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Social media monitoring tools that report and trend metrics like Likes, Tweets, Comment Threads and Positive/Negative Buzz are fast growing. In fact, within just the last month, VC’s raised over $25 million to fund new companies launching social media monitoring software.

Yet, as the chart below from KISSMetrics shows, once companies buy into and start using these dashboards, only 1/3 believe they made a smart decision. 6% get so frustrated they are prepared to switch to another vendor.

It’s clear like social media, social media monitoring tools are here to stay. SocialMedia.biz compiled a thorough and extensive review of the Top 20 vendors.

But could it be the allure of all this data leaves companies, once they get them, asking: “What do I do with all this data?”

Here are 5 social media monitoring mistakes and 7 good ideas.

1. SOFTWARE IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR STRATEGY: A dashboard with lots of data is not a substitute for a plan of action, a clear definition of goals and how they will be achieved.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING HAS LITTLE VALUE WITHOUT INTEGRATION: Many social media monitoring tools claim to monitor the “social landscape” or report on a “social campaign.” This is a fragmented look at a brand’s presence and social metrics should be integrated with overall campaign measurements.
3. SOCIAL METRICS MEASURE RELATIONSHIPS BEFORE THEY MEASURE SALES: Likes, Tweets, Posts and Comments have value because they measure our relationship with brands. This determine our behaviors and actions that lead to sales. Measurement tools have value when they correlations between these areas.
4. SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING TOOLS GIVE US DATA BUT PEOPLE GIVE US INSIGHTS: The best data in the world still requires people to uncover the insights. Without it, social media monitoring tools risk being a sophisticated compilation of charts and graphs.
5. MORE DATA RARELY LEADS TO BETTER ANALYSIS: Lots of data is always hard to decipher. But, when we dig deeper into a specific piece of data and look for the key segments, it usually gives valuable insights.

Here are 7 good ideas.

1. DEFINE BUSINESS GOALS: Begin with the end in mind; review goals early and often
2. KNOW THE 10%/90% RULE: In Web Analytics; An Hour a Day, Avinash Kaushik describes the 10%/90% rule; that is, for every $10 invested in analytic software, $90 is required for an intelligent analyst. Bottom line: It’s the people, not the software, that determine social monitoring success.
3. REMEMBER THE “OLD” TOOLS AS WELL AS THE “NEW”: The Google products, Google Alerts, Google Trends and, of course, Google Analytics, are still some of the best social media monitoring tools around. For example, on this website, Google Analytics’ Traffic Referrals tells us 50% of traffic comes from search, 24% is direct and 26% is from social efforts. Of that, Twitter is the #1 referrer but people who come from Twitter spend only 41 seconds on the site. By contrast, LinkedIn is #2 and a weekly Email is #3 (you can sign up in the upper right). Readers from these sources spend 4:40 and 7:20, respectively, on site. Twitter has value for outreach but our clients tend to come from LinkedIn and Email Marketing.
4. EMPOWER THE DASHBOARD THROUGH INTEGRATION: Don’t just have social metrics on your dashboard; integrate brand metrics like leads, conversion and sales so your dashboard tells the full story.
5. UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HIGH-VALUE AND HIGH MAINTENANCE: Every business has a range from best to worst consumers. Use your social media metrics to establish segments (e.g. time spend on site, # of posts, depth of engagement) of who to spend time with and who you shouldn’t.
6. IDENTIFY THE HANDFUL OF KEY METRICS ON WHICH YOU ARE PREPARED TO TAKE ACTION: Look at as many measurement as you want, but identify and hold your brand accountable to the few that are critical to effective business performance; review regularly (e.g. monthly, quarterly) are be prepared to take action on the results.
7. CREATE AN ACTIONABLE SCORECARD: These handful of metrics should be charted; goals should be established and progress should be measured against goals as well as a relevant prior period. There are your KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators), the actionable scorecare for keeping your strategy on track.

For the complete findings on the KISSMetrics study on social media monitoring tools, below is an infographic from Visaul.ly.

Do you agree with these mistakes companies make when they buy social media monitoring tools? Have we given you good ideas?

by KISSmetrics. Browse more data visualizations.

 

The idea behind 6 degrees of separation is, through “friend of a friend” connections, everyone is only 6 steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person.

The theory was originally presented by Hungarian author, Frigyes Karinthy, in a 1929 short story.  It was a popular play in 1993 written by John Guare and then a trivia game called Six Degree of Kevin Bacon that Kevin turned into a charitable organization called SixDegrees.org.

The theory was first tested in 1967 by psychologist Stanley Milgram from 296 volunteers who were asked to send a message by postcard, through friends and then friends of friends, to a specific person in a Boston suburb.

The idea of 6 degrees of separation was responsible for the early thought behind social media.

Is the theory true? Here are 5 studies that prove social media is less than 6 degrees of separation.

1. FACEBOOK PROVES IT’S 4.74 DEGREES OF SEPARATION: Scientists at Facebook and the University of Milan reported the average number of acquaintances separating any two people in the world was not six but 4.74. The experiment took a month and involved all of Facebook’s 721 million users. The study, released in November 2011, found that the average number of links from one arbitrarily selected person to another was 4.74. In the United States, where more than half of people over 13 are on Facebook, it was just 4.37.

2. TWITTER SHOWS IT’S 4.67 STEPS: In a study of 5.2 million Twitter friendships (friend and follower relationships), Sysomos, found the most common friendship distance is five steps. (The average distance is 4.67 steps). The second most common friendship distance is four steps. On average, about 50% of people on Twitter are only four steps away from each other, while nearly everyone is five steps away. After visiting an average of 3.32 people within the friend network, Twitter users can expect to find one of their followers. The results, released in April 2010, are:

3. LINKEDIN IS SET UP ON 3 DEGREES OF SEPARATION: Although LinkedIn has yet to do a study of the magnitude of Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIn, perhaps more than any other social network, was set-up about the idea of degrees of separation. In LinkedIn case, it’s 3 degrees of separation which are:

1. You already know them
2. You know someone that knows them
3. You know someone that knows someone that knows them

4. MICROSOFT PROVES IT’S 6.6 STEPS: Conducted in 2008, Microsoft looked at 30 billion conversations among 240 million people fron its Instant Messenger product to construct a communication graph with 180 million nodes and 1.3 billion undirected edges, creating the largest social network every constructed and analyzed. It found the average path length among Messenger users was 6.6 steps. It also found people tended to communicate more with each other when they were a similar age, language, and location, and that cross-gender conversations were both more frequent and of longer duration than conversations with the same gender.

5. EMAIL STUDY SHOWS 5 TO 7 DEGREES OF SEPARATION: In 2003, Peter Sheridan Dodds and his colleagues at Columbia University conducted a modern version of 6 degree of separation through studying e-mails on the Internet. They recruited over 60,000 participants from 166 different countries for the experiment. By factoring in the rate of dropouts, the researchers calculated a median chain length of between 5 to 7 people.

These studies show there is no shortage in diligence trying to show if the theory behind 6 degrees of separation stands up in social media. Do they prove it to you?

Buy it or build it?

This is a primary question that involves thought for any business. As it relates to marketing, there’s no shortage of ways to buy it from ads to affiliate relationships to list buying.  But with social media, you build it. And it often comes with a better return on investment because you’re taking out the middleman and building a more direct relationships with your customers.

Want proof? Here are 9 case studies where social media took out the middleman.

1. CLEVELAND CLINIC: Heavily regulated category like healthcare usually shy away from social media but not the Cleveland Clinic. By structuring a cross-functional team to enable education, collaboration, and smart governance, the Cleveland Clinic deepened engagement with its consumers around the globe – both providers and patients. They used Facebook and Twitter for daily wellness tips; LinkedIn for professional recruitment and YouTube for content on diseases and patient stories. Since the Cleveland Clinic established social media as a cross-functional discipline, it has seen a noticeable increase in website traffic, attendance at health lectures and new patients making and keeping appointments.

2.  EDIBLE ARRANGEMENTS. Through their Facebook page, Edible Arrangements offered consumers a voucher for free chocolate dipped strawberries. But to redeem the coupon, fans had to visit an Edible Arrangements store providing Edible Arrangements franchisees the opportunity to promote their store to a slew of new customers. This campaign  generated 170,000 new fans and a double-digit increase in sales versus year ago.

3. FOILED CUPCAKES: Has shown extraordinary growth, strong ROI and built a social community where 95% of their customers come from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. When Foiled Cupcakes had their first Groupon promotion, the promotion went live at midnight and fans bought 800 dozens by 8 am.

4.  HARLEY DAVIDSON: (HDTalking.com): Harley owners created a website and social community of over 3 million Facebook fans and 62,000 Twitter followers that runs entirely on user-generated content.  Here, Harley owners trade photos, jokes, where to find hard to find parts, advice on Harley models and ownership plus there are at least 7 mechanics on-call at all times.  HDtalking.com now has 58,000+ Harley owner participating and cost to Harley for operations is negligible.

5.  H&R BLOCK: Used Facebook and Twitter during the tax season to provide immediate access to a tax professional for Q&A in the “Get It Right” social media campaign.  The effort secured 1,500,000 unique visitors and answered 1,000,000 questions for a 15% lift in business versus the prior year when there was no social media “Get It Right” program. Here’s how Amy Worley explains how the company got it right.

6. IBM: Let employees set up internal blogs to promote collaboration and innovation within the company on a global scale. There was no external blog and no pressure on employee to participate in internal blogs but but there were 17,000 internal blogs, 100,000 employees participating regularly and as many as 500,000 participants involved in company crowd-sourcing “jams.”  Crowd-sourcing identified the 10 best incubator businesses, which IBM funded for $100 million and generated $100 billion in total revenue for a 10-to-1 ROI with a 44.1% gross profit margin.

7. MELROSE JEWELERS: An eRetailer sold high end watches like Rolex and Breitling where the average sales is $5,000. They offered consumers $100 off on their next purchase if they “Like” them on Facebook. They had an app on their Facebook page that functioned as a simple quiz where, after taking the quiz your “watch personality” was revealed at the end (e.g. you are James Bond 200o Breitling man) to engage and secure email addresses of potential customers. You also got $150 off after your purchase if you took a picture of your new watch and posted it on Facebook.  As a result, Facebook fans went from 30,000 to over 180,000 in one quarter and sales went from a few hundred thousand to over $2,000,000.

8. PRETZEL CRISPS: Launched a$1.00 coupon on their Facebook page. Within 36 hours, their fan base grew from 5,000 to 12,000. So, they launched another coupon – Buy One, Get One Free. Only this time they didn’t tell their fans. No matter. Fans found out on their own and the “letting you in on a secret” factor had a viral effect that built the fans from 14,000 and 29,000 and now it’s at over 62,000. But fans just tell one side of the story.  The redemption rate for the fist coupon was 87%; the redemption rate for the second was 95% and annual sales increase was 93%.

8. SETON HALL UNIVERSITY: Was discovering that prospective students went to their Facebook page before their website to find out whether this was the right school for them. So, they engaged on Facebook to increase enrollment and revenue and tagged whether Facebook played a role. Tuitions increased +18% and deposits increased +25% with 2X as many students coming to website from Facebook.

9. TORTILLALAND: Found social media was a great resource for building a database and conducting market research with consumers for their fresh, uncooked tortillas. In the space of a few months, they ran a sweepstakes; then, a free coupon on Facebook that created a database of over 14,000 and insights into target consumers through survey research. They built brand assets that would have cost 100′s for thousands of dollars through suppliers for a very small fraction of that amount.

When developing your brand’s growth strategy, will you buy it or build it and take out the middleman?

“How do I measure social media return on investment?” This is the #1 question over 3,300 marketers ask Social Media Examiner every year in the Annual Social Media Marketing Report.

Pictures, however, tell a different story. The first one below from Google Trends measures the year-to-year change in search volume for the phrase, “social media marketing,” which is increasing significantly.

But the second, from econsultancy, says what isn’t increasing is marketers measuring Social Media ROI, even though they say it’s their #1 priority. Hmm…

According to Marketing Sherpa, the top reasons that marketers use to explain this behavior are:

• Lack of knowledgeable staff
• Inability to measure ROI
• Management resistance
• Technical complexity

To help, here are 8 steps to demystify Social Media ROI.

1. BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND: Since it’s called return on investment, begin by identifying the return you want at the end. Define and quantify your expectations. For example, do you want to: 1) Increase sales by 50%, 2) shorten the purchase cycle by 1/3, 3) double leads, 4) increase conversion by 40% or 5) decrease customer complaints by 75%.  Be as specific you can be at the start; it increases the success you have measuring ROI at the end.

2. IDENTIFY WHO TO ATTRACT: Social media is one of the best channels for building 1-to-1 relationships. Take the time to identify who you want to attract and find the social networks where they spend their time. There are are great tools to help you. For blogs, there’s Technorati and Alltop. For Facebook, there’s Your Openbook and Booshaka. For Twitter, there’s Twitter Search and Kurrently. Just go to the search box in any of them and type in the product or service you offer. In fact, put the words, “buy” or “need” in front of it and you’re one step closer to a 1-to-1 business relationship.

3. FIND OUT HOW THEY FIND YOU: As you succeed with who you want to attract, your audience is going to want to find out more about you. The first place they are going to go is your website which should have an analytics tool like Google Analytics. Look at your “Traffic Sources:” then, look at “Referral Sources” to see which social networks provide the greatest number of visitors. Assess if this is in line with the social networks where you spend your time and resources.

4. ESTABLISH YOUR VALUE EXCHANGE: Companies ask that you “Like” them on Facebook. Ok. Now what? This chart below tells you consumers are motivated to “Like” you if you show them some “Love,” first.  It also tells you, if you take this step, they show their support for your brand in return. If you need some help showing some promotional “Love,” Wildfire offers some great social media apps that are effective, affordable and make the value exchange easier for you to execute.

The image above is of one hand clapping. Perhaps it’s coming from the marketing plan that relies on only one type of media.

It makes sense social and traditional media would work better together but, as with any new form of marketing, social media has more to prove so the two are sometimes compared as if they were in competition.

Here are 12 case studies that prove social and traditional media were meant to work together.

1. CLEVELAND CLINIC: Was not the first in healthcare to experiment in social media, but it achieved success where others failed. By structuring a cross-functional team to enable education, collaboration, and smart governance, Cleveland Clinic deepened engagement with its consumers around the globe – both providers and patients. They used Facebook and Twitter for daily wellness tips; LinkedIn for professional recruitment and YouTube for content on diseases and patient stories. Since the Cleveland Clinic established social media as a cross-functional discipline, it has seen a noticeable increase in website traffic, attendance at health lectures and new patients making and keeping appointments.

2. CLOROX: Used traditional media to communicate the many uses for bleach in the home but supplemented with social media to encourage usage in places outside the house. Clorox launched an online community, CloroxClassrooms.com, with blog and Twitter effort on Labor Day weekend at the beginning of the school year.  The Twitter page was among the Top 10 trending topics over Labor Day weekend and the blog was recognized by the Marketing to Mom Coalition and mommy bloggers for excellence in terms of delivering sharable information.

2. COCA-COLA: Used social media strategically and achieved the strongest global marketing integration ever with Expedition 206, a social media promotion where a small group of travel ambassadors went to 206 countries over 365 days to “generate happiness” and published on social networks.  It enabled global promotion execution and integration among 3,500 Coca-Cola marketers around the world.

4. COLGATE WISP: Changed the target for the launch of a new, disposable toothbrush, from the traditional Moms to young, urban men and women 18-25 who were active daters. They supplemented the traditional media plan with 8 ”Be More Kissable” viral videos. They created a Facebook App called “Spin the Wisp” and partnered with 8 online publishers. The videos received over 4.1 million views and the App was downloaded over 40,000+ times. Colgate learned the value of engagement because Colgate’s U.S. market share in the toothbrush category increased 5.6 points to a record 35.6% driven largely by the Wisp.

5. FORD FIESTA: Gave 100 consumers a car for six months and asked them to complete a different mission every month. At the direction of Ford and their own imagination, “agents” used their Fiestas to deliver Meals On Wheels. They used them to take Harry And David treats to the National Guard. They went looking for adventure, some to wrestle alligators, others actually to elope. All of these stories were then lovingly documented on YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter. Fiesta got 6.5 million YouTube views and 50,000 requests for information about the car—virtually none from people who already had a Ford in the garage. Ford sold 10,000 units in the first six days of sales. The results came at a relatively small cost. The Fiesta Movement is reputed to have cost a small fraction of the typical national TV campaign.

6. FRITO-LAY: Launched “What’s You Flavor” contest, as part of an integrated campaign, where social media was used as the vehicle for consumers to capture the diverse flavors and the diversity of people’s imagination in India. It leveraged the Frito Lays brand as a household name in India in a way that connected emotionally. The campaign attracted more than 500 press coverage worth 54 crores, the biggest in Frito Lay India’s history.

7. H&R BLOCK: Has learned in the weeks prior to April 15th, every question that is not answered immediately is a lost sales.  Tax preparation is a highly seasonal business.  H&R used Facebook and Twitter to provide immediate access to a tax professional for Q&A in the “Get It Right” social media campaign.  The effort secured 1,500,000 unique visitors and answered 1,000,000 questions for a 15% lift in business versus the prior year when there was no social media in the marketing mix.

8. HARLEY DAVIDSON: (HDTalking.com): Harley owners created a website and social community totally funded by users and user-generated content.  Here, Harley owners trades photos, jokes, where to find hard to find parts, advice on Harley models and ownership plus there are at least 7 mechanics on-call at all times.  HDtalking.com now has 56,000+ and cost to Harley is negligible.

9. HOULIHAN’S: Showed that social media drives ROI for small businesses. The restaurant showed that social technologies can be used in different ways to drive customers. Houlihan’s in the U.S.has around 100 restaurants, compared to their main competitor Applebees, which has over 2,000. With a small marketing budget, their marketing manager managed to drive sales directly from a private social network, run via Ning. The network was called ‘HQ’ and was launched in early 2008. By combining their social media campaign with email marketing, they managed to quickly build up 10,000 members and estimated that “7,000 to 13,000 people heard about our newest promotion because of an HQ member”. This shows the strength in running your own social network and how sometimes a private network may be the way to go, to offer people exclusivity and also encourage word of mouth.

10. JETBLUE: Started a Twitter account to have more direct relationship with customers and to listen and respond how they could serve them better and deal directly with any complaints.  They now have over 1.6 million followers.

11. MTV: Premiered Skins — an Americanized version of the acclaimed British teen drama. In addition to traditional media and Skins.tv, a central community regularly updated with content (including trailers and sneak peeks), a Tumblr blog – we are skins, Twitter handle –@skinsTV and a Facebook Fan Page, MTV used a number of innovative social apps to develop awareness and brand affinity for the show: Skins drew 3.26 million total viewers, outperforming the launches of competitive scripted shows across both cable and network in its core demo (12-34), including CW’s “Gossip Girl” and ABC Family’s “Pretty Little Liars.”

12. OLD SPICE: Managed to gather some pretty impressive stats that show the money where the buzz is. The reach of the Old Spice campaign is not in doubt, but did it actually impact sales? Since the original campaign launched with ‘Mustafa’, sales increased by 27% year on year. But in the 3 months after the height of the campaign, sales were up by 55%, reaching 107% in the final month of the social media campaign. And of course, Old Spice is now the #1 body wash brand for men. However you choose to look at the campaign, these figures stand up to show that a social media campaign, well executed and combined with traditional media, can drive significant ROI.

Do these case studies prove social and traditional media work better together to you?