Posts Tagged ‘Social Media Analytics’

Social Media Analytics Conference

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Social Media Analytics

I want to express my thanks to Business Insider for including me in its Social Media Analytics 2011 Conference which took place in New York yesterday. The conference addressed the challenges in measuring the return on investment of social media efforts. Given the efficacy of social media tools in reaching consumers, it is no surprise that companies have incorporated everything from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube in their marketing budgets. Indeed, according to a recent WebLiquid survey, the majority of marketers plan to increase their social media monitoring spend next year. But there is no clearly effective standard in measuring social media ROI.  Business Insider provided a forum for Fortune 500 companies and social media experts to share best practices in monitoring and analyzing social media efforts. The conference addressed:

  • The 40,000 foot view: how social media is changing business
  • Getting real ROI out of social media. What to do, which platforms to use, what to measure, which tools to measure with, how to judge success, what to keep doing, what to stop doing
  • Move over, SEO: How to optimize your content and product for social media and sharing
  • Social in the post-PC world; how to think about and measure social media for smart phones, iPads, connected TVs, apps, and HTML5 web

I particularly enjoyed the presentation of Eric Kuhn of United Talent Agency whose message gave hope to social entrepreneurs everywhere as social media levels the playing field. Kuhn spoke of how Paramount had spent $3.1 million to run a commercial for its “Transformers” movie on the Super Bowl. It resulted in 37,000 tweets, money well spent. But Disney promoted its movie “The Avengers” for free on its Facebook page and garnered 65,000 tweets. I left the conference encouraged that small enterprises are every bit as competitive with larger corporations with vastly greater resources thanks to the power of social media.

Business Insider had offered free registration, worth $399, to three participants who could write 50 words about how they would benefit from attending the conference. My 50-word submission addressed the challenges of limited resources for a start-up social enterprise and apparently someone at BI has a soft heart. Thanks again, I will put this learning to good use. And if you didn’t attend the conference, check out #SocialMediaAnalytics to read the tweets of what you missed.