Joy Mayer, 2010-2011 FellowWhat I shared about the Chicago Tribune's in-person events wasn't quite right. Databases of sources are handled two different ways for two kinds of events. The post has been corrected below. Thanks to James Janega for pointing out the error.
I've been saying all year that journalists have a lot to learn from other industries and disciplines. Never have I felt more fired up about that than when talking to Jake McKee last week.
Jake's background is in online communities and customer collaboration. He was suggested to me by The Guardian's Meg Pickard (an anthropologist by training) as someone who could help me learn about community organizing and community management. From his bio: "Jake helps organizations understand how to act like groups of people, rather than soulless money making machines."
Sign me up.
Jake is the co-founder of Ant's Eye View, a company that helps organizations transform customer experiences and embed customer voice and collaboration in what they do. Ant's Eye View has recently proposed a five-stage Social Engagement Journey. I'm taking a close look at what journalists can learn from it and will share those thoughts soon. For now, here's what I learned during my interview with Jake.
— Full customer and social engagement can't be really achieved until it's baked into the DNA of a company. It's not about choices and activities; it's about being immersed in the minds of our customers. And it’s about making it clear to those customers that we are invested in them in a way that excites them and creates deeper loyalty. This isn’t just about improved CRM.
— Companies should divide the social engagement steps into measurable, manageable chunks. Figure out where you are in the Social Engagement Journey — the climate of the organization, training needs, concerns from individual people or departments, relationships with customers, etc. Then map out what you need to do, and in what order. Set goals that get you from one step to the next. Strategize.
— The aim, Jake likes to say, is for everybody to go home happy. The company has needs. The customer has needs. How do you openly address both even when they’re not directly related? Create a platform of emotional connection or loyalty. Deliver things for them, and they'll what to help you, from evangelizing on your behalf to making your product better. The point is to break down the wall between the inside and outside, and create a relationship where both sides benefit. After all, the business (or news organization) exists to serve the customers, right. RIGHT? Are they getting everything they could be out of the relationship? And are you (and your organization)? When you have a true platform of ongoing, long-term loyalty, you can ask your customers for things you need, too.
— Focusing on mass audience is not necessarily the right approach. A small network of dedicated, connected participants, for example, can help change a community conversation. Build something worthwhile, then grow it. Start with a goal or problem. If your goal is to enrich the public conversation around a community issue, judge your efforts by whether you accomplished that, not by how many people conversed.
At this point in the conversation, Jake and I moved on to the topic of measuring engagement — something I'm planning to host a workshop on here at RJI in a few months (more on that soon) and am dedicated to getting smarter about. Jake's business revolves around bringing engagement to organizations, so he knows how to measure whether change is occurring. He also made the point that you can’t value what you don’t measure.
Emotional and anecdotal evidence of social engagement absolutely plays a part in assessing our efforts, but there are more definitive ways to approach the task. For example, if we're trying to measure a conversation in the comments section of a news story, there are a number of ways to do that, but the proper method depends on the overall business objective you’re addressing. For example:
If you're going for traffic and eyeballs, measure the total number of comments.
If, however, you’re going for engagement, pay attention to the ratio of comments and replies. A reply may imply dialogue rather than isolated commenting activity.
Or you might look at the speed of replies. If people are paying close attention to your site and talking back directly and quickly, they might be passionate about the debate. (If you know of a news or information site measuring comment activity this way, will you let me know?)
Again, know your objective, and look at user behavior that will let you know how well you’re delivering on the objective. And "more engagement" doesn't count as an objective.
Disciplines outside of journalism have long been accustomed to measuring the effectiveness of their efforts. Another example comes from Chrys Wu, who I interviewed last month. I was telling her about the Chicago Tribune's aggressive move to hold more in-person events. James Janega told me about the panel discussions the Trib hosts that draw hundreds of people, whose contact info goes into a database. Chrys riffed about what they could be doing with that data. Do they cross-reference it with their on-site registrations? Do they track how many folks signed up after the event? Those are great questions. One of the goals of the Trib's events is to connect readers with individual journalists, to make the paper more personal. Couldn't you even track whether those readers gravitated toward those specific journalists' work after the event?
I get the sense folks in other disciplines would be surprised at just how unaccustomed journalists are to assessing what works and what doesn't, beyond anecdotal evidence. (I've written some about what we should be measuring and how one chain of TV stations is approaching analytics.) We have much to learn about measurement. Let's get to it.
Joy Mayer is a 2010-2011 RJI fellow working on a project called “Ditch the lecture. Join the conversation.” Read Joy's other blog posts here, and talk back at mayerj@missouri.edu and @mayerjoy on Twitter.
Comments
You're too kind, Joy! If I've
You're too kind, Joy! If I've gotten you fired up about the Social Engagement Journey then my work here is done. Well, not nearly, but you get my point :)
Thanks for the great discussion and the great recap!
Jake, I'm going to comment on
Jake, I'm going to comment on Joy's post, but wanted to point out what a thrill I got out of the TED Talk by Derek Sivers on your blog that Joy referenced at the top of this post. It describes my last year at Trib Nation!
-- James Janega, Trib Nation manager, Chicago Tribune
As usual, you make very good
As usual, you make very good points on defining and measuring engagement. I especially like the point that focusing on a mass audience isn't always (and probably never is) the best approach.
But this brings up an important question for me. How do non-established brands reach community members on social media if not by targeting a mass audience? A startup can't afford traditional marketing efforts to reach new folks (and most startups don't want to, anyway), but that means you rely on grassroots/social media efforts to spread the word.
If 10 people like my Facebook page, then maybe three of their friends will like it, and so forth. It's not immediately shaping a conversation, but perhaps it's bringing people on board who eventually will. Am I completely missing the point? What do you think?
Ryan, good question, thanks
Ryan, good question, thanks for the follow-up.
This is an issue of ongoing, short AND long term activity that drives towards mass audience, rather than having your first task on the marketing plan going after all 500+ million FB users.
Starting with a group of 10 influencers as a way to get in-depth planning help on, for example, product design, may be a better approach than launching a Facebook page cold, without an audience predisposed to drive attention and fans towards that page. There are A LOT of variables here, from what kind of product you're making, what stage of the business development you are, and what kind of audience the product naturally engenders. After all, if you are selling custom hot rod cars, the audience is specific, (relatively) easily accessible, and naturally inclined to get excited about what you're doing. If you're selling laundry detergent, your goals, tactics, and expectations will necessarily be different.
The answer really is in your question: If your brand is “non-established”, what’s the roadmap to establishment? What are the ongoing, long-, medium-, and short-term activites, programs, decisions, and measurements you’re going to build out *over time* to get to a place where your brand is established enough to even reach mass audience.
If you only have 10 potential fans of your brand at them moment, then you have a lot of work to do first before you start working about targeting all 500+ million members of Facebook.
Hope that helps!
Ryan, it might depend what
Ryan, it might depend what you mean by mass audience. If a startup has a target audience (like say, oh, a neighborhood!), are there audiences within that area that could be identified? Parents? Civically engaged? Neighborhood associations? Rec leagues? Volunteer organizations?
Instead of seeing a mass audience like five square miles, can you strategize about what group you'd most like to engage, then figure out where they already are?
As Jake says, it's not about the numbers necessarily. Where can you contribute to the lives and the conversation of a target group?
This is sort of a response to
This is sort of a response to Ryan's query.
Specifically talking about FB/Twitter metrics, many newsrooms (including ours) measure their influence by how many followers they have. And as joy points out, it's not really about followers, it's about what you do with those followers.
We have a smaller following than we'd like, but I pride myself in the fact that we go out and respond to blog posts about the station and mentions on twitter not including the @. Zach Seward said at ONA that many people are surprised when he replies to them personally. I think that's a good start to leveraging the people you do have on networks.
I like to think of myself as an evangelist for the evangelists. I'm creating loyalty and people who will go out there and speak well of us, and tell others to find us on Facebook and Twitter.
It's difficult to quantify that, yes, but you can by how active an engaged your users are. How many @ and RT and comments you received and how many of those used positive words are all good metrics for those high-ups that demand numbers.
Kim, that sounds awesome.
Kim, that sounds awesome. Being responsive is so important. But beyond that, I love that you seek out ways to interact. Totally awesome. I'd love to hear more about what you're up to. Could you email me? mayerj at missouri.edu.
Thanks everyone for your
Thanks everyone for your responses. I have a little more homework to do, but I think I'll be coming back with more questions pretty soon. This is a huge topic for me right now.
Joy, as you know, I geeked
Joy, as you know, I geeked out over this particular post as it dovetails so much with what we've been learning over the last year at the Chicago Tribune with Trib Nation, our newsroom reader engagement focus.
I'd point out one correction to your readers (and members of our community!) on what happens to audience information for people who attend our larger events. (www.tribnation.com/events) It ISN'T shared with our newsroom. (Thought we talk with readers at the receptions after each of these events in search of new ideas.)
What IS shared with our newsroom is information from a series of topical lunches we host every other week with thought leaders withing the community. The one we're hosting tomorrow is built around early childhood testing, for instance, and will bring a dozen people we invited from outside the Tribune to brainstorm with Tribune journalists about the topic. Those contacts broaden our gang files, our understanding of the impact of issues, and our reach into the community at large. They're terrific. Here are some links from the Trib Nation newsroom blog: http://trib.in/hGKXOB
Apply the lessons Jake mentions with you to events like that and you get some sense of the excitement and possibilities we've had here as we engage with the community we cover, trade information with it, get excited together about new ideas -- and trust them to evangelize for their 160-year-old news organization at time when we need each other most.
Exciting times to be a journalist. Great, thoughtful post as always. Subscribe.
-- James Janega
Trib Nation manager
Chicago Tribune
jjanega@tribune.com
@JamesJanega
James, your energy is so
James, your energy is so contagious! Thanks for your input, and for sharing so much of your time with me.
In my research, I haven't found anyone more aggressive about in-person events than the Trib. I'm so interested in how your strategies will continue to develop, and in what we can all learn about how to use information our communities to better meet their needs.
Thanks for a great post. very
Thanks for a great post. very informative. I totally agree with you, having is the right mindset is most important of all. I Have already shared this post with a few of my friends and they loved it.
Thanks.
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