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Data Driven Social Media Marketing

Four data-driven insights to help you turn your social media marketing into a revenue-generating machine.

Presented September 6, 2011 at Social Fresh Charlotte

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@argylesocial@ericboggs@jthandy

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In God we trust. All others must bring data.

W. Edwards Deming

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In God we trust. All others must bring data.

W. Edwards DemingThere is no “data” confirming that Deming actually said this.

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“On the web, (this quote) has been widely attributed to Deming and Robert W. Hayden; however Prof. Hayden told us that he can claim no credit for this quote, and ironically we could find no ‘data’ confirming Deming actually said this.”

The Elements of Statistical Learning, 2nd Edition, PrefaceHastie, Tibshirani, Friedmand

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“On the web, (this quote) has been widely attributed to Deming and Robert W. Hayden; however Prof. Hayden told us that he can claim no credit for this quote, and ironically we could find no ‘data’ confirming Deming actually said this.”

The Elements of Statistical Learning, 2nd Edition, PrefaceHastie, Tibshirani, Friedmand

Beware rules of thumb. Data reveals the truth.

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A Delicious Slice of Argyle User Data

• Aggregated and anonymous• December 2010 through May 2011• 70k+ posts• 381 organizations; all industries, all sizes

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Definitions

• Post: a single piece of content published via Argyle Social.

• Click: a redirection from an Argyle short URL, published via Argyle Social.

• Conversion: direct or indirect completion of an Argyle Goal as a result of a click on a post published via Argyle Social.

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Conversions?

• Social Media Marketing = Marketing• Marketing = Driven By Outcomes

• If A=B & B=C, then A=C.

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Insight #1 RSS Automation Works

RSS Manual0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Clicks by Posting Method

Posting Method

Clic

ks

RSS Manual$0

$50

$100

$150

$200

$250

$300

Revenue by Posting Method

Posting MethodR

ev

en

ue

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Insight #1 RSS Automation Works

RSS Manual0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Clicks by Posting Method

Posting Method

Clic

ks

RSS Manual$0

$50

$100

$150

$200

$250

$300

Revenue by Posting Method

Posting MethodR

ev

en

ue

RSS automation is just as effective as posting manually.

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Insight #2 Scheduled Posts Generate Clicks, Not Conversions

<2min 2-30min 30min-3hrs

3-12hrs 12-24hrs

>24hrs $-

$50

$100

$150

$200

$250

$300

$350

$400

Timeliness vs. Influenced Revenue

Posting Delay

Infl

uen

ced

Rev

enu

e

Posted Immediately Scheduled for Later0

5

10

15

20

25

Timeliness vs. Traffic

Posting Timeframe

Cli

cks

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Insight #2 Scheduled Posts Generate Clicks, Not Conversions

<2min 2-30min 30min-3hrs

3-12hrs 12-24hrs

>24hrs $-

$50

$100

$150

$200

$250

$300

$350

$400

Timeliness vs. Influenced Revenue

Posting Delay

Infl

uen

ced

Rev

enu

e

Posted Immediately Scheduled for Later0

5

10

15

20

25

Timeliness vs. Traffic

Posting Timeframe

Cli

cks Scheduled posts drive traffic.

Timeliness drives conversions.

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Insight #3Hashtag Stuffing Doesn’t Work

52%

21%

26%

How Effective are Posts with Hashtags?

Posts with Hashtags UnderperformNo Significant DifferencePosts with Hashtags Outperform

-70%

-50%

-30%

-10% 10

%30

%50

%70

%90

%11

0%

0

5

10

15

20

25

Relative Performance of Hashtag vs Non-Hash-tag Posts

Performance Increase (Decrease) of Posts with Hashtags

# o

f T

wit

er

Ac

co

un

tsDon’t target content to hashtags. Target hashtags to content when relevant.

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Insight #3Hashtag Stuffing Doesn’t Work

52%

21%

26%

How Effective are Posts with Hashtags?

Posts with Hashtags UnderperformNo Significant DifferencePosts with Hashtags Outperform

-70%

-50%

-30%

-10% 10

%30

%50

%70

%90

%11

0%

0

5

10

15

20

25

Relative Performance of Hashtag vs Non-Hash-tag Posts

Performance Increase (Decrease) of Posts with Hashtags

# o

f T

wit

er

Ac

co

un

ts

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Insight #4Curating Drives Clicks…Creating Drives Conversions

Curators

Balanced

Promoters

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Clicks Per Post

Curators

Balanced

Promoters

0.0% 0.5% 1.0% 1.5% 2.0% 2.5% 3.0%

Click To Conversion

Curators

Balanced

Promoters

0.0% 50.0% 100.0% 150.0%

Post Conversion Rate

Sample Breakdown

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Insight #4Curating Drives Clicks…Creating Drives Conversions

Curators

Balanced

Promoters

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Clicks Per Post

Curators

Balanced

Promoters

0.0% 0.5% 1.0% 1.5% 2.0% 2.5% 3.0%

Click To Conversion

Curators

Balanced

Promoters

0.0% 50.0% 100.0% 150.0%

Post Conversion Rate

Sample Breakdown

Over-curating is ineffective.

Over-promoting isn’t as ineffective as you might think.

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Thank you very much.

Eric Boggs@ericboggshttp://argylesocial.com

Do or do not. There is no try.

~Albus Dumbledore

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A Brief Aside Re: Conversions

Two Types of Marketing Channels

Intent Generating channels build consumer awareness and interest, creating an intention to purchase a product.

Intent Harvesting channels capture consumer intent to purchase and drive them to the cash register.

Two Types of Conversion Tracking

Multi-touch tracking attributes revenue to all of the channels that touched the consumer on their path through the funnel.

Last-touch tracking attributes all of the revenue for a purchase to the last channel that touched the customer prior to the sale.

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DATA-DRIVEN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Practicing

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The Social Media Marketing Funnel

• Your goal as a marketer is to

move people down the funnel.

• Key Insight: every step is

measurable.– Awareness: Fans

– Interest: Clicks

– Action: Conversions

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Measuring Awareness: Fans

• Raw numbers and trends are easy but not very instructive. Compare with something real to make judgments:

– B2BCompare total fan count to lead count. Aim for 1:1 ratio.

– Consumer ProductsCompare fan count to customer count. Aim for 1:1 ratio.

– Newspapers & BlogsCompare fan count to website uniques. Aim for 15%.

How many fans do you have? Fan count is important, but it’s just one of many

numbers that lead to success in social media

marketing.

Fan / Follower counts are important for normalizing other social media marketing metrics!

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Measuring Interest: Clicks

Metrics in Action

Clicks Posts Clicks per Post

Which is better?

Which is worse?

Increase in clicks is driven by increase posting frequency

Increase in clicks is driven by more engaging content

Decrease in clicks is driven by less engaging content

Decrease in posts is drive by fewer posts—easy to fix!

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Measuring Action Requires Attribution

• Social media builds

awareness and interest in

your brand but doesn’t

usually lead directly to

sales…

• …but you can still measure

its impact on revenue!

• The secret: use multi-

touch conversion tracking.

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Measuring Action: Conversions

KPIs• Revenue• Conversion count• Revenue per conversion• Conversion rate

Key Questions

• What is your call to action strategy?• What offers work best?• Are you using landing pages?