Well I guess this depends on who you ask…

End-users would go ”cool stuff!”, privacy activists would say “its about time! and a major victory to privacy” and what about digital asset owners or digital strategist. What would be their reaction?

I reckon would be “thats not too good” I thought everything is trackable on line and how are we (agencies) going to say to our clients. Maybe oh well you see we have approximately 20% of the traffic unaccountable for and that explains why the drop in x & y. I strongly believe that this is due to the missing 20%.

Today, analytics is part and parcel of any online asset – clients demand them so to know exactly how people are surfing their sites, SEO specialists love them cause they can find out what are the keywords people use to get into the site.

Agencies (Client-side Marketers as well) use them to justify the investment (amongst many other metrics) and say how well they have done. Now with people able to opt out – would this mean a loss of valuable data that now relate to a negative relationship to the ability to generate insights that inspire a strategy?

It has been said to a strategist we need numbers to make business cases and to position our argument. So what does this mean to digital strategists. How else are they going to go our data so easily and at such low cost and so quickly!

With this opt out feature, does this signal a massive demand of quantitive/qualitative research whereby we conduct surveys or gather focus group and run modeling equations to make sense of it out.

Would this Google Analytic opt out feature ‘cripple” the digital industry? and how are digital strategists going to work around this problem? after online its seems we are very data-drive, no?

What are your thoughts? I’m keen to hear.

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Here are some of the Social Media Marketing Monitoring tools that I’ve used. Some are pretty good and some not so but nevertheless still works. Try it out for yourself.

Hope this helps.

Social Media Marketing Monitoring Tools

Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

• Google Alerts @ http://www.google.com/alerts (Generic KeyWord)

• Alert Rank @ http://www.alertrank.com (Accompanies Google Alerts)

• Social Mention @ http://www.socialmention.com (Targets blogs, forums)

• Tweetbeep.com @ http://www.tweetbeep.com (Targets Twitter)

• Twittrratr @ http://www.twittrratr.com (Targets Twitter with Sentiments)

• Watchthatpage @ http://www.watchthatpage.com (Monitor Specific Page)

• Lexicon @ http://www.facebook.com/lexicon (Targets Facebook)

• Backtype @ hhttp://www.backtype.com (Targets Blogs and Forums)

• Addict-to-matic @ http://www.addictomatic.com (Create One-stop Page of all mentions) *Love this*

• TechrigySM2 @ http://sm2.techrigy.com/main (Dashboard – Targets mentions of keywords)

• Board Tracker @ http://www.boardtracker.com (Tracks Forum Discussions)

• Trendrr @ http://www.trendrr.com (tracks everything according to them)

Paid Social Media Monitoring Tools

• Trackur.com @ http://www.trackur.com (Targets ALL social media mentions) – reasonably priced

• Dialogix @ http://www.dialogix.com.au (Targets ALL social media mentions) – mid tier pricing

• Radian6 @ http://www.radian6.com (Target ALL social media mentions) – high tier pricing.

Social Media Trend Tools

• Google Trends @ http://trends.google.com

• Blogpulse @ http://www.blogpulse.com

Please feel free to add to the list for those I’ve missed out. Thanks!

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Social Media Marketing has received centre stage in most of today’s marketer’s planning plateau, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube etc. Not is it without a day passed without a mentioned of them.

Marketers are curious about this ‘new’ media channel, proponents of it highlight its strong ability in improving the bottom line. Well to be honest, it’s really not a surprise, given that that many studies depict a sense of positivism in it. For example, TNS USA study in 2007 found the following…

“if you had 15 minutes of free time…”

1. 17% Social networking
2. 17% Talk on Cell
3. 14% Watch tV
4. 10% Surf the internet etc.

and Forrestor Research’s highly positive report on social media. For more information please view my previous entry found here.

If these numbers hold water, it definitely paints a picture that social media networking is a force to be reckon with and companies should engage them, afterall one of marketer’s many tasks is to seek customer engagement though many of the touch points available at its disposal.

However the reality is social media marketing is something of a black box, marketers inject programs into the black box and cross their fingers at the output. Though we appreciate the art of it, there should be some science involved to track. After all in the boardroom, numbers do the talking and in addition, there has been a saying, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”.

If this mantra is true, does this really hold water in the social media networking or marketing world? Well maybe, well maybe not. I do not know. But what I can offer is if we were to approach the measurement, we could perhaps look at alternatives – after all there is no such thing as a one off solution, no?

Perhaps the standard quantitative notions of approach to analyzing data (bounce rate, CTR, regression, path analysis etc) may be cast aside for qualitative methods? afterall social being social requires the need for verbal and face checks, no? or perhaps we should just get companies to state their objectives and we just track certain metrics. Do we really need to measure it? that is the question. Or shall we just let social media play its role and just cross our fingers and hopefully the spread of it is positive and will correlate positively with profitability and hope that we can control the spread if its negative.

Well what are your thoughts? I’m keen on hearing them.

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Now VAGSG stands strong at around 9000 members where activities have been planned both online and offline to foster growth and of course least but not least CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT – THE word in the marketing arena. VAGSG enjoys a strong return rate and it is a highly interactive forum as well.

How does one do that, the operating philosophy is very simple, just make users create contents (user generated contents) and let the spiders crawl through your web. That’s IT.

Actually thats not just it. I wish it was just that (haha). It was really a painful but challenging journey to make VAGSG what it is today. It is the de facto Audi and VW forum in Singapore.

The planning phase included:

1. Differentiate – USP – unique selling proposition. We are an independent forum run by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.
2. Excite – By generating fun activities (online and offline), chat about the latest models, modification of the cars etc.
3. Connect – this is done via offline ways, the intent is to get the forummers to meet one another and develop relationships and form a TRIBE. Its a long term engagement, encouraging customer loyalty and last by not least advocate positive word of mouth (yes viral again).

Our bounce rate of the forum is very encouraging (very low – I compared it with a fellow local automobile website) and the time spent on the forum is very encouraging.

That’s all from me for now. Will update more when I get the chance on the VAGSG forum story from its humble beginnings to what it is today. The e-strategies involved to drive traffic, attract and retain the forummers (offline and online) and of course will share the web analytics side of it, SEO and SEM as well. What I have learnt.

Lastly VAGSG has an army of supporters who cant wait to tell people about the forum and of course their rides and spread the positive word of mouth – yes its viral again.

Didnt Xerox research show, that is cost 5 times more to attract a new customer than to serve an existing, just let the customer do the job for you afterall your potential customer will trust them more, no? viral baby. The power of WOM.

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