Saturday, August 16, 2008

WebGuild Analytics and Social Media Event

I recently spoke at a WebGuild event titled "Web Analytics: Measure Social Media Engagement." Great panelists including Carla Bourque, VP Media & Entertainment, Nielsen Online, Eddie Smith, VP Marketing and Business Development, Socialmedia.com, Giovanni Rodriguez, Managing Partner, Conversation Group. The moderator was Andreas Weigand, former Amazon Chief Scientist.

We discussed a variety of topics. My focus was to discuss real-life examples of how companies advantage of Social Media whether it be blogs, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. At Position2 we work with clients to drive user engagement and leads with Social Media. There are technology companies like Coverity that connect with their community with Twitter in addition to media sites like Effinfunny that create special micro-sites and Facebook Pages to drive conversations.

Everyone is looking for a silver bullet for which new metric that should look towards. The panel recommended metrics like email forwards, sharing rates, recommendations in addition to click through, lead form fill, webinar sign-up, or time on site vs. bounce rate. Unfortunately, there is no single metric. It all depends on the business or the goal. A B2B firm selling software is going to have different goals than a consumer media site. One thing that is important is the need to dedicate resources to this fast-growing medium. Another is to give time to optimize as there are many ways to make things work. It is a game of applying best practices in a customized and iterative manner.

Thank you Daya at WebGuild for inviting me to speak. Also, thank you to the attendees for your engaging questions and comments.

No comments: