ImaginativePRO Blog

FIVE COMPONENTS FOR MEASURING RETURN ON CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

 

With the proliferation of new and emerging channels, marketers continue to struggle to determine where to invest their limited marketing dollars to achieve their acquisition objectives in the most effective way.

As new customers are acquired, companies will track hundreds of metrics, the results will be analyzed, and the model will be revised in an attempt to make better media purchases during the next campaign. And so it goes for the cost of customer acquisition.

But what about the cost of engaging with your customers across the entire lifecycle? What would it mean to you, your customers, and your organization if you knew which lever to pull, at which time, across which channel, and at which stage of the customer lifecycle, to maximize your return on investment?

It's time to relinquish traditional marketing and customer service metrics for performance metrics that are provocative, compelling, and defensible. But without customer data, business rules, and decision-making tools, connecting the dots will be impossible.

So before embarking on a successful return on customer engagement strategy, organizations must implement the following five key components to ensure a more relevant, timely, and accurate measurement of customer engagement—and, ultimately, future business performance.

1. Central Repository of Data

Savvy marketers must have the ability to organize and prioritize every piece of customer interaction data as they look for behavioral clues and actionable insights across every customer interaction. On the front end, that should include known transactional, demographic, and behavioral data about each customer, as well as information regarding their channel preferences, product purchases, and response history to offers.

Companies should also capture customer feedback from satisfaction surveys, quality assurance scores, and key performance indicator results. By capturing the right data all in one place, marketing leaders will have a better understanding of their customers while uncovering valuable insight to help inform the right customer engagement strategy.

In order to measure the return on customer engagement, marketers must establish a system or central depository for collecting and analying social engagement data.  Conversocial calls it the Social Engagement Hub.  The  Social Engagement Hub is comprised of the people, processes and tools mobilized for customer engagement through social channels.

Social Engagement Hub (Click Image To Enlarge)

2. Customer Lifecycle

Historically, Marketing's focus on the customer lifecycle has been limited to awareness and acquisition, resulting in the organization's focus on the management of campaign execution instead of real-time customer engagement. Furthermore, the customer's view of the decision-making lifecycle is rarely in alignment with the organization's.

The key to building customer relationships that last a lifetime is to align lifecycle perspectives between the organization and the customer by mapping out each stage of the customer journey, including pre-acquisition, acquisition, support, retention, and growth.

The Six Customer Lifecycle Stages (Click Image To Enlarge)

3. Multiple Touchpoints

Today, consumers have more power than ever to positively or negatively influence brands, whether by phone, social media, or other online channels. Organizations should determine which consumer touchpoints are the most important to them and their customers, starting with an in-depth analysis of brand objectives and consumer preferences.

In siloed organizations, that can be a tricky endeavor, because customer-care organizations are typically focused on lowering the cost to serve, whereas marketing teams are focused on creating value. An agreement needs to be reached on the ideal customer experience across every stage of the lifecycle before making decisions on which channels to support. Once marketers know which communication channels are worth the investment and which ones aren't, their decisions on resources will become much easier.

Customer Touch Points (Click Image To Enlarge)

4. Customer Lifetime Value

Are your customers worth keeping? Eventually, there is a tipping point at which the value of the customer and the cost of the service no longer equate. To determine that tipping point, marketers should calculate the following:

• The total revenue generated in customer purchases
• The total cost to acquire and support the customer
• The total revenue generated as a result of customer referrals

Understanding customer lifetime value can yield powerful intelligence for developing effective customer programs and delivering a framework and rationale for differentiated customer treatments and interactions over time. In addition, it's a valuable tool to provide justification regarding where to maximize, optimize, or limit marketing and customer service spend.

Lifetime Value of the Customer (Clik Image To Enlarge)

5. Real-Time Analytics

Customers provide behavioral clues and actionable insights about themselves in every decision the make leading to a purchase or response. The problem, however, is that many marketers continue to treat all customers uniformly, regardless of whether the consumer is high-value, low-value, or likely to churn.

Real-time analytics is more that just a spreadsheet. Using customer data captured from all sources can deliver actionable data sets that drive cost savings, greater value, and higher levels of customer engagement. By analyzing what's happening today and making changes to affect that result tomorrow, marketers can now take a greater role in delivering on objectives.

Perhaps the most difficult to obtain, this component is the linchpin to achieving real success.

Social Media Management Ecosystem (Click Image To Enlarge)

Conclusion

Having the right tools, strategies, and resources in place is only the first step. Organizations must still change the way they think, spend, and act—including looking beyond quarterly results—to fully realize the benefits of a return on customer engagement. Leaders must come to fundamentally believe that data relates to behavior, that customers want to be treated differently, that brands can learn how customers want to be treated, and that at a visceral level that treatment will yield results.

At times, the pursuit of a return on customer engagement may feel more like the search for a mythical creature, but don't get discouraged. The end goal isn't about achieving perfection or completely optimizing your marketing spend. Rather, it's about knowing which levers to pull at which points in time across customer segments, lifecycle stages, and communication channels that will have the most impact on your organization.

Leading this charge will not be easy. Obstacles abound. But the quest will be rewarded with demonstrated performance metrics that are not only provocative and compelling but also defensible.

COMMENTARY:    Carrying out a truly effective, results-driven strategy to engage and understand customers is much easier said than done. To streamline this process, businesses should consider incorporating social into the very makeup of their sites and mobile apps.

By creating multiple touch points for customers to bring their social network identities and social graphs into your business’s web properties via social plugins, businesses can start collecting user identities and measuring engagement by looking at referral traffic, conversion numbers, and value. To help you streamline your marketing performance measurement efforts, we’ll go over how customer engagement is achieved, nurtured, and measured.

Nurturing Engagement with Conversations

When it comes to nurturing engagement, it’s crucial for businesses to connect with consumers in dynamic, social ways. As a start, we recommend investing in social login, which lets your users log in to your site using their existing social network identities. Social login not only encourages on-site registrations and logins by making the process easy and quick for users, it also provides a streamlined, secure way for your business to capture valuable, actionable data contained within your customers’ social profiles.

To drive our point home, we examined thousands of websites with social login and discovered that socially logged in users view 66.7 percent more pages and spend 56 percent more time on average interacting withthe site.

In order to get the most from your social login implementation, we recommend that businesses use social login concurrently with other social tools such as social plugins and gamification.

Social plugins such as Ratings & Reviews, Comments and Reactions, Activity Feeds, and more, work together to encourage more on-site and in-app engagement for increased user loyalty.

Use Case: Dallas Morning News

News publisher Dallas Morning News saw an opportunity to better understand and engage its reader base on its online news site, Dallasnews.com.

Specifically, it implemented social login, allowing its user base to register and log in for the site quickly and easily using their existing social network profiles before leaving a comment.

This process of logging in with an existing social profile before commenting adds a layer of authenticity tothe site experience, converting what would otherwise be anonymous users into known customers.

To facilitate discussions on its site content, Dallas Morning News implemented a commenting system that connects users’ social identities with their comments. In other words, social login allows Dallasnews.com to automatically associate socially logged in commenters’ social profile data, including their names and profile photos, with their commenting activity.

After making it easier for users to authenticate their social identities on Dallasnews.com and making the commenting process less anonymous, Dallas Morning News saw its commenting activity rise by over 92% after just the first four months of implementing social login and comments, with over half of subscribers logging in socially to leave comments. What’s more, Social Login automatically filters out spam bots, increasing the quality of comments and improving the overall user experience on Dallasnews.com.

How to Measure Customer Engagement

Measuring user engagement calls for a look at referral traffic and conversion numbers and value. Broken down, these metrics include:

• Increase in SEO traffic - As we discussed earlier, user-generated content helps boost SEO. How much has SEO traffic increased since implementing social plugins?
• Increase in social referral traffic - Social plugins such as Share buttons help boost traffic from social networks. What is the increase in social referral traffic?
• Visit to conversion - Referral traffic is valuable but often times difficult tot measure in monetary terms. When it comes to real returns, you want to look at conversions. How many of your site visits lead to actual conversions?
• Value of conversions - Conversions should lead to direct revenue, such as a customer completing a purchase on your site or clicking on an ad. What is the value of each conversion?

After a thorough examination of the above metrics, you can use the following formula to calculate the ROI of customer engagement:

Courtesy of an article dated May 28, 2014 appearing in MarketingProfs, an article appearing in Conversocial, an article date August 12, 2012 appearing in Life Health Pro, an article appearing in Creative Intellects, and an article dated May 1, 2014 appearing in Social Media Data

FACEBOOK REIGNS SUPREME FOR SOCIAL MEDIA REFERRAL TRAFFIC, PINTEREST RANKS SECOND IN SOCIAL REFERALS [REPORT]

Welcome to the 1st Quarter 2014 edition of the Shareaholic Social Media Traffic Report. In our last study, Facebook, Pinterest and StumbleUpon saw the biggest gains in their respective “share of visits,” a percentage of overall traffic — direct traffic, social referrals, organic search, paid search, etc. — sites received.

Our findings for this new study are based on four months of data collected from 300,000+ websites which reach more than 400 million unique visitors each month.

This report takes a look at how much traffic the 8 most popular social media platforms referred to our network of sites. The Shareaholic network is well diversified, with sites ranging from independent lifestyle blogs to publishing companies to commerce sites. The chart below features data for the months of December 2013 through March 2014. The numbers in the month columns are shown as “share of visits” while the last two columns on the right quantify how much each social network’s respective share has grown or shrunk.

Following the data are 4 important takeaways from this study:

Percentage Change Between December 2013 and March 2014

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Percentage Change Between September 2013 and December 2013

1) Facebook is the supreme king of social referrals

• Facebook users love to — or can’t help but — click links on their feed. Last month, Facebook drove 21.25% of the overall traffic sites received. Since December, FB’s share of traffic grew 38% (5.81 percentage points).
• While brands enjoy hating on Facebook for limiting the reach of Pages and then forcing businesses to pay for ads, Facebook still continues to refer loads of traffic to websites when users share links they enjoy with all of their friends. Though, last month, Eat24 caused a ruckus because it initiated a ‘breakup’ with Facebook, brands will never be bold enough to actually prevent users from ‘liking’ or ‘sharing’ things from their sites to Facebook. Eat24′s popular breakup letter received more than 26k Facebook likes and shares. While most brands may have lost faith in their Fan Pages, they know the world’s largest social network will still bless them with tons of organic traffic.

2) Pinterest is the reigning queen of social referrals

• Pinterest further solidified its 2nd place standing; its share of traffic grew a whopping 48% (2.31 percentage points) since December. Last month, it claimed a 7.10% share of overall traffic, which is orders of magnitude greater than the shares for each of the 6 remaining social networks.
• For sites overall, Pinners are not the most engaged bunch. For brands though, Piqora states a pin is worth $0.78 in sales.  Naturally, results will vary from site to site.

3) Twitter hangs onto third while StumbleUpon closes in

• In the 1st quarter, Twitter’s share of overall traffic held steady around 1%. Last month, Twitter managed a 1.14% share of overall traffic, gaining 1.59% (0.02 percentage points) since December.
• StumbleUpon made surprising progress, driving 0.99% of overall visits to sites last month. SU’s share of traffic grew 14.91% (0.13 percentage points) over Q1.

4) Reddit, YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn (mostly) fail to impress

• Reddit’s 0.21% share didn’t even budge.
• YouTube was the biggest loser with a meager 0.09% share of overall traffic last month. Its share shrunk by more than half (52%) since December, shedding 0.10 percentage points.
• For the first time since July 2013, Google+ overtook LinkedIn for 7th place. Over Q1, Google+ grew its share of traffic by 53% (0.03 percentage points) to 0.08% overall. LinkedIn only drove 0.04% of overall traffic to sites; its share shrunk 21% (0.01 percentage points) over Q1.
• As our Social Referrals That Matter Report noted, YouTube, Google+ and LinkedIn do drive the most engaged visitors (even though they drive the fewest).

Social Media Traffic Referrals (December 2013 - March 2014)

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Social Media Traffic Referrals (September 2013 - December 2013)

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Courtesy of an article dated April 21, 2014 appearing in Shareaholic

ONLINE VIDEO TRENDS: DEVICES, DEMOGRAPHICS AND AUDIENCE SIZE

American adults prefer original digital video content to news, sports and daytime programming on television, and they like it almost as much as they do primetime TV, according to a recent report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and GfK.

Some 22% of American adults now watch original digital video content each month, bringing the monthly audience size to 52 million—a 15% increase since 2013—the study found.

Watching original online video content is particularly popular with younger adults age 18-34 (39% do so) and males (25% do so).

Younger viewers and men are also more likely to watch other digital streaming video types, such as TV programs online and amateur videos.

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Below, additional key findings from the report, which was based on data from a survey of 1,011 US adults (18+).

Average Time Spent

• American adults watch 23 minutes of of online video per day on average, up significantly since 2010 (10 minutes), though down slightly from last year (24 minutes).
• TV programs online are the most popular format (9 minutes per day on average), followed by online movies (7 minutes), nonprofessional video clips (4 minutes), and professional clips (3 minutes).

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Viewing Times

• Online video viewing peaks in the evening for all demographics.
• Younger males (18-34) report watching more amateur videos during most of the day compared with younger females.
• Viewing of TV programs online skews female from 9 PM to midnight.

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Location and Devices

• 87% of original online video viewers only watch content at home.
• 46% of original online video viewers watch on their smartphones and 41% on their tablets, levels almost twice those of a year ago.
• 48% use internet-connected TVs to watch original digital video.

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About the research: The report was based on data from a survey fielded in March and April 2014. GfK screened over 2,300 American adults age 18+ to find individuals who watch online video at least once a month and then completed full interviews with 1,011.

Courtesy of an article dated May 15, 2014 appearing in MarketingProfs

MUSIC MAPPED OUT: HOW CONSUMERS ARE INTERACTING WITH MUSIC ACROSS THE U.S.A.

Just about everyone connects with music, but where we live plays a big part of how we listen to, buy and engage with our tunes. For example, music aficionados in the Pacific region (California, Alaska, Oregon, Hawaii and Washington) make up the largest group of subscription streamers in the U.S., at more than 7.5 percent. Meanwhile, tune enthusiasts in the Mountain region (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming) rank second-highest for listening to music (CDs, digital tracks, albums, etc.) as a primary activity—meaning they listen specifically to listen rather than being in a space where music is playing in the background. When you add in background music, the Mountain region boasts one of the highest overall listening rates across the country.

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Courtesy of an article dated May 9, 2014 appearing in Nielsen

CHICAGO ARTIST LEO SELVAGGIO DESIGNS A MASK USING HIS FACE TO FOOL FACE RECOGNITION SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS

ON THE STREET OR ON FACEBOOK, FACIAL RECOGNITION CAMERAS ARE POINTED YOUR WAY NON-STOP. ONE ARTIST WANTS TO LEND YOU HIS FACE TO PROTECT YOURS.

The city of Chicago monitors its citizens through ~25,000 surveillance cameras--what the ACLU has deemed a “frightening number.” These cameras connect to facial recognition software and government databases to reveal your identity. In 2013, Chicago police flexed the muscles of this system for the first time, and used it to identify and arrest a suspected purse snatcher.

Even to law-abiding citizens, that volume of cameras is overkill. In response, Chicago artist Leo Selvaggio has offered his own face to shield people's identities--from everyday pedestrians to active protesters--whether they’re in a public urban space or just shooting selfies for Facebook.

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In an Indiegogo project dubbed URME (phonetically, “you’re me”), Selvaggio offers three ways to buy his face, all sold at cost. The first is as a photorealistic, 3-D printed and hand-painted prosthetic mask. At a glance, it appears real to cameras and people alike.

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A second, “economic” option is a DIY paper mask kit. You can cut out Selvaggio’s visage from a sheet of paper, then stick it on your own face. No one will be fooled, but that’s not really the point. Here, Selvaggio’s face serves more as a Guy Fawkes mask--the mask of choice for hacker collective Anonymous. It’s an overt refusal to be recognized, and a visual icon that's recognized by many protesters. But facial recognition cameras, often working from low-resolution camera feeds, will just ID you (or your throng of people) as Selvaggio himself.

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The third mask doesn’t live in the real world at all. It’s a piece of open-source software that uses augmented reality to stick Selvaggio’s face onto faces in a video feed, shielding you from such platforms as Facebook’s powerful facial recognition. (Ignore the fact that Facebook can probably triangulate who is in your crazy protest video by analyzing the viewing and share patterns of its multi-billion-person social network.)

URME SURVEILLANCE: Indiegogo Campaign from Leo Selvaggio on Vimeo. 

Selvaggio’s masks make a point, even if they're an imperfect solution to an increasingly stifling surveillance infrastructure. In the best-case scenario, his masks become the face of protest across the world. Of course, that teaches our surveillance systems to pay close attention to whomever is obfuscating his or her own face with Selvaggio’s mug.

What would be interesting, and more importantly, scalable, would be if hundreds of thousands of people offered their faces for Selvaggio’s platform, allowing citizens to swap faces at will. It would build so much margin for error into these automated surveillance systems that they could become reasonably useless. But then again, I’m not sure that hopping on the El with someone else’s face each day really feels like freedom.

Support the project here.

COMMENTARY:    As a strong supporter of freedom from surveillance, I'm sold on the URME Anti-Surveillance Mask, as a way to put one over on Big Brother, the NSA, FBI, major airport and local law enforcement agencies everywhere.  We are constantly being watched, photographed and videotaped, and it has completely gotten out of control.   The social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and Google, are all cooperating with both local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and the Department of Homeland Security to protect us from terrorists and criminals, but lost in all of this is our individual rights against being watched like we are criminals ourselves.  Our faces are now stored on video tapes and photo images taken wherever we travel or visit. I am glad that Leo Salvaggio thought of a way to curtail these infrigements on our individual freedom.    

Courtesy of an article dated May 8, 2014 appearing in Fast Company Design

MILLENNIALS BUYING ONLINE INSTEAD OF VISITING STORES, SO RETAILERS USE NEW STRATEGIES TO GET THEM TO VISIT STORES

Millennials are increasingly skipping trips to the store to make their purchases online, and now some retailers are fighting back with innovative in-person experiences.

Though Millennials still prefer to shop for many things in person—76% would prefer to shop for casual clothing in-store, and 57% would prefer to shop for home accessories in-store—convenience, among other factors, has clearly been shifting them away from stores and into online shopping. Some categories are already decidedly online purchases in their minds: 61% would prefer to shop for electronics online. At the same time, 51% say they would rather make an inexpensive purchase online than in-store, which indicates that even more retail categories could shift over to online buying for the generation. 

 

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While older Millennials remember the heyday of brick-and-mortar shopping, younger Millennials are growing up in a time when a trip to the mall seems almost retro. In fact, galleries of images of “dead malls” are objects of fascination online, and dead mall Facebook groups even exist to chart the rise in abandoned (post-apocalyptic looking) malls across the country. The next generation will have even less of a connection to the idea of shopping as an in-person event. 

It makes sense that retailers would attempt to lure in the generation known for craving experiences by making in-store visits more unique and by adding new elements beyond the racks and registers.  Lately, some brick-and-mortar locations have been thinking outside the box to draw young consumers into stores. In March, Uniqlo—which is planning a major U.S. expansion and is already aiming to stand out to Millennials by being “the anti-fast fashion” chain—transformed the second floor of their New York flagship into a concept they’re calling SPRZ NY (Surprise New York). The gallery-like space features products made in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art—each item corresponds with a piece of art in the museums collections, with a dedicated micro-site providing a lesson on the art and artist. SPRZ also includes an in-store Starbucks, making them the first specialty retailer to include the coffee giant chain in a location.

 

Uniqlo is not the only retailer amping up the brick-and-mortar experience with added bells, whistles, and dining options. Urban Outfitters recently launched a concept store in Williamsburg Brooklyn called Space Ninety 8 to create a more local and unique shopping location that offers more than your average Urban products. The retailer has been losing ground with Millennials and Space Ninety 8 is a clear effort to charm the generation. The location is a five-floor warehouse, with each floor dedicated to a unique retail approach. The first floor, Market Space, is completely dedicated to local designers, other floors include music-dedicated areas that sell records, record players, and books, a bar and the restaurant The Gorbals live on the upper floors, and the rooftop is dedicated to open seating and a view of the Manhattan Skyline. 

 

Urban Outfitters new in-store concept targeting Millennials with a unique buying experience. (Click Image To Enlarge)

But will creative brick and mortar approaches be enough to draw them in? While we’ll likely never return to the halcyon days of mall culture, it’s possible that these collaborations between retailers and creative enterprises will bring Millennials into stores. However, until more Millennials are on steady financial ground, they might be more interested in price tags than experiential retail. When we asked the importance of various factors when deciding where to shop in-store, 80% named low prices. 

COMMENTARY:   Millennials are not angst-filled, skinny-jeans-wearing, side-swept-bangs-sporting hipsters.  A survey conducted by Mooslyvania, an independent digital advertising agency, refutes the most common myths associated with this generation and unveils a treasure trove of data on what really motivates them in how they think, shop, buy and continue purchasing their favorite brands.

While there's no cookie cutter recipe for defining a Millennial, the 2014 Moose Millennial Study Data can help marketers eager to please this generation – defined as anyone between the ages of 13-33 – better understand how to connect and create a long term friendship with them. Millennials in general account for nearly $1.3 trillion in consumer spending and spend the second most amount of time of any generation online – 87 percent as much as Gen X'ers.

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Overall, Millennials identify with themselves as being incredibly self-confident and independent and, yet, seek constant reassurance from friends and family when it comes to shopping, buying and making purchases. Whether shopping alone or in a group, they remain digitally connected contacting friends and family for advice or opinions via text, phone call or social media. While 57 percent surveyed said they tell their friends about their purchases, 44 percent prefer to "show off" their purchases, even if it's in subtle ways. Millennials are not alone -- of the 1,000 surveyed nationwide, the study revealed 85 percent of them live with a significant other, roommate or parent.

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In addition, it's not about major brands, but brands that have done their homework to connect with the Millennial consumer across multiple touch points -- to Friend them, so to speak.  For example, when asked – unprompted – to name their top three favorites, 58 brands were mentioned five times or more.  The survey results reflect what these 58 companies are doing right to connect with them.

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Millennials fully expect marketers to be upfront when it comes to answering questions, to practice what they preach, and build trusting relationships with them by using context-driven content spread across a variety of platforms. It's definitely not a one-hit ad crowd.

Norty Cohen, founder and CEO of Moosylvania said. 

"For years, advertising served the role of reassurance and endorsement.   That role has changed tremendously.  Our job as marketers is to understand how dynamically the connectivity of the next generation of consumer is evolving. For example, forty percent of these Millennials have signed up to receive emails from their favorite brands. Think about that – the average person looks at their phone more than 150 times a day – and email is right in there with social media for this hit of self-assurance."

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They are definitely head over heels for certain brands they perceive to be as authentic as themselves. In addition to Facebook (59%), the top ways in which Millennials advocate for their favorite brands include telling their friends (57%) and shopping in-store (54%).   Facebook is also a natural stopping-off point for Millennials to learn more about brands they love.  In fact, the ubiquitous social media platform outranks brand websites almost two to one as the go-to for product discovery.

With regard to advertising, Millennials desire ad experiences that are more context-driven and spread across multiple platforms.  Videos, product reviews and How-To's for many product categories resonate with this generation.

Methodology 

The 2014 Moose Millennial Study Data surveyed 1,000 people about their buying, shopping and purchasing attitudes.  The online study was finalized in January 2014 by Moosylvania and Great Questions, LLC.

Courtesy of an article dated May 9, 2014 appearing in MediaPost Publications Engage:GenY and an article dated April 2, 2014 appearing in The Shelby Report

DISTIMO: TOP GLOBAL APPS REPORT FOR APRIL 2014, '2048' NO 1 FREE APP, MINECRAFT NO 1 IN PAID

April is the first month of Q2 2014 and we were excited to take a look at the app stores, curious to find out if there were any significant changes after the mostly stable global performance during Q1 2014. In this blog post we highlight the leading free, paid, and grossing apps for the Apple App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon Appstore. The charts in this blog post are based on Distimo AppIQ data, covering the full month of April 2014 on a globally aggregated level.

Top Free Apps

After the ‘flappy’ trend from February, two more new apps were so popular that a lot of developers showed their appreciation in the form of imitation.   Far ahead of all, 2048 led the free field of the Apple App Store. Over 80 percent of the downloads were generated on the iPhone platform, and the United States was the leading country, followed closely by China. Rank two represented the other popular imitation topic of April: Piano Tiles, being similar to Don’t step the white tile. Pleasing for Chinese developer HU WEN ZENG, most downloads were generated in China.

The bike racing game Trials Frontier raced up to rank three, being likewise supported by Chinese fans, who downloaded the game most during April 2014.

The fourth ranked app was Supercell’s Boom Beach, which surprisingly also generated most downloads in China during April. The game was made available globally in late March, after being soft-launched in only a few selected countries before, such as Canada and Australia. In the first weeks of the more global availability, the download volume in China was higher than the United States, which speaks for China as being one of the nations who explore new games the quickest.

Behind these top performers, the number three app from March, YouTube landed on rank five in April.

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On Google Play, Instagram continued its upward trend from March and reached rank four. As only remarkable change, Skype – free IM & video calls returned to the top five free apps, ending the presence of Clean Master (Cleaner) – FREE in the top five which had lasted for the first quarter of 2014.

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Frozen Free Fall (Kindle Tablet Edition) ‘fell free’ one rank down to rank two, making room for ZeptoLab’s Amazon version of Cut the Rope 2. Candy Crush Saga did not move from rank three, but Sonic Dash had to give way to Viewer+Downloader vTube for YouTube.

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Top Paid Apps

In the Apple App Store, Minecraft – Pocket Edition celebrates a half year of being the number one paid title. Monjang’s adventure game has been leading the paid global charts on iOS since November 2013, even though in April 2014 a new competitor got close: the beautifully designed adventure-puzzle game Monument Valley by ustwo™ showed a strong initial month of April, reaching global paid rank number two. Rank three showed a familiar face with Heads Up!, reentering the top five again. Maybe due to his ‘web-sling skills’, Gameloft’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 landed in the global paid charts on rank four, after only being released in late April. This sleek performance caused Afterlight to move down to rank five.

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Taking a look at the Google Play paid global charts, we can report, that not only for the first quarter, but also for the complete first third of 2014, the following titles remained in the same positions, presenting a very stable situation on Google Play.

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The paid section of the Amazon Appstore continued with two familiar names, but also featured some new names in April again. Similar to the Apple App Store and Google Play Minecraft – Pocket Edition kept the leading position in the Amazon Appstore. The newer title Card Wars – Adventure Time from February 2014 fought its way up to rank two while on rank three Plex proved to play a successful strategy of a price change. A price drop for a selected date range during April from $4.99 to $0.99, resulted in rank number three for the Entertainment app. Plants vs. Zombies (Kindle Tablet Edition) on the other hand, lost to ranks and settled on rank four during April. Rank five was conquered by the newly released puzzle game Tipping Point by Barnstorm Games. Notable about this performance is that the downloads only came from the United Kingdom, where the app is priced at £1.49, but this was still enough to capture the global rank number five.

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Top Grossing Apps

After the past five months from November 2013 to March 2014, the Apple grossing charts did not offer much to report about. The month of April has stirred things up. While the big two players Clash of Clans and Candy Crush Saga remained in their long-term leading positions, but Japanese Puzzle & Dragons made a move up to rank three. In the Japanese store the game received several features in categories such as ‘Great Role-Playing Games’ or ‘Great Free Games’. Game of War – Fire Age caught up as well, still behind Puzzle & Dragons, being a close follower since five months. Supercell’s Hay Day could not keep up with these competitors in the top five during April and dropped out to rank six. Instead it looks like Supercell’s Boom Beach stepped into Hay Day’s shoes. After the global launch in late March 2014, Boom Beach steadily gained ground in the grossing charts, accompanied by various Apple App Store features, in categories such as ‘Best New Games’, ‘Great Free Games’, and even got its own feature category: ‘Boom Beach’. All this resulted in an additional title within the global top five grossing apps in April 2014 for Supercell.

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On Google Play, Supercell remained as well in the lead with its top grossing app: Clash of Clans. In line with the move in the Apple App Store, パズル＆ドラゴンズ(Puzzle & Dragons) also showed an upward trend. On Google play though, this push was strong enough to conquer global grossing rank number two, before Candy Crush Saga. クイズRPG 魔法使いと黒猫のウィズ, which just re-entered the top five last month, further increased its position to rank four and switched ranks with Supercell’s Hay Day. Boom Beach is not available on Google Play, yet. If it does become available, it will be interesting to analyze its impact on Hay Day’s Android performance.

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The month of April apparently not only brings changes to the weather. With lots of new apps and different trends on established apps, even the grossing charts showed some movements.

Market Growth in April 2014

Continuing the high-level analysis on the major app stores, April shows a different picture from March. The graph below covers the past six months, showing the development of the relative market shares in terms of revenue for the Apple App Store and Google Play.*

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 The whole market grew by about 1.5 percent from March to April. At this point one may also note that April is a one day shorter month compared to March, with only 30 days. But still, both stores showed a positive growth. For the first time, since we have been doing this analysis though, the market share of Google Play did not increase steadily – compared to March 2014, it even dropped by 1 percent point. The current market share distribution is at 39 percent for Google Play, while the Apple App Store increased its share to 61 percent. This result is in line with a stronger growth of the Apple App Store during April:  2 percent vs. only 1 percent for Google Play.

Apple’s stronger growth was partially supported by a revenue increase in Australia and South Korea during April. In Australia, this was mainly caused by new apps such as Zynga’s new FarmVille 2: Country Escape, but also by Supercell’s Boom Beach.  Boom Beach had as well an impact in South Korea, next to new Kakao titles such as 블레이드 for Kakao and 불멸의 전사 for Kakao.

Considering both stores in terms of market share relative to November 2013, Apple led with 63 percent compared to Google Play with 37 percent. Over the past six months the market shares hence did not change much. Looking at the separate stores in terms of growth during the past half year, the Apple App Store increased its revenue by over 27 percent, while Google Play showed a gain in revenue of around 38 percent.

COMMENTARY:  This analysis is based on comparing the revenue generated from the app stores of the following 34 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam. These countries are chosen for this analysis, as revenue is generated for both stores in each country.

Courtesy of an article dated May 9, 2014 appearing in Distimo Blog

ECOMMERCE SITE ALIBABA FILES FOR AN IPO, AND WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THIS YEAR'S MOST-HYPED IPO

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Alibaba filed paperwork on Tuesday, May 6, 2014 for a $1 billion public offering. It is expected to increase significantly and could become the largest tech IPO of all time.

If your first thought reading that is "What the heck is Alibaba?", you're probably not alone.

Alibaba is a household name in China and well-known among certain tech industry watchers and investors abroad, but it doesn't exactly have mainstream recognition among consumers in the United States. That might change after its IPO.

To help you get a head start learning about this fast-growing tech company, we've put together a primer on what Alibaba does, how it got so big and what impact it might have on other U.S. businesses.

What exactly is Alibaba?

The Alibaba Group is the largest ecommerce company in China and, according to some reports, the largest in the world. It primarily consists of two big shopping websites: Taobao, which launched in 2003 to compete with eBay in China, and Taobao Mall (or Tmall), an online shopping marketplace.

So basically it's just China's version of Amazon?

Not quite. Unlike Amazon, Alibaba doesn't actually handle any of the logistics — like fulfillment centers — for online shopping. It just creates the platform and user experience for consumers to shop from various brands.

Even that user experience is notably different.  Kelland Willis, an analyst with Forrester Research says.  

"When you are buying something on Amazon, you are engaging with Amazon.  When you buy on Tmall, you are engaging with the brand."

Alibaba's investments also extend well beyond traditional ecommerce. It has invested in a Chinese department store operator, mobile messaging app Tango and Weibo, China's version of Twitter which recently went public. It is also reportedly in talks to get back a stake in Alipay, a payment service like PayPal.

Screenshot of Alibana's Taobao Mall ecommerce site (Click Image To Enlarge)

Just how big is it?

Alibaba generated more than $3 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2013, an increase of 66% from the same quarter a year earlier. Its gross profits for the quarter shot up by an even higher percentage to just under $2.4 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reports hearing from sources that the combined sales volume on Taobao and Tmall hit $240 billion in 2013. On Single's Day, which is essentially China's version of Cyber Monday, Taobao and Tmall topped $5.75 billion in sales. That's more than double the sales of all online retailers on Cyber Monday.

Alibaba is expected to go public with a market cap of around $165 billion, though some analysts think it may top $200 billion.

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How does someone even build up a company that big?

Alibaba was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, an eccentric English teacher-turned-entrepreneur who became interested in building Internet companies after going online for the first time in 1995 while on a trip to Seattle.

Alibaba Group CEO Jack Ma (Click Image To Enlarge)

The secret to Alibaba's success, according to Forrester's Willis, is a combination of launching when the ecommerce market was still small in China and going out of its way to build trust with consumers in the country.

Willis says.

"What Taobao did from the beginning was they created a set of regulations that absolutely ensured consumers get the product they ordered.  It builds trust with the brand. As a result, consumers thought of Alibaba Group as a whole as one they could trust to interact with."

One example of that is the option to pay cash upon delivery, after the shopper has had a chance to inspect the item in person. 

China's ecommerce market has also ballooned in recent years and is expected to be larger than that of the United States in the not-too-distant future.

Why is one of the largest companies in China doing a public offering in the U.S.?

Initially, Alibaba reportedly wanted to go public on the Hong Kong stock exchange, but decided otherwise because regulators in the country would not greenlight its proposed governance structure. But Alibaba stands to gain other benefits from listing in the U.S. as well.

R.J. Hottovy, senior analyst with Morningstar says.  

"By listing in the U.S. you open up the doors to a lot more potential investors.  There are some question marks about accounting and security rules outside the U.S. and European markets. The U.S. listing will add a layer of creditability."

Alibaba Group's headquarters in Hangzhou, China (Click Image To Enlarge)

Will the Alibaba IPO have any impact on U.S. tech companies?

The Alibaba IPO is coming at a time when investor sentiment for the tech sector has weakened thanks in part to sky high valuations. That could change if Alibaba proves to be a strong IPO.

Hottovy says.  

"If it was successful and did well and was priced with a premium valuation, I think that could have a halo effect on the broader tech space.  It could spur some renewed interest in the space."

At the very least, it will have a notable impact on Yahoo, which as a 24% stake in Alibaba and stands to net as much as $10 billion from the Alibaba IPO, depending on how it prices. That could give Yahoo and CEO Marissa Mayer the additional resources needed to make some big acquisitions.

COMMENTARY:   Among the biggest shareholders set to profit from the IPO is Yahoo, which holds a 22.6 per cent stake, and SoftBank, the Japanese telecoms group which has 34.4 per cent. While SoftBank executives have said it plans to retain the stake, Yahoo will sell part of its holding and its current director on the Alibaba board will step down.

Other known investors include Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek and US fund Silver Lake. Mr Ma himself holds 8.9 per cent of the company.

Corporate governance activists, however, have questioned the board structure that Alibaba is proposing. Under the terms, a 28-member management partnership of senior executives from Alibaba and affiliates has the “exclusive right” to appoint a majority of the board.

With that level of control kept by the partnership, “it really all comes down to what is the quality of those independent board members,” said Gary Hewitt, head of research for GMI Ratings, a governance analysis group.

The company named only three members of a board that will have nine people: Mr Ma, Joe Tsai, the executive vice-chairman, and Softbank’s Masayoshi Son.

The company’s Chinese retail platforms had 231m buyers last year, just shy of one-fifth of China’s total population, and nearly 40 per cent of the number of Chinese who use the internet. Its ambitions are expanding, however, both across other sectors of China’s internet and outside its borders.

Its many operations include a small business loans division, a group buying site, cloud computing business and an online advertising exchange. It is affiliated with China’s largest online payments processing network, Alipay, although that business was spun off in 2011 to a separate vehicle and is not part of the listing. 

Alibaba has also embarked on an ambitious, multibillion-dollar string of deals to broaden its reach beyond ecommerce. So far this year, it has taken stakes in companies ranging from China’s largest video hosting site, Youku Tudou, to the US start-up Lyft, a car ride-sharing service.

Jixun Foo, a partner at venture capital group GGV Capital, which had been an early investor in Alibaba said. 

“You should think of them beyond an ecommerce player, just as Amazon is going beyond ecommerce to compete with Netflix, for example, in the so-called online video space.  They are testing the water on many fronts.”

Most of its revenue comes from online marketing, commissions on transactions and fees for its services. In the nine months to December 31, it generated revenue of $6.5bn and net income of $2.8bn, according to the filing.

Alibaba is being advised by Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup.

Courtesy of an article dated May 6, 2014 appearing in Mashable and an article dated May 6, 2014 appearing in the Financial Times Tech Hub

MOST RETAILERS HAVE A MOBILE PRESENCE, BUT THEIR MOBILE APPS LACK IN-STORE NAVIGATION OR SELF-CHECKOUT FOR CUSTOMERS

Retail has so far invested in creating a mobile presence, but it has yet to harness the huge potential the mobile platform offers, a recent Mobile X Retail App Report for the Fashion Retail report (PDF) by Plastic Mobile indicates.

Though that conclusion may be a surprise, it also offers savvy businesses the opportunity to get up to speed before their competitors catch up.

We need a rethink in the industry:

• We need to understand that fusing offline and online isn't just about ensuring coherence between the two but also about recognizing that consumers have an integrated offline and digital experience in their day-to-day lives.
• And we must do more to take advantage of that moment when a customer gets out her smartphone inside a store.

Interesting Stats

Nearly every customer will enter your store with a secret weapon in her pocket—a smartphone—and plenty of them will use that smartphone while shopping.

If you don't have a strategy in place to get them to interact with you while they are on their phone in your shop, then you're missing a fantastic opportunity—and most retailers are indeed missing that opportunity, according to a recent review of retailers' apps by Plastic Mobile. 

Customers, on the other hand, want to be able to integrate mobile experiences while they're inside a shop, according to a recent survey by Walker Sands: 

• 64% of survey participants say they have used their mobile device to research products while in a brick-and-mortar store.
• 52% say they would be more likely to shop at a retailer with an in-store navigation on a mobile.
• 59% said they would be more likely to shop at a store offering self-checkout via a mobile device.

How You Do It

So, what ways can you capitalize on consumers' in-store mobile use? Plenty.

Mobile optimization can be used to not only improve customer service but also increase loyalty and engagement.

In-Store Checkouts

Here is an idea that is starting more than a few murmurs within retail: A consumer can buy items without having to queue up at the checkout. Rather, by either using a mobile app on their own phone—or, more realistically at the moment, by approaching an assistant who carries a mobile device—shoppers can buy the item immediately, on the shop floor, via one-to-one service, without any queuing.

JCPenney staff are issued iPod Touches enabled with software that lets them check out items, and it's proving to be a huge success. It not only improves customer experience but also frees up shop assistants—an added efficiency for stores. Assistants can quickly help someone pay for an item and then be free to walk around the store doing necessary jobs rather than being tied to a static unit where they have to stand and wait for customers.

Social Media

1. Make your handles visible. At the very least, you should have your social handles/account names visible within the store, encouraging shoppers to like or tweet you.
   
   If you can get a customer tweeting pictures to you of your products while they are in your store (with fully branded background) then you're in the ideal scenario, where consumers are doing the marketing for you. But you can go far beyond this scenario.
2. Offers and competitions. Offer in-store customers exclusive offers. Get your customers to Like you while they are in your shop and in return give them a 10% discount or a free item. Have exclusive voucher codes that are advertised only in store (maybe bespoke ones for each store, letting you loosely track social engagement by geographical area in a new kind of way); customers would then be able to use those voucher coders on their mobiles. Create a "selfie" area in a shop and run a social media competition. None of those are radically new ideas, but they will increase engagement and loyalty.
3. Rethink personalization. If you want to take cues from e-commerce and rethink personalization, why not consider offers that are tailored to people based on their online profile, but which get flagged to them only at the final stage, by a shop assistant, when they are buying from them on the shop floor?
   
   There are possibilities for "signing in" a customer when an assistant uses a mobile device to check them out; if that action could flag a bespoke offer, which an actual human could tell them about, you've got a fusion of offline and online that couldn't be more personalized and personable.
4. Branded wallets. The relatively new concept of branded wallets is becoming popular. Branded wallets allow customers to check loyalty points and offers and to manage their respective accounts with retailers. It also gives retailers the opportunity to create bespoke offers and experiences.

The overall aim here is to increase loyalty and engagement. A mobile device gives you the opportunity to have a one-on-one conversation with a customer, and that means creating more than just a mobile presence.

Do It Now While It's Still New

JCPenney has been very vocal about its ambition to convert to a totally mobile checkout solution, but at the moment the idea still has enough newness to gain points just for the novelty of the experience.

We're just on the brink of really harnessing all this technology to make our lives more convenient, and yet you still have to deal with the mundane reality of queuing at checkouts on a busy Saturday afternoon.

Imagine that first experience of skipping a queue and paying while you're still browsing around the shop; it's a memory that will stick, and you're likely to remember the brand that first brought it to you.

The Burberry Flagship Store

One example of a store that has really invested in fusing offline and online is the Burberry flagship store on Regent Street. It has blended the digital and physical to the extent that mirrors inside the shop actually become personalized, interactive screens. The store is also used to screen live global events and gigs, or "choreographed audio-visual take-overs," as they like to call them.

Obviously that is a massive investment and not one that all retailers should be emulating, but it's this kind of store—where the company has really thought about how it can take advantage of both real-world and digital experiences—that retail is heading toward, and it's this kind of approach that other fashion outlets can learn from.

COMMENTARY:    When consumers are looking for information on your brand, it is more likely to be on a phone or tablet, instead of a PC. The mobile device is king. At least that’s according to a report released recently by a mobile analytics firm which concluded that mobile device usage is on the rise.

The firm which compiled the report, Flurry, says that the average US consumer spends 2 hours and 42 minutes a day on a mobile device (compared to 2 hours and 38 minutes a year ago), and that amount of time continues to increase. It was only a few years ago that mobile browsing was seen as a fad. Now it is in full command of the room and taking no prisoners.

But there’s another conclusion from this report that is even more interesting… and surprising.  And that is the solid dominance of apps over the mobile Web. For the average U.S. consumer,  86% of their time was spent using apps on a mobile device — or 2 hours and 19 minutes a day. Now compare that to usage of the mobile Web (i.e., what the report refers to as using a mobile browser).  Consumers spent just 14% of their time (22 minutes a day) browsing mobile websites versus using an app.

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One fact which seems to be borne out by all of these statistics is that the main casualty seems to be the browser. If you want to do something on a mobile device, the phrase “there’s an app for that” is truer than it has ever been.

Think of it this way — if you have a smartphone device, when was the last time you actually used a browser for something? Email – app.  Online banking – app. RSS feeds – app. Even Google has its own app.

It leads you to wonder:  Is the browser fast becoming an ancient dinosaur in the world of mobile?

So what’s the lesson to take away from this? At the very least, make sure that your website is mobile-optimized. But what would be even better is if you were able to have an app professionally designed for your business. Then you would be capturing a chunk of that 86%.

As Flurry said on their blog last year, “it’s an app world – the Web just lives in it”. You can thank Steve Jobs for that

Courtesy of an article dated May 8, 2014 appearing in MarketingProfs

THE BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS INCLUDING THE EIGHT KEY SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS YOU SHOULD BE TRACKING

Social media can be an incredibly important tool for your business. But it can also be overwhelming. You’re following what’s being said about your industry and brand, your team is trying to produce and share great content, you’re interacting with customers, finding prospects and you’re trying to make sense of it all. The biggest question you’re most likely trying to answer is if your work in social is helping you achieve real business results. To find out, you need to measure your efforts by tracking the right social media metrics.  

So which social media metrics should you be tracking.  As a novice beginner, these are the eight key social media metrics you should be tracking:   

• Influence
• Audience Growth Rate
• Share of Voice
• Engagement
• Reach
• Exposure
• Sentiment
• Mentions

Influence

Influence measures the extent to which one’s activity in social inspires action in others. Someone with high influence sees a large amount of engagement and amplification of their social messages, proving their audience is actively engaged and likely to listen to their opinions and recommendations. Due to these consistently high levels of interactions, social influencers are viewed as credible sources of information.

How to Measure Influence:

Tools like Klout, PeerIndex and Kred measure influence by assigning a score to one’s social media activity and interactions. Each company uses its own methodology for determining influence by giving different weight to metrics like reach, comments, likes etc. to formulate a number that represents one’s overall social influence.

You can also determine influence on your own, without using a scoring system. When doing so, it’s important to keep in mind that audience size does not necessarily translate to influence. Just because a person has a large social following doesn’t mean they’re influencing their followers. Influence is all about encouraging or inspiring people to take action. That’s why the metrics that are most telling of influence are engagement and amplification.

Here are some key indicators of influence:

• Twitter replies, retweets and list memberships (these are especially helpful in finding influential people in very specific topic areas).
• Google+ comments, shares and +1s.
• Facebook likes, shares and comments.
• LinkedIn recommendations, interactions, likes and comments.
• Pinterest repins, likes and comments.

How to Use Influence:

• Evaluate your social presence. Research the extent to which your messages and content are being shared and use the intel to inform your ongoing strategy.
• Understand who is talking about your brand or company and what kind of impact they have. Reach out and engage with influencers who are portraying you in both a positive and negative light.
• Find the right influencers to help promote your content, campaign or company.
  • Make sure you’re researching those who are influential in the space or industry you operate in. A recommendation or endorsement from a trusted social influencer with expertise in your industry can be extremely valuable.
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of influencer partnerships by measuring if your reach, exposure and engagement levels increase.

Audience Growth Rate

Audience Growth Rate measures the change in a brand or company’s following on social media networks. Tracking your Audience Growth Rate on each individual network will determine the average rate of increase or decrease in your fans or followers over time.

How to Measure Audience Growth Rate:

Benchmark your audience on each social network and measure the increase in those numbers every day, week, month or for another specific time table to determine the speed at which you’re attaining new fans.

How to Use Audience Growth Rate:

• Evaluate performance on each network. Identify which networks are generating the greatest growth and investigate how you can apply your success on those networks to others.
• Track your growth rate during the course of a campaign, product launch, or other new initiative to evaluate its success.
• Expand in the right demographic. Pay attention to the gender, age or location of new followers (some networks will provide this breakdown or you could manually investigate) to measure if your strategy is helping your brand reach your target audience.
• Research the competition. Measuring the Audience Growth Rate for top competitors will highlight what speed is realistic for your industry and help determine if you’re effectively growing your audience.

Share of Voice

Share of Voice helps you understand how your brand or company is performing in comparison to your competitors. The metric details what percentage of mentions within your industry or space are about your brand and what percentage is about the competition.

How to Measure Share of Voice:

To measure your Share of Voice, you first need to tally all of the mentions for your brand for a specific time table. Then, compile the mentions of each competitor in your industry for that same time period. To calculate Share of Voice, divide your mentions by the total number of mentions for the competition.

How to Use Share of Voice:

• Evaluate brand awareness and market share. Share of Voice will show just how much (or how little) of an impact you’re making in your industry.
  • Calculate Share of Voice for more than just brand mentions—compare metrics around specific products, services or brand attributes.
• Competitive research. Calculate Share of Voice for a top competitor to evaluate its market share. Investigate the reasons for why it may be higher than yours and use them as inspiration when formulating ways to increase your share.
• Measure effectiveness of campaigns and other efforts. Benchmark your Share of Voice before beginning a campaign so you can measure any increase. Continue to measure to see if the campaign has any long term effects on brand awareness.

Engagement

Engagement measures how much and how often others interact with you and your content in social media. When someone takes the time to like, favorite or comment on something you’ve posted, they’re actively engaging with your content. Engagement metrics showcase audience action, which is important for social media health and growth.

A subset of engagement metrics are sharing metrics, which represent when people amplify your content. All of the major social networks allow users to share content whether it’s a retweet, share, reblog, repin, etc. Engagement metrics are important in highlighting the success of content, but depending on your goals, sharing metrics could be of higher value because they extend your content beyond your own audience, increasing its exposure.

How to Measure Engagement:

Every social network offers different engagement touch points, so each one will be measured differently. Here’s a breakdown of engagement metrics by platform:

Click Image To Enlarge

Additionally, some networks provide additional engagement metrics, which include:

Facebook

• People Engaged: the number of people who have clicked on, liked, commented on, or shared a post.
• Engagement Rate: the number of people who have clicked on, liked, commented on, or shared a post divided by the post’s reach.
• Post-specific Scorecard: details the number of likes, comments, shares, and clicks on an individual post.

LinkedIn

• Interactions: the number of times people have liked, commented on, or shared a post.
• Engagement Rate: the number of interactions, clicks, and followers acquired divided by the number of impressions (followers acquired are only included for sponsored updates).

Google+

• Total Engagement: combines the number of +1′s, shares and comments

How to Use Engagement Metrics:

• Guide your content strategy. Use engagement to understand what types of content or posts get attention—and more importantly, what types don’t.
• Target the right demographic. Pay attention to the gender, age or location of the people engaged (Facebook Insights provides this breakdown or you could manually investigate). If the majority of your engagement comes from people outside your target location or demographic, you’ll need to tweak your strategy.
• Measure the success of product launches, marketing campaigns or other new initiatives. Listen to feedback to inform future projects.
• Add context to exposure or reach. Tally sharing metrics like retweets or replies and divide them by exposure or reach to calculate an engagement percentage. This will tell you what percentage of your potential audience actively participated in a contest, read a blog post, etc.
• Measure growth and performance on specific social networks. Track your engagement rate over time to see how you’re improving.
• Find influencers or brand advocates. If there are people who consistently engage with you in social, consider utilizing them to help gain more exposure for future initiatives.

Reach

Reach is the potential audience for a message based on total follower count (Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn followers, total Likes on your Facebook page, etc). If your boards have 1,000 followers on Pinterest, then each of your pins could potentially reach 1,000 people.

It’s important to note that Facebook provides its own analytics around reach, which it defines as “the number of people who saw your post”. Facebook considers a post to reach someone when it’s shown in that person’s News Feed. They also provide “total reach,” which includes the number of unique people who saw any activity from a Page as well as paid vs. organic reach.

Exposure

Exposure further expands on your potential audience by measuring not just the number of your followers, but the number of followers each of your followers have. Each time a person shares something in social, it is delivered to their list of followers—each instance is called an impression. And those impressions are included in a message’s exposure. For example, if your company’s latest tweet was retweeted by a Twitter user with 10,000 followers, then the exposure for that tweet would include the number of impressions based on your audience plus the 10,000 impressions based on that specific user’s audience. Of course, not everyone who receives a post in their social feeds will read it, which is why exposure measures the potential audience.

How to Measure Reach and Exposure:

To measure your reach, you would tally your following on each social network—number of Twitter followers, Facebook page likes, LinkedIn followers or connections, Pinterest followers, etc. You can keep track of these stats manually or can use the analytics reports provided by each social network.

Measuring exposure on your own can be a bit tricky, especially if you’re looking to track the impressions of a particular campaign or market team. Quality social media management or analytics platforms will automatically track exposure for you. Or if you want to measure your content’s exposure manually, you can tally up your total follower count as well as each time your content is shared in social. For example, on Pinterest you would track the number of repins and the number of followers those who repined your post have, as well as pins from your website or blog. Focus on the sharing stats for each platform—retweets, shares, likes etc.—as well as links from your website or blog to calculate your average number of impressions.

How to Use Reach and Exposure:

• Track reach on each social network over time to determine where you’re seeing the most growth.
• Use exposure to measure the spread of a conversation to evaluate the success.
• Inform future initiatives. Determine what’s resonating with your audience by finding what types of content or messaging received the highest exposure. Use that research to perfect future campaigns or content creation.
• Track competitors’ exposure to view potential share of voice.
• Compare exposure to mentions to find potential influencers. If a specific post’s exposure was many times higher than its mentions, someone with a large social following is clearly distributing the content. Research the influencer and find ways to work together.
• Combine exposure and reach with engagement metrics to help form a more complete understanding of impact (look for a breakdown of engagement coming soon in this blog series!).

Sentiment

Sentiment refers to the emotion behind a social media mention. It’s a way to measure the tone of the conversation—is the person happy, annoyed, angry? Sentiment adds important context to social conversations. Without it, measurement of mentions alone could be misleading. If you were measuring mentions for your company’s new product, you might assume a surge in mentions meant it was being well received. After all, more mentions = more people talking about the product. But what if all those mentions were negative?

Measuring sentiment will help you understand the overall feeling surrounding a particular subject, enabling you to create a broader and more complete picture of the social conversations that matter to you.

How to Measure Sentiment:

Measuring sentiment on your own can be quite a time commitment, depending on the size of the conversation. To record the sentiment of mentions, you would read each one, evaluate the tone and assign a score such as positive, negative or neutral.

There are a few free tools available that track and measure sentiment and quality social media marketing platforms will provide automatic sentiment analysis. The uberVU via HootSuite platform uses a powerful automation tool to determine sentiment, which is based on machine learning technology. If a person was to tweet about their experience shopping at Sears, the sentiment would be determined based on the description words they use. “Such great deals at Sears!” would register as positive whereas “Customer service at Sears is the worst.” would register as negative.

How to Use Sentiment:

Evaluate Brand Health

• Analyzing sentiment on a regular basis will help you understand people’s feelings towards your brand, company or your product or service.
• Consider using a tool that provides automatic sentiment analysis to get a quick overview of your brand health without having to dive into each individual mention.

Head Off a Crisis

• Watch your sentiment level for any signals that could indicate a dramatic shift in brand health.
• A sudden spike in negative mentions could be an indication of a developing crisis. Loop in your PR department, dive into the mentions to find the cause, and establish a plan for handling the rise in negativity.

Competitive Research

• Sentiment analysis can also be used to find how your brand or product is being perceived in comparison to your top competitors.
• Keep an eye on the overall sentiment level of competitors and find opportunities (positive and negative) that you can use to shape your positioning against theirs.

Evaluate Campaigns and Other Initiatives

• Use sentiment levels to measure the success of product launches, marketing campaigns or other new initiatives.
• Track how levels change throughout the duration of the initiative to establish if it is being received positively or negatively. Consider adjusting your strategy if negativity rises.
• Did your increased sentiment level remain post campaign? Use the sentiment research to inform and perfect future initiatives.

Mentions

The first social metric you need to track is volume of mentions, which is the size of a conversation. Depending on your job role or function, you’ll want to track mentions for several different keywords such as your company, brand name, product or service, industry, the competition or a particular market term. This will give you a complete picture of the social conversations that matter most. Mentions are simply the number of times the term or phrase you’re tracking was used across social media, helping you understand just how much (or little) attention the subject is receiving in social.

How to Measure Mentions:

Mention volume is a simple (but tasking) counting metric. You can invest in a social media marketing platform that will automatically track the number of mentions for a specific search term for you. Or, you can count tweets, wall posts, etc.

How to Use Mentions:

Establish a Baseline

• Track mentions in recurring time periods (daily, weekly, etc) to establish the typical volume.
• Record benchmarks so you can accurately measure growth over time.

Take Action

• Find the right windows to engage. Are there certain days or times when mentions increase?
  • Marketing should rearrange its content schedule to capture the attention of an active audience.
  • Customer service and sales should be online and ready to engage with clients or prospects.
• React to spikes in mentions.
  • PR should investigate a spike in brand mentions as it could signal a positive brand story they should amplify or a negative one they’ll need to get ahead of to prevent a potential crisis.
  • A product team needs to understand the cause for a surge in market terms or features and evaluate how or if they need to react.
  • Marketing should prepare competitive positioning when top competitors see a surge in volume.
• Use mentions to track if campaigns, product launches or other initiatives are gaining traction. Did mentions increase after launch? Are they remaining stagnant? Monitor mentions closely and consider making tweaks if you’re not seeing a reaction.

There you have it. Mentions: step one to measuring social media. Stay tuned tomorrow for our next Beginner’s Guide post, when we’ll break down sentiment.

Courtesy of an article dated April 24, 2014 appearing in The Uber Blog