#048: Social Media Analytics with Hayes Davis

Show Transcript

The following is a straight-up machine translation. It has not been human-reviewed or human-corrected. We apologize on behalf of the machines for any text that winds up being incorrect, nonsensical, or offensive. We have asked the machine to do better, but it simply responds with, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

[00:00:24] Hi everyone. Welcome to the digital analytics powerhouse. This is Episode 48 Have you ever had to measure social media.

[00:00:35] Yes I know it sucked but you did it anyway. Good for you. Do you want to know how to do it better. Well sure you do. Will you learn how to measure social media better by listening to this podcast. Maybe so tweet at your Facebook wall and filter your snaps because this is the show about social media analytics. After years of avoiding all things social media TIM WILSON My cohost Hello. Hello and under 140 characters Michael and myself my how willing we needed a real pro a real ace a real ninja guru pirate to help us understand this better so we went out and got Haise Davis Hayes is the CEO of Union metrics imperative that he founded liquid communications using metrics works with a lot of companies that solve complex social media problems and analysis.

[00:01:27] So welcome Hayes.

[00:01:30] Hey guys. Nice to be here.

[00:01:32] It’s a pleasure to have you. And you know it might be good to get us started since you kind of take that less is more approach to your LinkedIn profile to maybe give you the backstory of where you got into this and sort of where it came from. What kinds of problems were you trying to solve for the way.

[00:01:50] Sure sure. Yeah I like to keep it a little mysterious unlinked. It makes it more exciting when somebody finds me and actually gets to talk to me. So you know I’m like get lucky you guys.

[00:02:03] So you know I will take you all the way back to the Dark Ages of oh gosh I don’t know around 2008.

[00:02:12] Facebook had 100 million users. Twitter was just breaking out after South by Southwest in 2007 and I was was kind of sick of my job.

[00:02:26] So I was looking at all of those developments and I said you know this is the social space is where I want to be.

[00:02:34] And so I ended up founding what became the new metrics with my co-founder has a Ph.D. in organizational communication and was studying this stuff from an academic background.

[00:02:45] And so we started this company and we actually started in kind of a different area. We were focused on social commerce actually and we realized pretty quickly that there was no measurement at all.

[00:02:56] And so we started a product called Suite which was actually something that I kind of stepped out and built pretty quickly to test out some ideas around.

[00:03:08] What does it mean when you when you have a piece of content that you put out on social media that actually gets tweeted amplified. And how do you quantify that. And that’s really where tweet Rich came from and we started to realize there was a lot of traction around that and our passion was actually not in the commerce side but in the measurement side.

[00:03:26] And so we really began to grow that and we were very very early to the space.

[00:03:31] This concept of reach as it related to social and that was an exciting place to be and so as we continue to grow the company we’ve branched out over the years into full multi-channel analytics suite across Twitter and Tumblr and Instagram and Facebook and really trying to serve marketers you know helping them make sense of social as is a huge task right now.

[00:03:56] You mentioned that social media sucks when you try to measure it.

[00:03:59] And that’s true a certain degree but more and more it’s really core to what marketers do and we try to help them with that with our with our products and make it suck a little less.

[00:04:11] So how do those how do those different channels like I know Twitter’s API has gone through some evolutions Facebook’s has gone through evolutions. Is there like a minimum threshold of what has to be available through an API before you can say look there’s enough there that we can actually help out. Or are there have there been platforms yet we’re not going there because there’s just nothing there and we don’t want to get into screen scraping right.

[00:04:34] Yes and yes actually so we we’ve always taken the approach that our ideal relationship with any platform is is through a published API and ideally through a commercial API it’d be quite honest. That’s how we prefer to get data. There are platforms that you know we’ve seen that evolution repeatedly platform emerges.

[00:04:54] There is organic engagement on that platform. They open their API just a little bit.

[00:04:59] Maybe they open it too wide and then pull it back in and change things and then they try to build a business around it.

[00:05:05] And we’ve seen this happen just repeatedly over and over and over again and so what we realized with that is you know we need to be sure that if we’re going to do an integration with the platform we’ve got a great business relationship with that platform that we understand you know where they’re headed. They’re

[00:05:21] mature enough to actually be thinking about this in a way that allows us to get consistent data. So yeah we’re not going to go one leads.

[00:05:30] They are working with Facebook anyway.

[00:05:34] Yes we know the one point seven billion pound gorilla gets to call the shots so that’s kind of how it works.

[00:05:43] And I don’t want to derail the direction of the conversation right away. But maybe let’s bring it back to some ideas are best practices like how do companies what have you seen worked really well for getting consistent data from some of those tools. Because that’s I mean honestly one of the biggest frustrations that lot of people have is sort of how do I bring it all together and how do I make sure it kind of is stable company just like they have.

[00:06:11] They wring their hands about tweaking their web analytics platform because then they won’t have historical data. And that’s my that’s right we’re social it seems like shit by the time you get year over year compares means you probably have screwed something up because you Panetta well.

[00:06:27] So you know there’s a set of things to unpack there. Number one is and this is a ridiculously self-serving answer but I would highly recommend that nobody should really be doing this directly against the platforms themselves.

[00:06:41] And I really do mean that I was at a conference not too long ago and one of the speakers got up and proceeded to give this like 40 slide presentation about how he used all of these tools to build this pipeline at the agency that he works and to process all this data and he’s like you don’t need a product to do this.

[00:07:01] And you know I’m sitting there you know my jaws on the floor a little bit. And I admire his I admire his tenacity but I also know that the second one of those platforms changes that entire house of cards is just going to fall flat right. Right.

[00:07:17] And that’s that’s so you know I consider it one of the things that we do as a you know building a product in this space. Our job is to insulate our customers from all of that shit out there. That’s really what we’re what we’re trying to do.

[00:07:32] And so that said you know you can only you can insulate from API changes and help to provide you know evolution around that as the API evolves so you can add functionality or you can you know we do a ridiculous amount of work to hide all that complexity. And I mean a ridiculous amount of work. The amount of time an engineering team spends the amount of code that goes into it it’s it’s not something you know it’s one of those things where you if you’ve ever written software you know that you can set up a couple of things and all of a sudden you’re getting data and you’re like cool okay this is great right. But to actually make that into a production system that’s actually going to serve a bunch of people you know that’s the other 99 percent of the work even though you can in 30 minutes start getting you know a CSB or some Jaison or something like that. So now to the question of you know what does this actually look like from a metric standpoint and how do you bring these pieces together. How do you compare across platforms.

[00:08:32] You know I think we’re still we’re still in the infancy of what social means and it means so many different things.

[00:08:41] You know I’ve seen some interesting ideas around trying to build a taxonomy of social metrics and things like that but ultimately there’s a lot of different data sources.

[00:08:53] The words we think mean the same thing like and impressions don’t mean the same thing you know and that’s something that is a big challenge and so one of the things that you know we have to work on I think as an industry is coming to a consensus about what those things mean.

[00:09:09] And you know I think where we’re 10 years into this roughly a little bit more at this point and I think if you look back at media measurement in the past for new platforms 10 years in a lot of things we’re still up in the air as well. So that doesn’t make our lives any easier does it make the lives of the analysts or the marketers any easier. But I think it’s the reality that we work in today. So it’s. But that said you know I think we have to push as an industry to start to get some clear definitions around that and we can’t just kind of throw up our hands and say OK well Facebook gives me a number and they call it reach and Twitter gives me a number and they call it impressions and we just kind of say OK let’s just throw the biggest one in PowerPoint and show it to a client.

[00:09:55] Well in both of those channels are not only competing with each other so they’re not necessarily incentivized to say we’re going to make our metrics merge or be comparable unless they are confident that their numbers are going to look better but they’re also rapidly evolving the platforms right I mean you’ve got like every time you turn around you’ve got you know Facebook live stream comes out you know or you know something like Periscope that’s kind of a new day which I always think of that is there’s so many things that are moving the the number of platforms that are hot with different groups you know and depending on who you’re targeting at the same time that the platforms themselves are evolving to try to capture as much market and relevance as they can in that consumer behavior is also like shifting and adjusting.

[00:10:43] And the data that sits on that I mean it does a lot of time seems to me like trying the thing you really can’t do is say we want to we need to figure out what our K.P. eyes are for this right now and we’re expecting that we’ll revisit them every three years because then you’re just there’s shit there could be whole new channels. I was actually at a thing where somebody saying you know we’re working with the with the four major platforms for us. And they said was Facebook Twitter Instagram and he’s like I can’t remember the views. I’m like a Rick Perry moment. He was like I remember the last time my got Pinterest he was like No no it’s like Snapchat and for their demographic he was like Pinterest you know. No way. No. And I have no idea. And I assume Pinterest is still growing and just a big. So you wind up with who’s your audience and it’s not just like how is my website serving this. It’s which of the channels because every one of them is a big investment to manage but also to measure and figure out how to get the data right. And you know I think I hate social media.

[00:11:47] That’s right. Wow. It was.

[00:11:50] It was out loud and I can’t say you know as somebody who needs to quantify it and I can’t necessarily say blame him but I think the way to think about this is that people came into their assessment of social media with a I think an approach that was based more on a traditional media idea where the medium itself is is fairly slowly evolving and it’s really about the way you craft the messaging and things like that you think about radio TV print that sort of thing the actual medium itself didn’t gain a lot of new features. Right.

[00:12:27] You just gave different ways of slicing and segmenting audiences by having you know a million cable channels so if you happen to be somebody who really wants to watch you know 36 hours in a row of us you know renovation shows you can watch TV Right and that they’ve captured an audience there so you can reach that audience specifically.

[00:12:52] But that social comes along and that the media is constantly evolving as well as the messaging for that media and how those mediums aggregate audiences is evolving so you’re moving along like three different dimensions or as before you were kind of moving more along one dimension that makes sense and so when you think it’s not you also have the with TV all you could do was buy ads whereas in social you’ve literally got your your own or your organic or whatever versus your page in there they’re kind of in the same. They overlap. Right. Which is also not the case with traditional media. Yeah I mean there’s.

[00:13:29] Oh no no. You’re absolutely right.

[00:13:31] I mean we look at that kind of mutually reinforcing sort of triangle of paid owned and earned right.

[00:13:39] And you know obviously earned media predates social by a lot or otherwise there wouldn’t be you know PR firms.

[00:13:45] So but I think the the idea that there’s old media through channels that is not also paid.

[00:13:52] That’s something that’s certainly a little bit new and then being able to combine all of those together through largely the same medium is also kind of different.

[00:14:01] So that’s to me is what’s exciting about it. It’s a very different it’s it’s rapidly evolving and I certainly would rather be involved in this type of world than one that I think where we just all agreed on our measurement 50 years ago and we just kind of do the same thing day in and day out and looking at you Nielsen but you know so I think that’s the I think that’s what’s exciting about it but it is a giant pain in the ass. But I think you know the right way for marketers to think about it I think is and you kind of alluded to this earlier is you know look at the these networks have I think what we thought originally was that there was sort of one template for a social network and it was like Facebook is a social network MySpace and Facebook friends started that kind of additional like that sort of.

[00:14:51] Idea of a social network or we’re just going to connect with our friends and we’re going to post some stuff and share things and communicate on it.

[00:14:57] And that’s what a social network looks like. Right. And so one of the ways that Twitter evolved and was evaluated was kind of under that rubric which is I would argue one of the reasons why Twitter is perceived to be struggling is because they’re evaluated under the Facebook rubric of what you have to have this giant audience of this many in use in Aspe growing this way and they have to spend this much time.

[00:15:19] But what we’ve seen is the emergence of large but still somewhat niche platforms like snap chat for example is humongous. But it is targeted largely at a specific demographic that said snapchat all the time.

[00:15:33] And you know I’m not a teenage girl which is like what you kind of think of a snapshot.

[00:15:37] So it has the potential to be to be bigger more broadly spread than you might think. But I guess where I’m going with this is that there’s not a one size fits all. If you’re a marketer you need to understand what demographics are there and what the sort of you know what the nuances of that network are and decide whether or not you want to invest in it.

[00:16:00] It’s a new medium it’s a new channel. And I think the world’s two things are gone now. One is when you can just invest in one channel and not have to even think about it and then to where you tried to be everywhere all the time.

[00:16:15] So you have to actually go back to basics and think about who am I trying to reach.

[00:16:20] What are those personas. What are the demographics. What is our market research tell us and then how do we best use one of these platforms or multiple of these platforms to do that. And how do we create messaging that works on those platforms.

[00:16:33] But that’s what I see.

[00:16:36] It’s interesting a lot of what you’re talking about to me historically falls in the realm of the social media strategist or the community manager social media manager or whatever the marketer who’s owning social media and less the analyst I’m trying to I’m trying to think of examples of where I’ve seen the question of which channel or which strategy or the use of that channel. I feel like I have a much more run into hey we have all linked in group and we have a Facebook page and give me some insights from it and sometimes I think that fundamental question might have been actually skipped which is another. Another thin challenge for the analyst. There was some sort of surface assumption made that this is the channel that I should be on and it may or may not be right. Yeah that’s right.

[00:17:30] And I think there’s a lot of frustration then because it’s not sort of metrics aren’t being used in the way that we use them for other analysis or research to then pursue a better achievement or outcome because there’s no goal or orientation toward a specific objective necessarily beyond sort of let’s get more people who like us or let’s make sure we reach a bunch of people and maybe that’s what it is maybe all the analysis should be focused on that sort of how do we best reach the biggest possible audience. And you know Tim and I can tell you the story of how we tried to advertise on Facebook.

[00:18:06] That was boy did I or not we’re not we were not getting more or Facebook is every bit the when you’re working with small amounts of money in a very targeted audience you can see right through the obvious crap that is their platform. Well what about this like there’s measurement. There’s I want to reach the right audience and I want to get scale and I want a shift brand perception of drive consideration or maybe a direct response I want to drive people to buy. How much of what you’re seeing is kind of that world versus hey I want to use this as a low latency consumer research market research tool or as one of our very loyal listeners out of Perth Australia. Helen Cripps as I’m reading some papers she’s written recognising that social media for a company can have value just in the fact that it’s enabling their employees to make connections with relevant people to in certain areas that it may not be about large reach or a high number of engagement or scale like do you how do you guys have ways that you sort of break down the there there’s different things we can do with data from social media and not all of it is measurement or optimization or maximising the return of the channel in hard dollars of revenue.

[00:19:36] Yes. So I mean when I go back always on the question but I think so what’s the ARL I have a tweet. Oh that’s a stupid question.

[00:19:49] So I think yeah.

[00:19:53] So we see a lot of different use cases and I actually will I’ll give you the framework that we use so think about it.

[00:20:00] Which maps pretty well I think to our customer base of things.

[00:20:05] So number one I think and I thought I’d like to think about this is like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. All right.

[00:20:11] So there’s like this is my my hierarchy of social media needs. And so at the base of the Foundation for everybody is old old media. Right. It’s the stuff I can publish. All right. And so everybody’s initial perception of social is OK.

[00:20:29] I want to increase my own reach. I want to get more engagement or because these are things that I feel like I have some control over. Right.

[00:20:39] I can hit that button and Hoot Suite that publishes this tweet right.

[00:20:44] You’re brought. You’re broadcasting. Controlling right. Exactly what when and where. Yeah.

[00:20:50] And so the next one that we see is kind of moving up that hierarchy and this hierarchy kind of represents I think the level of sophistication ways in which social actually starts to permeate the organization. The next one is campaigns and that can mean can’t pay campaigns or it can mean more in the sense of I’m doing a specific organic campaign trying to get people around a particular topic and trying to get them to go buy my products or go see my movie or go you know or if it’s more of like a branding oriented campaign to you know associate my brand with health and fitness or something along those lines right.

[00:21:29] And so usually those executions are going to be elements that you control and then the idea was social off and as there would be some earned media that comes into that. And those can be paid I guess or not above and beyond that.

[00:21:43] HOLMES monitoring and so monitoring listening whatever you want to call it.

[00:21:48] But generally speaking the idea that I want to know what people are saying about me or about my products and now there’s a lot of different kind of offshoots of this that could mean that I want to monitor social for support reasons you know I want to be able to engage with people who are talking about some issue with a product or something like that. It could be that I just want to understand maybe at a high level even though it’s bullshit sentiment and I might try to tie that back to perhaps some kind of campaign that Iran improves.

[00:22:22] You know how people you know perceive brands whatever that might be and that you know that concept has been used in a lot of ways.

[00:22:31] I think it vendors over time. It’s been you know let’s let’s tap into let’s listen to what people are saying and let’s you know show like you have 52 percent positive sentiment this week and you’ve had fifty one point six percent positive sentiment last week so you must be you must be doing something right.

[00:22:49] You know but there is a lot of value to be gleaned from understanding and seeing how people are engaging and talking about your brand. That is important.

[00:23:00] It could be individual influence or individual person level.

[00:23:04] It’s important if somebody who is well known well respected is saying very publicly with their own platform very bad things about you do need to know that because that can shape your strategy it can shape the tactics that you use. Conversely if if people seem extraordinarily happy with your latest product release you know that’s good information as well.

[00:23:25] So we move up from monitoring to competitive analysis and with competitive.

[00:23:31] This is again moving to another level of sophistication. I think this is one of those things that is something people talk about and say they do.

[00:23:38] But but not as many people really do it. And I mean a couple of things with competitive one is really looking at your your actual competitors people you’ve identified customer companies you’ve identified as competitive.

[00:23:52] Understanding how they’re getting engagement understanding their strategies keeping tabs on them for when they release new products or new features.

[00:24:00] Those kinds of things all those things that you might do monitoring your own brand you can do for competitors is that they usually are focused on their own channels or is it seems like could be a hell of a lift to actually go also to their audiences and what they’re saying like if they release the product and what they’re saying about it versus what other people. Or is it both.

[00:24:20] Well I think it’s both.

[00:24:23] I think if you’re if you think about competitive analysis I think you want to know what the competitor is actually doing in publishing and what their owned media looks like what their campaigns look like. Then also what is effectively monitoring them what are their audiences say and perhaps what are their overlaps between their audiences and my audience.

[00:24:45] But I wouldn’t say competitive out benchmarking and just industry wide analysis I view monitoring and listening is more around my own brand things like what are people saying earned media around my stuff.

[00:24:58] But this next level of analysis is really looking at OK what is my share of voice over those competitors. What if I share a voice within the industry as a whole. You know those kinds of things.

[00:25:08] And then the very last one and this is the peak the tip top of of of my Maslow’s hierarchy of social media here is that is research and there’s a tremendous amount of value to be gleaned using social market research especially Twitter because Twitter has this really unique Twitter does not get enough credit for what Twitter really is which is real time information network where people are sharing constantly things that are important around the world all the time. It’s the Zeit Geist and being able to tap into that and understand understand those conversations in a way you really can’t do with any other platform is really powerful.

[00:25:49] So an example that you know talk about that I was I was looking at recently is being able to use Twitter and say geographic information on Twitter to think about where you might want to deploy a product resources.

[00:26:04] Let’s say you’re a brewery for example and you have a seasonal beer that you want to you want to make sure it gets in the right hands so you can use Twitter data to say OK who’s talking about that style of beer where in the U.S. were they talking about that style of beer.

[00:26:21] What seasons today talking about that style of beer the most do.

[00:26:25] Does that actually matter. Distribution network. Do we have a distributor in that state where people are talking about this.

[00:26:31] And so that’s the kind of thing that you can learn very very quickly from social they can have a tremendous impact and how you would actually invest resources as a company and above and beyond just this idea of okay that I get more followers last month than this month. And so that’s where I think you can get into a really interesting conversation from sophisticated about it is where you can. Actually change business processes as a result of what you’ve learned from social and I think that’s that is absolutely within the realm of possibility today and something that you know we try to help our customers do. But it’s something that I think people can do if they use what’s already available.

[00:27:12] See besides reminding me of great lakes brewery Christmas sale that’s very interesting and I think that might.

[00:27:20] That seems like for a lot of analysts. The missing connection between actually doing something with social that is meaningful or impactful as opposed to just sort of measuring our likes or tweets or whatever.

[00:27:34] Well I feel like there’s a that is taking a market research mindset a lot of times the competitive research or the or the market research. To me I don’t think falls in the scope of the assigned role for the analyst. And at the same time the market research group or department. There’s kind of used to their primary research and secondary research that’s got you know this weight behind it if it’s primary research we’re commissioning surveys of secondary research then it’s coming from a well regarded source. And they kind of struggle with the squishiness of this much messier data how to even tackle it. And I kind of feel like that that opportunity just falls on a big ass chasm between those two mindsets and there’s a challenge to say how do you bridge that gap to say let’s get these groups together understand what this is. Put the number of likes and read tweets and scroll that what is this datasource. How could we look at it and get that sort value out of it. I’m not seeing that happen with the organizations I work with but it seems like an opportunity I think is an opportunity.

[00:28:44] And I you know I’m speaking from most of our customers that we work with our I would say as indeed in mid-market and you know we don’t work as much with big enterprise customers.

[00:28:58] We have a number of big enterprise customers and you know who you are and we love you but we we get less than Oceano wasted. Oh that’s a shame.

[00:29:10] Now so we work we tend to work with smaller teams and often the customers we work with don’t necessarily have an analyst role on staff. They might outsource that or they may they may make do with what they can.

[00:29:25] And so I think as you get to a larger organization an organization that has consumer research that has you know marketing and execution around that that maybe has social as a function under marketing and then has an analyst team that’s you know supporting that.

[00:29:40] It’s very easy for this stuff to fall through the cracks because I think people are to a certain degree and I don’t you know I don’t know if this rings true to the experience that you guys have to understand.

[00:29:52] I think that while it kind of brings to mind she has ever read Clayton Christensen stuff innovator’s that type of thing. Absolutely.

[00:30:01] So not rocket science at this point. But one thing that has always stuck with me from from his work is that teams are organized around the functional interfaces of the products that they build.

[00:30:13] And so one of the things that I think has happened here is that there is this long term kind of inertia that’s built around some of these functional interfaces that no longer exist.

[00:30:24] The research takes inputs in the form of surveys or data that they feel like they can trust from from other parties and produces their analysis which then is in that sort of a functional interface into marketing and they use that to come up with their messaging and then there’s another interface where marketing is really about the output and then the analysts about you know kind of taking that input and then producing some metrics that the marketers can look at.

[00:30:53] And so this idea of these social channels being both inputs and outputs means that ultimately those functional interfaces are broken down and they’re not they’re not in the right places anymore within these organizations and so I don’t pretend to have the right.

[00:31:08] You know I I can’t walk into Big Company X that has these types of interfaces and say Big Company X you should tear down these walls and do this sort of thing. But I think that the companies that are able to put those teams together in a constructive way and realize that the functional interfaces that exist are no longer valid are going to be the ones that are going to be able to do some of the most interesting things.

[00:31:35] By treating social inputs and outputs into the into that process.

[00:31:40] So that’s kind of how I view it.

[00:31:42] That doesn’t you know that’s all well and good cause I didn’t change a damn thing at any one of these companies that I think there is there is there is value and there’s there’s winds significant winds to be had by realizing that some of those dividers now those interfaces are outmoded.

[00:32:03] I’m chuckling a little bit remembering the experience I had where we were external as an agency and the two large consumer brand had commissioned us to put a social media command center social media listening post or something it was kind of around when the Super Bowl that was ending in Indianapolis and they had a great. I mean they’re always the pictures of the social media command centers and I actually thought we were cobbling tools together because there was we were cobbling paid tools together we weren’t just kind of cobbling together hooking into API eyes and trying to figure out the how much do we listen for the brain a lot of what you’re talking about. We were hoping to get to the top of that hierarchy.

[00:32:45] There was also a piece of saying yeah we need to manage some some metrics to to see if there’s a spike in something and we do need to take some look at sentiment because not that we care whether we’re good or bad but there’s enough people talking about this brand we can’t read every tweet. So we want to find the ones that had emotion in the tweet and scan those and see what’s going on and try to put a process around it. But damn it was resource intensive. I mean it’s just because it’s Zeit Geist and you sort of have this feeling of you’ve got to be out there engaged in it or listening.

[00:33:19] The challenge with Twitter is there’s so much there and it happens in real time and some of it is ephemeral and some of it is important. And sorting through that is certainly non-trivial.

[00:33:29] But that said there’s a lot of value in there both at the individual user level at the tweet level and then I think at the aggregate level. And so I think organizations have to make a decision. A lot of times they they don’t pick one of those levels to think about and they try to either they try to do all of them at once and it sounds like maybe in the project that you were looking at you were kind of like well you know we need to think about this from an aggregate perspective.

[00:33:59] There’s all these people talking about us what’s the sentiment of that and we need to look at that and capture as much data as we can but then we also need to be able to see individual comments and maybe we want to respond to those and then we need to understand whether or not we should respond to this person because this person is important or not. By some metric and then by the time you do all of that you’ve gotten yourself into something that is incredibly resource intensive and only companies with lots of resources can can pull it off. And those big companies have been telling stories about how they created some kind of you know super sweet Social Media Command Post you know and everybody want it to kind of make that happen for themselves.

[00:34:37] Well that may not surprise either one of you that I was I was the one who was trying to desperately just try to get articulated what the different structure what the framework was for what it was we were trying to do and there wasn’t a whole lot of interest in I was getting looked at like I had three heads but I was used to it you know where were you Tim when the Oreo blackout I’m so blissfully moved on from the point where my agency I needed a sit in.

[00:35:07] This is get close to home because Hayes was involved in an earlier version.

[00:35:12] I have no I have I’ve been traveling straight Super Bowls and I have never watched them the same again.

[00:35:18] So what about the other channels like for a while you guys were pushing and maybe not pushing you were you were kind of heavy into figuring out tumbler. I mean you kind of educated me on tumblr.

[00:35:29] I still feel like people say can we get cool analytics on tumblr and I’m like well yes but that’s just the Web page interface and you’re heavy users of Tumblr or working in in the dashboard and in their feed and that seems like a table I’ve got I’ve had clients that flat out do not understand the channel the medium even how the medium works and they want to measure it whereas that is it is it on the wane is it still growing. Is it.

[00:35:54] Tumblr is tumblr has has been misunderstood for a long time.

[00:36:00] You know it is one of those very powerful parts of the Internet that generates so much of what we think of as Internet culture but has not been able to monetize that and be as mainstream as I think there was.

[00:36:14] You know the intent for it around the time of the Yahoo acquisition is partly because it’s this it’s such a hybrid channel and people don’t know how to approach it.

[00:36:26] Do I approach it as a publishing platform or lets me have a you know a nice blog and a public facing you know a public facing property line right.

[00:36:37] Or do I or do I view it more like Twitter where you know most of the activity that actually happens on tumblr happens logged in on the dashboard where people are scrolling through their feeds and that kind of thing and so that that too that dual sided nature of Tumblr is something that was often really hard for people to to get their heads around or has been hard for people to get their heads around.

[00:36:59] And somewhat harder to sell advertising on from Yahoos perspective. You know people coming at it from the web analytics side of things like oh I just put you know my Google Analytics Javascript on there and then I’ve measured tumblr.

[00:37:11] Right. Well you’ve missed the 60 plus percent of activity that happens as the from the tumblr social network.

[00:37:18] Right.

[00:37:20] The haben and I’m glad I can get somebody some marketers saying hey Tumblr told us we can put Google analytics on it put it on and then I go back and forth like and I’m trying to tell them like OK yes sure. Great. Good on you. But that’s not where hopefully most of the action is happening. Otherwise you’re just using it as your content management system for your bigger website. You’re not actually using the channel right though.

[00:37:43] Yeah.

[00:37:44] And then they’re surprised if they don’t get like you know a million blogs. Right. And you haven’t actually optimized for that in any way.

[00:37:52] Yeah. The people who were coming to it are just browsing the web they don’t know what the little circular arrow thing is up there.

[00:37:58] And you know but I mean for us the way I view the channels right now just in terms of the landscape as Facebook is it is a must have for almost everybody unless you’re very much focused on particular niches.

[00:38:09] But if you if you want to cycle when you check that off sweet we did it.

[00:38:13] Yes.

[00:38:15] Twitter is the other must have and it is by and large still it is a must have and you know it’s it’s second to Facebook in that regard but I think for most businesses which we’re talking about here I think they’re going to want to have a Twitter presence.

[00:38:30] Instagram is fast becoming a must have though because of Instagram. You know the limitations on the types of interaction you can have with Instagram and the fact that Instagram doesn’t have a native amplification function that you can’t read Graham as part of its various variants those kind of things. It’s.

[00:38:46] Still limited in a lot of ways that you can use it. Instagram is not very good right now for direct response he came out a clickable link in a caption.

[00:38:55] How much is how much Facebook can obviously have relations with all these guys but how much is Facebook kind of pushing them to not kind of to stay off their lawn and a staff that the sales staff from other ships. I guess.

[00:39:10] Well I think it’s my perception and this is my personal perception and form somewhat like conversations.

[00:39:17] But I think it’s that they want Instagram you know Facebook obviously is Facebook’s.

[00:39:22] I mean obviously that Facebook’s strategy is to acquire a bunch of different endpoints with which people interacts with Facebook properties and they have largely let those properties be themselves. You know they pay tremendous amounts of money for those properties and still allow them to be themselves you know Whatsapp 18 billion dollars or whatever it was and Instagram for only a billion dollars.

[00:39:45] By the way it was just absolute genius acquisition is insane. I was just genius.

[00:39:50] And so you know Facebook has gone back to this idea that I was going about of these channels having their own you know I identity and their own ways about aggregating audiences I think for Facebook Instagram is kind of that brand advertising platform for them. It’s a way it’s a place for brands to do more.

[00:40:10] Of the type of advertising they would do on a visual or more TV kind of medium. Now that said obviously Facebook has been pitching video really really hard. I see Instagram as you know kind of that premium brand content and Facebook proper as more direct response for it.

[00:40:31] I think just inevitably because of the way that it works that’s that’s what they’re doing there.

[00:40:36] So I kind of see it that way I don’t know if it’s a get off my lawn type situation one way or another.

[00:40:40] But I think it’s I think they’re actually really complimentary and I think if one were to just Instagram just devolve into basically Facebook with a different with like more slightly more pictures and a streamlined interface that doesn’t really benefit Facebook as a whole. No they don’t.

[00:40:57] Facebook doesn’t really need more M.A use they need better segmentation of those menus out to audiences they can sell marketers and they use monthly active users.

[00:41:08] Yes. Could you drop into them dropping some acronyms is mostly users. Moutza it’s a mouse that’s not said mouse up with your friend who’s got mouse.

[00:41:18] I don’t know. It’s one of those things that you guys would know that probably better than I would be mouse.

[00:41:25] Yeah. No it’s just a pizza. And see if I throw open my mouth. I think it’s deprecated that Metropol.

[00:41:33] Yeah I know they did. That goes to it’s the perfect example of one that people were on that bandwagon and then they’re like yeah you know there are people rising. This is complete bullshit so we’re just going to remove it. Right so.

[00:41:46] Oh yeah. Like the recent video tracking metrics that were recently revealed to be just a little bit different than real life data anyway because this is a great discussion. Actually there was a few really good things. I certainly got us a couple of really nice things out of it. So

[00:42:05] really I think it’s it’s good we like to do a segment on our show called The last call where we just go around the horn talking about something we found that was interesting in the last couple weeks. Why don’t you start for one. I would love to. And actually this was last call for me is coming straight from my confirmation bias which is right where you want it to be. And I ran across an article on Chief Martek Scott Brinker’s blog about some research done by Seaby Global which is a company I’m not familiar with but they did some analysis of personalization and how companies were successful or not successful. And they found that tools in investment were not a leading indicator of success but the actual people involved with the personalization program. And it’s like oh I’m going to take that steady and carry it with me always people over tools in anything related to those kinds of things because I think the same thing is true of analytics.

[00:43:05] And I think Scott Braker did a nice job of kind of elucidating on that topic so. Good good read something that you know obviously fits with my views but I like that article quite a bit nice.

[00:43:17] HAYES You want to share.

[00:43:20] Yeah I will I’m going to go deep in the weeds here I think because there’s obviously a lot of analysts on here and says something that I don’t know if I’d call myself an analyst.

[00:43:32] I dabble in it. Put it that way.

[00:43:35] But a couple of tools recently that have been really valuable for me and a couple of analytics product projects I’ve been doing is something called CSP kit like comma separated values.

[00:43:47] It’s a set of command line tools for those of you who like to use command line tools that allow you to do some really really cool stuff with CSB. So if you’ve ever gotten somebody handing you I don’t know oh let’s say a 10000 row GSV or maybe 100000 ROCI as Wii and you didn’t really want to open that up in excel. You wanted to actually get some data out of it and start looking at that. Then the CSP is really awesome for that and I will also say that if you want to pair that nicely with what sequal like which is another nice little easy to use command line database you can really make SEUS fees do some crazy stuff without having to resort to.

[00:44:30] I’ll call it the limitations of excel. So anyway. Something something fun if you’re into that kind of thing.

[00:44:38] So you’re perpetuating this Silicon Valley CEO drop in the CSB and sequel right. Or maybe you’re busting the stereotype.

[00:44:47] I just every time I do it I feel like I should probably be doing something much more strategic.

[00:44:52] But sometimes you know you just gotta get your hands dirty with some strategic comma separated values Oh I work. Yeah.

[00:45:00] You know we didn’t put in your bio that you’re a growth hacker and a data scientist and a data scientist as we all know is what you call an analyst.

[00:45:11] If they live in California so I wondering why he may be using that in an upcoming prison.

[00:45:18] I stole that stole that from somebody I don’t know. It’s not mine.

[00:45:22] It’s very true though it’s very true. All right Tim what’s your last. So mine is we’ve talked about a bunch of different mediums bunched media.

[00:45:32] I’m going to I’m going to endorse an entire site which is be medium dot com which I was just vaguely became aware of it and I think it was maybe when Blair Reeves was on and he was like basically been blogging on Medium dotcom finally sort of figured out that oh it’s this kind of centralized thing where you can go and create a new account.

[00:45:49] What’s struck me is that I get my little daily digest and it is like interesting little nuggets that I probably want it comes into my inbox. So it’s back to e-mail. So oldest digital media out there but it winds up having stuff that piqued my interest and just to be a little specific.

[00:46:08] Just one very recently or a month or so ago based on time shifting. There was that article by a guy named John Saito sayto. I don’t know I say I know it is this my interface or yours where he just riffs for a little bit about if you wreck if you start looking at all your applications and you’re looking at your space or my space and how there’s just not consistency. If you’re in Google Drive it’s my drive. But if you’re an Amazon it’s your accountant and he can kind of steps back and sort of evaluates what’s that mean and what is the mindset of the product developers and the use of your versus mine. It was kind of made me stop and think they hadn’t really noticed that but that’s kind of interesting. So it seems to be kind of wide ranging for whatever reason I spent five minutes and my profile and it seems to drop stuff in them more often than not actually find kind of intriguing. And so it’s a for medium back home.

[00:47:00] Nice. Well know that’s some quality last calls. Well again this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much Hayes for coming. If you’ve been listening and have questions or have comments about what we didn’t get to or cool things you’ve been doing please send your question along with a self-addressed stamped envelope to P.O. I read.

[00:47:27] No no no.

[00:47:28] Hit us on Facebook or Twitter. We need to get a few bucks just so that we can do that. That would be amazing. P.O. Box 1 2 1 2 Burbank California. But we do we’ve got our Facebook. We’ve got Twitter and we’ve got the measure slack which we didn’t talk about as social media but there’s set a social community there in the measure Slack’s a joy in that and get all your questions and comments answered.

[00:47:57] Anyways thanks once again Heys for coming on the show. It’s been a pleasure for my cohost Tim Lowson panel.

[00:48:09] Thanks for listening. And don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook Twitter on measures like we welcome your comments and questions coming forward slash analytics or analytics on Twitter.

[00:48:24] Smart guys want to fit in and. Made up of term. Limits don’t. Work. OK we’re manage to do. I got a rework the whole thing. Never mind. Just. Said. The company is doing well right. And the baby is alive. So really if you look at YouTube primary K.P. you know. It’s pretty darn good. You know we’re beginning a social media measurement. I’ve got a lot to say about that. OK so. I thought this was a politics you. Let’s turn it. And that’s just to avoid this topic. I’ll agree with that. You’ll. Realize what that is going to sound like as it was coming out of my mouth. Wait what. This rocket thing is really paying off. Is that a social app. What I’m looking at my pocket the last like 17 things are all. Are related. Calpe was arranged for two years in a grid. No one thing that can’t be said of you is that you lack focus. We’re not even connected. Is. That right. I think right now we are. You know what you have to see. Well yeah. Yeah I don’t know we’ll see how this goes. Yeah well I’m right I will take that risk. Oh how dare. You know. This. Person. Really. I literally think about that every time I. Go to uni. If you are. Oh that should be a fun conversation. It’s. Rented turn. To register.

[00:50:26] Why don’t you read it or read it or know where it is read it. I have never been able to. Read it or read it. OK. Yes. You just don’t like or. Read. It. Or. Rock in social media.

 

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