eMetrics – Jim Sterne opens the show!

Ok firstly apologies for arriving late to eMetrics! Jim even made me sit at the front of the class. Sorry Mr Sterne.

This eMetrics is focused very much on Social Media (and yes Jim’s book is now available in the UK) it is understanding how best to use it in business situations and more importantly for us analysts how to measure it and communicate said results to managers for strategy.

“Sherlock Holmes Factor”

Are you able to test and provide recommendations based on what your customers are talking to you about. Remember that there is no real answer.

Jim talked a lot about how to use social media to interact with your customers. It may seem an obvious thing for us to talk about since we immerse ourselves in it almost every day (learning about how to communicate with customers on a regular basis and measuring the effect of that). However, Jim gave a great example of how Nestle’s fan page on Facebook was attacked from consumers because of the effect of using palm oil is affecting the habitation and contributing to the extinction of the Gorillas. One vice-president said to a facebook poster that he couldn’t write such things on ‘our’ fan page and that he was breaking the law but photoshopping the ‘kit kat’ logo to say killer.

What about one of the more famous ones (certainly in North American anyway). A musician looked out the window of a plane and saw the ground grew throwing around guitars, one of which was his. When landing he opened the case and the guitar was broken. After a year of communicating with United Airlines he published a video on You Tube which has now have had millions of hits – what is the brand damage? Probably in the millions? The length of pain that United will have to go through – probably years!

Social Media Metrics Book

- now for those that don’t know Jim’s passion for web metrics is world renowed and he’s even earned the nickname ‘The GodFather’. He has now taken this passion for metrics and applied it to the social media space and published a book. Sadly I’m still waiting for mine from Amazon but, will review this and other books shortly.

This has been out in the US for some time and I’ve managed to find an interview recorded by Bryan Eisenberg (@thegrok). This is definitely worth a watch.

Take Away

Bob Page from eBay has categorised us web analysts as statisticians rather than accountants. We don’t provide exact results we provide information based on customer behaviour which is always going to be unpredictable. I think that most of my clients have spent hours working on trying to match the figures between back-end systems and web analytics and I’m sure that you have heard the phrases:

“Web analytics tools only capture based on user interaction and are dependant on javascript and speed”

Another take away is understanding that customers don’t do what you think they are going to do. This may seem an obvious thing to say. However, few people understand their customers to the point of understanding their motives for joining (may not be just to buy a product, place an ad, post a comment, register for a newsletter… could be something else)… Ask them! But dont bombard them with 15 surveys per visit (as I’ve seen on some sites.