The Great Social Media Crisis of Faith

My
clients
believe.
VOICEOVER: I speak to clients worldwide about their
social eﬀorts. And almost universally, they’re telling me
that they’re having a Crisis of Faith. They believe in the
power of social for awareness. Preference. Conversion.
Loyalty. All the good things!
Unfortunately, 3 major challenges are shaking that faith.
ERIC WEAVER • @WEAVE • SLIDESHARE.NET/WEAVE • PRESENTED AT #PMIEUR 23 JUN 2015 2

#1: The content glut is
killing reach
OUR CLIENTS FACE 3 MAJOR ISSUES

In 2012, Content got us excited.
VOICEOVER: Amazingly successful content campaigns like this one showed the power of social
(http://j.mp/oreo_daily). Clients believed and invested in content. Only problem? Today no one is seeing it.

THESE DAYS, ORGANIC
REACH IS CLOSE TO
ZERO.
VOICEOVER: With over 1500 new posts every newsfeed refresh, organic reach is nearly zero.

…which means
of your fans don’t see your
content investment on a good day
Content visibility for
ﬁve Mediabrands clients
Client
Posts/
month
Total reach
per post
Avg reach
per post
Fans Visibility
Beverage 2 10,254 5,127 93,000 5.51%
Gaming 14 630,655 45,047 500,865 8.99%
Chemicals 6 13,574 2,262 148,000 1.53%
Insurance 54 155,102 2,872 48,000 5.98%
Software 28 577,589 20,628 638,000 3.23%
AVERAGE 5.04% 95%

#2: Paid social ads
now a requirement
€

Facebook organic reach for one Mediabrands client
VOICEOVER: This organic reach is pretty pathetic, right? Watch what happens when we spend 1000€ to
boost 2 posts.

Social networks tell us:
“If you pay, we’ll make it worth your while.”
PAID REACHBOOM! PAID REACH
VOICEOVER: Boosting breaks the reach barrier. By paying, clients get the reach they need (even if social
networks are over-rewarding them to incent more spend). But why pay for reach? Never had to before!

All good things (engagement, loyalty, conversion)
come to those who Reach
VOICEOVER: Because reach is the only path to Engagement – and consequently to awareness, trust, preference,
conversion and loyalty. Paid reach is now required to make results happen in Social Media Marketing.

Asking for more money is risky business.
VOICEOVER: So we now need a new budget for paid social. But asking for more money is politically risky.
You need to be armed with a strong argument and good data.

#3: No ﬁscal
metrics for social
“I’ve got Likes,
Retweets and
Shares. No idea
what they’re
worth.”

“We don’t internally have the
confident data we need to
convince leaders or peers that
they should invest in some of
this new technology or
positions
or skills that will be
crucial to a growth plan”
Adrian Parker,
Patron Spirits Company
“I also have no
idea about what’s
working and
what’s not.”
Director of Marcom,
US fast food giant
VOICEOVER: Brands everywhere are telling us the same thing: that the “soft metrics” of
social (likes, retweets, etc.) don’t really tell them what they need to measure success.
And that they feel stuck. No ﬁnancial metrics – no new funding.

Social ROI: complex and time-consuming.
47% have given up on “tracking social ROI”
VOICEOVER: It’s so bad
that nearly half of
companies have given up
on the idea of tracking
social ROI. This leaves
Social Marketing in
“Budget Prison.” It can
never prove its worth, so it
never gets the funding it
deserves.
THIS IS BAD FOR YOU,
Social Marketer. This is
bad for your customers,
too.

WE NEED TO BUST SOCIAL MEDIA
OUT OF “BUDGET PRISON”

Step 1. We need a means of calculating
the worth of our social eﬀorts.

“What would
I have had to pay
using paid media
to achieve the
same result?”
Rather than building questionable,
complex ROI spreadsheets, EMV is
easily calculated and automated to
allow daily measurement.
We need one performance
metric to rule them all —
Earned Media
Value
(in cash)
€

“EMV? Isn’t that
the failed AVE
model?”
No. AVE measures column
inches of PR pickup.
EMV measures actual social
activity – discrete user actions –
and associates a value.
A click is a click is a click.

Here’s how we do it. First, let’s price our KPIs.
How have past campaigns performed?
PAGE CPM
COST /
ENGAGEMENT
COST /
ACQUISITION
@Brand_DE 0.55 € 0.85 € 1.05 €
@Brand_CH 1.00 € 0.85 € 1.53 €
@Brand_AT 0.75 € 0.75 € 1.15 €
PRICING
DATABASE
VOICEOVER: We recommend calculating an
individual price for every social KPI. Because
a Like for one brand in one country will be
worth something diﬀerent for another brand
in another country. We store that in a pricing
database.

API
Next, we read all earned activity via API
PERFORMLY CLOUD-BASED ROI PLATFORM
VOICEOVER: We currently use APIs to pull all social KPIs – every
fan interaction. This automates data gathering daily.

API
Then, calculate Earned Media Value.
PERFORMLY CLOUD-BASED ROI PLATFORMVOICEOVER: Then we calculate the worth of these fan interactions based
on our prices in the pricing database.
x Price Per
Fave =
x Price Per
Like =
x Price Per
Play =

Some clients
weight their
Earned Media
Value based on
how it was earned
EXPOSURE (x1). We need this
to allow for engagement.
ACQUISITION (x1.5). More
fans = more opportunity to
create conversion.
ENGAGEMENT (x2). If fans
engage with us, they build
touchpoints, trust and
preference.
VOICEOVER: Some clients are very particular about how
they value Exposure metrics vs Acquisition metrics vs
Engagement. So we weight the prices accordingly.

API
Finally, aggregate all earned value.
VOICEOVER: Our Performly analytics tool then displays total daily Earned Media Value.

I can now compare
performance
between pages and
against
benchmarks
VOICEOVER: We capture all this great data via API. Now we can start charting it to show us actionable insights.

I can also watch trends over time
VOICEOVER: Which days earned the most value? Which posts generated the most value?

Example Performly
content performance chart
FAN ACQUISITION
FANENGAGEMENT
0 2 4 6 8 10
20
40
60
This post has
low
engagement,
low acquisition.
Performly might
calculate EMV
at
28€
VOICEOVER: Let’s look at how individual posts perform in terms of cash. Because NOW WE CAN.

Content performance
FAN ACQUISITION
FANAENGAGEMENT
0 2 4 6 8 10
20
40
60
An easy like, this
post has high
acquisition but low
engagement. Few
touchpoints created
by fans. Performly
might calculate it’s
worth as
252€.

Content performance
FAN ACQUISITION
FANENGAGEMENT
0 2 4 6 8 10
20
40
60
This very
controversial
post has high
engagement, but
low acquisition.
Performly might
show it earned
3075€
but generated
signiﬁcant
unfollows.

Content performance
FAN ACQUISITION
FANENGAGEMENT
0 2 4 6 8 10
20
40
60
This post is doing
everything right.
High acquisition
& high
engagement.
Performly says it
created
7147€
of marketing
impact and grew
the fanbase.

Now we can have a VERY diﬀerent kind of
conversation with the CFO and CMO
THESE NEW FANS, AND
OUR EXISTING FANS,
CREATED
OF EARNED MEDIA AND
BRAND TOUCHPOINTS
“HEY, THANKS FOR THE
OUR SOCIAL
PROWESS PRODUCED
OF MARKETING IMPACT!”
PERFORMLY
SAYS WE GAINED
NEW FANS
12,500 47,700€
“CFO, I’D LIKE
TO PROMOTE THIS POST:”
10,000€
47,000€
10,000€

What happens when we excel at
resonating with our fans?
12,400 tweets
1,460,000 followers
T-Mobile US: 510,000 followers
VOICEOVER: T-Mobile’s John Legere is quite
proliﬁc (sometimes controversial) – so much so
that he has nearly triple the fans of his company.

John’s impact to T-Mobile Marketing
$0
$2,000,000
$4,000,000
$6,000,000
$8,000,000
$10,000,000
$12,000,000
$0
$500,000
$1,000,000
$1,500,000
$2,000,000
$2,500,000
$3,000,000
March April May June July August
6MonthRunningTotal
EMV
MonthlyEMV
Running Total Earned Media Value
John’s total Twitter EMV in 6 months: 8,500,000 €
T-Mo’s total Twitter EMV in same period: 17,700,000 €
VOICEOVER: John creates a MEANINGFUL impact to T-Mo’s marketing eﬀorts. His Twitter account alone can
generate millions in Earned Media Value – a signiﬁcant portion of T-Mo’s total budget.

Highest daily EMV: 309,000€
$0
$100,000
$200,000
$300,000
$400,000
EMVperDay
VOICEOVER: In just one day alone, John generated around $375,000.

Step 2. Rethink social team structure & skills

In 2015: Social has really become a fully paid
channel. Paid knowledge and budgets
are essential. And CFOs now demand
fiscal metrics.
ADVERTISING KNOWLEDGE
In 2015, social teams need A.C.E. skills:
Advertising, Content AND Engagement
In 2012: Brand content became a crucial part
of the social mix. Essential skills for
today as well.
CONTENT CAPABILITY
ENGAGEMENT SKILLS
In 2008: Social was all about Community,
Customer Care and building trust.
Measurement/ROI wasn’t critical.
These days, clients still want to
engage with you, and you can’t blow
it.

Your paid social
team should be able
to answer these
questions
Which paid social platforms should I use
or know?
What kind of talent do I need?
What kinds of posts should I boost?
And why?
How do I justify talent and tool costs?
How do I manage inbound campaign
performance signals?
How do I report back to management
on spend performance?

Step 3. Rethink your approach to content

If we can measure content’s worth,
we can measure fan resonance
VOICEOVER: By looking at YouTube EMV, we can start to work out ROI on individual videos.

Performly & Listening
Reports
And if we can measure resonance,
Agile Social Content is now possible
VOICEOVER: People talk about Agile
Social Content. Now we can actually
measure performance and adapt our
approach daily.

Using Earned Media Value to test creative approaches
After two years, key KPIs on the fanpages
for a soap brand stalled, remaining
stagnant month after month. The social
team needed to identify a new content
strategy to boost engagement.
Performly clearly showed the highest-
performing content was imagery and
stories about “normal” people to whom
the audience could relate. Fans created 4x
more earned media when page posts
showed ordinary-looking people versus
models.
The client social team responded by
focusing on user-generated content for the
next six months.
BEFORE
AFTER

Finally, knowing EMV
means Social Media
teams ﬁnally can have
the numbers to give
them a meaningful
voice at the Annual
Budget Meeting.
Credibility FTW!

SO…

This presentation was written by Eric
Weaver for the June 2015 Performance
Marketing Insights conference in Berlin.
I am no longer with Mediabrands. For more
information about Performly, please visit
performly.social or contact Jason Carter at
jason.carter@mbww.com.
In October 2015, I will be teaching these
concepts at Dublin City University’s
(Ireland) Masters of Digital Marketing
Programme. I can be reached at @Weave.
THANK YOU, ATTENDEES!

The Great Social Media Crisis of Faith

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