It’s Election Day, and some pundits are predicting a landslide win for Obama, while others say that McCain has a slim but very real path to victory. In other words, no one knows anything for sure.

We decided to apply the same methodology we previously used to predict individual primaries, to gauge social media’s feelings on the two candidates. I won’t call these results a prediction– because there are too many variables this time around– but it gives a clear picture of who’s winning in the blogosphere.

We first looked at CI’s home state of Colorado, for the 7 days leading up to Election Day (10/28-11/3). We measured and averaged the mentions of each candidate, along with the sentiment, within a sample set of 30 right-leaning and 30 left-leaning Colorado-based blogs. When we translated these numbers into percentages (see methodology), Obama emerged the clear winner– 55% to 45%.

We also performed a national pulse-check, where we used the same metrics (avg. sentiment multiplied by number of mentions) and timeframe, but did not take party affiliation or location into account. This produced almost exactly the same result– Obama with 55%, McCain with 45.

Both metrics have their weaknesses. The Colorado sample set is very small; and on a national scale, Obama has been dominant in the social media space for over a year now. But the fact that both produced a ~10% point advantage for Obama, using separate sample sets, is definitely interesting.

Will this translate to the polls? We’ll see tonight (hopefully).

Tags: Blog Analysis, Event Tracking, Politics, Social Media Metrics // Add Comment »

In his recent book, “What Sticks”, Rex Briggs estimated that over one-third of the $300 billion dollars in annual advertising spend in 2006 was wasted. Of this amount, approximately $23 billion dollars was wasted simply because the allocation of media spend across channels was not optimal. Put another way, re-allocating media dollars to channels that work harder for your brand or products can optimize your marketing spend to the tune of billions of dollars.

Last week, I was honored to be one of the panelists associated with a very interesting measurement discussion. The purpose of this panel was to explore how industry is progressing in developing digital marketing metrics to drive more consistent and higher ROI through less advertising spend waste– with better optimization of media mix, combined with a data-driven digital marketing approach. This session was part of a “digital immersion day”, hosted by McCann Worldwide in San Francisco for one of their clients. I was joined on the panel by Dan Neely of Networked Insights, Konrad Feldman from quantcast, and Will Hodgman from Comscore (M: Metrics), so a wide range of measurement angles was represented.

Anna Banks with McCann expertly moderated a vibrant discussion by posing challenging measurement questions, including examples such as:

· Can digital and social media metrics be used as leading indicators of business? Which ones?

· How can companies quantitatively understand the lift that active participation in social networks can give to their lead generation efforts? What about PR? What about aircover advertising?

· What’s the potential of Atlas’ engagement mapping, or other similar mechanisms to track the impact of a series marketing tactics (or user actions) beyond the last action?

All panelists provided well-thought answers that predictably highlighted their company’s ability to help drive towards a better estimation of marketing ROI. As a Collective Intellect employee who fulfills the twin roles of client services and social media analytics, here are some general impressions on measurement in a social media world, which were also discussed to some degree last week:

It ain’t easy (to estimate ROI)

Measuring ROI within the social media channel is not a white-jacketed, scientific affair (yet). And while I do believe it’s possible to move beyond the fuzzy warmth of the adage that “social media is more about the ‘I’ in Return on Investment”, measuring channel-specific impact of social or digital media marketing endeavors is not for the faint of heart. However, it can be done and there are digital research firms such as Insight Express or Marketing Evolution addressing this very issue. For example, Insight Express is charged with quantifying ROI across channels as part of BzzAgent’s recent challenge to competing agencies, the “WOM Guarantee Program”.

Doing it right may not be the best approach

Although it sounds counter-intuitive, digital and social media marketers need to make decisions quickly about what is working and what is not. Asking them to provide the inputs needed to build a complex, black-box, neural net or marketing-mix model– that may be statistically rigorous but mildly obsolete by the time it is complete– doesn’t help with the daily challenges of managing your campaigns. A “good enough” approach may work for many marketers. Begin with key social media performance indicators which, in turn, can be correlated with success metrics to gauge impact on revenue, customer satisfaction, or brand awareness.

Liberty! Give me the data

Database marketers and business intelligence experts are quite comfortable in terms of mining their own data for information. Can social media information become part of this world? The answer is a qualified “Yes!” However, there are fundamental challenges incorporating social media data feeds into database and reporting systems. Enabling savvier clients to make their own channel-specific ROI estimates (at whatever level of effort they choose) is an attractive option. Social media data can be integrated with alternative marketing data to help understand more fully the relationship between marketing action and downstream success metrics.

Conclusion

One of my favorite words is “nascent” and, to me, it describes the current state of social media analytics. There is no solid, industry-wide, currently accepted approach to measuring ROI for this channel. A wise person once said that it is not the destination but the journey that matters – as in traditional media, social media measurement approaches will become formalized over time and that journey will be fun.

Tags: Advertising/Marketing, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Metrics, Uncategorized // Add Comment »

Well it’s been a while since someone has done a really in-depth analysis of social media companies and here is a real killer. Philip Sheldrake, Director at RacePoint Group has broken the silence with an incredibly detailed analysis of the current players in the social media world. Download the full 99 pages of sweetness and make sure to subscribe to the RSS at Marcom Professional.

The eBook had the 6 pages about Collective Intellect including the following excerpts (that I liked) :

“Collective Intellect describes their last year as one focused on adding millions of new social media sources and improving data quality with highly automated categorisation and analytic tools. Quite rightly, they point out that analysis is pointless if you don’t start with accurate and comprehensive data. Collective Intellect must be doing something right to have attracted customers from the likes of Microsoft, Chrysler, Anheuser-Busch, Pfizer, Dell, Yahoo!, Viacom, Verizon, Levi’s and Adobe.”

About yours truly: “Collective Intellect’s Nick Sowden is the only staff member of the SWA vendors described here to let me know he’s on Twitter and to have subscribed to my Twitter. He’s also one of two to have invited me to link up on LinkedIn. To me, ‘being’ social inspires confidence that they truly ‘think’ and ‘live’ social.”

“I recall telling a colleague that Collective Intellect has “the magic dust”. Here are a few more things, additional to those above, that led me to make such an exclamation…. ”

Phillip closes with more praise: “In fact, the only other criticism I can muster up is the plainly visible fact that their reports aren’t as pretty as the competions’; not a critical desideratum and easily fixed… come on Collective Intellect!” Good point Phillip. We pride ourselves on data and we’re working on making our reports ‘prettier’.

To be somewhat balanced I should talk about Philip’s main criticism: “Interestingly, Collective Intellect dismisses social networking pages as “highly off topic and generally unhelpful”, and instead prefers to focus on the group / community pages within such networks. They also write off micro-blogs such as Twitter and Jaiku as “highly irrelevant”. That’s one perspective I can’t agree with.” Erroneous! I sent Philip some bad data (what was I think??), as we’re all about twitter. I twitter more than I eat… and I’m a hungry man. We’re already incorporating twitter into our data, in fact.

Thanks for the write up guys!

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Metrics, Social Media Monitoring // Add Comment »

Paul Gillin’s recent thought-provoking comments on whether and if a negative sentiment “floor” exists for Dell obscures a larger point - never give up! Using social media tools to further understand the negative sentiment associated with the “floor” helps build a business case (for or against) further marketing strategy and outreach. My response:

—-

A natural floor for social media tonality certainly exists, and no doubt varies by industry topics. However, as an employee for a company whose mission is to both interpret and effect change within the social media arena , I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that Dell has a unique opportunity to dive deeply into the negative commentary that constitutes the “floor”. Put another way, understanding tonality sets the stage, understanding content provides further opportunity for outreach. If the themes around negative content are inconsistent from month-to-month, a case can be made for a “floor” of constantly churning negative activity that it doesn’t pay to try and influence. However, if the themes emerging from negative social media activity are consistent, and no outreach has been attempted that leverages “the message” of this consistent negativity, the case could be made to further reduce the floor by testing different types of social media outreach. Dell may certainly have recognized this and have attempted the outreach (or decided that an ROI case can’t be made for it) – but it’s worth mentioning!

—–

Collective Insight helps marketers understand the “face” behind the social media buzz and can use that knowledge to connect in a relevant and timely fashion.

Tags: Blog Analysis, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Metrics // Add Comment »

As the CEO of Collective Intellect, I have the pleasure of interacting with dozens of companies, agencies and technology vendors every month who are at the forefront of social media engagement. These interactions are confirming that the importance of social media is real. I wanted to share some of my perspective on how companies gain strategic advantage through social media engagement, and to do a plug for why Collective Intellect should be a key component in your approach.

As a serial entrepreneur, I have been at the frontline of customer relationships many times. Through these start-up experiences, I have discovered that new business services exist on a continuum from tactical operational improvements to services of truly strategic import. The good news for investors and users is that services everywhere along this continuum have the potential to create value. The dynamics of the value provided have a significant impact on the client’s (i.e. users) underlying business models.
From my perspective, it is clear that many earlier adopters of Collective Intellect’s services are adopting them in ways that deliver strategic advantage. I would like to highlight some the strategic potentials associated with social media engagement.

• First, social media engagement is being used to increase revenue and market share. More and more consumers trust web sites for recommendations and advice than ever before. Several weeks ago, General Motors announced that it was shifting 50% of its marketing spend to digital. The reason was that traditional media was primarily valuable for building up awareness for new vehicle models, but digital media is where consumers made consideration and preference decisions on which cars to purchase based on their own online research and conversations.

• Second, social media engagement is being used to optimize messaging delivered through social media and through traditional media. Identifying the key issues and concerns of authentic voices found in blogs and other social media allows companies to deliver the messages most important. Coca-Cola recently opted to encourage and recognize user-generated mash-ups of creative advertisements rather than continue to try to enforce trademark protection. Now, if you create a cool Coke commercial, you could get sponsored to create the next one.

• Third, early adopters have less competition for the attention of creators and users of social media. Thus, the odds of meaningful engagement will never be higher than now. We have clients that are creating meaningful relationships with the key influencers in social media around topics that are associated with their brands and companies. These relationships form a foundation for future interactions that start to integrate these companies and citizens in valuable communities.

• Fourth, innovators are striving to harness the value of the social media content in their web properties to engage clients. We are working with several clients to build next generation publishing models that integrate social media influencers together in ways that support specialized vertical topics. These early models, if successful, will provide enormous first mover advantage for these clients.

If you’re an adopter of social media engagement, I encourage you to contact Collective Intellect today; so you can take advantage of this outstanding opportunity.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Social Media Metrics // Add Comment »

Robin did an interview with the Wallstreet Journal regarding coca-cola and superbowl advertising. You can check it out here, and I’ve included a short excerpt below.

Questions for Hal Curtis
And Pio Schunker
By SUZANNE VRANICA
March 11, 2008 3:36 p.m.
Super Bowl Sunday may have been five weeks ago, but marketers are still trying to evaluate just how well their commercials preformed during the game.

A new study released this week shows Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl ad staring Charlie Brown was the most talked about ad online two weeks after the gridiron matchup, according to Collective Intellect, a company that analyzes blogs to see what people are posting online about products and brands.

The Coke spot, set at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, features Stewie and Underdog balloons fighting over a huge Coke balloon. The two characters bounce around the New York skyline bumping up against office and apartment buildings. The twist: the two are outdone by Charlie Brown, who swoops in and grabs the beverage. The spot cost about $2.3million to create, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Robin Seidner, the director of marketing for Collective Intellect, says Coke’s ad had 350 blog post the day after the game, while Pepsi’s ads had 250 posts. Some ad executives believe the spot has a good shot of winning an award at the Cannes Lions festival, which is the most prestigious honor in the industry. It’s something new for the Atlanta beverage giant, which has been hampered by a lack of sizzle when it comes to its advertising in the past few years. Coke has struggled to create ads that please the younger set and at the same time don’t turn off older consumers.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture, Social Media Metrics // Add Comment »

On Friday afternoon, I sat down to speak with Ron Morris of American Entrepreneur Radio, to talk about social media measurement and the after-buzz of Super Bowl advertising. To listen to the podcast, click here.

Tags: Brand Management, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Metrics // Add Comment »

It seems like just as I wrote a post about the WSJ article, I see another article in the New York Times adding to the flames of publishers and vendors squaring off on measurement.

Along the lines of the what I wrote before, every vendor (ComScore, Nielsen) does measurement in their own way. Publisher server data doesn’t remotely match. Vendors who use panels do have problems with measurement because they are extrapolating based on the small number of hits their panelists make. and, since these are consumer panelists — not business panelists working behind a company firewall — they really can’t be getting all the data they need to extrapolate well.

The rub is that online advertising will grow more slowly if measurement isn’t standardized in some way.

Tags: Social Media Metrics // Add Comment »

It is a “Big Day” for anyone who makes investment decisions for a living. Why? As of today there is a service available that will allow traders, PM’s and researchers to efficiently search ALL media. Not just news stories. Not just press releases. Not just websites.

As you might have heard, there is this thing called “New Media” out there. The blogosphere is a big part of it. But there are hundreds of message boards that are an important component of it as well. These new information sources (labeled “user-generated content” by the traditional journalists who are rightfully scared as Hell about the whole genre) contain a treasure-trove of information that traders-of-old only dreamed about. Patients discussing their drug therapies. Regional newspapers interviewing local executives. Former executives airing dirty corporate laundry. Industry pundits breaking news long before the Wall Street Journal starts running the presses. Sure it is noisy, but now with a bit of fancy technology all this content is filtered, categorized and ranked for relevance. And best of all, the technology “learns” what you consider relevant over time, so the filtering gets better and better and better. No more page-forward-page-forward-page-forward on Bloomberg. No more endless searching throught the big search-engines, hoping to find a nugget.

Media Intelligence, truly, is here. Email your friends at Collective Intellect and join the trading revolution.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Social Media Metrics, Social Media Monitoring // Add Comment »

From CNET: Collective Intellect has a goal: Make bloggers work for The Man.
The company has created a service that combs through thousands of blogs, news sites, chat rooms and other Web sites every day and then surfaces rumors and news reports that might be of interest to traders or corporate public-relations executives. Read full story

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Blog Analysis, Consumer-Generated Media (CGM), Social Media Analytics, Social Media Metrics // 2 Comments »