Social Media Perspectives

I hate articles like this:

 

How Walmart Won the Facebook War vs Target

 

It shows that there are plenty of Agencies who don't understand Social Media. And how sensationalism is why so many people are still suckers. To be fair I can come  up with many bright comments about the details in this story. From how many Fans Walmart and Target have on Facebook to the number of page actions taken as a great source of insights and feedback.

 

But that isn't what is in this article. And shame on Business Insider for allowing it to be printed.First off the title. The war will never be over. Don't use such a ridiculous title. And the stats inside  are so simplistic you wonder who comes up with this stuff. But the basic premise:

 

Walmart - 25 mil fans Target 20 mil fans and basically that Walmart has superior engagement levels and actions.

 

Yes. But why? Has Walmart run more games and contests or coupons? What time period is this over?Has either done heavy Facebook advertising? Do we know how much? 

 

No the author makes believe none of that is important. Here is my perspective. Facebook has been a zero for both brands.

 

Using the weekly 'Talking About' numbers:

 

Walmart 672k this past week or 96k per day.

 

Target     916k this week or or 130k per day

 

Worldwide Customers:

 

Walmart 500 million? More? Lets say 500 million. I bet it is higher.

 

Target     300 million? More? Let's say 300 million.

 

Walmart:

5% of customers like the Brand on Facebook. Average Fan takes an action on the page (Share, Like, Comment) once every 260 days. 

 

Target:

6.7% of customers like the Brand on Facebook.   Average Fan takes an action once every 153 days.

 

And of course the article mentions nothing about sales generated, coupon or campaign conversions etc. So based on the data above in the big picture Facebook is not driving sales for either company. and considering Walmart had $440billion in sales last year and Target only $67 billion on Facebook Target is wiping the floor with Walmart. In fact the doctor had to be called in to stop the fight and bandage Walmart's face.

 

Granted some of the numbers like Talking About are just from the last 7 days. But the article author gave no time line and if the war is over why did Walmart lose so badly in the last week?

Don't be Snowed. Total Fans and Followers Mean Nothing

I recently blogged that people aren't engaging with Brands on Facebook. I used MTV's 100million total fans for their Facebook pages and got into their numbers. Then I saw this Forbes article linked on the Twitter.

Stop being conned by the Media, Marketers, Guru's. No one gives a flying crap about Fans or Followers. They mean nothing to your business.

The C-Suite knows this and that is why they don't care about Social. They didn't in 2010 and they do not today. Why is this? 

What is important is activity. You need to forget 800mil Facebook accounts and 450mil Twitter accounts. Next time someone says your customer is on Facebook or Twitter the fact is they are not. And if they are it is not for very long each day.

When I went to MTV's main page with 33mil fans I find over 300K in the Talking About Section. Talking about is the number each week adding up all the comments and likes to your brand page posts, plus all the times people add their own comment and those get liked on your page. This is not UNIQUE visitors! If I comment once per day then they count me as 7.

So take 300,000 and divide by 7 and you get just over 40,000 actions per day. Hey that is nice right? But MTV needs millions of unique viewers world wide since MTV is a GLOBAL BRAND. So it could be 300,000 unique people who each took one action, or it could be 10,000 hardcore people who take 4-5 actions per day on the brand page.

So that 33mil Fans? Means nothing. It is nice to have them. But you can't reach them all with your page. You can reach maybe 0.5-1% a day in terms of them seeing your posts and comments. Not bad. That is 150k to 300k impressions. But not driving viewership or profits. 

I once blogged about starting with your goal and working backwards. Imagine the CEO of MTV coming to you and saying 'I want to have 10,000 to 40,000 actions per day on our page. How many fans do we need for that?' and you respond '33 million'.

You need to stop including gross numbers and start looking at 'how many are you really reaching'. 

Stop saying total accounts and think how many are actually using this network right now when I want to reach an existing or potential customer. 

You need to stop thinking you reach all your fans and start thinking is having X number engaging with me a big enough pay off vs my effort which could be focused elsewhere.

Does the 22% Decline in Facebook Usage per User Mean Anything for Social?

Last April I wrote a scathing breakdown of all the Facebook Hype Metrics using data directly from the Stats page. Warning its data heavy: 

LINK

Facebook has a MASSIVE PR problem when it comes to showcasing data. They shoot themselves in the foot constantly. It's easy to snow Marketers they are a big group of suckers it seems. Just read Mashable. In a Macro Aggregated way Facebook numbers are nice. On a per user basis (Micro) they have very little activity on their network.

Using the new and improved stats page:

When you take 540mil 'active users' this comes out to 43minutes per day per user. This is down from 55 minutes per user in April 2010! A 22% drop in time spent. This looks even worse considering I am logged in with Facebook in a Tab and that time clock is ticking and being recorded as time spent on the Network even though I am typing this!

When you break down 30b by 540m users this comes out to 55 items shared per user per month. That is 1.83 items per day per user. Since over 200m log in each day its about 5 items per user logged in. Not bad. If you are selling your Network as a place to go viral how does you get your item to be in that 5? And you have less than 5 because photo albums and notes are part of that! So you have to get into the 3 slots and there are a million of brands, brand page posts, links and stories etc vying for them every day!

Now an even bigger kicker because this impacts Facebook's Traditional Advertising which is most of their revenue!

Have you used Facebook's Mobile App? It is pretty good. Allows simple communication but small screen, and definitely not a place for Facebook Ads to be lucrative. But if 40% of the network are using Mobile then the people not using mobile are exchanging even less items, making it even harder to go viral or have your Fan Page post seen. The Mobile App also makes it harder to get seen in the Live Feed vs Desktop.

There are Stock Analysts following every single update to the stats page. They do exactly what I do when I delve into what these stats mean. They do not see a $33b value. Not if you are basing it on an Advertising/Business Presence Model. And does the 22% reduction in Network Usage say anything about Social? Or just Facebook?

UPDATE: Nov 17

David Berkowitz of Media Post and www.360i.com was kind of enough to tell me that when logged into Facebook in an open Tab, but not actually on the Tab doing any activity, that Facebook stops recording time spent. He is the first to state this since I have brought up that up before. I have an issue with very shady information not detailed by Web Properties. This is not just a Facebook issue and something I plan to discuss on a new blog post.

Should We Believe the Facebook or DoubleClick Numbers.....

I have a Finance Degree. I analyze stocks all the time because I enjoy it. I can look at the fortune 500 stats for hours and find glee. One purpose Sky Pulse Media serves is to help Clients value the various Advertising and Marketing platforms and channels properly to maximize ROI. Everything has a value.

We also know the last Private Investor in Facebook gave a $23bil value. If Facebook goes public at less than that the investors lose money on paper and in reality. For example if I bought a 10% share in Facebook for $2.3 bil expecting the value of the stock to reach $40bil at IPO and instead it goes public at $11.5bil I lost half my investment.

Some numbers recently have me very perplexed:

A recent Ad Week article cited Facebook having 146mil unique visitors in July, while DoubleClick claims 540mil. Which one is correct? This is HUGE. Because 70% of Facebook users per their Stats Page are not in the US. So either there are 43mil monthly US users or 162mil. Which is it?

Secondly DopubleClick Claims 690Bil Page views in July for Facebook.  Is this possible even if 540mil users are accurate? That comes out to 42 page views per user each day assuming all 540mil log in each day. Since Facebook claims only 200mil+ that means everyone who logs in each day averages over 100 page views per day. That seems absolutely impossible.

Also Facebook claims 55mins per day per user, Nielsen claims 6hrs per user per month!

This means something is either being measured differently for Facebook because of the way the website is structured. Or the measurements are completely untrue. The big issue is Wall Street will see the exact same thing and completely discount the value of Facebook because they won't know what to believe.

One last measure. If you buy Apple stock the cost is $6 per $1 of Apple Revenue. At the same valuation Facebook is worth $9bil. Would you pay $15 per $1 of revenue for Facebook instead of buying Apple. Apple makes Computers, MP3 Players, Tablets, Phones and has revenue streams with ITunes and the APP store. Facebook could go the way of Myspace in 3 years. Do you feel Facebook has the dedicated loyalty Apple has?

Something to think about. My next post will discuss why Traffic Numbers might be (or can be) fudged.

Why Social Media is not in the C Suite of Big Brands

Last week I helped you as a marketer figure out the reality in terms of how many people are active on Twitter and Facebook, vs the number the networks want you to believe.

Today it's time for a different angle. I have stated that Social Media is an Interpersonal Communications Technology Revolution connecting people all over the world. And yes it has empowered the people to mobilize, thus making listening skills important to ensure your Brand keeps it's image up. But why so little caring and spending from CMO's and thus acceptance by CFO/CEO's when it comes to marketing/selling?

If you are in the C-Suite of a Fortune 1000 company you make a lot of money. Your money is enhanced by the stock price. The stock price is moved by sales. Big sales. Not small sales. You are going to focus on the big bang for your buck. Not whether Nancy in Iowa is a loyal Brand Ambassador.

So I am going to use Facebook which is viewed as the largest scalable network. Some Brands have upwards of 10mil fans. But I already proved that possibly up to 60% of users on Facebook are Ghosts. They either just browse or they do not exist. Now some case studies with my estimates of their actual customer base world wide. Engagement is the average number of people who either click Like or Comment on a Fan Page Post from the Brand:

Nabisco Cookies:

Customers: 600mil +

Fans:527,000= 0.08% of their Customers

Engagement:100-500= 0.02% to 0.09% of their Fans
Twitter Followers: 0 could not find a Nabisco or Oreo's account.

Not making money for the CEO

McDonalds:

Customers: 26mil per day! I estimate 1 bil customers

Fans: 3mil = 0.3% of their customers

Engagement:500-1500= 0.016% to 0.05% Engagement
Twitter Followers: 46,000

Not making money for the CEO

Starbucks: 

Customers: 400mil

Fans: 13mil = 0.325% of their customers

Engagement: 100-400 wall posts by Fans (Starbucks does not post to its wall)
Twitter Followers: 1mil- Starbucks does get a ton of mentions on Twitter due to FourSquare etc, but I posit that this is not adding to sales very much. Twitter is not drawing people into Starbucks, people are Tweeting they are there, or that they want Starbucks. This has nothing to do with what Starbucks is doing on Twitter. In fact the Official Starbucks Twitter Account averages only 1-10 Tweets per day.

Not making any money for the CEO.

I am not saying this will never change. What I am saying that until it does change the CEO doesn't give a flying f*ck about Social. In fact Vice Presidents might not either other than thinking its a cute new accessory for their image. And a caveat, the engagement numbers are actually better if 60% of Fans are Ghosts, but the percentage of world wide customers are much worse if this is true, or if I severely underestimate world wide customers.

My next post will be using Starbucks and McDonalds as a case study in what they can do to improve their Social Media impact and results.

How to Cut Through the Social Media Start Up Bullshit and Get to the Meat

Marketers are gullible. It is in their nature. They are trained to often not tell the truth in order to sell product. Watch TV Ads. How many are truthful? Almost none of them. They all fib in some way. Talking Gecko's eh? I notice that the Journalists who cover Advertising/Media tend to also be of the same vein. It drives people like me who are Sales/Finance folks crazy. I see the same Bullshit regurgitated and tweeted and blogged and written about all the time. They want to cloud ROI so they don't have to be accountable for the fact they are snowing Brands and taking their money.

So I am here to help you understand what someone on Wall Street who crunches numbers would look at. This is important because its one thing to accept a lie or fib, it's another to pass this on to clients. The goal is being able to reach someone with an Ad or Pitch. 

Twitter:

Twitter has 100mil accounts. That is the number you hear over and over. WOW 100million! But I want to reach someone. That is the goal of a marketer (never mind a friend using it to communicate with another human). I look at number of Tweets/Day and divide by 4-10. That is the number on the network that day. I tweet from 4 accounts (3 personal, 1 client) about 40-50 Tweets in a day. But taking people who tweet once to balance things out I use 4-10 to give me a range. Which is 9m to 22mil people world wide. 60% of these people are outside the US. Which gives me 4mil to 9mil in the US using the network. (Currently they are running at 80mil-90mil Tweets per day)

Facebook:

Facebook has 500mil accounts. 500 MILLION! Holy baloney Batman. Isn't it in Facebook's best interest to focus on that? What if they created 100million of them just to ensure the Hype? How do we know they did not? So key metrics I would look at is actions/activity. In April I blogged about the metrics taking everything from their stats page. At the time they claimed 200mil Log Ins per day!

But the stats page since scrubbed clean of the damning info said this:

35 Million Updates per day.

65 Million Comments per day.

So let me get this straight. 200 mil Log Ins. 100 million actions. If each action was done by 1 person and no one took more than one action, that means half the log ins did NOTHING. I assume many people who do take an action do more than one. My estimate thus becomes 30mil-40mil Active Users Per Day. World Wide!

How can you reach someone via a Fan Page or an Ad if people are not Actively Engaging on the site?

Yesterday was the Coup De Grace: Ad Week in a Myspace Article said Facebook had 146mil unique Visitors in July. Now even the 200mil log ins seem very suspicious.

But now you have better parameters for discussion. You can tell clients the pool of users is bigger than an American Idol Audience but smaller than the Super Bowl. You can discuss how you can build small communities and develop loyalty. But in a framework of honesty so expectations are set properly.

My next blogpost will cover how to analyze Engagement Rates for Brands on Facebook from the context of their complete customer base.