need to complete a free Alpha-user registration and start testing our tool as much as possible. Why? Because it will help you increase the bang you get for your buck when you blog. We are in the process of packing more oomph into our tool. In turn, this will allow you to track various blogs and see what works and what fails. And that’s just the start.

Various subscription plans on offer – See how they work
=========>
Here’s what I’m suggesting for today. Please register yourself for free or pass on this link to some of your friends so they can benchmark themselves – to get better. Once we release Beta things will change, except for Alpha users: they get a free ride. C’est la vie.

Enough about what I think and feel, what is your take? Share your thoughts below; they are what matter most.
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When you look at successful web applications, they are all simple to use. Moreover, users benefit from using the tool nearly instantly, such as:

Google, type in your keywords, search and find what you are after;
Plaxo, get a username and password ==> start adding your addresses and synchronize with your PC, and NOW
My.ComMetrics.com, type in your blog’s URL and start tracking your performance.

Of course, Plaxo takes a bit more time to make it work properly on your PC. Nevertheless, its address synchronization feature between your PC and Plaxo works right away after having installed a small plug-in. Other features make it easier to better manage your social network.

When you have to read too much to figure out what ingredients are needed to cook a dish, forget it.

All it takes is a good bread recipe and some flower, yeast, water, salt. Follow the recipe and you are pretty much ready to make the dough, let it rise, put it in the oven …… The result is a delicious bread for you to share with your family and friends.

Good ideas help making you do whatever you need to do. Sure, some web-based applications are a bit more difficult than Google or Plaxo as described above. Nevertheless, they are easy to use, such as Onvista.de allowing you to:

a) track certain stocks, after you;

b) register and get password; thereafter

c) enter the stocks you want to track; AND

d) see the results.

It will take about 30 minutes to familiarize yourself so much that you can really take advantage of the service.

Same way things work with My.ComMetrics.com

All it takes is for you to sign up, register your blog, enter those blog URLs you want to compare yourself against and you are set.

fill in contact form, call or e-mail us to get invited as an alpha user RIGHT NOW.

Imagine having several c-level executives blog. Are they reaching their respective target audiences?

Is blogging time well spent?

Recently I wrote an article for the Financial Times on this subject. Takes a few minutes to read but should be worth your time.

In an ever faster changing global marketplace, the Internet and social media are being used by stakeholder groups to connect to each other. Often this happens without the direct involvement by the corporation owning the brand.

Today, a more effective spending of hard euro marketing costs is needed. Furthermore, it is critical that social media activities should help increase the firm’s lead generation and customer retention.

Such efforts can help in reaching potential clients and embracing existing customers by creating communities. While the company cannot respond to every comment people might leave on a blog or micro-blog to the CEO, social media helps the listening process regarding investors’ and customers’ needs and concerns.

An ever greater number of people is getting excited about Web 2.0 technology. One of the greatest challenges is explaining why this all matters, and how this all works, to people who have no idea what the technology can or cannot do.

Download the version as a pdf file here:

Financial Times – Is blogging good value for the C-suite? 2-pages

Our tools empower you to benchmark social media efforts and activities, while focusing attention on customers, trust and confidence, community, and social connections, interested?

Get ComMetrics now! Contact us

Or read the article online here: Read more on the Financial Times website

What do you think?

]]> http://howto.commetrics.com/articles/knowing-if-one-uses-social-media-smartly-would-be-great-now-you-can/feed/ 0 http://howto.commetrics.com/articles/ceo-blogger-facebook-furl-linkedin-myspace-twitter-warning/ http://howto.commetrics.com/articles/ceo-blogger-facebook-furl-linkedin-myspace-twitter-warning/#comments Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:33:57 +0000 Urs E. Gattiker http://howto.commetrics.com/?p=7

Measuring impact with only a single coarse tool when it comes to social media is dangerous
We look at various statistical indicators to see whom the crowd is following on the Internet and what this means for the brand.

There is no single metric for ranking the popularity and/or influence of your Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO) blog, your company’s page on Facebook, monitoring Twitter conversations and so on. There are two principle ways of ranking social media:

- traffic (which is not a term with automatic meaning) and

- through the number of links to a page – thes have generally been used as sign of influence.

Nevertheless, blog content depends on the quality of the blog or the social media channel in which the original story or post appears. These, in turn, depend on the integrity of the writer who checks the facts and makes sure that the material is correct.

Nevertheless, in the social media domain,

• popularity
• crowd scoring

have become ever more important when assessing the influence of a blog or a social media campaign.

Essentially, similar to citation analysis for research, most scoring systems assessing the popularity or backlinks for a blog are focusing on the number of times a blog post is linked to or referred to by another blogger.

However, a report by the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the International Mathematical Union and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics states in a recent press release to a report warning over science citations:

While having a single number to judge quality is indeed simple, it can lead to a shallow understanding of something as complicated as research. Numbers are not inherently superior to sound judgments.

Get the full report here:

Measuring Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook & blogs with a single metric is dangerous (416.9 KB)

We are developing our tool and testing first results
Below we give you a glance at how it is looking

We have been focusing on some of the popularity measures to address benchmarking in the context for blogs, webpages and mini-blogging (e.g., Twitter).

Below is a first screenshot from the dashboard that we offer our Alpha users so far. Well, let us tell you more below:

If you cannot see the above screenshot try – crowdscoring your social media efforts – ComMetrics tool

Naturally, data presented in a table such as the one above have to be added and normalized to arrive at the compositive index. As well, there are a set of compositive indices that you can use to benchmark and rank yourself.

The dashboard enables the user to decide if things are listed in ascending or descending order, if she would like to see raw data or normalized data instead or both.

Naturally, the preference given to which indicators one wants to look at is another option.

Bottom Line

We continue to work on this to make it work even smoother than it does now. As well, we are putting in the visual options that allow users to get a trend analysis. In the latter, comparing one(s) blog(s) or webpage(s) with a set of possible competitors or best practic examples is a feature you can look forward to.

So stay tuned.

A few of our clients and readers have asked to hear what we have been up to and when the alpha version will finally go Beta.

Well we are in the process of inviting a few of you to pre-test the Beta version. If you have subscribed to the ComMetrics blog – e-mail digest you might just get invited directly enabling you to join the small group of knowledgeable users like yourself that have been testing our tool for the last 60 days or so.

At this stage we have gone into private beta. Nevertheless, we should be ready to invite our ComMetrics blog subscribers in a few weeks to start with their test-drives.

In the meantime, we keep you posted here as well as on our ComMetrics blog – stay tuned.

For now, no panic we have started to do a more formal write-up of what we have in store for you that you can look at using these hyperlinks (see also right side – pages – of website – more details about what we are into – real fun and hard work)

• social media monitoring
  • best service is no service
  • monitoring & measuring
    • sign-up
    • how it works
    • demo account
    • FAQ
    • pricing

To learn more contact CyTRAP Labs