SEO Werkt!

In the spirit of asking for forgiveness instead of permission, I can’t tell you how very sorry I am for the title of this blog post.

Yes, it is just a shameless attempt at link bait. I’m really really sorry (cue Jim Bakker tears).

But now that you’re here, please read on. Because there is one really good reason why you don’t need to measure social media ROI.

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Before I tell you that reason, let’s talk about the reasons that aren’t on the list.

“The ROI of social media is that you’ll still be in business in five years” is not only wrong and inane, it’s not a reason for not measuring SM ROI.

“Asking what the ROI of social media is is like asking what’s the ROI of your mother” is not only a demonstration of your stupidity (and a good reason why you should be fired from your job), it, too, is not a reason for not measuring SM ROI.

“The ROI of social media can’t be measured” is one of those statements that makes your senior management team want to beat the crap out of you, so let’s not put this on the list either, OK?

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There’s really just one good reason for not measuring social media ROI:

It’s not worth the effort.

There are three elements to that statement:

1. The amount of money you spend on SM is so small that measuring its ROI isn’t worth the effort.
2. The amount of money you would need to spend to develop the capabilities to accurately measure the ROI of SM would effectively wipe out whatever ROI you’re generating.
3. There are more important things for you to figure out how to measure.

These aren’t mutually exclusive statements. They’re all tied to the amount of money you spend on social media.

When I last asked financial institutions how much they were investing in social media as a percentage of their overall marketing budget, more than half said “too small to measure” which was the answer below “1-2%.” One in five FIs said they didn’t have a separate budget for social media.

So let’s say you work for an FI with $10b in assets, and you spend 1% of assets, or $10m on marketing each year. If one-half of 1% of your marketing budget goes to social media, you’re putting $50,000 into social media on an annual basis.

I’m not arguing that knowing the ROI of that $50k investment isn’t important. What I am arguing is that the cost and effort required to develop measurement capabilities might actually cost you more than the $50k you’re spending on social media.

The other point I’m arguing is that it’s my bet your marketing measurement capabilities regarding the other $9.95m that’s invested in marketing isn’t as good as it could be. Do you really want to invest $50k to improve the measurement of  a $50k investment, or spend it to better measure the $9.95m investment? (Take all the time you need before answering).

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Bottom line: The level of chatter regarding social media ROI is way out of control, and way out of proportion.

Gurus (and other morons) who try to redefine how ROI is calculated should be strapped in a chair and forced to watch Ben Affleck movies for 48 hours straight.

Gurus (and other morons) who have idiotic reasons for not measuring social media ROI should have their tax rates increased. 

If you have other good reasons for not measuring social media ROI, I’d like to hear them.

Filed under: Analytics, Marketing, Social Media Tagged: ROI, Social Media

Memory is a tricky beast. You might sit and study for hours on end, but for some reason it never seems to stick with you. However, as Time points out, implicit learning relies on three factors that are easy to control. More »

For four years, each day Daniel Disselkoen took the same tram to art academy. Why would you then look out the window with curiosity when there is no reason to expect anything new? He decided to change the daily journey for his fellow passengers and himself.

Man-eater was part of Dan’s graduation project “Remake Reality” for the Royal Academy of Art, The Netherlands.

Portfolio: Daniel Disselkoen

Financially troubled RIM probably doesn’t have two pennies to rub together, so the company must be thrilled that it just saved itself $147.2 million.

RIM announced today that the decision in its patent battle against mobile software company Mformation Technologies was overturned, saving RIM from paying the hefty award.

Mformation brought the case against RIM in 2008, arguing that RIM’s BlackBerry Enterprise Server software violated its patents. The jury agreed, and last month RIM was ordered to pay $8 for each of the estimated $18.4 million devices it sold in the U.S. (If there was ever a good reason to have poor smartphone sales, this was it.)

RIM, clearly, is happy with the way things turned out. “We’re pleased with the victory,” RIM’s Chief Legal Officer Steve Zipperstein said in a statement today. Zipperstein also used the victory to criticize the patent system, which he said is being exploited by unsavory characters for illegitimate reasons.

With defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, Mformation now has the option to appeal the latest decision. Doing so, however, would mean having to wrangle up an entirely new jury, and we’d  have another trial on our hands.

We’ve reached out to Mformation to see if the company intends to go that route, and we’ll update this story when the company responds.

Filed under: mobile

If every person and brand out there was sailing smoothly with social media marketing, we’d have no reason for conferences and events, blogs and books. Every company has challenges to social media marketing success, some internal, some external. When marketers look to solve these problems, they often look to software first. But software is only part of the solutions.

I caught up with Erika Brookes from Oracle-Vitrue last week to chat about some of the challenges her clients are seeing in the social space and how they’re solving them. Oracle-Vitrue is a sponsor of Explore Minneapolis coming next week (Aug. 16-17) to the DoubleTree by Hilton Park Place. They’ll be there, along with other great sponsors and software companies and an all-star lineup of speakers to help you think deeply and differently about everything from content marketing to measurement and analytics and beyond. You can register below the video, but let’s dive in and see what Erika had to share:

You won’t want to miss the business insights we have to offer at Explore Minneapolis. I’ll be speaking, along with an all-star lineup that includes SME Digital’s Nichole Kelly, The Now Revolution co-author Jay Baer, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Ad Contrarian Bob Hoffman and more. The event will also feature a number of excellent software providers and companies like Oracle-Vitrue to help you navigate the waters of digital marketing. They’ll bring their knowledge to share as well as their products. This is a must-attend event, so register now!

The two-day event, incredible content, breakfast, lunch and a cocktail reception is $450, but if you’re a member of a professional organization (IABC, PRSA, AMA or similar), ask if they have a discount code for you and save big! Learn more about the speakers, their topics and more at the Explore Minneapolis registration page!

Or register here:

Explore is a five-city conference event series from Social Media Explorer and presented by Expion and Raven Internet Marketing Tools. Learn more and sign up for email updates for the city nearest you at GoToExplore.co.

Burner launched today, an app that gives you one-off numbers that go dark after you’re done using them. But what happens when those numbers are used by criminals? The privacy-focused company says it is ready to deal with illicit behavior, and will comply with U.S. court orders.

“Burner is a very focused product around anonymity and privacy,” said Burner chief executive Greg Cohn in an interview with VentureBeat. “Part of the reason we’re doing this company is because we’re privacy advocates.”

Burner lets you buy a number to use for a certain amount of time before it is “burned” or goes inactive. Think of Craigslist transactions. You don’t want that guy who tried to sell you a crappy TV to have your real number sitting around. A Burner number allows you to cut off ties from that person quickly, and keeps you identifying information out of their hands.

If you need more convincing, just think of the “Can I get yo number?” Mad TV sketch. Seriously, give that dude a burner number.

Burner avoids running out of numbers by recycling “burned” numbers after a quarantine period, where the activity on the number is watched. Once activity, such as incoming calls and texts, dies down and a certain period of time has passed, the number will be given out again to a new user.

The life of a number depends on how much money you pay for it, but can be burned at any time.

While these numbers protect your privacy, they have obvious use cases in the criminal world. Drug deals, threatening phone calls, and other scenarios where the caller doesn’t want to be traced could be facilitated by an app like this, and the team is well aware.

But what happens when law enforcement comes knocking on the door? This is a huge issue for companies who are bent on privacy, but are suddenly being asked to hand over the identities of those using its service.

“Ultimately what we expect to do [is] adhere to U.S. laws that are valid and court orders that are valid, but we will make sure that they are [valid],” said Cohn. “We are explicitly not going after a market in the vein of Tor or Wikileaks where there’s protection from the law.”

Recycling the numbers brings up another issue. If a phone number is used for criminal activity and is then reissued to an innocent person, Burner and law enforcement will have to decipher which person committed the crime and which person to leave alone. The company says it will not reveal its tactics, but does have a plan in place for those scenarios.

The app is free on iOS, but the numbers are not. Users buy “credit packs” which range from three credits for $1.99 to 25 credits for $11.99. You can then use your credits to load various Burner “types” on your phone. For instance, three credits will get you the “Mini Burner,” or a number that expires after seven days. Eight credits will get your a Burner number that expires after 30 days.

Burner was founded in January.

Can I Have Yo Number image via YouTube

Filed under: VentureBeat

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a great way to browse the web securely, and OS X has a VPN option built right into it. The problem is that it doesn’t always automatically connect when you boot up your computer, or after it disconnects for some reason. A simple Applescript over on Stack Exchange solves this problem. More »

Guest point by Eric Schwartzman (@ericschwartzman) on why he believes the Social Media Policy at the 2012 London Olympics failed

First off, social media could have at least partially erased the advantage that some state-sponsored “full-time amateur athletes” from Eastern Bloc countries enjoy over self-financed amateurs from Western countries. But unfortunately the social media gag order by the IOC neutered that chance by restricting athletes from sharing posts that mention their sponsors on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else online. Here’s the clause:

“Participants and other accredited persons are not permitted to promote any brand, product or service within a posting, blog or tweet…” [PDF]

Since state-funded athletes don’t need to raise money from private enterprise to support their Olympic bids, social media could have given those who do a way to rally funds.

The financial pressure on US Olympians is no joke. The parents of Gabby Douglas and Ryan Lochte both filed for bankruptcy recently, crushed under the immense financial sacrifice it took to get their children to the Olympic Games. Recognizing the contributions of their sponsors via social media might have offered some relief. But Rule 40 erased that possibility.

The Track & Field Athletes Association, Olympians and fans have been protesting the policy by including the hastags #rule40 and #WeDemandChange in their tweets. Above is an image Olympic medalist Dawn Harper tweeted to protest the gag order.

What’s backwards is the premise of the rule, which assumes that if athletes use social media to promote their own sponsors, official Olympic sponsors and rights holding broadcasters will lose. This is second reason the effort failed. It assumed that the media landscape is a zero sum game and that the absence of unofficial sponsors in social media would be a gain for official sponsors in mainstream media.

But as we seen, social media drives traffic to owned media, increasing the number of eyeballs broadcasters have to sell to paid media.

As veteran reporter Suzanne Vranica wrote in a story about the impact of social media on ratings:

“There have been plenty of negative hashtags assigned to NBC’s Olympics coverage on Twitter, including #NBCFail and #NBCStinks. But on Madison Avenue the hashtag for this Olympics so far is more like: #NBC$$$$.”

The take away is this. Social media doesn’t replace mainstream media. It drives mind share. More mind share equals more viewers. And more viewers means more value for official sponsors and broadcasters. What the IOC failed to appreciate is that tweets, blogs and mobile videos don’t cannibalize prime time viewership. They complement it.

To be fair, the IOC’s social media policy is certainly no anomaly. According to the National Labor Relations Board, most social media policies in the US are unlawful. Rule 40 is just one of many shortsighted gaffes that digitally illiterate gatekeepers from a bygone era have concocted to try and police the digital world by analog standards. Which brings me to the third, and final reason the social media policy at the London Olympics failed.

In the US, we enjoy freedom of speech. When organizations restrict that freedom they provoke real hate, and that hatred severely tarnish their brand. Social media policies govern personal expression and many regard personal expression as a natural right.

If organizations are seen as depriving individuals of what they consider to be their inalienable rights, such as the right to improve their working conditions or the right to bargain collectively, those same organizations are seen as unjust and their reputations suffer, which is the case for the IOC.

To sum it up, Rule 40 not only fumbled the chance to level the playing field for all Olympians, it skirted a ratings gain and stained the reputation of the International Olympic Organizing Committee. They protected themselves in the court of law and lost in the court of public opinion.

But it didn’t have to be a win-lose scenario. They could have had their cake and ate it too. If you’d like to learn how to develop practical, win-win social media guidelines by which your employees can conduct responsible, constructive social media engagement in both official and unofficial capacities, here’s a half price link good until the Closing Ceremonies for the first 50 sign-ups to take my online course on social media policy development.

Eric Schwartzman is the creator of www.SocialMediaBootCamp.com

If you’ve tried taking naps in the afternoon and found yourself feeling groggy after waking—if you manage to force yourself back out of bed—you may just be going about them all wrong. Even if you don’t work in a job where napping is acceptable, there’s a very clear reason why the best naps are the ones that are usually around the half-hour mark. Here’s why. More »

If you are a local marketer and have tried to get your business location verified in any of the three major search engines you know that each have their pitfalls.

Google has made the switch to Google+ Local which has thrown everyone into a local Internet marketing tizzy as of late although there is some hope for change.

Bing is well, Bing. They have their processes and their quirks but no one is ever quite sure just how many people are seeing listings or are actually using Bing. It has the most silent combined 30% of search share one can imagine.

The reason we say Bing search is combined is because it also takes into account Yahoo search which was riding off into the sunset until Yahoo made the move to bring Google’s Marissa Mayer in as CEO. The likelihood that things stay the same there in the search game are pretty slim considering who know has the reins.

Well, we may be seeing early impact of Mayer’s time at Yahoo although the kind of change reported by the NGS Marketing blog isn’t something that would happen that quickly (but what do I know?). It has to do with Yahoo upgrading its decidedly antiquated business verification process which was done by good ol’ fashioned humans until now. They have even gone ahead and added an option that neither Google not Bing offers

The email verification is a good and convenient option, which neither Google, nor Bing currently provide.

What does this addition mean? First, it should generally take much shorter time for a listing to be verified and published (in case you choose any other option than the postal mail one). Previously, the process was being completed manually by Yahoo’s moderators and in some cases this was taking well over a month. Apparently, the moderators’ job will now be eased, and most probably some of them will be relocated and/or discarded.

So who knows? Maybe Yahoo will become a real search player again? When the agreement with Microsoft runs (or dies) out will Yahoo go back to becoming a true search entity again? With all of the traffic that comes through Yahoo don’t you think they might want to keep the search earnings potential in-house rather than sharing with their Bing buddies? Danny Sullivan doesn’t think so as he stated in a post that wonders where Yahoo’s next search alliance might come from in a post Microsoft search era.

Of course, Yahoo can’t walk away without finding another partner, and it has a real shortage of choices. There’s no one left in the US with the proven ability to deliver search queries at the volume Yahoo would demand.

Ask.com? It’s largely outsourced to Google these days. Blekko? I’m sure it would love the job, but there would be a huge scaling-up challenge and, I’d say, much more work to do on the relevancy front. Maybe Yandex or Baidu could make a bid?

It won’t be Yahoo. Yahoo has lost too much key search talent and hasn’t kept its core search technology up-to-date. When it gave itself over to Microsoft, Yahoo really left itself without a “Plan B.”

This gets more and more interesting doesn’t it? Is there a YaGoog far off in the future? Could Googahoo be a real option? It’s not like Mayer doesn’t know the powers that be at Google well. Until recently she was one! Ahhh, but would the powers-that-be-in-DC allow it?

What’s your thought?

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