Social Media Engagement, Ice Cream, and Murder

Earlier this summer, the Altimeter Group and WetPaint collaborated to produce the ENGAGEMENTdb site and related ENGAGEMENTdb Report ( a free download).

It’s truly a must-read if you’re interested in how large brands are engaging their customers through social media. In the Introduction, Ben Elowitz (of WetPaint) and Charlene Li (of Altimeter) claim:

While much has been written questioning the value of social media, this landmark study has found that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. The relationship is apparent and significant: socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful.

So now we know it pays to be social, but it is important to note that by “social,” we’re talking about deep engagement, not merely having a presence.

But there’s an interesting rhetorical slip there – in the space between “a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement” and “it pays to be social” we’ve crossed the gap between correlation and causation.

Read more…

Twitter 101: These Are Not The Cavaliers You’re Looking For

I don’t normally blog much about twitter: it seems like an already over-covered by other voices.

Lately, though, I’ve been seeing an increase in twittering of dubious value. For example, automatically following (or stalking, as Ari Herzog put it) folks who mention a given term, and overly friendly twitter accounts purporting to be young women who want you to see their ‘special’ photos on other sites. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s also seen lots of new followers whose usernames look suspiciously like they were generated by a script – JohnSmith18273, JaneDoe45039.

This week, for example, Ann from MarketingProfs mentioned that her dogs – King Charles Cavalier Spaniels – are staying with my wife and I while she’s out of town. Then rt_cavs retweeted it:

Indiscriminate Retweeting

The problem, of course, is that her dogs have nothing to do with the Cleveland Cavaliers. I don’t think Cavs fans are so enthralled with their team as to be interested in the dogs, or the cars, or any of the other things cavalier might mean.

When keyword matching twitterbots are at their best, they can broadcast tweets of interest to a broader community who might otherwise not have seen it. In cases like this, though, they just reduce the signal-to-noise ratio.