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Presented jointly by: Emily Riley, Senior Analyst, Jupiter Research Emily covers advertiser and publisher trends and technologies, including social marketing, brand and direct response marketing, targeting, measurement and response. Emily has been quoted widely in the media. She has several years of experience at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., and Advertising.com. Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst, Forrester Jeremiah is a leading expert on social computing, including experience at Hitachi Data Systems as the community manager and PodTech Network. He speaks at a strategic level on Web marketing topics around the globe. His blog “The Web Strategist” is one of the most popular on social media marketing and how companies can connect with customers. Brian Watkins, Social Media Marketing Manager, Omniture Brian leads Omniture’s social media strategy. He has spent his career in public relations working on high-profile accounts such as Yahoo! and Symantec. Brian’s focus it to help Omniture engage in a meaningful dialogue with the online community. Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media WHITE PAPER

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Page 1: Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Presented jointly by:Emily Riley, Senior Analyst, Jupiter ResearchEmily covers advertiser and publisher trends and technologies, including social marketing, brand and direct response marketing, targeting, measurement and response. Emily has been quoted widely in the media. She has several years of experience at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., and Advertising.com.

Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst, ForresterJeremiah is a leading expert on social computing, including experience at Hitachi Data Systems as the community manager and PodTech Network. He speaks at a strategic level on Web marketing topics around the globe. His blog “The Web Strategist” is one of the most popular on social media marketing and how companies can connect with customers.

Brian Watkins, Social Media Marketing Manager, OmnitureBrian leads Omniture’s social media strategy. He has spent his career in public relations working on high-profile accounts such as Yahoo! and Symantec. Brian’s focus it to help Omniture engage in a meaningful dialogue with the online community.

Blogs, UGC and Social Networks:

Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

WHITE PAPER

Page 2: Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social MediaBlogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Intro

The world of companies talking at their audience and rushing to establish a static Web presence is fading into the backdrop. With the advent of Web 2.0, communication has become a two-way street. Consumers are vocal and connected globally through an explosion of tools: email, chat, RSS feeds, alerts, online communities, blogs, mobile portals and social networking sites. Their behavior is changing quickly, and the behavior of marketers must adapt to reach and effectively track them.

In this guide, we present how the consumer landscape is evolving to drastically change how information travels and how the advertiser landscape must develop to communicate tactically in order to achieve cross-channel execution. We demonstrate how to help marketers quantify social media with Omniture SiteCatalyst, gather insights from advanced segmentation in Omniture Discover and realize revenue from effective content placement with Omniture Test&Target.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Consumer LandsCape

The younger generation, Gen Y in particular, dominates Web 2.0 behavior. That by no means should negate marketers who target generations older than 35 from adopting Web 2.0 tools. Many adults over the age 35 are active in this area as well.

The highest concentration of young users is found on social networking sites. The faster you move away from social networks, the more the consumer landscape becomes equivalent among age groups. Reading blogs and articles on newspaper sites has evolved into relatively normal behavior. For instance, the number of people who read comments on a mainstream site is close to the number of consumers who read newspapers in general.

Some of the less frequently adopted items are widgets, or user interface tools, predominantly found within social networking sites but used by very few people. This is one of several indicators that this wave of social network adoption has additional potential and has not reached online maturity. In fact, new behaviors under the Web 2.0 umbrella are just emerging today.

A key age gap note: Gen Y is just getting out of college and has limited purchase power. Soon, when they become the dominant purchasers on the Web, marketers will require a proficient knowledge base on how to use Web 2.0 tools to capture the bulk of consumer spending.

There is no indication that Web 2.0 adoption will drop off as Gen Y enters the workforce and embarks on a new life stage. On the contrary, it appears that Gen Y’s adoption is expected to increase. Although social networking sites are currently viewed as entertainment, as Gen Y becomes the dominant working and money-making segment of the population, these tools will become useful in other applications (i.e., apply knowledge of communications channels to a product research or purchasing mindset).

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Web Information FlowsBefore online social networks, a marketer simply had a giant megaphone to broadcast a single, untargeted message to the masses. Word of mouth was limited to over-the-hedge discourse with neighbors, chat with the local baker and banter among friends at your Tupperware party that weekend.

In today’s online environment, that party includes global participants. Those individuals can quickly view the message, read multiple interpretations and forward information to friends, who then create a “mash up” of the topic. In addition, Web users can evaluate a product and post reviews, even before most of the population has picked it up off the shelf.

The message now plays the ‘telephone game’ much more quickly and over a much wider group of people. Not only are consumers bumping into each other’s opinions in real-time; but marketers can also gauge public opinion and acceptance simultaneously.

This two-way feedback changes how marketers need to communicate to individuals and accentuates the importance of listening to consumer “buzz” about how they view the product by comparison to a competitor’s product.

advertIser LandsCapeNow that there are so many changes in consumer behavior, what must advertisers do as a result?

Social marketing is a new channel. From the consumer’s perspective, online is a 360-degree experience, not silos or channels. Marketers need to get closer to this full view to align their messaging, sales flow (from research all the way to sales confirmation) and measurement. A streamlined experience ensures the consumer gets exactly what they need, when they need it.

How does the online world relate to overall advertising spending?Advertisers are increasing spending in diversified ways.

Where does Web 2.0 compare to traditional advertising modes like display?More traditional modes have different budgets and different project managers; very little data is shared across the channels.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

How have multiple channels changed the approach to measurement?Measurement should inform your next campaign and determine whether or not a marketer was successful. Insights gleaned from the process feed into the new cycle, enabling marketers to more efficiently target and serve up details relevant to that individual on their site. When fragmentation occurs across channels, it is challenging to collect all of the data and gauge impact.

Online Spending TrendsSearch is still king and will be through 2013.

However, display advertising is anticipated to jump around 2010. This is largely due to increased investment online by brand advertisers, who are focused on visual recognition since many consumers are not searching for their specific products.

Social marketing creates an exciting opportunity for brand marketers and often falls into the display measurement category, further stimulating the upward momentum evidenced in the chart.

Regarding classifieds, the newspaper market offline is feeling the crunch. Likewise, growth is slow online. There are many free Web sites that are a result of the Web 2.0 explosion, creating competition for classified sections.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Social Media’s Impact on ImpressionsWith the growth of online spending, so have impressions grown.

Consider the average consumer, who may have a social networking account on a site like MySpace or Facebook, who may visit multiple retail sites to research a product and may frequent entertainment sites to sample and download music. All of these avenues expose them to high numbers of brand messages and banners—impressions. There are far more page views online today than even a couple years ago.

The result is density and clutter. Consumers see a lot more advertising than ever before; so, they ignore a lot more advertising than ever before. Marketers are nervous about this trend. The key is to measure your marketing dollars, so that you can figure out how to avoid the clutter and deliver the ROI that your message is in the right place at the right time.

Measurement MetricsWhat are marketers measuring today, and is it working?

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

More than any other time in the history of the Web, marketers are measuring a variety of metrics. On average, they use six metrics. Click-throughs accounts for the highest usage at 80 percent, followed by impressions at 62 percent.

Direct response-oriented metrics are becoming increasingly popular at 57 percent, particularly registrations and purchases. In addition, engagement mapping (also called purchase path measurement or attribution) is emerging as a metric—it is the idea that you can attribute a consumer’s fulfillment to a previously viewed ad, even if they took not obvious action at that time.

This lingering awareness, or latent impression, results in the consumer clicking a second similar ad or returning to the Web to perform a search on the product. This principle is a new idea; it is happening most in relation to Web analytics tools as a way to determine how display campaigns really affect consumer behavior on a particular site.

Marketers must expand their metrics horizon to consider out-of-box methods for measurement, such as using free tools for listening to buzz on other sites about your product or creatively leveraging search analytics tools you are already paying for to monitor how individuals change their search behavior, as an indicator that your advertising in the social media space is having the desired impact.

One concern among marketers: how to avoid spending significantly more in measurement than what is being spent on the social media campaign itself.

Advertisers Want More of Their MetricsA majority of advertisers are unhappy with their metrics tools. According to Jupiter Research’s findings, 70 percent of advertisers want more accurate campaign measurement. Despite additional options, more is not proving to be better.

How can you use the dashboards and tools you have today to form a consolidated view?

There is value in attribution as a theory. Social media and display may not have the best immediate conversion rates, but they are creating value in the longer term. For example, consumers are seeing these things and engaging a representation of the company on a social networking site.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

All of these elements create one brand impression or picture. The consumer might see a banner, ask about information on your site, go to Google and perform a search about your company or your competitor, visit your blog or view a video about your products.

With integrated measurement and execution on the marketer’s side, this picture can be as consistent as possible. Be sure not to be contradictory in your messaging, that your brand is engaging and your voice is the same across all channels. Advertisers do not want to foster a fragmented relationship with the consumer.

The pivotal factor for success is to figure out the resulting behavior, then, be able to reverse segment the user population based on whether they saw a campaign or not. This will start to prove that those who are exposed to creative spending are more likely to convert over a period of time.

It is engagement plus—engagement that is tied to ROI.

Advertisers are only beginning to understand attribution and recognize the value in measuring it. Start with search behavior and site analytics; ask your vendor how to use their tools to gain more insight into display or social media.

Best praCtICesThe consumer and advertiser landscapes must merge to deliver an exceptional experience for the user and exemplary results for marketers. Here are three ways to help achieve this goal:

Take a consumer-centric approach—focus on the consumer and optimizing their experience »Develop cross-channel measurement—use tools like buzz monitoring and engagement to create value »and establish benchmarks around areas that are brand oriented for smarter media buysImplement attribution management—organize purchase funnel and layers of measurement from most »engaging, high-level items down to the actual sale

Making it Consumer-CentricLet’s take a look at how a consumer’s 360-degree online experience unfolds.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

The Three LsIf advertisers can understand how display campaigns, their Web site, search initiatives and user-generated content (UGC) act as pieces within three phases, success is attainable.

The most important thing you can do is to learn about your consumer, through tools like Google Trends and postings on social media sites. Determine what people are saying, the good and the bad, about your company compared to your competitor, and be able to approach online campaigns in an informed way.

Next, launch in a coordinated manner. For example, banners may stimulate the initial impression, but do not just think of clicks to your Web site. Consider the other ways consumers can find you. Advertisers need to be cognizant of search presence to make their brand or products easily accessible, with taglines and messaging to match the display campaign, when a consumer returns to learn more later.

When you kick off a display campaign, leverage UGC as a sounding board—be active and receptive.

The best thing about social media is long-term engagement or cultivated loyalty. Consumers may return to your site to read your blog; tap into that. Give them incentive to become brand advocates and reasoning that reinforces their purchase.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Leveraging Cross-Channel InsightTo improve learning, marketers must start sharing information.

The chart represents a simplified version of all the dashboards a marketer may manage, with the ideal goal of creating one online brand picture.

Work to answer the question: what is happening across channels that might influence consumer perspective?

Consolidating TechnologyHow do you connect and derive the most value from the tools at your disposal today?

It is really about consumer behavior on your site. Look beyond just purchase or engagement behavior to consider customer service behavior and email or chat interactions to identify potential brand advocates. Start thinking of these active users in a different light.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

In the instance of a hotel chain, they categorized their site visitors as lookers, bookers or newbies. Have they visited the site before but not booked? Have they bought? Or is this their first visit? Grouping consumers may help to refine the way marketers approach these individuals.

Search is measurement, a wealth of data, keywords and adoption. Think of search as a gateway from display to your site—it gives advertisers a solid understanding of where individuals came from and where they are going. It is a connector from the more brand-oriented, engagement-oriented investments to the direct response spending.

For example, you are spending money on a display campaign. Consumers click and come to a search engine but are not continuing on to your site. Marketers can use search analytics to determine if they are buying ineffective keywords, consumers are becoming confused or other things, like a competitor’s ad, are coming up and diverting the traffic.

From the standpoint of UGC, measurement is focused on engagement: how long are people interacting with me, and can that be benchmarked with behavior elsewhere? Attaching an ROI to something like video views may not be easy, but site visitors can be given a cookie to follow them to a search engine or Web site to analyze value. Then, marketers can determine if those who viewed the video are more likely to go deeper into the purchase funnel and become more frequent consumers.

Display is often the first point to talk to a consumer. Instead of using the archaic megaphone approach, think of display as a continuous cycle, where marketers use site, search and UGC details to keep fine-tuning the message in stages over time.

Accounting for Online InteractionsIn an ideal scenario, attribution gives each piece of the purchase funnel credit where credit is due.

Today, many of the touch points that a consumer experiences are often ignored during the measurement process:

C » onversations among friends on a social networkContent read on a blog »Viewed but unclicked banners »Widget interaction »

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

All of these are overlooked, despite consistently reminding a consumer about an opportunity. So, when that motivated consumer decides to take action by seeking out a product through a search engine, the search term gets inflated credit for the conversion.

In the new attribution method, marketers strive to segment consumers based on where they interact with the company to see the true source of the list. This assigns weighted, justified credit during future media buys and channel development.

strategIes to measurIng soCIaL medIa suCCessAny time you have budgets, resources and headcounts allocated to marketing, you need to measure your efforts, especially within your media programs.

Challenge: availability of Web analytics is limited on the open Web.You are using blogs or getting blogs and social networks to link to your site; yet, you have no access to the Web analytics from those third parties. You want to find out what others said.

Solution: as communities form, fish where the fish are.Seek out communities where your brand exists that your customers already frequent, and go join them.

In addition, marketing measurement is expanding, and page views are not the only metric. Consider options, such as engagement, that can be broken down further into attributes like interaction, time spent on site (attention) or sharing information from one social network to another (viral nature).

Keep in mind that driving traffic to your corporate Web site and microsite is not the only goal. For example, an Intel marketing manager created campaigns with a rule not to drive traffic back to the Intel.com site. Instead, he aimed to enter communities where their clients existed and expand into early technology like Digg to reach the target audience.

Forrester Prescribes Five Objectives to Social Media Marketing; they are as follows:Listening »

Understanding what your customers think and say by using brand monitoring tools »Gleaning insights from what these individuals are saying in their natural environments »

Talking »Traditionally marketers do this very well; however, the trick is to flip the flow »In lieu of talking “at” the market, talk “to” individual customers in a dialogue »

Energizing »Word of mouth or viral marketing »Getting your customers (advocates) to spread the word for you to prospects »

Supporting »Often hosted by brand »Getting your customers to sell support »

Embracing »Often hosted by brand »Getting customers to work with your team to build better, innovative products »

The result is a form of free ethnographic research. Not surprisingly, Forrester’s findings around trust clearly indicate that people trust others who are similar to them or that they know, far more than salespeople or marketers.

We will not focus on the final two items, as those behaviors typically happen on your corporate Web site, where you already have access to Web analytics.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

ListeningThis is all about understanding what your customers are saying through channels like blogs, forums, podcasts, or other UGC like Twitter and Delicious. It can take the form of an early warning system, if companies recognize that their products are having issues and identify strategies sooner. Secondly, marketers can find influencers in their space and determine what customers care about and what is triggering discussions.

Measure success via the following indicators:Insight gleaned from UGC—Create a spreadsheet or use a brand monitoring service to track keywords or »sentiment.Competitive information gathering—Monitor consumers comparing your products and your competitor’s »use of these tools.Potential warnings of detractors—Watch for any negative remarks about your brand or company. »

Begin moving forward with these two action items:Improve marketing messaging »

When creating campaigns, test them with the market to see what consumers say back. »Identify influencers and communities of practice »

Are they repeating your message? »Do you have a share of voice? »

TalkingMarketing’s goal is often to get the message into circulation, using talking as a way of broadcasting information through blogs, YouTube, etc.

Measure share of voice and overall success by analyzing the following:Consumption of content »

Count page views through third-party devices (e.g., Alexa, Compete) that function through browsers; »while the numbers may not be accurate, look for trends over time.

Trackbacks »Determine who is linked to what through tools like Technorati or link tracking tools. »Put together a thread to see who is pointing to other people or sites and who is coming to your »properties to discover if your share of voice is increasing.

Interactions and engagement »Are people leaving comments, sharing information or mentioning the content? »

Qualitative level »What are they saying? »Look for impacts, sentiment and tone. »

Use a mix of spreadsheets, free tools and vendors, based on your organizational goals. The measurement responsibility usually falls under the marketing or corporate communications umbrella; however, that does not mean it should be limited to those areas. Product teams, support teams, event teams and others may have need of these tools.

A best practice is to establish a process internally, where a group is responsible for listening. They should have the know-how, be familiar with the tools or have been measuring mainstream media for some time. It is then that group’s job to signal to the other teams when things are happening.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Tip for Brands Developing DashboardsIt’s great to create a “health check” of your social media tools to measure any increase in comments on specific blogs or brand-related discussions being shared on a site like YouTube. Take it a step further. Instead of developing a dashboard that merely tracks, build a map that has a final destination or marketing goal around these new spaces. The result will be associating a value, or share of voice, to those numbers when you forward them up to management.

EnergizingSocial networks are outstanding for facilitating the spread of word of mouth and enabling customers to talk about you. For instance, you can share applications that will trigger a notification on your newsfeed, or track embeds and widgets on blogs.

Measurement of energizing borrows from a physics concept, namely velocity, to gauge distance over time. How fast did an application get embedded over a week? How far did a marketing message spread over a specific time?

Brand Monitoring Services

Some of the metrics offerings garnering attention in the social media sphere are noted below:Enterprise metrics—Nielsen BuzzMetrics, TNS Cymfony, Biz360, Factiva »Strategy/product development—Umbria, MotiveQuest, VML SEER »Engagement—BrandIntel, BuzzLogic, Visible Technologies »

Free Search ToolsFor brands just getting started, individuals watching their own brand or marketers who may wish to monitor a subset of a product, free search tools are a springboard for embarking on social networking measurement. They do require human aggregation and should be used to look for trends, as specifics are less accurately reported.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Here are some recommendations:Google Blog Search—see who is linking to who »Technorati Blog Search—identify authorities »Twitter Search—hear what people are saying about your brand (take a queue from Intel, Dell, Comcast »and Southwest Airlines by checking at least once a day)IceRocket—use the graphing tool to measure keywords »Google Alerts—trigger emails based on keywords (e.g., products, public employees, company names or »even competitors) for instant, daily or weekly rollupAggregate into a feedreader—if the data seems unwieldy, create your own dashboard (e.g., Google »Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo) to quickly scan the information

How to Get OrganizedPlan for manual data collection and analysis—Have someone within your organization manage »spreadsheets if you do not have access to larger brand-monitoring companies.Develop a dashboard—Tie in social media measurement. »Prepare monthly reports—See what is working and what isn’t, to improve your blogging efforts. »Benchmark over time—Are blog subscriptions increasing and viral videos being embedded elsewhere »online?Include qualitative information—Pull out anecdotes of success or failure to identify learning opportunities. »

SummaryMarketing is distributed—page views are not the only metric »Measure your social media efforts based on objective »Develop key attributes and benchmark over time »True measurement requires qualitative analysis »Real-time reporting and responses are required to be successful »

In the same way a customer who visits a physical store expects immediate help, an expedient service response applies to the live social Web. Be a good listener, active in various channels and ready to serve.

It is not just about numbers; social media is about people.

measurIng BLogs, uCg and soCIaL networksAlthough it is difficult to track things outside your own Web site, there are elements you can measure.

Measuring Social MediaThe following are best practices used by Omniture customers:

Track all referring sources to your Web site, including social networks »Measure your own social media content »Understand your content creators »Leverage your best content, making it easy to find »Promote messages in your network and throughout social media tools »

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

When Web analytics is tied to a CRM system, it reveals a lot more insight. This example comes from one of our Genesis products, which is close-looped marketing for a sales force. It is associating Web analytics data with salesforce.com data. Now, the number of people coming to the site is apparent, as well as how many people are responding, requesting additional information and filling out lead-generation forms.

Social Media ReportsIs social media influencing your bottom line?

Using SiteCatalyst, let’s explore sample data for booked sales this year.

The Media Tactic Report enables marketers to include all social media (e.g., Web site, email, paid search) by drawing from unified sources—SiteCatalyst takes everything coming from a social media site, classifies it and sets it up as a social media source.

One of the standard metrics is click-throughs. In this example, a majority of traffic is coming directly to the Web site, or organically.

The result is a measurement of qualified leaders, or how many people accepted a meeting with the sales team.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Quickly determine how many leads actually progressed forward, or met with the sales team. Then, see how many of those deals are closed and ultimately become booked sales.

With SiteCatalyst, you can identify how much influence each source is having on annual contract value.

If you take a deeper look at the example, using our Discover advanced segmentation tool, it becomes evident that blogs are sending a large portion of the total social media traffic.

Measure Your Own ContentBuilding on the example of blogs in the previous section, let’s explore measurement with SiteCatalyst.

Measure popularity in the following ways:Unique visitors »RSS subscriptions »Comments on blog, specifically who is interacting with your content »Most popular blog topics or blog posts »

Measure influence through these areas:Trackbacks, external links »Best day, time to update/highlight blogs »Influence on lead generation/sales »

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

This example presents a snapshot of Blogs.Omniture.com, looking at individual page measurement. When the data from salesforce.com is factored in, it shows that 11 of the people from the first post did respond, which resulted in new qualified opportunities (NQO). Then, it is simply a matter of seeing how many individuals closed deals and figuring out their annual contract value.

SiteCatalyst defines the topics a company is blogging about and how they influence the bottom line.

Content TrackingMeasure the popularity of content at different levels with SiteCatalyst.

This is an example of different blogs within a corporate Web site. It is sorted by page views and provides the number of monthly visitors each blog is receiving.

Information can be correlated with other variables for additional insight. For instance, we can take the second blog, ’LetitRide’, and break out the number of page views by day.

It appears Monday is receiving the most page views, by far. So, this is the optimal day of the week to promote new blog content.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Getting to Know Content CreatorsWho really pushes the needle for your site?Is the UGC aligned with your business goals?

Here are some tips for leveraging the involvement of UGC creators:Measure user popularity to determine who is the most influential or valuable person »Promote users to drive higher consumption throughout your network »

This SiteCatalyst example shows how to track who is creating the most, and potentially best, content on your company’s behalf.

Understanding the Influence of ContentMarketers can identify the best content to achieve specific goals for UGC, such as:

Measure popularity »Measure influence on business goals »Promote it; make it easy to find within and outside of your network »

Blogs within a site are shown above. Using SiteCatalyst, the data can be parsed into metrics to show registration numbers and participation trends.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

Finally, if the goal is to encourage more participation or grow the community, the third metric should be your focus.

Page views represent popularity. If your business objective is to sell more adds, this is an important metric to keep in mind.

If your goal is to generate more leads, then the second metric should be leveraged.

In this example, the under performer is idolchatter. It has significant page views, but it is not achieving the number of registrations or level of participation as the others. On the other hand, letitride is the best performer, with a high level of page views, registration and participation.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

High Value ContentPromote it!

Here is an example of a community or media site, whose business objective is to drive more participation. On their home page, they highlight the most popular or commented on stories.

Moving over to Martha Stewart Online, the green highlighted box is an area on the site controlled by a marketer through our Test&Target solution. Within the tool, you can create a business rule to automatically pull specific content you identified into the site display.

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Blogs, UGC and Social Networks: Creating and Measuring Great Social Media

In this instance, the mycolts.net community site appears with SiteCatalyst metrics. As previously determined, the letitride blog is best meeting business objectives. By establishing a rule in Test&Target, that content is positioned to prominently appear on the home page.

CLosIng thoughtsWhich social media sites meet your business goals? »Stay focused on those. Recognize who is driving content to your site and who is moving consumers further down your conversion funnel.

More than just page views. »Web analytics drives everything. Tie it into CRM and other data to gain additional insight and better understand where to focus social media efforts.

Do you know your content creators? »Identify and get to know your advocates. Individuals who are aligned with your messaging should be promoted.

Make your best stuff easy to find. »Share it on Twitter and throughout your network.

When your social media efforts are more measurable, they are more successful.

***

If you would like to speak to an Omniture consultant to review how your social media can be measurable, actionable and successful, please give us a call at (866) 923-7310. For internationally-located businesses, visit Omniture.com for the office information nearest you.

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© OCTOBER 2008 Omniture, Inc. Omniture and the Omniture, SiteCatalyst, SearchCenter, Discover, Genesis and Test&Target logos are trademarks of Omniture. All other trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

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aBout omnIture Omniture, Inc. is a leading provider of online business optimization software, enabling customers to manage and enhance online, offline and multi-channel business initiatives. Omniture’s software, which it hosts and delivers to its customers as an on-demand subscription service, enables customers to capture, store and analyze information generated by their Web sites and other sources and to gain critical business insights into the performance and efficiency of marketing and sales initiatives and other business processes. In addition, Omniture offers a range of professional services that complement its online services, including implementation, best practices, consulting, customer support and user training through Omniture University™. Omniture’s more than 2,000 customers include eBay, AOL, Wal-Mart, Gannett, Microsoft, Neiman Marcus, Oracle, Countrywide Financial, General Motors, Sony and HP. www.omniture.com

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