Thinking about how it is difficult to understand user intent on the web. Are they just searching for a price for a car because they are about to buy or because they are looking for a friend? I know, broad. But what I’m wondering is if there is a way to pre-shape intent before they arrive at your persuasion content/architecture.

I know we are getting better at filtering intent. I work on Subaru and if someone is on an endmenic site research cars and we have a creative message that adds value to their search and they click on it to get content directly from Subaru we have a better idea what content to get them because of the message they clicked on to get there…so there experience is better because it matches their intent.

And maybe that’s the answer…but it feels like there is something I’m not thinking about. It’s been a long day.

This just might be me rambling, going to explore this idea some more.

Social Media - ROI, Value, Etc - It’s some sort of glue

I’ve been stepping back and looking at social media in a bigger picture context, and I think that is where you can prove value and ROI. As a stand alone project, social media’s ROI/Value can be difficult to prove to a CMO. “So, let me get this straight, by blogging you will increase my sales?” Now this in the thick of social media do have charts and graphs that can prove this… but it takes some digestion to get it (and having CMO’s actually participate to really get it). But if social media is part of a larger web presence for a brand/product - the value of why do it makes a lot of sense.

Organic Search/Search + Social Media
Reach + Social Media
Impressions + Social Media

In any of those contexts it gets much easier to explain the value/ROI of why you need social media involved in your web presence strategy.

This thing called the Web - No mom, that’s not just “another link”

Explaining what I do for work to anyone can at times be challenging. Explaining it to my mother is an art. One I have not completely mastered. But I will say, if you need to test any of your web ideas out…always run them past my mother. She will break your experience design without even trying. She’s brilliant like that and doesn’t even know it. Same with my father. May be the best usability testing team on the planet. But I digress ( I love saying that).

When I was trying to explain what I do the last time something really stuck with me. That the web is all activity or search, and that Web 2.0 is really about the activities we can do with the web. I know, I know…this is obvious to most of us. But not to my mother. And when you have to slow it down and explain it…that when we go to the web we are looking to “do something”, it makes a lot of sense that your web presence should be about an activity design, what do you what consumers to do where.

Leading by example - or, get out of the way

I’ve be dormant on the web presence/social media front for awhile. And I think the echo chamber has hit a point…put up or shut up. I sat down and looked at the projects I’ve done over the last 2 years. Some pretty cool stuff that I’m guessing nobody knows about. And some pretty cool things that never got done. It’s time to fail forward, fast.

Just a couple of things, rolling around in my head…

But because of my recent work in website design, working with design principles and IAs my thoughts around the topic have evolved into a couple of areas…which I’m still putting some thinking to…but here is what I’ve got so far. When it comes to social media measurement, its -

Activity vs. Media Value

…and it centers around how you approach your social media project. If its about an action, you measure the engagement/participation/activity you want someone to do. If its about selling it, you need a media value number. Now, both of these ideas can work together (and should) but the difference is in what you need as your end goal and why.

Activity

I’m calling it activity because you initial set out to design a social media project with people actively doing something (could also be called engagement/participation). But the entire project is built from the beginning to have a person actively do something with your content (information). So that is what you need to measure…and those metrics might need to be thought up to go with the project.

Media Value

These are more traditional online/offline metrics that everyone for the most parts understands. Impressions, CPM, time spent, etc. If you design your social media project to generate ‘X’ impressions that you can measure it against either an online media CPM or a PR dollar efficiency. But while this will help sell the project, might not sell the widgets for the brand.

For example - (i’m borrowing this from Bokardo, with his thoughts on activity-centered design…yes, this has been a decent influence)

If you design a social media project to have people ’shop’ (activity) in your store, then you would measure shopping. If you design a social media project to have people ‘visit’ your store, then use the metrics, because you just need them to stop by.

Ok, so maybe this is some obvious already discussed social media measurement thinking. But I just needed to get it out, give it a spin. I’m really in the camp of knowing what activity to drive and measure off of that.

Now, to turn this post is a little different direction - I was reading Beingpeterkim and borrowed his post on a framework for measuring social media and added/edited in a couple of other points. I think this is a good cheat sheet to get at social media measurement from a standardized POV. His bullet points with my additions (genius steals and I hope he considers this flattery)

Attention:  The amount of traffic to your content for a given period of time.  Similar to the standard web metrics of site visits and page/video views.

Engagement:  The extent to which users participate with your content in a channel.  Think blog comments, Facebook wall posts, YouTube ratings, widget interactions, passing content on.

Authority:  Ala Technorati, the inbound links to your content - like trackbacks and inbound links to a blog post or sites linking to a YouTube video.

Influence:  The size of the user base subscribed to your content.  For blogs, feed or email subscribers; followers on Twitter or Friendfeed; or fans of your Facebook page.

Sentiment: The impression/reaction the audience has of the brand/product after the interacting with your content. Good/bad sentiment.

Media Value: Total number of mentions/impressions of brand/campaign across all media outlets/channels (social media impressions vs. CPM to generate same impressions)

Now my water cooler discussions were more centered around the lofty ‘what is social media’ discussion…which I’m currently boiling down to - social media is just content and should be treated as such (I do think it is more than that, but for space/arguement on the blog…running with that this morning). After reading through several of the linking posts on the best practices meme, ended up with a couple of favorites that I think are related to what I think is a best practice for social media…or a starting place for a social media game plan.

When I first started advising team members and clients on social media I recommended a strategy to do one of two things for consumers in social media land. We needed to either 1) give consumers something to talk about or 2) a place for consumers to say something (ok, you could/should do both).

I felt that running with this strategy would lead brand stakeholders to a wide range of tactics…with the key being that they would now be at least participating with consumers in some form/function, which to me was key.

So after wading through some of the best practices posts, found a couple that I think relate to my thinking and either add to, evolve, or compliment it.

Jason Falls leads off with ‘embrace your audience‘. Which I twist to - know your audience (embracing to means know that you know your audience to a certain degree). This is a key foundation point…know who you are going to be participating with and what they want/like/feel/etc.

Beth Harte raises the point of ‘provide a platform‘. Give you consumers a place to chat, get them going. And I really like that she cuts to the chase and adds, “Why wait for those limited occasions?”. Lead your consumers with a place to chat if they don’t have one. And if they do, give them extensions there to help them talk.

And if they are well cemented with there own places to chat, then follow Kipp Bodnar advice and create value for your consumers. I would evolve that a tad and say, create value with them. Play the curator role and serve information/content for the discussions happening out there. Respond to issues that people are having and know when to peel back the certain and let your brand story out.

All these points I think can lead to a strong foundation strategy which then we can modify from client to client. To me, that is what leads to some of the social media best practices.

I know I need to embellish more on my initial thoughts that I think all social media is just content. I’ll try to get back to that soon…maybe after I’ve had my coffee this morning.

But saw this today, Bookmarkable Banners with Reminders over at Ad Lab blog…and could not stopping thinking, yes, this is what I want…this is what will help me.

The example above is an ad for what looks like a music event, but you can see how this format can work with any date-based information: promotions, coupons with expiration date, sales and so on. To quote from an email from Spongecell, “We’re adding our Add to Life technology to a standard IAB advertisement to make it easy for a consumer to easily move relevant content from an advertisement into the tools they use every day - Calendar, Social Network, Mobile device or home page - think of it as a bookmark for an online campaign.”

Putting in context some of my online behavior, you’ll understand why I like this idea and wish we would see more of it. Online content…no matter what it is, I’ll “pull” it - i.e. I’ll grab something I like, I’ll save it for later.. Most of the time I’m just scanning content online (which I think is becoming the norm for most of us). What I mean by scanning and pulling:

- I’ll click a link to open in a new tab in Firefox…read it when I get to it.
- I’ll mark a scanned RSS item in Google Reader for later (and tag it), just noting it in my brain.
- I’ll tumble something if I think it’s clever, to have to look at later.

I rarely click and read something right on that click. Content for me is always pulled and pushed around when I want to deal with it. I think more and more online behavior is moving towards that. So when I saw the ad on AD Lab blog that basically setups up a reminder/save this for later/pull type of ad…I was like - YES! This is what I want. If your add gets my attention, let me pull it somewhere for me to save it, grab it when I need it again. Let me see the new cool shirt or whatever, and even though I might not be in market to buy right then, let me save it for when I am. I think most ads should offer this feature. Of course this would alter search…because would I search my ’saved ads’ for a t-shirt first or online in general. Ahh…the can of worms.

ps - the coffeeshop is playing Iggy Pop right now. I have a secret love Iggy Pop music.

Update: Thoughts for myself…After thinking about this more, I think I have several other links that could prove this would be good for online consumer in general. I’ll try to write up more soon.

Ok, While I haven’t read the report yet…I will…my first gut reaction is that the ‘people will be buying experiences’ isn’t new. I’ve seen that in a couple of different places for awhile. What puzzles me is when/why did this become new? Of course it is about the experiences…but then again, it is how you define experiences.

Is experience -

1) I want to make sure I am cool, so if I buy a red piece of gum because everyone else is I will have the experience of feeling ‘in’

2) I actually need some decent gum, umm, red gum, it was a good product, i had a pleasant experience, it met my needs to chew and flavor

3) I’m buying red gum because MTV told me to. Which could be just like #1…but in my mind they are kind of different. One is because you experience others around you, the other is a manufactured brand.

Now getting past the experience thing for a bit…I’ve talked about it before, how people are defining themselves by their media and experiences, not their tangible goods. So where does a brand experience fit into that? Have a good product, tell that product’s story.

I think what we really are experiencing is the death of manufactured brand experience.

And speaking of this advertising working, found via brandflakesforbreakfast.com and e-bay seller making his own ads (selling nice big jugs). Wonder how long before 1000s of ebay powerusers start doing this? And when they’ll buy online ad units to push their ads? Hmmm…but there is a business model in their somewhere.

With that said, here is my Chatback badge…give it a chat…because hey, it’s not like I don’t need another distraction at work.