Social Media Analytics is an ever-evolving practice. Here is a quick presentation on how Raidious handles analytics on a cross platform basis for socialized media (one point we make here – social media is a misnomer, it’s all social). It’s all about understanding how to grow and engage an audience with content, regardless of the platform – social or otherwise.

If your company is asking questions like . . . how do we measure the impact of social media? What is the ROI? What metrics should I be paying attention to in which platforms?

We have some answers for you. Please contact us any time, and we’ll be happy to have one of our strategists do an analysis of your current efforts.

Just like everyone’s mother always said, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. Or as my grandmother used to say, “Keep mouthing off like that and a bigger boy’s going to pop you one.”

The owned media vs. earned and paid media debate is apparently not immune from the same wisdom passed along by our elders: Google has officially popped Facebook right in the kisser for saying, well, not-so-nice things.

As has been widely reported all over the web, Facebook was caught red-handed engaging in a smear campaign against Google via public relations company Burson-Marsteller. After Facebook came clean on Wednesday, the PR firm admitted they had pitched stories to bloggers and other media with statements like “The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day–without their permission.”

The source of Facebook’s ire is Google’s Social Circle, which permits users of Google Chat and Contacts to see public information about each other–including Facebook information, Twitter feeds, and personal websites.

To be fair, Google’s profiling isn’t exactly opt-in. Whether or not users have a Gmail or other Google service account, they must sign up for Google Profiles in order to customize and decide exactly what information is available to others.

But compare this to Facebook’s labyrinthine privacy and security settings, and the frequent complaints about user privacy issues and information sharing, and it seems like the pot calling the kettle black.

Facebook has since stated that it did not intend to engage in a “smear campagin,” but was merely trying to ensure the public was well informed. I don’t recall a public service announcement from Facebook “informing” people that they disclose user information to advertisers and other third parties.

Regardless of intent, in my mind it all comes down to the inherent transparency of owned media. Engaging a PR firm to propagate negative sentiment via earned media about another company, all the while asking that your company’s name be withheld, is a smear campaign whether you admit it or not.

Compare that tactic to using owned media channels to go beyond marketing your services to calling into question the business practices of a competitor. How far would you go, knowing that your official platforms were the source of potentially injurious (or worse, libelous) statements? Would you be more or less inclined to bite your tongue?

Not that any of this will ultimately matter to either company: users are more and more free with their personal information on the web, and to most people this is a non-story about two corporate behemoths pointing fingers at each other in the usual game of “Oh yeah? Well guess what they did!”

Despite the myriad complaints about privacy, Facebook isn’t losing users in droves, and people still depend on Google’s various services like they were oxygen.

White this is far from the first or last such incident, it is nonetheless embarrassing for any company to be outed for throwing such an obvious and ultimately useless low blow. If you’ve got something to say about a competitor and don’t have the sand to be completely transparent via owned media, do everyone a favor and heed mom’s advice.

Network Solutions recently released its State of Small Business Report, and its findings have sparked conversation about whether Facebook threatens to replace traditional business websites.

According to the report and an article in My Venture Pad:

62% of small businesses said that social media didn’t change their spending plans for the coming year. 27% said they are planning on increasing their spend due to social media.

But 9% plan on eliminating (4%) or spending less (5%) on their traditional website due to social media. While 9% sounds low, last June only 2% reported plans to spend less or eliminate their traditional website due to social media.

From its inception Facebook was intended for individuals, not businesses. Initially the site’s main founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was disinclined to even accept advertising despite calls from all sides to find ways to monetize the social networking site. (Just go watch “The Social Network,” it’ll save us all some time.)

Now that Facebook has given up any notions of being “cool” and is friendlier toward brands, it’s tempting to dump a massive amount of effort into your company’s Facebook page. It’s the number one social networking tool with over half a billion unique monthly users, and its utility as a resource sharing and recruitment tool cannot be denied. But there are troubling questions.

Where Did My App Go?

As corporations big and small began to adopt Facebook–first through Groups and Fan Pages and now simply Pages that users “like”–it seemed as through the company took every step possible to make this process difficult. The standards for what could and could not be done with HTML and Facebook’s own FBML (Facebook Markup Language) changed without notice, terminology shifted, and standards and practices were nonexistent.

Now the site has adopted iFrames, which allow companies more freedom to display whatever web content they choose within a subset of the overall Facebook experience. What happens when Facebook changes its mind again? Every change in strategy and back-end technology represents a seismic shift in the way businesses interact with the site and its users. As soon as your brand is up and running successfully, you find yourself in the position of rejiggering your content, feeds, and apps, expending time and money repainting the same house over and over.

Do I Own My Data?

Facebook has to its credit suffered relatively little downtime throughout its existence. But as with any website, it does happen. When it happens to Facebook, one can hear the screams of withdrawal the world over. As the site has become more popular, it is increasingly the target of scams, phishing attacks, and other efforts to steal user data. If the site’s databases were to become compromised, a staggering amount of personal user information would be available to scammers, thieves and other criminals.

Just as people once believed that if humans were meant to fly we’d be born with wings, there is a general sense of finality with Facebook. Where else could we possibly go with social sharing and communication? But ideas do not stop, and when the next big thing comes along Facebook is not immune from suffering a fate similar to MySpace and Friendster–dropping rapidly and popularity and use. There is no way to say the site will last forever. What happens when Facebook, like other social networking sites before it, starts to look like a ghost town? Where did your investment go?

The Lesson: Own Your Content

Your website adheres to your brand at all times, from the visual design down to the domain name. Barring a disaster of Michael Baysian proportions, any data and content contained in your site can always be backed up or transferred to any host you like. You and your IT team–internal or external–have the ultimate say over anything related to your site.

The same cannot be said of Facebook. You and your brand are at the mercy of their shifting company priorities and policies, changing tastes, and design, not to mention their often-questioned privacy practices.

All of this sounds incredibly negative. I am the first to say that a solid, well-funded, well-planned Facebook strategy is absolutely essential for a business of any size. But to shift the majority of online spending into one silo is suspect. While the transition from a traditional media approach may be difficult to operationalize, it is crucial to maintain a multi-channel presence in which each one supports and augments the other. In short, you need to drive the content on your website to people, utilizing the channels those users like best.

Every now and then Raidious will offer little tips and advice that will help make a powerful impact on your social media campaign. Today’s social media tip is centered around your brand’s voice.

“Voice”  is the key word here. Before you go jumping on Twitter and Facebook, posting content left and right, you need to consider exactly how you want your brand to sound to your audience. This is key to being able to create real and valuable engagements with your customers.

Remember when you’re creating content for your pages that you are speaking for the brand, and not yourself. Once you’ve got that down, your followers will be more interested in interacting with the brand they know and appreciate.

Social Center

There are many different perspectives on social media marketing. Everyone has a unique strategy, or theory when it comes to communicating your brand message online. We at Raidious are no different.

Raidious broke social media into three main categories that describe exactly what you need to be doing for a successful social media campaign.

#1. Content

At Raidious we believe that content is king regardless of the platform. Content is anything you post on your pages in order to interact with your customers. This could be a Facebook post, a tweet, photo, video, link, etc.

Developing the content strategy that works best for your brand takes time, and it requires plenty of listening. In order to know what your followers want you to talk about, you must first listen to them. Create content, and then track it using tools like Social Center. If no one is interacting with your content then try something else.

#2. Monitoring

Monitoring means listening. Put simply as possible, it’s listening to the internet. Create search terms and monitor them for mentions of your brand. This includes blogs, social, forums, news sites, etc. Any time your brand is mentioned on the internet, you should know about it.This is how you find out what is being said about your brand, whether positive or negative, in order to know how to manage your online presence.

#3. Moderation

Moderating could also be called Monitoring Plus. The whole point of social media is the ability to interact with your constituents. You create a piece of content with the goal of getting your followers to comment, like, retweet, and reply. Your ability to continue the conversation is key, so post responses to comments and thank your supporters for retweeting and being great advocates for your brand.

If you’re only doing one of these processes for your brand, then your social campaign needs some tweaking. Remember, social media is social. Engage in the conversation to create advocates.

Back in September, I wrote this post regarding the definitions of Paid Media (what Ad Agencies do), Earned Media(what PR firms do) and Owned Media (what Raidious does).

Recently found this article from Forrester Research, apparently they’ve been looking into this. Good information!

Raidious is purpose built to manage owned media properties for large brands.

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• The 2010 Social Media Marketing Ecosystem (socialmediatoday.com)

In the past, there were basically two approaches to marketing services: earned media (PR) and paid media (advertising). More recently we’ve seen the rise of owned media.

What’s the difference? It’s mostly about Control.

Earned media: Getting someone else to provide content about you on a media platform they own and control. Also known as Public Relations.

Paid Media: Paying someone to include your message alongside their content, on media they own and control. Also known as Advertising.

Owned Media: Providing your own content on media platforms you own and control.

Raidious deals only with owned media – we help you provide the content for the media platforms you own and control – email, blogs, social media, web video, mobile devices, and more.

UPDATE: Recently found this article from Forrester Research, apparently they’ve been looking into this. Good information.