the social metrics

"Last week, Google launched its updated Think Insights website … the new Think Insights – aimed at providing one, definitive Google destination for digital marketers. Perhaps that goal, alone, merits our attention."

—

Google has built an interesting space with Think Insights. They combine market research, search trends data, creative, webinars, tools and guides all in one nifty location. 

If I was a digital marketer, I’d be very excited by this. As an analytics person, I think Think Insights will be an interesting place to look at market data to complement my social media and TV analytics projects. 

I’ve been harping on about centralizing business data, research and insights functions together to help businesses generate holistic insights. What Google has done here is create an industry portal for marketers to have a central place to visit when they’re mulling over their next campaign. 

It seems to be the middle step between the centralized business data insights (which many companies struggle with) and the industry analyst insights (that are often accessed via expensive subscriptions). 

Like many Google ‘offerings’, this is obviously meant to drive more advertising dollars on the Google network BUT it’s a good resource and a clever move by Google. 

View high resolution

The UK government looks to attract US tech companies to the history-laden shores of London. 

View high resolution

Holistic Data Insights Triangle - Achieving Highly Valid and Robust Data Insights.

Back in January, I blogged about the idea of a ‘Proof For Change’ triangle I had and a sketched out notion of how the triangle would work for data insights.

Over the last few months, I’ve been putting some data measurement frameworks in place for various projects. All with the goal of capturing holistic data insights on the project’s success - whether that project was a TV advertising campaign or a social media effort. 

In each case, I’ve used my data insights triangle idea to make sure I’m capturing data from different sources and employing a holistic measurement review of the project. 

Back in January, that idea was just a sketch in a notebook. Here is the triangle in a more formal view.

The idea is that holistic insights come from measuring projects through three different sources: market research, analytics and unprompted feedback. 

If a piece of data insight (e.g. customers have trouble with the interface on product feature X) is supported by these three different measurement methodologies, then there is a strong case for putting that piece of insight into action. 

In that way, you’re getting a variety of different to give your insights a high level of rigor and validity. 

View high resolution

“Social Media ROI” is fast catching “Marketing ROI” in Google Search. As many businesses move forward with social at the core of their business and start-ups build themselves upon a social mantra, it’s not surprising that our interest in social media ROI is still strong.

This chart was taken from Google trends and compares the search terms “Marketing ROI” (red) and “Social Media ROI” (blue).

The chart shows “social media ROI” coming into our search practices in 2009 and growing, inching closer to the overarching “Marketing ROI” term.

Odds on the “Social Media ROI” horse taking the lead in the last four furlongs? 

Some Ideas on Measuring The Quality of Collaboration →

My latest article over at The Community Manager offers up some ideas and tidbits for community managers looking to measure the quality of collaboration. 

TheCommunityManager.com (TCM) has some really great advice for any current or would-be community managers, written by others who run some of the best communities on the internet. If you’re interested in online communities, you should definitely check out TCM and their Twitter chat with the hashtag #cmgrchat.