Measuring audience social technographics profile

Ploughing straight into a social media campaign without first considering where your audience might be and how they are using social media is a little like booking a flight and not knowing where the plane is going to land. Somewhat pointless, and yet a lot of organisations are doing just that. Social and digital media has opened up new and free platforms for them and they therefore think they must be there, regardless of any real consideration about whether their audience is going to be there with them. Think of buying exhibition space at a trade show and turning up to find that there are hundreds of exhibitors but no guests.

I therefore find Forrester's social technographics profile really help in, if nothing else, challenging my clients to think about where there audience might be online and how they use online tools. It doesn't provide all the answers, but it prompts the right kind of thinking. Now the nice people at Forrester have made their tool embeddedable, so I thought I'd bring it into my site here:



And here's their presentation to explain what the different profiles mean in terms of audience use of online tools:

Social Technographics Explained

View more presentations from jbernoff.

And if you're looking for more information, I can't recommend enough that you read their book Groundswell - it's akin to being my bible.

Using augmented reality to enhance university campus tours

It was only going to be a matter of time before some bright spark came up with a decent iPhone app to enhance university campus tours. uTourX does just that - for US-based universities at the moment, but it's the potential of the technology that makes it useful for us Europeans too. Check out this video:



I'd like to see it go one step further and integrate video clips, perhaps students talking about their campus, alumni sharing their memories, or even virtual fly-throughs of the inside of buildings when you use your camera to 'point' at them. Wouldn't it be great also (and I know it can be done), for example, if when someone touring your campus in winter hovers over an open green space, they are greeted with an image of that space busy and bustling in the glory of a beautiful summer day - we need never worry about those horrid drizzly autumn/winter campus tours again! And think of the commercial application if when a visitor to your campus points the camera at one of your food outlets, they are greeted by the menu of the day and a full price list, including details of special offers. The potential is incredible.

An easy way to monitor your brand on Twitter direct to Outlook

I was asked earlier today about how you can monitor a brand on Twitter, or find people who tweeting about things that interest you. I always advise people to use search.twitter.com and type in their brand name or search terms relevant to their interests, but I also showed the people I was talking too how easy it is then to set up automatic updates in your outlook inbox using an RSS feed from search.twitter.com. I've therefore used screenr.com to create this short video guide on how to do this:

Using social media for events

Here's the presentation that I gave today on using social media for events. It's probably worth pointing out that this was for an hour long workshop, so barely time to even scratch the surface. You might find some of my other blog posts and presentations helpful too though:



... and in case you're wondering 'Remember the green fish' refers to the importance of the individual in social media spaces (for those of you looking at the presentation online who didn't attend the workshop in person).

Acknowledgement must go to teachertube.com for the excellent video (available to view on YouTube here).

Measuring social media

It's been a little quiet around here since I presented at the CASE conference back in August. Firstly I took a much needed holiday to Sri Lanka for a couple of weeks (so I am now a darker shade of British pink, and just that little bit heavier thanks to the all inclusive rate and 'cocoloco' cocktails). However, what's really been keeping me busy is the follow-ups I've had since the conference. I now have a hectic diary in the lead up to Christmas running in-house workshops on social media, and helping people to develop their own social media communications plans and strategies.

I think this interest tells me something. No, I don't think my ego is quite big enough to suggest that it says lots of people think I'm fab and want to work with me. I actually think that it tells me that there is a sudden and eager interest from organisations to really start making sense and get to grips with social media. To some extent this is about stopping 'dabbling' and starting to be strategic. It's no longer about giving a nod to social media, but now about actually getting serious and getting down to business. Above all, in the current economic climate, it's also about finding creative ways to engage with inexpensive marketing-communications activities and perhaps considering what else might need to give in order to free up staff time and resource to give social media a strategic chance.

And so I really welcome Karine Joly's article 'Social Media Measurement 101' on universitybusiness.com. According to Karine 'social media is just not optional anymore'. Now, of course as a communications consultant who specialises in social and digital media I'd whole heartedly agree with that statement, wouldn't I? However, what I really welcome is her seven-step plan for social media measurement:

1. Define measurable goals for social media activities
2. Choose key performance indicators carefully
3. Plan ahead and properly set up the right measurement tools
4. Capture the data at preset intervals
5. Don’t forget some benchmarking
6. Share your measurement data
7. Use measurement data to craft your next moves.

All sensible and sound advice, and really just reinforces how social media plans should be part of an integrated marketing-communications strategy and plan.

Following a presentation I gave at another CASE conference earlier this year, I posted this article about monitoring tools (mostly free) available out there. And when it comes to benchmarking, platforms such as Technorati and Twitter Analyzer might be helpful.