Use Conversation Mining and Facebook Data to Thump Your Competition

1. ok by Jay Baer
An ebo
Use Conversation Mining+Facebook Data
To Thump Your Competition
1

2. Table Of Contents
3 Executive Summary
4 Overview
5 Strategy First, Metrics Last
6 Two Common Lies About Social Media
8 Facebook Insights Is a Glass Half Empty
10 Filling the Other Half of the Glass
11 Words + Numbers = Knowledge
13 Four Ways To Thump Your Competition
with Facebook Conversation Mining
14 What is Conversation Mining Worth?
15 Now Do This!
16 About the Author
16 About NetBase
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3. Executive Summary
Nobody said social media would be easy, just that it would be The best social media operations have a different way of
awesome. It takes real work to do it well, even (perhaps especially) looking at social media measurement. They don’t just look at
in the area of metrics. Too many companies focus on obvious, the numbers; they also capture key qualitative data and use it
accumulation metrics—i.e., Facebook “likes”—rather than on more to make improvements to their content, channel selection,
nuanced measures that indicate whether the whole initiative is timing, and more.
driving business value.
For thousands of years, companies have wished they could
Here’s Why This Happens: eavesdrop on their customers – and now they can! Yet, most
of them rarely take full advantage of this ability, especially
1. Marketers adopt two false assumptions: on Facebook.
That Facebook is a customer acquisition vehicle, when in
If you go beyond the numbers and add a conversation layer to
reality, 84% of Facebook fans report that they are current
your Facebook analysis, you can gain four critical advantages
or former customers.
over your competition:
That fan page activity equates to fan engagement (or that
“engagement” is actually of inherent value) #1: You get an “early warning system” for issues and
proactively prevent them from spreading
2. They utilize metrics from Facebook Insights such as People
#2: You get the ability to make uber-quick course
Talking About This (PTAT) because they are easy to calculate
corrections for promotions
(Hey! Facebook does the math for me – yea!)
#3: You get the ability to change products or packaging
3. They forget that even the perfect metric can tell you less than in response to what customers say IN THE WILD, not
the full story. The world isn’t made up of ones and zeros; it’s in a survey
made up of people.
#4: You get the conversational cues you need to better
speak your customers’ language
Stay with me for the next few pages, and I’ll show you how
to combine numbers with words to thump your competitors
on Facebook.
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4. Overview
Is there any topic beat to death more than “social media
success metrics”? Yet, even with the huge amount of
attention being lavished on it, it’s still a Yeti-like mystery “Although many organizations
to many marketers. In a recent survey by Awareness, Inc.,
57% of respondents chose “Measuring Social” as the top have established formalized
social marketing challenge.1 Even after hundreds of industry
luminaries and pundits (including me) have practically social media programs, the vast
deforested entire regions writing about the topic, marketers
are still looking for the right equation to figure out what works majority - 75% - still lack a
in social media.
Part of the challenge is that there are no “magic numbers”
holistic measurement strategy.”
when it comes to measuring social media. What’s appropriate The Social Media ROI Cookbook: Six Ingredients Top Brands Use
to Measure the Revenue Impact of Social Media, July 2012
for your company to measure depends upon how you use
social, and for what business functions. You might start your
measurement quest with standard metrics; but then you need
to individualize them for your business and your industry –
and that can require considerable effort.
Second, no matter how carefully and cogently you select
your metrics, they often tell only half the story. Most social
media metrics measure accumulation (not behavior), and thus
miss an important part of the picture. (You can tell when they
measure accumulation, because they count up from zero.
Facebook fan counts are one such number.) Getting content
and social media marketing right requires you to look beyond
the accumulation numbers to understand not just how many,
but what, why, how, and when.
1
Awareness, Inc., “The State of Social Marketing Report,” September 2012
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5. Strategy First, Metrics Last
Let’s remember: the goal is not to be good at social media;
the goal is to be good at business, because of social media.
Social media metrics selection is the last thing you should
do when rolling out your program, because you have to pick BUSINESS OBJECTIVES
measures that reflect what you want to accomplish with MARKETING OBJECTIVES
your social media strategy – which in turn supports your
MARKETING STRATEGY
marketing strategy – which in turn supports your business
strategy, per the nifty pyramid chart, adjacent. MARKETING TACTICS
If your social media strategy (and marketing strategy for that SOCIAL MEDIA OBJECTIVES
matter) is about creating awareness, measure that. If you’re
trying to generate sales, measure that. If you want to use SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY
social media as a loyalty and retention tool, measure how
SOCIAL MEDIA TACTICS
well that’s working for you.
It takes careful thinking, access to data, and a holistic SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS
approach to come up with the right indicators for your
business. You can see the complete thought process behind
this premise in Avinash Kaushik’s fantastic blog post.2 That
guy is so smart, it’s scary.
“If you only care about
averages, you’ll only be
an average marketer”
– Jay Baer
2
See http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/facebook-advertising-marketing-
best-metrics-roi-business-value/
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6. Two Common Lies About Social Media
In addition to not customizing their metrics enough, and not current or former customers. In The Social Habit, a study I
considering metrics in the proper strategic sequence, many completed in September 2012 in partnership with Jason Falls,
marketers are guilty of two other false assumptions: Mark Schaefer, Tom Webster, and Edison Research, we found
that brand affinity is as important an underlying motivator for
1. Facebook is a customer acquisition vehicle (false) Facebook “likes” as are deals.3
The reality is that people who interact with your business The big opportunity is turning your fans (who are also your
in social media are already interacting with you in other customers) into volunteer marketers who extend your
channels. In a 2011 study conducted by worldwide advertising Facebook reach.
agency DDB, 84% of Facebook fans reported that they are
In general, why have you Deals/Discounts/Coupons 61
“liked” a brand, product You like the brand and support them
39
57
or company on Facebook? To learn about new products
News and information updates 34
Articles, stories and other ideas 27
Enjoy the person(s) posting - they are interesting/funny 23
Recipes 22
Humor/comedy 21
They share interesting links from around the internet 20
Customer service/support 15
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
3
See http://socialhabit.com/
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7. Two Common Lies About Social Media
2. Engagement = Advocacy (false)
Lots of activity does not necessarily mean that your volunteer
marketers are successfully advocating on your behalf on
Facebook. Let’s look at the example of Coppertone, which
had a high number of fan posts and comments on its
Facebook fan page during the summer of 2012. The volume
data (measured as “engagement”) looks great, until you dig
deeper and recognize that a lot of this chatter came from
parents complaining about problems with the children’s
photo contest that the company was running.
These fans were “engaging” with Coppertone, but not in a
way that supports the brand.
Figure 3. Volume of fan posts and comments on the Coppertone
Facebook fan page, July-August 2012. (Source: NetBase)
Figure 4. Coppertone attributes and
terms being discussed on the company’s
Facebook fan page. (Source: NetBase)
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8. Facebook Insights Is a Glass Half Empty
Facebook Insights is universally available, and free. And that’s
about where the good news stops. In fairness, Insights is okay at Users create a “story” that adds to
telling you the basics, and Facebook (and Twitter) are brilliant for PTAT when they:
making some of the data public, which induces hyperventilation
when competitors get more fans and followers than you do. “Like” a page
Post on the page wall
Facebook does capture valuable demographic information;
Like a post
especially useful now that Facebook has given companies
the ability to target posts by geography. Diving into detailed Comment on a post
Insights via mind-numbing Excel export shows you interesting Share a post
information such as likes, reach, clicks, and more by country, by Answer a question
city, and by age/gender.
RSVP to a page’s event
You can also determine the source of new likes (Facebook, your Mention the page in a post
website, mobile, etc.). Tag the page in a photo
Check in at a place
Furthermore, Facebook Insights tells you how much activity is
associated with your page and what posts are generating that Share or like a check-in deal
activity. For good or ill, People Talking About This (PTAT)—my Write a recommendation
nominee for worst abbreviation ever—is the coin of the realm. It Generate “viral shares”
tells you the number of users who have created a “story” about through subsequent likes,
a page (or post) that has displayed in a user’s news feed during a comments, or re-shares
seven-day period. (Keep in mind that this number looks back nine
days in actuality, because Facebook Insights has a two-day lag.)
While PTAT sounds good on the surface, it isn’t very prescriptive
because it’s not a “clean” measure, but rather a steaming gumbo
of a bunch of behaviors, thrown into a single statistical pot.
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9. Facebook Insights Is a Glass Half Empty
There are better numbers than PTAT available if you export your
page-level data, such as:
Weekly Total Reach: The number of people who saw any
content from your page, across the entirety of Facebook.
(You can also look at reach to see how many people were
reached via your own page, versus shares from your fans
(known as viral reach), versus paid reach (when you pay to
promote a Facebook post).)
Weekly Total Impressions: The number of times your
content was viewed, across the entirety of Facebook.
Weekly Engaged Users: The number of people who
clicked or engaged with something on your page in a
one-week period.
Weekly Negative Feedback Users: The number of people
who gave negative feedback on something you published
(somewhat similar to an “unsubscribe” in email parlance).
Facebook Insights (or a third party using the Insights API) also
allows you to look at key metrics on a per-post level. You can
see breakdowns on specific numbers of clicks, comments,
shares, and so forth for each post. This level of analysis is handy Figure 5. An example of summary metrics by post
for comparison over time to see what content types or subjects (NetBase Digital Channel Intelligence solution).
are resonating with your fans.
Be cautious about using averages, however, when studying
your Facebook results using Insights. You’ll be much better off
examining at the individual post level. If all you care about are
averages, you’ll always be an average marketer.
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10. Filling the Other Half of the Glass
Because it is based solely on math, what Facebook Insights
does not do well is answer your “why?” “so what?” or “now
what?” questions. When your goal is (at least in part) to 48% of people who have “liked”
ignite your fans’ passion for your company and keep them
advocating on your behalf, those fans’ algorithmically defined a brand on Facebook have at
activity is only half of the story. Facebook Insights is like
counting click-through rates for email. The information is least occasionally commented on
valid, but it doesn’t tell you everything you need to do to
make improvements. information posted by a brand.
DDB Worldwide and OpinionWay Research,
“Facebook and Brands,” October 11, 2010
t’s Close
So Le Gap!
That
10

11. Words + Numbers = Knowledge
Some companies (and social analytics solutions) have tried
to tackle the “so what” of Facebook behavior by augmenting
Insights with measures that look at the tilt of fan interactions.
What is the sentiment of your Facebook posts? What is the
“passion index?” It’s an interesting field, and with much
research completed that purports to tie passion to loyalty (and
thus dollars), I can get behind this type of measurement.
But it’s still incomplete. I still want to know – and you probably
do as well – “why” and “now what?” How can we make all this
data actionable? Figure 6. Analyzing Corvette’s Facebook fan page conversations exhibits a lot
of positive fan sentiment, which is in addition to the likes and share counted.
The best social media operations look at measurement more
broadly. They don’t just look at the numbers; they also capture
key qualitative data and use it to make improvements to their
content, channel selection, timing, and more.
For thousands of years, companies have wished they could
eavesdrop on their customers – and now we can! Yet we rarely
take full advantage of this ability, especially on Facebook.
It’s not just that they like the product you sell, but what
specific attributes they like. The taste? The smell?
The styling? The price point? The really cool commercial
that you ran last Sunday?
Looking at the substance of the conversations – singling
out the attributes that people talk about and the sentiment
around those attributes – brings you much closer to
actionable next steps.
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12. Words + Numbers = Knowledge
If you have only a few posts and comments per day, this won’t be too difficult to do manually. If you have a larger Facebook presence,
you should look at solutions like NetBase Digital Channel Intelligence, which can easily scale to hundreds of thousands of comments and
analyze and evaluate the context of what’s being said about you, and why.
Figure 7. Fan comments on the Corvette Facebook fan page
reveal that consumers have a great deal of nostalgia when
they think about the Corvette brand and often connect their
Corvette experiences with family, particularly with Dad.
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13. Four Ways To Thump Your Competition with Facebook Conversation Mining
If you go beyond the numbers and add a conversation layer to Example: A packaged vacation provider noticed that the
your Facebook analysis, you can gain four critical advantages majority of people coming to its fan page were women talking
over your competition: about taking a trip with their “hubby” or “kids.”
1. You get an “early warning system” for issues and proactively Possible Actions: Roll out a contest to elicit the craziest
prevent them from spreading family vacation experience; create a Facebook only-
promotion for quick couples’ getaways.
Every social media crisis starts with a spark. If done properly,
conversation mining will detect that spark before it becomes a 3. You get the ability to change products or packaging in
five-alarm fire. response to what customers say IN THE WILD, not in a survey
Example: A CPG manufacturer identified growing Example: A cereal manufacturer noticed that many of
conversations about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on the fan conversations on a brand page were about snacking,
its Facebook page. not breakfast.
Possible Action: The manufacturer could identify fans with a Possible Action: Extend the brand with new packaging/size
large social graph (lots of friends or followers) and invite them that is ideal for eating on the go.
to a GMO Facebook live chat/discussion.
4. You get the conversational cues you need to better speak
2. You get the ability to make uber-quick course corrections your customers’ language
for promotions
You may think you know how your customers talk about your
Customers are full of great ideas, and you can find them if you products, but I am often surprised when I look at the actual
pay attention. conversation-level results.
Example: A quick-service restaurant chain rolled out a Example: A medical organization mined Facebook
promotion offering its customers a free ice cream sundae with conversations to understand the phrasing that real people use
purchase of a burger. While fans “liked” this offer, the vendor when describing medical conditions.
learned through conversation mining that people talk much
more and more passionately about their fries. Possible Actions: Incorporate this real-world phrasing into
content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and
Possible Action: Create a new promotion, centered around search engine marketing (SEM) activities.
French fries.
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14. What is Conversation Mining Worth?
84% of marketers surveyed for Altimeter Group’s Social Media
ROI Cookbook said that customer insights were a primary
benefit of social media measurement.4 Yet in my experience, The goal is not to be good at
the vast majority of these insights are not captured
systematically but rather shared anecdotally, usually by the social media; the goal is to be
community manager.
good at business, because of
Given that the community manager is typically the only
person in the organization reading every post, decisions are social media. One of the ways
often made based on single points of data and the persuasive
powers of individual community managers. to do so is through improved
A big reason why few companies are able to assign a value to insights into your customers’
conversation mining is because it’s difficult to measure the
value of better decisions. However, it’s somewhat easier to
measure the value of better content.
feelings and thought processes.
– Jay Baer
Think of the quick service restaurant example. What would
be the incremental sales of a free fries promotion compared
to the free ice cream sundae promotion? Or the medical
organization? What if it could improve conversion rates and
cut its cost per acquisition (CPA)? These are business cases
for conversation mining that can produce tangible ROI. And
they show how quantitative and qualitative analyses create a
virtuous circle of improvement.
4
Susan Etlinger, “The Social Media ROI Cookbook: Six Ingredients
Top Brands Use to Measure the Revenue Impact of Social Media,”
Altimeter Group, July 24, 2012 14

15. Now Do This!
Effective Facebook marketing is about having the right content
and making it accessible to fans at the right time. And if you get it
right, they will spread your message on your behalf. But the math See It In Action:
of routine metrics and measures can’t teach you all you need Intrigued by the benefits that conversation
to know to optimize these programs. You need to listen to your mining could bring to your business?
customers better, which will help you make better decisions that Visit http://bit.ly/UpwvRY to request a
will give you a competitive edge on Facebook, and beyond. FREE Facebook fan page conversation
analysis from NetBase.
Here’s your Knockout checklist for success:
Know why you’re on Facebook, and the true impact
that Facebook has on your business
Select cogent/coherent metrics from within Facebook
Insights using native or third-party tools
Use Insights data to give you the “who,” “what,” “where,”
and “when” answers you need to optimize your Facebook
content and audience interactions
Add a qualitative layer to your Facebook program, to
benefit from the power of words – and answer the “why,”
“so what,” and “now what” questions
Develop ways to value (or at a minimum, acknowledge)
the benefits of conversation mining
Consider adding a qualitative layer to other social
outposts, such as Twitter, blogs and beyond
15

16. About The Author About
Jay Baer is a hype-free social and content strategist, speaker, NetBase, NetBase delivers the enterprise social intelligence
and author who has advised more than 700 brands (and platform that global enterprises use to monitor, understand,
29 of the FORTUNE 500) on digital marketing since 1994. and engage with customers in real time. Using a high-
He is President of the consultancy Convince & Convert, precision natural language processing (NLP) engine
which works with leading companies and agencies to take combined with text analytics and machine learning, our
their social and content programs from good to great. His platform processes billions of social media posts to extract
Convince & Convert blog (www.convinceandconvert.com) structured insights from specific channels such as Facebook
is ranked as the #1 content marketing blog in the world by and Twitter as well as the entire social web.
the Content Marketing Institute, and his weekly Social Pros
podcast (www.socialpros.com) is a favorite among social Marketing, public relations, market research, customer
media practitioners. service, sales, and product innovation leaders access these
insights via customizable dashboards and use them to
Jay is a partner (along with Edison Research) in The Social craft winning strategies faster. Clients include Coca-Cola,
Habit, a landmark research project that studies Americans’ Kraft, Taco Bell, HP, IPG, and J. D. Power & Associates.
use of social technologies. He’s also the co-author of The NetBase powers the weekly Sentiment Tracker in the Wall
NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Street Journal and our solutions are sold globally by SAP AG.
Smarter, and More Social (Wiley, 2011), a leading book on
social business transformation.
For more information, visit: www.netbase.com.
@NetBase NetBaseInc
NetBase Solutions, Inc NetBaseInc
r
Jay Bae Try It!
We can help you knockout your
competition! Click here to get your
FREE facebook fan page analysis.
http://bit.ly/UpwvRY
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