Less is more

Last week I attended a marketing conference hosted by Northwestern, where there is a panel on the topic of social media. During the 30 minutes, the discussion ranged  from what is social media to how could marketers utilize social media, but still, missed the point that I really care about: how could companies measure the effectiveness of social media. Not until today, a friend kindly share with me an industry report, did I have some new thoughts on it.

First of all, why businesses need social media? Below diagram partly proves the importance of social media. I think for answering this questions, there are two types of companies’  advertising needs : One is for advertising on social media to increase brand awareness or drive sales, which is easy to measure. Another is for socializing with consumers to manage with a relationship, which is difficult to measure. However, there are much more reasons for a business to use social media besides advertising, such as listening to the market place and react, human resource purposes, etc..

How brands are discussed in the public

Consumers use social media to share feelings with their friends. Different from paid searches, which is known as “search for the right thing, at the right time”, social media doesn’t born with a strong “action-driven” nature. That is why reported CTR is always lower than paid searches. However, on the other hand, advertisements on  gaming platforms to engage with consumers are proven to be quiet effective on some media, typically Face book, and this type of advertising is even more popular in Asia, though the measurement is more comprehensive than simple advertising. In terms of socializing with consumers, which is another major type of utilizing social media among business, always presented as a homepage on Face book, a channel on YouTube or an active account on twitter, for the purpose to influence brand reputation or increase brand awareness, really differs in the effectiveness among various marketers, where measurement needs to be played a key role here.

Spectrum of actions could take on social media

There are several vendors providing social media measurement tools. Radian 6 is a good example . Its application manages three different marketer’s needs, which is listening, measuring and engaging.

Listening: a brand isn’t just what the company says. It’s also about what employees, customers, prospects, competitors, and world at large say it is.A buzz metrics like below will take all the relevant keywords for a brand.  So not only listen to your customers, listen to the world as a whole. A brand’s share holders are always more than you could think of, and social media do drives transparency out there.

Measuring：My key take-away from Radian 6’s measurement is the use of share of conversation and buzz lifecycle.  Marketers are familiar with the term “share of voice”, but they may want to know, do share of voice generates compatible share of conversation in the market place? Share of conversation is how often your brand is discussed over the internet compared with your competitors, it could be case/event sensitive, but in the long run, it will be a fair measurement.   Or we could think of it in another way, if a brand could generate a good share of conversation, is that necessary for the marketer to invest in a large advertising budget? Maybe yes, maybe not.  A good example is iPhone in China, iphone has not been officially released in china, but the product sells itself without a penny of advertising budget, thousands of thousands people discussing it over the internet and trying to buy one from whatever channel they could get. This is a typical case of a successful brand with a large share of conversation but literally, no share of voice.

Buzz lifecycle tells marketers the influence of a topic of your brand, it could be the latest advertising campaign, or a new product just launched, enabling marketers has a better control and management over the buzz  in the long run.

Buzz life cycle

As far as engagement, there is nothing new worth mentioning, it’s all about respond to the right customer, at the right time. A good example I recalled I read somewhere else could be Bing’s  ” co-twitter” practice , Bing carefully follows the buzz on twitter and if there comes up a question or problem the person who responsible for the twitter account couldn’t answer, he or she will forward the question to other folks of the company to deal with. I think it is a mini example of integrated marketing communications from a company’s internal resource allocation.

Thare are other measurement tools out there too, I will discuss them in the future. Stay tuned ：）

美国时间今天是中秋节，学校的中国人圈子有活动庆祝，而我参加了合唱的表演，于是今天下午早早地来到kellogg进行彩排。我把iphone放在外衣的口袋里并把外衣放在大厅一个角落的桌子上。

一 直忙着彩排，也没有太注意外衣的事。其次是在美国习惯了，特别是学校，就算leave my stuff unattended 很久也不会有人来拿。晚会的时候来了很多观众,一时有些杂乱，等我表演节目完毕去拿外衣的时候突然发现口袋里的手机不见了，而别的东西诸如钥匙等都在。我 打了自己电话也没人接，一时很着急。然后身边的人，特别是Isabela等，很热心地帮我一起寻找。主持人也帮忙在现场宣告了这么一件事，说有人掉了个白色iphone，看到的人请归还，但等了很久，始终没有回应。。。

一个kellogg的同学说大厅有录像机，然后我们打电话给university police寻求帮助，毕竟等晚会结束人群散了之后就没希望了。 于是在等警察的时候，我尝试用iphone 的mobile me进行远程控制，

我 找了台电脑，登入了账户。首先，根据GPS锁定，发现手机仍然在kellogg，说明小偷没走。然后，我用密码把手机锁了。最后，我远程发了条消息给自己 的手机，大致意思是请小偷归还我，并且说你拿了它也没什么意义，我可以远程把手机锁掉。然后在发消息的时候我让手机自动响铃2分钟，小偷在不知道解锁密码 的情况下就关不掉铃声。发了这条消息后小偷就把手机归还于我原本放大衣的地方了，不过并没有把相连的耳机还给我。

通过这件事，我大致学到了三点。

1. 自己太大意了，以后还是要多加小心。这件事我自己的大意付有50%的责任。

2. 这件事让我对中国人挺失望的，现场的观众95%都是中国人，很多都是西北大学学生或alumni的朋友，偶尔几个外国人也是 来旁观的教授。甚至有个目击的工作人员告诉我说他看到有人在男厕所摆弄个明显不属于他的iphone手机，而这个手机也是白色的。虽然不能100% assume他看到的人就是小偷，但偷东西的应该是中国人不会错。但另一方面，有一群人，认识的，不认识的，帮助我寻找着iphone，没有他们也不会有 那么多点子，包括最终发现小偷把iphone还给我也是他们，真的很感激这些同胞们。同样是中国人，为什么差距这么大呢。。

3.产品总结。 很感谢iphone mobile me的功能，如果没有它，相信小偷是不会把手机还给我的。不过这个小偷也不专业，他如果知道怎么把iphone关机或者在偷掉后立即让手机返回出厂状态的 话我就没办法了。不过另一方面也说明他并不是个十足的坏蛋，毕竟没有做地很绝，还是换给我了。对于不专业的小偷，mobile me还是挺有用的。

明天早上11点的飞机去墙外。来上海短短地三个星期，很多人没见到或没见第二面，有些可惜，在这里想说声抱歉。不过有朋友的地方已经给了我很多快乐。今天和家人吃了临走前最后一顿晚饭。其中有谈到留美问题，我说论生活幸福指数，我在上海要比美国幸福很多。

很多人想要出国，原因因人而异，但其中自然会有衡量幸福指数的标准作怪，以国内的标准，美国物质生活发达，政治社会福利体系好，都是在国内想要体验的东西。然而另一方面，在家乡已经习以为常的，甚至可谓幸福指数的基础，在美国却满足不了，比如食物，朋友，亲人和一定的社会认同感。而这些生活中已经习惯的东西我在上海的时候是很难想象没有它们的感受。满足不了基础，自然觉得在美国的幸福指数要低。话说社会交际圈和社会认同感可以努力，但对大部分移民第一代而言，达到同样的效果总是比国内要付出多很多的努力。

感性上我非常想一毕业就回来，甚至明天都不想走了。理性上我接受留美工作，基于逆境的锻炼，或者回国后更好地发展，而后者是很博弈的一样东西，到底到哪个点我会接受，这方面的平衡一直会变，我想很多人也会这样。

叶落生根，想念将予以延续。

9月10号阿里巴巴十周年，有幸去参加了他们的庆典，去杭州的时间非常紧，上午急着在上海三个地方办完事，下午就来到了杭州，来到淘宝办公处正好碰上原阿里软件的人搬家。淘宝在杭州2000多人，给我的感觉像个大学。首先是员工都非常年轻，可能与其近三年扩招了很多应届生有关。其次办公室不像个房间，像个办事广场，很大，然后工作人员一个隔着一个位子的样子还真有点像大学里的图书馆。人员来来去去的很热闹，接触过一些淘宝人，很可爱的一群孩子，喜欢自己的工作，对他们的印象都不错。在淘宝，和同龄人一起工作的氛围应该挺轻松自由的，可能就是辛苦了些带孩子们的“小大人”们。

晚饭后去了庆典，由于某些原因去了内场，近距离地观摩。2万多人的体育场很壮观，外加众多激情的年轻人使整个黄龙体育场都沸腾了。

整个晚会的节目都是阿里巴巴内部员工自编自演的，无论是四个子公司的热场巡演，还是正式节目的编排，阿里巴巴引用了航班起飞，国际化等元素。传递了改变和发展的喜悦，还有一种具有社会责任的企业文化。当然，最雷人的无非是马云的视觉系表演，唱了狮子王的can you feel the love tonight，唱地还不错吧，呵呵。

大概到了节目的后半段，我就有了一种莫名的感动，感动于中国的企业也可以如此成熟地向国人，甚至在场的外国人展示着过去的精彩和宏伟的未来蓝图。身在国外，我深知国家富强的重要性，而这种油然而生的自豪感是阿里巴巴带给我的。马云说，过去十年阿里的员工 “很傻，很纯”，确实，在创业和发展的阶段有数不清的可能性会阻断阿里的成长，幸运的阿里人靠着脚踏实地的精神和社会责任的信念坚持了下来。

晚会后去白鸦的咖啡店逛了逛，虽然去他店的时候颇费周折。咖啡店环境不错，很多互联网的人相聚于此(发现大家都是用Mac的），可惜与白鸦交流的时间短了点，希望以后有机会，或者白鸦以后可以考虑来别的城市开分店哈。^ ^

其实我回上海已经有一段时间了，前些天一直很忙，虽然我承认很大一部分时间是忙着吃。。。刚回上海两天，就开始陪来上海的美国同学来作公司访问，短暂地接触了不少外资企业，也学到了不少东西。印象特别深刻的是百胜集团的市场战略和mill brown的一个老外对中国市场的客观解读。说到百胜集团，中国市场为其全球总收入贡献了30%，最近它又雄心勃勃地入了小肥羊火锅20%的股份。除了产品本身，百胜中国的成功也和旗下品牌的市场定位和推广分不开，当然，产品和市场两者不是独立的，公司始终把市场定位作为主线开发产品，然后对开发的新品以市场为导向进行优胜劣汰，比如说新品进入，肯德基会先进行季节性销售，表现好的才会出现在永久菜单中。而必胜客由于定位是西方美食之旅，其菜单每个季节都会换，永久性菜单也每年保持一定的转换率。而对于很多人认为西方快餐是垃圾食品的问题，肯德基则通过Promote均衡饮食，三对三篮球赛来减轻这方面的负面印象。其影响力还是有一定作用的。百胜也提到了E-marketing，虽然现在还是以传统媒体为主，但和别的外企一样，其对于E-marketing的尝试和发展很快。（插句：总体来说肯德基和必胜客已经不错了，但偶对东方既白的未来仍持观望状态）