Influencers. It’s the next big social media catchphrase and it kind of makes me want to vomit. Why? Because it’s just another intangible that people are making up idiotic equations for and pouncing around announcing their self-proclaimed genius.

Way back when(March 2009) , Mashable gave us this theoretical equation: Influence = (Personal Brand * Knowledge * Trust2).

While it’s a good thinking theoretically, practically- it’s stupid. Trust makes a massive part of this equation and  is generally immeasurable. You can “approximate” trust through other metrics, but then are you really measuring trust or something else such as mass appeal or return visits? I visit Perez Hilton’s site often, but it’s definitely not because I trust him.  Just like Mr. Perez, quasi-related metrics are ALWAYS biased.   Plus most of the metrics proposed in this article are more measurements of a brand value than anything else. Likely because trust and knowledge are nearly impossible to measure since they are entirely relative. This is a theoretical equation, but not one that actually works in practice. It’s excellent example of the biggest flaw in the space currently- too much thinking in ideals, too little thinking about how to make  practical  application feasible. I could argue this further, but that’s NOT the point of this post.

The point is, people are confused. They’re baffled by how they match up everything. They know that in a world of millions of messages they have to pick and choose who they respond to- simply because it’s impossible to address every piece of online content.  Thus was born the term “ influencers” which became a proxy for pretty much every possible engagement population in social media. “Make sure we alert influencers of our campaign. Take care to address influencers needs.  What are influencers saying about our brand?” The list goes one and one with one common theme, the word “influencers”. Barf. Double barf.

Here’s the thing,  when you see some one’s social media profile and activity where available; you’re missing one thing. Context. All you can see is who they are online and whom they digitally interact with on a single social site. The full picture of online social activity is not currently measurable. That activity on one site is  a very small part of the picture. I am sure many of us have singel site relationships that are further supported by other online & even offline  engagement.  For example,  say I have a friend Alice, who I see quite often. We may share messages occasionally online, but it’s far less then I share online with other people. However, I would consider Alice one of my best friends even though it may not be discernible on open access social sites ( twitter, blogs, etc). However,  I am pretty certain if I ever needed some one to go to bat for me, Alice would be there regardless of how strong our “public” online relationship is.

Now lets pretend I am a nobody on social media (that’s not hard to pretend -I kind of am ) and Alice is a uber elite social media guru. And to drive this story forward let’s say I am refused service at McDonald’s because I want to order a happy meal & I am not a child. Remember this is all hypothetical. If I get pissed off and write a blog post on my experience and & it’s valid issue, Alice might go to bat for me and spread the message. So while up until this point  I am not measurably “influential”- all the sudden, without warning, the story spreads.  Why? Because there was no way to predict digitally I was connected to Alice or further more that she would go to bat for me.  Proof that, in general, online conversation is not predictable ( yet).

So here’s my take on influencers. The concept is a load of rubbish- at least in the way people currently think about it. I think the term generally leads us to black and white perceptions of customers and friends and so forth. You’re either  and influencer and valuable to my [insert marketing terminology such as campaign, brand awareness, promotion] or you’re not. And lets be honest the world (and the internet) is rarely black and white. Instead I think the question we should be asking  instead of “how do I isolate influencers?” is  “how do we monitor what conversations matter and which are just noise? “

My thoughts:

1. Know your community

Learn who the biggest voices are in your target areas. Explore the landscape and understand the strengths and weaknesses in how conversations travel within your niche. Don’t just learn about it, be an expert.

2. Keep your ear to the ground

Simple street smarts-watch your back. It’s not a novel concept, but one many companies large and small forget to do it. Who can blame them? It’s easy to get caught up in reporting  and forget that one of listening’s biggest strengths is the ability to spot a storm before it forms.

3. Adapt, grow, & learn the hard way

Brands are going to make mistakes, and the first reaction is always going to be to freak out, As result, especially after a crisis, companies try to monitor every single brand mention. That’s not sustainable. The fact is, and I say this all the time, monitoring has and element of trial and error to it. The idea is to focus on growth and admit up front that there will bumps along the way. Key phrase here- you marketers will love this- hockey stick approach.

I’ll be the first to admit that there is more to this story than is in this blog post. The space, in general, is not evolved.   And yes, there is that tricky feat of operationalizing this thinking to work for thousands, perhaps millions of conversations. I’ve got some good ideas on how to do this, but I’m keeping my mouth shut. Let’s call it “competitive advantage”.

So even if your blind, deaf, & dumb you’ve heard about the Kevin Smith Southwest airline incident. I am NOT going to rehash or add my commentary on whether what Southwest did was right or wrong or whether Kevin Smith is really that fat. Not important. What is important is the comments Southwest has allowed to be post on their blog.

A small sample- You can read all of them here & here:

• “To be honest, I would not want to sit next to a fatty on an airplane. They smell and overflow into my seat.”
• “Yes he may have fit in the seat but I bet he was on the lap of the person next to him. Lose weight people, people say it’s in their genes, that’s a load of crap, it’s in the 4000 calorie Buffett that you eat. It’s that Ice cream sandwich. I can’t stand fat ass people.”
• “If you eat too much, you have to pay for 2 seats. Stop complaining you overindulging fatwad.”

Hate speech is defined as ” speech perceived to disparage a person or group of people based on their social or ethnic group”. I am pretty sure these comments fall hard in the line of hate speech and thus extremely inappropriate for a brand to be hosting on their site. No brand wants to be seen as a conduit of any type of bigotry. Ever. But low & behold Southwest is hosting a conversation spewing with lil’ pieces of hate on every page. I am frankly shocked none of these comments were removed during moderation. I thought that maybe Southwest had made a big boo boo and no installed a moderation system into their blog.

But shock & awe Southwest’s blog user guidelines state:

“This is the point where we insert the “fine print” and discuss the guidelines for posting. Nuts About Southwest is a moderated site because we want to ensure that everyone stays on topic—or at least pretty close to it. We would LUV for you to post your thoughts, comments, suggestions, and questions, but when you post, make sure that they are of general interest to most readers. Of course, profanity, racial and ethnic slurs, and rude behavior like disparaging personal remarks won’t be tolerated nor published.”

So. Wait. Really? Southwest does enforce comment moderation? Sure doesn’t seem like it. I am pretty damn sure that last time I checked saying something like, “To be honest, I would not want to sit next to a fatty on an airplane. They smell and overflow into my seat.” was pretty damn rude. Plus something like “I can’t stand fat ass people,” counts as profanity, no?

People are entitled to their opinion, and agree Southwest needs to allow people to add their two cents. But, I am clearly shocked by how loose they have been with comment moderation. It’s not like people who agree with Southwest’s perspective can’t share without using profanity and degrading comments against fat people. I happen to think this comment is written well with out being offensive or profane:

“As for the others who are offended by the policy – why should the rest of us pay for your inability to get fit? Working on it? Bravo to you! Until you get there, though, pay for the extra seat or drive. Southwest has always had the best service, best prices, and best flight attendants! My family will remain loyal customers.”

After reading this and really thinking about it I have decided to not fly Southwest. Is it because of Kevin Smith? Not directly. Is it because Southwest on their own blog has gone against their corporate policy and allowed hateful comments to remain posted on the site? YES! In essence, by not removing these they impart have ignored the hurtful and awful nature of these statements. I don’t ask for much of brands, just that  in a public forum, they stick to their legal responsibility & refrain from supporting or posting hate speech. I am sorry Southwest you broke that rule.

Also, Southwest just an FYI You might want to take those comments down because according to your legal disclaimer & the nature of comments that made it through your filter -you could be sued.  Or you can hope, just like one of your commentors, that  ” [fat people]  just stay home till they have shed the pounds and can join the human race.”

1. There’s been a whole lot of hub bub on the release of the New Google Buzz. While I think Buzz is generally cool, there are a few things that make me less likely to get on my desk chair at work and scream about how freaking incredible it is to all of my coworkers. One of those things is a  a very real fear of doubts to my sanity.  I digress.

Below are 4 basic reasons I am hesitant to buy into the Buzz

1)I don’t want Google making decisions on which relationships are relevant to me.
2) I already have way too much email and do not welcome the additional inflow from Buzz
3) I am weary about how businesses will use and eventually exploit the structure.
4.) Google will now have an aggregate view of my web use across search, email, and social. Right now users do not have a say in how this data is used.

Below I explore each of these concerns more deeply and hopefully shed more light on these concerns. If you don’t read any further you’ve already got my basic thoughts. But read on, trust me it’s worth it.

1.) I don’t want Google deciding who my friends are.

Yesterday I wrote a post about how we need to better define relationships via social media. I thought it would be a one time post, rant a bit, and all would be good. But then, Google Buzz came out and my post became more of a burning issue. In many ways Buzz took the power of social organization and further removed it from the end user. Google chose to leverage machine thinking & advanced algorithms to “decide” who you are closest to.  While I think algorithms are pretty much awesome and can do a lot of good to both simplify and organize are lives (hell I have a stats degree) I don’t believe they should ever be a replacement for decisions made my human mood or preference. Read Write Web said it best: “The people that you email and chat with the most may not be your closest friends or the people that you want to share and connect with.“

The reality is we as humans are fickle people. Yes we often have patterns to our overall behavior, but our opinions or perceptions are rarely routine.  This makes algorithmic thinking the WRONG approach to friend management. Take an example I mentioned in the comment yesterday: I have a best friend from college, Tracie. We don’t have a ton of time to talk as we live in separate states, with very different jobs, & very different lives. However, we passively engage in each other lives almost daily. I am more likely to read Tracie social output than anyone else’s , however I rarely comment. I save my thoughts & tidbits for when we get a chance to chat via phone or video chat. That’s simply the dynamics of the relationship we have. That said, according to Google’s model I it’s likely I would rarely see content from Tracie.

What I would be more likely to see is content from people I work with. I email them often, chat with them occasionally, and have used social media as means basic communication. Many of you who know me on foursquare may remember the great Foursquare Battle of 2009 between my boss and me for mayorship of our office building. It was brutal. But as much as I love my co-workers, the last thing I want is being encouraged to spend an additional 6 hours outside of work engaging with their content .

It boils down to this simple point: Google determining my friends for me is a just a little too 1984 for me.

2) I already have way too much email.

Let’s say we get beyond the issues with friend management that Google Buzz introduces. There are still some basic structural concepts to the tool that I am not so keen on. Take for instance that every time someone responds to a post it goes to your email. Great. More email.  I am sure I am not the only person here who has an inbox that is as flooded as Jacksonville, Florida during hurricane season. Wading through the mess of emails I get daily is hard, but somewhat manageable. Until, you add buzz. Now on top of all the regular emails I get, I will also get a mother dump of buzz emails. Which guess what-don’t seem to easily be sorted out. JOY! Now I have 3x as many emails! Just what I wanted for Christmas (Chanukah, Kwanza, Festivus)

Better yet, along with my ability to manage email also goes my favorite excuse. I’m sorry I must have missed that on [insert social site]. Now there are no excuses. Perhaps I am being entirely lazy, but really with all the stuff floating around the Internet I enjoy an excuse to miss some of it. I value my ability to have a reason to take a break and breathe. Now, I have no excuse because it’s in my email. Even if you didn’t stream into email via buzz for the myriad of reasons it may not, people are going to think it’s there. You’re responsible for seeing it. We all know that the whole “it must not have come through” excuse only works once, maybe twice.

Plus, you have a whole new flood of people discovering your email address. Now they too can send you emails about stuff you don’t care about! I know I sound like the worst person ever but really, there is a reason why some people do not have my email address. The main reason is I like to keep my email load manageable and adding every person I have a social relationship would make that pretty much impossible.

Simply put: I like to keep my email and my social community separate and enjoy the perks of doing so.

3) I am weary about how businesses will exploit Buzz.

Call me a skeptic. But I am not sure Google is always going to use recommended posts in the right way.  I want to believe that posts will rely on relevant user content that may be of interest to the end user, but I see this easily becoming another method to serve ads. So now, not only will I have ads at the top of my email ( based on the content of my emails- if you didn’t know already), I will also have ads flooding into my buzz stream.

If I accidentally respond to one of the ad buzzes- we are all prone to make mistakes especially when advertising is masked as genuine digital interaction- does that give marketers the ability to hit me with “buzz” driven email? How does that comply with opt out emails policies? How will we be able to block corporate buzz communications? Unlike twitter where I can just unfollow, it’s a little less clear how the role of companies & their ability to contact you through buzz will play out.

For example I might want to extend email privileges to Papa John’s, but I avoid following them on social sites. But since they have my email contact does that automatically give them buzz access? Additionally, let’s say I order pizza a lot. Hence I get a lot of confirmation emails & promotional offers, does that mean they can legitimately (according to buzz’s algorithms) move into my top friend posts? When you mix the world of social and email things get fishy.

My thoughts: Companies will always find a way to advertise and I am concerned Buzz’s methods might be more intrusive than other social sites.

4. That’s a hell of a lot of free data I’d be giving Google. What do I get in return?

Look lets face it Google already knows a lot about me. They know what I search. They know what I email and chat about. The only thing they don’t know is what content socially I share, what my identity is across sites, and who are my greatest influencers. Sure those sounds like some big holes to fill, but if I aggregate everything through Google Buzz, suddenly they now have that very information [in part]. I’ve written a lot about online identity and I think it’s a really important subject in regards to Buzz.

With Buzz moving to include data from other social sites in their stream, such as twitter, flicker, and surely other sites in the coming weeks, we have to firmly begin to examine the value of our data. Privacy is an interesting issue online, because I feel people haven’t been burned enough yet to really see how little control they have of their personal data. With Buzz, Google is officially beginning to manage one identity across sites. Instead of simply managing the connections into site (like oauth), Buzz pulls content & creates an aggregated user record. Ta Da! Your search, email, blog, social, & other data are now in one magically packaged personal file. Are you comfortable having all the data packaged up with no rights in how it is used? I can only speak for myself, but it makes me feel extremely uncomfortable.

We share a ton of information online, but as we approach consumer data aggregation we need to make sure we understand the power in that data. I would love advertisers to be able to provide me relevant offers. But, I don’t want those offers at the expense of intrusion into my personal life. I feel, as many people do right now, that there are too few guidelines on who owns users’ data. Personally I am not confident that Google is who I want to bank on for my identity management. Do I trust they guard their data well? Yes. Do I have confidence in their technology? Yes. Do I think they value my say in my online personal safety and identity control? No. Until I am given the right to limit what information I share with businesses, I am very wary to submit my information cross-sites to identity an aggregation system.

Bottom Line: I want to know I can trust the Company that manages my aggregated online data.

I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at Social Media Week on the topic of Social Graph Optimization. It’s a complicated subject and one that I really should write a full post on and I promise I will in due time. While this particular post isn’t exactly about that topic, it is driven by some thoughts I had as result of the panel.

I have been thinking more and more about the concept of “friends on the Internet”. Look over 6,000 people follow me on twitter- it’s impossible for me to truly be friends with every single one of them. However, by current social Internet standards – I am. They have 100% access ( except in some circumstances) to my social activities and behavior. Sure I prefer some of them to others, but they have no way of knowing this digitally. In Social networking sites currently all relationships are generally created equal.

Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, & etc were all built on this weird concept of validity of numbers. The more people I am connected to, the more power and value I have. While the SIN complex -get it? Strength In Numbers -will always apply, we need to progress to some type of way to establish the strength and validity of social relationships. Who do we consider friends, and what connection are more about status & fluff? With out some way to divide these two camps ( simplifying & assuming their are only two levels of relationships) maintaining well balanced virtual relationships is overly complex. In essence, the current social structure as it stands now is not built to support enduring virtual relationships.

As social society continues to adapt & mirror the best parts of in person communication enhanced with technology, this becomes more and more import. For example, in real life- those who have larger social ecosystems are naturally casually connected to a myriad of people. While these large physical ecosystems exist, people do not transmit all of their likes, dislikes, behaviors, habits, & emotions to the ecosystem as a whole, but rather selectively to various sub communities within the ecosystem based on the trust, relevance and strength of the relationship. I see adapting this type of communication structure into the social space and as a crucial next step for digital communication.

Here’s a peg shot video from just after the panel at Social Media Week. I think it sums up my thoughts nicely.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about online identity & facebook. I’ve seen a lot of people complain about facebook changes over the past few months. There’s issues with privacy. There’s the flaws in usability. Lastly, there’s the ever increasing flood of crap that facebook continues to force into the user experience. If facebook continues to overwhelm the user, and under deliver on the necessities such as usability and privacy- what will be their enduring value proposition?

As facebook becomes more and more common on a myriad of sites, I think facebook (along with google) is vying for what will be the next major advancement in social media- Identity. Currently on the web you need little more than a fake name and picture cut from a magazine to register an account as someone entirely different from yourself. While the loose structure of current online identity begets many of the things techies adore about the internet, it also creates serious cases of virtual identity theft.

In past years, defense of one’s personal identity had to be carried out on a case by case, site by site basis. This has created back breaking work for the user and made it nearly impossible to verify identity across sites. Then came open authentication and suddenly a login to facebook/twitter/google could be used to register on various other social sites. Thus the identity is verified across sites under a single username. This make protection and isolation of identity a single step rather then several.

My prediction is that facebook’s oauth capabilities are the beginning of their attempts to carve out a identity niche. Sure, I bet they have plans to stay a top ranked social site, but just in case they’re making sure they survive by initiating the process to create cross site identification. While facebook’s friend connect isn’t anything new, the developing concept of verified virtual identity is. With google also on the oauth train it will be interesting to see who develops a full virtual identity management system first.

As social media continues to cater to the niche, whoever presents a way to verify a virtual identity across site is set to score and score big.

I am not sure how I missed this interesting piece by Shelly Kramer, but I did. And if it hadn’t been for @lizasperling giving me a far too gratuitous shout out, I might have missed it entirely. Shame on me! I was just crawling into bed for some much needed shut eye when I, as always,  checked my twitter. This article, tweeted directly at me, set my mind so firmly into motion that I was forced to pull out from under my haven of warmth and put my currently turbie twist covered head to work.

I agree with nearly everything Shelly Kramer shared, but I think there was a little something missing. I suppose that something is the perspective of how men and women cognitively approach things different. As much as I would like to say men and women are equals in everything, it’s not quite the case. Fundamentally our brains are wired differently, thus making certain things more appealing/ intuitive based on our gender. I am not by any means saying that a women is not capable of doing everything a man can. Simply, that we might have to fight little against our cognitive tendencies to do some of those things.

What is the  Difference between the Male & Female Brain

A neurological study on brain mass found that in the male brain the cerebral cortex it is slightly more likely (60%) to be non-symmetrical. What might be the male advantage of a lopsided brain? Well a thick cortex can suggested increased functionality of the brains processing. Things that are function based, like staking claim to things & defending territory, may benefit from the increased thickness.  Women on the other hand have a more symmetrical cerebral cortex which suggests an uneven thickness in neither the right or left side of the brain. Since the a female brain is naturally more symmetrical, the thought processes which require multi-directional processing are more easily developed.

Another study in cited Psychology Today found that the male brain is characterized by systemizing tendencies and mechanistic thinking. “Systemizing” is  just a fancy way of saying they have natural tendencies to analyze, explore, and construct a system. They intuitively figures out how things work both literally and figuratively.  In contrast, the female brain is characterized by empathizing tendencies or mentalistic thinking. Empathy is the “the drive to identify another person’s emotions and thoughts”, and to respond to them appropriately. Mentalism, the other strong component to female thinking,  is the ability  to  understand people and what drives them.

So from this understanding of the brain, what can we deduce? Let’s make it simple: Women naturally do well with multitasking, cross-topic organization, community development, and communication. Men naturally do well with promotion (territory claim),  self preservation, concept exploration & system development .

How Does this Alter  the Way We Look At Women in Social Media?

Research has shown us what I think we already knew subconsciously was true, women naturally are more focused on conversation, men are naturally more focused on self survival (promotion). This doesn’t mean that all women are capable of is girl talk or task management. Nor does this mean men are only capable of tooting their own horn and exploring undeveloped concepts digitally.   I am simply saying that advance science shows that each gender has a natural tendencies to certain skill sets. Naturally men will promote themselves more, whether they intend to or not. Likewise, women are more likely to engage in a community, whether ore not they set out to do so. All this put into perspective, it make sense why the “biggest” names in social media are predominately men. It’s not they are any better or more talented than the lovely ladies of digital community, solely that they got prepackaged with a little more natural intuition on how to put themselves top of mind in the field.

In order for any of this to change and for more women to get credit for the more than excellent work they do, us ladies need to focus a little more on self-promotion & industry presence. I know it’s counter-intuitive, it’s uncomfortable, and frankly it seems a bit “used-car salesman like”. Hell, we’ve got thousands of years of  evolutionary developed cognitive processing fighting hard against us.  If we can go a little against our intuition and do a little more to promote our work , women-in life & in social media- will be better. Here’s just a few ideas of simple things we can do to promote women in social media.

1. Endorse Female Conference Speakers- Until the landscape at conferences becomes a little bit more balanced, it’s going to be harder for women to get the social media street cred they deserve. There is no reason more women shouldn’t be speaking at conferences & Shelly Kramer’s post had a list of women who are more then capable of delivering an excellent workshop or speech. Frankly, I’d enjoy some more balance in things; It would not only add some spice to the current conference rosters, but also produce new insights &  program management ideas. Plus, it’s getting old not seeing women on panels or giving speeches. While the world  ~50% female, conference speaker lists make it seems as if we are going extinct!

2. Boast just a little- If you’ve got accomplishments, share them. Chris Brogan doesn’t hesitate to mention he’s a NYT best selling author, neither should you. And if you know anything about Chris, he never comes off as a self promoting jerkwad. He’s balanced in his approach. He balances promoting his events & speaking engagements partnered with vocalizing his legitimacy , all while maintaining a more than active conversation with the public.  I think one of the women who may be doing this best in social media is Liz Strauss. Mingled in with her day to day conversation she still takes time to mention her events and do a little healthy self promotion that never comes off as excessive or in your face.

3. Schmooze, Chatter, & Network- If we’re naturally better suit to create dialogue based communities we should use our strength to help overcome our brain-based weakness. The sum is greater then the sum of all the parts, right? If we can create positive social media orgs for women, then as women break through the barrier, they can mentor and train the next generation to over come the same challenges. There’s a lot of insight and drive here, we just need a little more organization.

This networking function goes beyond  just connecting with other women in the industry. Network with the men who are currently leading the charge! I am sure you’d be surprised how many of them also think that women are unrepresented  in the scene ( especially at the events). If they know who the talented women are, that their intentions are honest, and that their work is superior, then  it is likely they were use a little of their social capital to help these women out.

In Short: Women are doing excellent work. I am confident we can & will lead advanced social thinking & dialogue, but to do so we need to start fighting our intuition and step into the portion of the spotlight we deserve.

The other day I was asked to give advice to a company on how to spot Social Media fakers. After much thought and some valued input from @db, @BROOKLYN2020 & @justjon , I threw together the following presentation with 15 ways to catch these vendors of certified crap & tainted  social media views right in their slimy  tracks.  Enjoy!

If we don’t start pointing out the losers in this business, it’s going to be hard for any of us to be winners.

photo courtesy of nataliedee.com

One thing Social Media “gurus” are experts at is making up definitions for words that already have established meanings. I bet old Merriam & Webster are pretty pissed about this and rolling in their graves. Wait are they dead? Alive or deceased, it’s pretty ridiculous for people to think they can change the meaning of something just because the context is new or unique.  This is exactly the case with one of my favorite social media buzzwords “Engagement.” Yes, you could logically argue that in the 15th century, when the transitive verb first entered into colloquial speech, that it’s creators weren’t thinking, “gee we ought to put a clause in here for how this relates to internet marketing.”

No of course they didn’t. They couldn’t predict the future, and they were marveling over the recent discovery of my favorite portion of the food pyramid- chocolate. But I am not going to judge them because-hey-even though they didn’t throw us a media tailored definition,  the standard serves as enough to easily judge any type of social media related meaning we could throw at it. Look at the beauty of M&W’s fine work:

Engage: to hold the attention of: engross <her work engages her completely> b: to induce to participate <engaged the shy boy in conversation>

Now you could argue that anytime someone liked something a brand produced that they were technically “engaged” with the brand.  Let’s be blunt here- my specialty.  Do you walk around telling people, wow I am really engaged in those boots right there, I have to have them? No you don’t. Okay. Well.  I know you’re yelling at me in your head saying- “boots aren’t content, stupid!” I ask you this, when you read a blog, watch a youtube video, or listen to something on the internet how often would you feel comfortable using the word “engaged” to describe your experience? And further more how often do you share that content that you read, watched, ore heard that did not “engage” you? I would bet the family farm that it’s probably around 85% of the time.

Now I’ve heard & read time and time again that engagement is best measured in RTs, reblogs, shares & etc. I don’t agree.  RTs don’t show engagement. Why?

1. How many times do we retweet something solely because it has a good title? I’ll admit I’ve done it more times then I am willing to say. We ALL have. If anyone says they haven’t they’re a liar and -if you believe in some sort of god-he knows when you lie…

2.  A retweet doesn’t show any actual engagement with the content.  It just shows that you know how to copy & paste, or if you’re using more “advanced” means of tweeting, it means you know how to click a button. Clicking a button is not engagement, it’s showing you’re about as smart as the average monkey.

3. That said, even if you did read the content and like it and retweeted it for all the right reasons, did you really engage? Do we measure engaging with a TV commercial by how much people liked the content?  No, we don’t. There have been plenty of awesome & amazing commercials that have generated little engagement. I know several ad agencies that can tell you all about this.

This leads me to what I would like to call my REAL Social Media definition for engagement: (ta da)!

Engage: to hold the attention of: engross <her work engages her completely> b: to induce to participate <engaged the shy boy in conversation>

Duh. You should have seen that coming.

PS. if you want to “engage” with this content leave a comment, start a discussion, or etc.

PPS. If you don’t want to “engage” and just want to share this, please do. Even though it isn’t a good measure of engagement, it is a good measure of popularity.  Just like an insecure teenager, I don’t mind sitting at the cool table.

Let’s be honest with ourselves here. Not everyone is good at math. Once we all accept this, the social media measurement world is going to be a hell-of-a-lot better off.

Watch this video. Ignore everything except the equations and how they progress. Yes, some of the metrics are complete nonsense. Yes, subscribers are just like followers. Yes, the video transition effects were nifty. I am asking you look past all of this.  Focus solely on the thought progression to the final equation.

You likely didn’t take notes while you watched that, did you?  If you didn’t, you missed all the messy bits. But, have no fear, because I am going to take you though the proposed equation step by step so you can see it for what it is- (mess x epicfail)/lack-o-judgment.

First, the host introduced you to three major metric categories (volume, engagement, & conversions). Under those three categories she listed several proposed metrics. Do you remember this? Or were you to focused on the super hero t-shirt? I know; it was a great t-shirt.

Now to make following the progression of this proposed equation easier, I broke each of those metrics into two groups. For example, I split the proposed Volume metrics into those that represent Reach & those that show Frequency. For Engagement I parsed the metrics into Time and Content engagement types. Lastly, I broke the metrics mentioned in the Conversion category into Responses & Revenue related metrics.  If you’re reading all this and are confused, the picture below should clear everything up.

In the next section the presenter outlined how you should divide these metrics, regardless of which category they were in within the previous section, into two groups: Hot & Cold metrics. Try to ignore that these groups make about as much sense as splitting the metrics by what which letter of the alphabet they start with. I know it’s hard, but just try.

The metrics the video host allocated to the Cold side are those that fall into the standard media buyers equation (reach x frequency) / timespent.  Additionally, revenue & responses are also fall under  Cold metrics. NOTE: it is not specified where in the equation these metrics belong, just that they belong there. Somewhere. The Warm side contains “harder to measure” Content Engagement metrics such as Sentiment & Ecosystem.  See below for the picture-fun version.

Now does anyone see some major possible issues yet? You should. If not, I am more than happy to point them out.

1. The actual metrics in the previous sections are replaced with less specific category titles. This begs the question why were those category groups originally defined? 
2. Responses & Revenue aren’t included in the Cold metrics equation & seem to be mentioned as an after thought?
3. Many of the data rich metrics in Content category of Engagement  are completely ignored, instead favoring to rely solely on Sentiment analysis
4. The host has introduced a new metric to the equation which was not included in the previous metric categorization: Ecosystem

So after all few more sultry glances and mirage of smoke, mirrors, and excessive metric organization, the video host presented the final equation:

You’ll likely note I added a little color to the above graphic. Here’s why. The yellow represents those metrics the host mentioned previously in each part of the discussion leading up to the grand reveal of the master equation. The plum section signifies metrics that were introduced in the second part of equation definition. Those red highlights those metrics which may have been alluded to, but were not brought out specifically during the previous discussions.

So now let’s play point out the possible problem points again (it’s a fun game isn’t it?).

1.  What are the Page Views & Visits in the Social Media world? Up until this point we have not see anything in this video that mentions these metrics or what defines what metrics would represent them.
2. Where did Frequency & Reach go? Are they supposed to be represented by Page Views & Visits? Are those two things really the same thing in social media measurement?
3. Why did the equation change from Timespent being in the denominator of the Cold metrics portion of the equation, to being an additive?
4. Why are Responses and Revenue removed, especially since they’re the only metrics which track possible financial return?
5. What exactly is the resulting metric meauring?

Now let’s combine everything together into a pretty picture. It’s a beautiful disaster.

Everyday on twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc I see posts on how to measure Social Media.  Usually while reading these posts I have to resist the urge to find a knife and go on a “people who cheapen my skill set in the social media space” killing spree.  For the most part the measurement solutions proposed in these articles lack context,  double count metrics, and fail to isolate an overall measurement goal. The result is equations (usually to measure ROI or some variant of ROI) that have enough holes in them to strain the pasta for my Sunday spaghetti dinner.

Yesterday I got into a nice discussion with  Olivier Blanchard about just how twisted many of the these measurement suggestions are and how they actually gain notary in the space. The conclusion was simple: people are making a quick buck off of people who don’t understand what measurement really is. Or in my candid and oh so witty manner of speech- people are getting played. In general, measurement is facing the same issue much of the social media world is facing- everybody’s “expert”.

So holding all this in the back of my head, I tried to understand how people get guided so off course by both these articles and their own better judgment. At around 5 o’clock last night it hit me. Adding qualitative aspect to a previously primarily quant based world has thrown some people so far for a loop that are willing to accept complete gibberish as a viable marketing solution as long as it has words like “tweets”, “likes”, and “posts” built into the equation. Additionally, you have an influx of tools to measure social media that don’t really MEASURE,  they MONITOR.  Did you see how I caps locked those words? It because we’re getting to my thesis: Social media monitoring is not social media measurement.

Why do people group these two very different things it one haphazard mess? A) because they can B) because people are dumb enough to listen to them c) because there’s a confusing mass of a no mans land in the middle that I like to call “reporting”.

So what really constitutes measurement and what types of analysis are simply monitoring? Well it just so happens I created the chart below to help clear up the misconceptions. Note you won’t see the words “engagement” or “volume” in this chart. This  focuses solely on the outputs and ignore the inputs ( ie: variations of metrics & types of  content).  Why are we ignoring the inputs? Because any good data nerd knows that the inputs should be guided by your companies internal goals and not by some one with a white board and a video on youtube. I could jabber on and on  about what each of these is and why they fall where they do, but this post is already too long. I’m going to let the image speak for itself.  In entries to come I will be analyzing various proposed measurement methodologies, pointing out the potholes, and giving credit where credit’s due. Thoughts? Comments? Bitter rage? Let me have it!

Special thanks to @devintrix &  @norcross for  listening to me babble last night about this.