blogworld08

Why Asking About the ROI on Social Media is the Wrong Question

November 2, 2008 By Des Walsh

One of the many knowledgeable and articulate people I was privileged to meet and learn from recently at BlogWorld & New Media Expo is Jason Falls, director of social media for Louisville, Kentucky based brand-building agency Doe-Anderson.

Jason’s blog Social Media Explorer is a regular fund of information and fresh perspectives, as exemplified in his post last week on determining the return on investment (ROI) for social media.

The proposition he develops in that post is that:

The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.

And says further:

To illustrate that point for all our measurement and metric geeks out there, what you are trying to do is assign multiple choice scoring to an essay question. It’s not possible.

As a former high school teacher of English and History, often envying my math teacher colleagues when it came to assessing assignments and I was ploughing through a mountain of essays while my math colleagues zipped through their multiple choice, check the box, assignment returns, that analogy summed up for me very neatly the way I had been thinking about measuring the effectiveness of social media investment in the enterprise.

But precisely because I recognize that I approach such issues with the conditioning and biases of someone with a more liberal arts than mathematical/science background, I have frankly been somewhat unsure of my ground.

Was I being too readily and unreasonably dismissive of a more quantitative approach to measuring the effectiveness/ROI of social media?

After reading Jason’s post a couple of times now and watching the excellent, embedded video interview with Katie Delahaye Paine, I think not.

In fact, I feel much more comfortable now about the way I have been explaining these issues to people, especially about continuing to frame or re-frame questions about effectiveness in terms of conversation.

I don’t mean that in any smug, self-satisfied way. There is a lot more to be discussed about the issue of assessing – as distinct (I would say) from measuring – the effectiveness/ROI of social media investment. And especially about how to communicate effectively about these issues with clients, many of whom will present as being much more comfortable with numerical assessments.

Which could be a difficult call, especially if you accept Jason’s contention that “every session on measuring ROI in social media is a waste of time”.

The stream of comments Jason’s post has attracted, still going some five days later, suggests that the issues are by no means clearcut, at least on the level of practical application of the principles espoused.

Filed Under: Enterprise 2.0, Social Media Tagged With: blogworld08, conversation, Jason Falls, ROI, Social Media

Lonnie Hodge to Speak at China Bloggercon 2008

October 30, 2008 By Des Walsh

I’d love to be able to attend China Bloggercon 2008 in Guangzhou, China, a couple of weeks from now – November 15th to 16th to be precise.

Having been just over a month ago at another gathering of bloggers and other new media enthusiasts in Las Vegas, NV, USA – BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008 - I know what a buzz it is to hang out for a few days with people who have a shared enthusiasm for blogging and podcasting.

The event in Guangzhou will be, if I’m not mistaken, the third China Bloggercon. I understand that it is expected to attract around 500 participants.

A couple of people I know are on the speaker list, including as keynote, as has been reported in a few places now, social media commentator Shel Israel, whose Global Neighbourhoods blog is a great source of information and insight on the takeup and application of social media around the world.

Also on the list is my friend and colleague, Professor Lonnie B. Hodge, who is a long-term Asia resident and now lives right in Guangzhou. Lonnie is CEO of CultureFish Media, of which I am an Associate.

Next week, Lonnie and I will be launching a new Internet radio program about China. We will be having a conversation each week about doing business, especially online, in China, about social media in China and probably ranging out from time to time to a wider regional perspective. We have started to line up some very interesting guests. Watch this space!

Filed Under: Blogging, China Tagged With: blogworld08, China, China Bloggercon, Gang Lu, Guangzhou, Lonnie B. Hodge, Shel Israel

Cool Celt at BlogWorld Expo 2008: Ewan Spence

September 29, 2008 By Des Walsh

You couldn’t miss Ewan Spence at BlogWorld Expo in Las Vegas last week. He was the one wearing the kilt.

And the smile. Cool guy. Pioneering podcaster having launched The Podcast Network with Cameron Reilly before most of us knew what a podcast was.

Unfortunately, because I had a few commitments as one of the track leader team, Ewan and I kept missing one another and did not get around to having the conversation we had hoped to have. Next time.

Ewan has posted his self-described “professional” report on BlogWorld Expo at the BBC News site. Well worth the read, especially on how bloggers are generating income for themselves, especially via affiliate marketing.

His general verdict on blogging as an industry? Positive and optimistic.

Blogging is still a nascent industry but on the strength of the BlogWorld Expo, the pioneers have put down not only a strong groundwork for those that are following them, but have also put in place a rich ecosystem that rewards openness and sharing.

He’s also done a personal report on BlogWorld, which captures nicely the buzz of the event and shares some of the party experience, including the “hear yourself speak” variety and also the “been there, done that in my undergrad days when it seemed fun” version: whatever takes your fancy, but the parties look to me like they are now entrenched as part of the BlogWorld experience.

And there’s another photo of Ewan with the blog post, but not showing the kilt.

You’ll have to go to BlogWorld Expo 2009 to see that.

Credit for photo above: Blogworld Expo 2008 Blogworld Expo Party – Ewan Spence: (CC) Brian Solis www.briansolis.com and bub.blicio.us

Filed Under: Blogging, Events Tagged With: BBC News, BlogWorld Expo 2008, blogworld08, Ewan Spence

Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008 Farewells Big Numbers Game

September 27, 2008 By Des Walsh

BlogWorld Expo Keynote by Richard Jalichandra

Like some others, over the past year or two I’ve been less than impressed by Technorati’s performance. So I was frankly not overwhelmed with anticipation of the keynote address by Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra, at last weekend’s BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas.

In the event, I was pleasantly surprised. A big factor in that was when Jalichandra announced that he was to be giving us a preview of Technorati’s latest State of the Blogosphere report, which was to be released in stages over several days, starting with the Monday immediately following the conference, September 22.

But I listened and watched in vain for something I had come to expect from these reports. How many blogs are there now and how fast is the blogosphere growing?

Thinking that I might have had a lapse of attention (there had been a party the night before, although I had not stayed very late) I looked forward to reading the report online.

But when I finally got around today to reading the serialized sections of the report, I found myself looking in vain again for the latest aggregate number of blogs, worldwide.

They were not to be found.

Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere Alerts 2004-07

Aggregate numbers of blogs, with accompanying graphs, a staple of the Technorati alerts for several years now, have demonstrated the cumulative dramatic growth of the blogosphere. As these graphs have been made available by Technorati under a Creative Commons license, I and others have been able to make ready use of them in blog posts and slide presentations, without having to seek special permission from Technorati.

Apart from my general interest in the statistics, I liked having these graphs available to help explain what was happening with the blogosphere – and then being able to segue into what that might mean for business.

A quick recap.

Technorati stats Sept 2004 Exactly four years ago, in September 2004, Technorati was tracking just under 4 million blogs and reporting on various statistical findings about those blogs.

At the end of July 2005, Technorati was tracking 14.2 million blogs and it was noted that the blogosphere was doubling every 5.5 months.

By April 2006, the number of blogs being tracked was 35.3 million, with a mild slowing of the doubling factor to every 6 months.

A year later, April 2007, Technorati was tracking 70 million blogs, so the doubling factor was now around 12 months.

As then CEO of Technorati, Dave Sifry, commented at the time, the “slowing” of the doubling factor should not have caused surprise:

… we’re dealing with the law of large numbers – it takes a lot more growth to double from 35 million blogs to 70 million (which took about 320 days) than when it doubled from 5 million to 10 million blogs (which took about 180 days).

A Worm of Doubt Crept In: Just How Good Were the Aggregate Numbers?

As I recounted in a blog post here at the beginning of this year, New Year’s Day in fact, my confidence in the comprehensiveness of the Technorati statistics had been shaken a couple of months previously when visiting China for the first time. The figures being supplied to me there indicated that in 2007 there could well have been over 70 million blogs in China alone, about when Technorati was saying that blogs in China made up for only 8% of its total 70 million.

And even if the figures from China were a tad self-serving, a tad rubbery, were we now to understand Technorati’s recurring phrase that its figures were for blogs which Technorati was “tracking” to mean that they were implicitly acknowledging (and perhaps explicitly somewhere) that there were a lot of blogs they weren’t tracking? In other words, were there a lot more blogs than Technorati was counting?

My assumption is that the answer is yes. But whether or not there is a simpler explanation, it seems Technorati, “under new management”, has moved on.

Game Over: With One Leap, Our Fearless Tracker is Free!

From reading the latest report, it looks like from here on the discussion about aggregate numbers will from now on be, at least as far as Technorati is concerned, academic.

And the question of how many blogs there are outside the USA – and, by implication, in English – will be academic too, as far as Technorati is concerned.

Why?

Because the latest report declines to make a declarative statement or estimate on the total number of blogs and simply quotes some statistics, mostly from the USA, indicating that there are A LOT (although note that a worldwide figure from Universal McCann is tucked in, showing 184 million blogs worldwide):

There have been a number of studies aimed at understanding the size of the Blogosphere, yielding widely disparate estimates of both the number of blogs and blog readership. All studies agree, however, that blogs are a global phenomenon that has hit the mainstream.

Having thus absolved itself of any responsibility to provide or adjudicate on total numbers – and wisely in my not totally humble opinion – the Technorati report focuses on providing some analysis of what all the blogging activity means:

For the 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, we wanted to go beyond the numbers to deliver insights into bloggers and the state of blogging today. Who are the bloggers, why and how do they do what they do, and what is the impact on their lives and work?

To achieve this, Technorati has surveyed a random sample of Technorati users and supplemented the data and analysis with its “traditional analysis” of Technorati’s data. Those surveyed provided 1,290 responses from 66 countries. There is a brief explanation of the survey and analysis methodology on the Technorati site.

There are six sections to the report, including the Introduction:

The short story?

First, the story is now about the Active Blogosphere, defined as “the ecosystem of interconnected communities of bloggers and readers at the convergence of journalism and conversation”.