A Week in Italy: Measuring All Things Social and Moving Corporate Social Efforts Forward

Lundquist 3rd european digitalI had the incredible honor and pleasure to be invited to join my friends at Lundquist PR for their 3rd European Digital Leadership Conference last week.  These forums are organized by Lundquist to help develop outstanding digital leaders and equip them with the strategic vision and essential skills needed to manage their company’s digital communications. The initiative is built around a series of “retreats”, intimate and closed-door gatherings for exchange and thought leadership discussions among members.   Joakim Lundquist and team organized for a great group with an intense and solid agenda for a 36 hour deep dive and actionable outcomes – while we also had some great Italian food and wines, by the way.

This time, I was fortunate to be a participant rather than the facilitator.  My good friend and measurement pro, Katie Paine, led us through matters of metrics, measurement, standards related to the value of social media efforts.  The focus was on relationships and the need to move away (very very far away) from impressions, clicks and eyeballs to real action and connectivity

Katie’s presentation about measurement of social efforts included some great factoids and thought starters:

  • Digital natives switch media 27 times per hour or every 2.2 minutes
  • Less than 5% of Twitter or Facebook posts are seen, as the avalanche of information and social media streams through our phones, tablets and computers
  • Slide 10 is great. Likes and followers are like construction workers whistling at a pretty girl on the street.  They are mere impressions and count for next to nothing.  They are a vanity number that has little real value…especially given the spam and bots in social media.  Its why Relationships matter or another way of putting it, focus on the niche not the mass part of social media
  • On influencers….be very careful about how you define who are actual influencers.  Computers cannot tell you who matters most. Big numbers don’t mean influence. All influence is relative.   Be clear and understand context and content, not just the numbers.
  • Enjoy slide 11.   There is something to think about when it comes to engagement….and or influence.  How do your numbers stack up in this regard?
  • There was a great discussion about being data informed versus data driven.  Hat tip to Thomas Backteman on raising the discussion about dependency on data versus the need to think and be creative. There could also be a nuance here related to differences between European and American business.Italy path forward

In addition to Katie’s presentation, we broke into 2 working groups and actually applied the measurement steps Katie outlined to a specicific and targeted Corporate Communications social media effort ( i.e, not marketing, think Corporate social responsibility or investor relations efforts)…despite the mist and rain, we did come up with paths forward

We had a great discussion about how negative commentary can be easily decreased but then how to engage your social efforts in a way that moves the neutral and positive commentary to increase…and the issues of how that takes time and effort since it is not about “mass media” but about relationships.

Here are the 6 steps we worked with to develop a sound measurement effort (it’s also slide 15 on the presentation link):Katie-Delahaye-Paine-6-steps-to-standard-compliant-measurement-Lundquist-Breakfast-Meeting_-wide

It was also a real pleasure to spend time with the team at Lundquist, brainstorming through client issues related to “executive buy-in” and organizational planning to be able to support expanded social efforts.  We had focused discussions related to companies approaching change in their internal culture to move towards more transparency, accountability and engagement, and explored issues and solutions for digital media, storytelling, as well as use of social media in corporate social responsibility and investor and financial communications programs.  Thrilled to be doing some joint work together with this really smart and advanced team.

Here is Katie’s take on the get together. (and thanks Katie for the cutline on the pic, “for added fun, the ever provocative social business guru”…ha)

Here is the Lundquist blog post from a breakfast meeting we also did in Milan.  Thanks Joakim for a productive and great time….and for the food and wines

 

Leave a Reply