MarCom Professional

What follows is the entire version of my recent post on Mashable, “The Maturation of Social Media ROI“

Over the years, Social Media experts attempted to redefine ROI for a new era of influence. While some introduced alternative philosophies for measuring the nuances tied to social media, others wondered aloud whether ROI simply wasn’t necessary as the tools and methodologies for analyzing yields didn’t yet exist. And furthermore, by focusing on justification and metrics, we were distracted from the primary objective of building relationships and cultivating dialogue. More...

The PRCA invited me to give a short presentation for one of its series of ‘Expert Briefings’ yesterday, this time on measuring digital, hosted by Ketchum Pleon. Up in the firing line with me were Fernando Rizo, head of digital at Ketchum Pleon, and Kristin Wadge, a director at Metrica. Although the three of us have quite varied clients, we all pretty much said the same core things:

• Metrics have to have real meaning to the business: they must be things we can learn from, and feed back into the development / strategy process.


• Online measurement must tie in to offline measurement. We set audience strategies ahead of channel strategies, and the ways to reach those audiences will be online and offline.

More...

I am a great fan of the UK B2B Marketing magazine.  They have created a strong presence and a great monthly magazine within a couple of years of launch.

I am subscribed to a few of their emails (although unsubscribing is an issue) and today received a message asking me “How are you using telemarketing as part of your demand generation or new business activity?”

As a rule I like to take part in surveys because as a marketer I rely on people doing them for me.

This was an unmitigated disaster.

How not to structure a questionnaire survey

I started to answer the questions but more and more doubts arose about the quality of information I was imparting and the ability of the company [who presumably paid to do this] to use any answers I gave. More...

We're always being asked to demonstrate what return on investment we can promise to clients - and from various conversations I've had with colleagues in the industry, we're not the only agency to be asked. If a client spends 5k with us, what will they make back?

It's an almost impossible question to answer - and trust me, I've tried as hard as anyone to come up with a metric that shows the direct impact of PR on sales. Note here that I'm talking about a direct link from PR to sales rather than the things we can track rather more easily (reputation, awareness, positioning etc). More...

MarketingProfs recently published a fantastic report on the equality of B2B and B2C adoption and practice of social media. In “The State of Social Media Marketing,” the 242-page report shared how over 5,000 marketers and business professionals use social media to create award winning campaigns, measure ROI, and reach audiences. Jay Baer offers an interesting analysis at Convince and Convert. More of my thoughts on the subject of B2B and B2C social media are shared in my post, “The Business of Social Media.”

One of the more interesting charts shared was a look at company policy as it relates to social media use during business hours.  On average, about 60% of companies polled maintain a “common sense” approach to at-work usage of social media. More...

Every year closes with summaries of the top stories as well the predictions for the year ahead. Heading into Twenty-Ten, I contributed to several prediction roundups including Junta42, ContactCenterWorld, ZDNet, among others. What I didn’t do however, is write about the endless predictions for the future of marketing, media, business, et al. While there were many excellent contributions, I focused on other writing priorities.

When I received an end of year 2009 report on the Top Social Computing Predictions for 2010 from Forrester Research, my attention shifted. Fueled by a timely post by Forrester’s newly appointed social analyst Augie Ray, “The Year that Marketing Dies,” I was compelled to read and share what I learned. More...

I’ve worked with some pretty exciting companies and teams over the years, and I’m delighted to be helping Visible Technologies expand internationally.  Today they have announced a new round of funding ($US22M), and I can tell you that the future looks very bright indeed for this smart company that is helping brands and agencies navigate the new world of social media in the US and now globally.

Read on from the official release below.

Visible Technologies Secures $22 Million in Funding Led By Investor Growth Capital

Funding to Support Accelerated Technology Development and Establish International Operations

BELLEVUE, WA. More...