In the last several weeks, the SOCIALtality team has spoken with several potential, enterprise-level AlphaTesters.  It's an exciting time to be a part of an organization bringing an unprecedented level of measurement, analysis and ultimately, accountability to both Social Media and a company's full, marketing channel mix.  Each week, we're discovered by a growing crowd of newly-intrigued individuals.

I'd love to believe that our awareness-building efforts are solely responsible for generating this momentum, yet I think it has more to do with internal changes in the organizations themselves. Companies are moving beyond Trial Phase of Social Media Maturity in growing numbers.  They've become comfortable with entry-level monitoring and measurement and now seek an intelligence solution that can match the organization's growing desire to leverage Social Media more strategically. 

 

SOCIALtality has 55 Facebook fans and we're damn glad to have them.  I know what you're thinking.  55 fans?  Really?  Just 55? Doesn't that "I hate 'Battery Low'" fan page have more than 2.2 million fans?

It's true, just 55.  Believe it or not, it was much worse three short weeks ago.  On February 3rd, our fan count stood at four.  1,2,3,4. In fact, the count on February 3rd was identical to our fan count at the end of the page's first day of existence (October 1st).

Four months with four fans. Let's take a moment to thank our first four stalwart fans for sticking with us and really believing. Oh wait, I was actually one of the first four.  I guess that means we had three fans. 

Wendy Troupe and I were speaking to Nathan Gilliatt this morning about the nature of analysis, measurement and social media.  The conversation ranged across a variety of topics: from his recent and very successful AnalyticsCamp in Chapel Hill to the occurrence measurement silos (we all agreed, by the way, that measurement silos stink and rob you of true cross-channel, big-picture insight).  During that conversation, Nathan said something that stopped the coffee cup halfway to my lips.  It was eloquent, simple and yet, profound:

"[If you set aside the corporate desire for engagement], Social Media becomes a set of really powerful, publicly-available, data points."  (paraphrasing, Nathan said it much better)

You can't measure what you can't see.  If your tools are limited to measuring volume of mention, share of conversation, +/- sentiment, degree of influence, etc there may be a lot you're not seeing.  In fact, if your current analytics tools aren't measuring the effect that your social media initiatives have on other communications channels, then you may be attempting marketing optimization while blindfolded.

Last Wednesday night at a fireside chat at the Vilna Shul, I had the pleasure of listening to Misiek Piskorski talk about his research of social networking behavior. Misiek is an Associate Professor of Strategy at Harvard Business  School where he teaches a second-year elective entitled "Competing with Social Networks". Misiek has been studying users interact in Facebook to identify their motivations and habits and he had some interesting observations — most notably, that 78% of users are active "stalkers". That’s right — most of us are just interested in looking at other people’s profiles, pictures, relationship status and conversations rather than producing our own content.

Overall, the main objective for users in social networks is to build relationships. But more broadly speaking, Misiek covered the motivations of users, how businesses can leverage this activity in their strategy development, and what in the way of technology is here and coming to help us in these interactions.