Old Media Metrics with New Media Strategy can be misleading

The digital communications scene in Calgary is growing and maturing. In an oil and gas based world, which often means that certain industry’s adapt technology and digital communications into their organizational structure and revenue plans at the speed of a glacier, the digital world is making progress here.

However, just because we have more organizations using social media in calgary, and more value is being retrieved from digital communications,  and more organizations are leveraging their online audience to build relationships, generate revenue, communicate, and so on, I think we still have a long ways to go in Oil Alberta.

Here are three common old school ways of thinking that can mislead a company’s digital marketing results.

By the way, when I say old school, I mean just a few years ago. Old school in the digital world is still new school in most industry’s.

1. Using old digital media metrics to measure new media results

A few years back, seems like an eternity now, when I started my first digital agency I bought an online mens magazine. At that time, facebook and twitter were well on their way, but very much in their infancy…more so than they are now. I had many metrics to measure success of the magazine such as traffice and revenue . However, I also looked at other metrics that lead up to the revenue generation conversion. Metrics such as the number of page views and length of time on the website. In addition, I also looked at new visitors verses returning visitors.

Today if I were running an online magazine, or running any type of organization that has any type of content to share (hello non-profits, hello oil and gas associations, hello academic associations, the list goes on), those metrics that I used to use to measure success of a content driven website, are becoming less valuable. 

Why is it important how long someone stays on my website?
Why is it important how many pages they look at?
Why is it important how many people come back to your website?

The reason that I care less about those metrics now, because those measurements miss so many opportunities. Opportunities to measure how far your content reaches out into the web. After all, Digital Communications 101 says: You are trying to reach your networks network.

I’m not saying those other feedback loops are not important, I am saying they perhaps don’t tell the full story or give a full indication that you are moving towards your goals.

If I were an organization that needs some tangible results from digital communications, I would turn the wheel and start looking at metrics that revolve around:

How is my content shared?
How far does my brand reach?
What kind of actions can I get the user to do when they visit my digital real estate?
How can I get them to digest my content better, quicker, easier?
What kind of social assets am I building within my company/brand that I can leverage into my business goals?
What are people doing when they interact with me online? 

2. Targeting demographics

You know what is dead? Demographics.

25 – 35 year old female
Works in HR
Makes $73,000 a year 
Has a BA
Has 2 kids
Been married for 10 years.

*YYYAAAAWWWWWNNNN* *Stretchy* *attention lost*

If that is what your target audience looks like, you may want to re-evaluate.

The digital world has developed great strategies around  Persona building. Persona building allows a company to start thinking about what drives the user emotionally. What personal heart strings can we pull to connect with the audience. I don’t care how advanced our company is or how new age they are, people still buy today for the same reasons they bought 50 years ago…they want to feel a connection to the things they find align with their values.

Persona building is nothing new at all. Many companies in all sorts of industries have been doing this type of emotional marketing for a long long time. However,  we now have so much more information at our fingertips about our users, it would be nieve for any company, big or small, to ignore them

Creating Persona’s helps you identify what your audience finds important in a meaningful way so that you can create content and communications that relate to them. I would look at things like:

What kind of websites do they visit
What kind of restaurants do they eat at?
Where are they in their career, where do they want to be?
What challenges are stopping them from moving ahead in life? 

3. Looking outside, not inside.

It is so often that companies look to the outside to get help on generating ideas on systems, processes, and structures. However, many many companies do not realize how much power they have internally. An effective internal communications strategy can help decrease expenses and increase productivity. It has already been done by the likes of IBM, Dell,l HP, and the list goes on. The bigger your oganization, the more power you have to decrease expenses and increase productivity (which increases the bottom line…in case I needed to spell that out). 

Here are some of the ways that companies choose to create barriers around internal growth:

Email – is only a two dialouge. That greatly decreases the opportunity for others to comment and input ideas or suggestions to help reslove an issue

Access to others – Companies often do not have a clean way for a manager in one location to get input from managers across other locations to solve a certain issue. Whether that is a sales challenge, employee issue, or product development issue, often employees and management only have access to the people immediatly around them.  That is like filling the library with 10 books.

Employees holding back – Tons of employees have brilliant and wonderufl ideas. Most employees, long term and short, have brilliant ideas on how to be more productive. I often hear though, that these employees don’t know how to express their idea, or are just discouraged by the fact their manager may not have the time to listen. There is often no central, neutral, safe place for employees to voice their ideas, concerns, and growth potential.

How do we solve this problem to build an organization that fosters growth, social leadership (internally here, but also externally), organizational growth, while not completely blowing up your company?

Policy - Create policy within your company around idea generation, voice, and knowledge sharing. A policy that states that new ideas and challenging thoughts are safe and welcomed. If you don’t welcome new ideas challenges though from your employees, good luck my friend.

Tools – You will have to create a platform for employees and managers to communication. Whether that is using Microblogs like Yammer or Social Cast, or creating a intranet with Sharepoint, or even just creating internal blogs. You have to have a transparent open tool that every can be a part of.

Influencers – Creating this environment is a great idea!!! However, a few people have to lead the revolution and use the products constantly to show that they work. These people, called influencers, will be experts in the applications and thorough believers in the philosophy around the process. They will be instrumental around creating believers in others and pushing the momentum.

FREE DOWNLOAD!!!
 The Social Intranet: Where Work Gets Done – A free whitepaper http://bit.ly/oglxKO.
Thanks to Troy Davis for finding this and sharing it.

At the end of the day, marketing concepts and the reason people buy and engage with a company in any capacity, has been the same since…well…sliced bread was invented. However the tools we have to use can give us, and our competition, a critical advantage.

Don’t be a “It won’t work for us” kind of person. Because it works for your competition.