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Last Friday I presented at the NMAlive event* on Online Engagement Demysitified event, running with the hopeful title “How Engagement Measurement Will Change the World” (see slides above).

As ever, it was a good opportunity to revisit the theme of engagement measurement and think about how we talk about it at iCrossing.

We’ve effectively spent the last four years looking at how you quantify and understand the concept of engagement. It’s only with evidence and actionable analysis that the idea of connected brands, organisations in touch and in dialogue with with their customers and stakeholders online becomes real.

Evaluating engagement has become increasing sophisticated. Right now the social media analysts in the UK are re-mixing the whole idea of search and social media data as a research discipline in incredibly exciting ways for clients as diverse as banks and soft drinks brands. Our work in this area has been profiled in two Forrester case studies on our projects for Channel 4 and Toyota.

The technology has moved at an incredible rate too. We started with social network analysis visualisation and a lot of manual work on collating data. Over time the expertise of out technical department, performance insight experts and insights from our journalist team have all been fed into new approaches to using our own tools and those of technology platforms like Brandwatch and Buzzmetrics. We remain open-minded as the the best technology and metrics mix for any particular campaign or brand.

What has remained a constant though for the past two years or so, is the basic framework that we use when developing an evaluation, iCrossing’s Framework for Measuring Evaluation (see diagram).

Three things we have learned about evaluating engagement are: Read more…

Like most people, I’ve spent the last week watching the depth of the devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti reveal itself with an increasing sense of horror and disbelief. And probably like most people, I’ve donated as much as I could afford to the relief effort via the Disasters and Emergency Committee (DEC) website, because, as one colleague put it: “There’s pretty much nothing else that I can practically do to help the people of Haiti.”

The story that has been playing out on our TV screens and newspapers is truly shocking, and there seems to be a battle going on over which story the media wants to tell. What’s going to sell more papers or get more views or viewers? The story of “hope” (the one word headline on the Sun’s front page on Monday) - that people are still being pulled out of the rubble alive nearly a week on from the earthquake? Or the story of “human evil” - that “thugs” (as the Metro’s front page so eloquently described the Haitian earthquake survivors) are “looting, shooting and lynching” (the Telegraph) as a response to humanitarian efforts to provide them with food and water. (The fact that we’ve all donated £25million so far tends to suggest the Sun got it right again!)

Of course, the need of the media to create simplified, exaggerated, panic-driven narratives in order to grab attention from their competitors is nothing new. But as my sister (who works in the digital communications team at the Department for International Development  - DfID) explained to me as she worked a Sunday shift whilst visiting me this weekend - the way that the media tells these kinds of story has had a direct impact on the amount of money raised by DEC in the past.

I was fascinated, then, to see that her emergency shift supporting the DfID press office with their communications relating to relief efforts in Haiti wasn’t so she could help with press enquiries. Rather she was working to publish updates on DfID’s own website, and pictures and relief plan details directly to social media places such as Flickr and Twitter and on their blog pages. I watched her upload this Creative Commons map (which she sourced from Wikimedia) showing the exact location of the Leogain to Flickr, a region of Haiti that no one had yet managed to get to, and where DfID co-ordinated rescue teams were planning to travel to next. In a situation like this, providing pictures, updates and information directly to people like you and me - rather than relying on the press to tell the story - means that we are able to make up our own minds whether we think that this is a cause that’s worth our money without the filter of headlines, editors and ad sales targets.

Personally, I find this a very easy decision to make! But for those who might be worried that their money might somehow end up being “looted” by “thugs”, these images and updates tell a pretty clear story.

I’d really recommend adding DfID and other relief co-ordinating agencies to your social media feeds and streams if you are interested in getting a clearer understanding of what is happening in Haiti. With news breaking today that a second earthquake  measuring 6.1 shook the island this morning, the success of social media to help raise awareness about the need for donations could make a big difference to Haitian survivors.

IMAGE CREDIT: Michael Haig / Department for International Development via Creative Commons licence

HEADER IMAGE CREDIT: The U.S. Army

Image credit: Creative Common Attribution: webtreats

2009 was the year social media became mainstream and your mum got a facebook account. Twitter took off in a big way (Twitter bigger then Amazon) and Facebook saw massive growth (Facebook bigger then Yahoo!) but search was still king of the hill, will that change in 2010?

Hitwise released some interesting stats last year that showed that social was now bigger then search in New Zealand and that at the end of the year Facebook overtook Google as the most visited site on the internet (albeit only for two days). So is this a trend that will likely continue into 2010? Well the growth of Social Media has not levelled off yet, people are now using the internet to blog, upload pictures and videos, socialise and network in greater numbers all over the world (click right for larger image). It looks like social media will soon surpass search in Australia and I would expect the same to happen in many countries this year.

So is search passé? Most definitely not, 2009 saw many of the big search engines integrate social data into their search results. You can now see real time Facebook and Twitter results in search pages, results based on your social graph and a whole litany of other social data (images, videos, news etc) right on your search page. The web is evolving, search results are becoming more personalised, social media is playing an ever increasing role online and as such online Read more…

This is the first post in the ‘decade in search’ series. We’ll probbaly  see a whole host of predictions being made for 2010, but before making ours we thought we’d the take time to  review the major events that have shaped the search industry over the last 10 years.

It’s possible that the internet is going to keep me and many others in a permanent state of mental adolescence.

2009’s been a bad year for it – first there was Spotify, which instantly transformed my music listening and sharing habits. Then there was Twitter, which woke up after a year snoozing and ate my blog.

And now my world’s been realigned again: this time by Posterous.

I was alerted to it by Antony’s recent presentation, which gave it a special mention among things to watch out for in 2010. Since then I’ve gone slightly nuts for it.

Pre-Posterous printing press, 1930, from Seattle Municipal Archive

Others have done the hard work of describing what Posterous does: in short, it’s a tool that makes it absurdly easy to publish text/audio/images/video and push it to wherever else you’d like it go.
Read more…

Even with the Bing’s announcing it will be delaying its UK launch until Q1 2010 at the earliest it is still worth considering Bing as part of your online marketing campaign. Here are a couple of things to consider:

• It appears visibility results in Bing differ from Google. Some websites have a great visibility in Google and not so much in Bing - other sites have the opposite. Websites that don’t have the visibility will need to address this fact, whilst websites that do have good visibility will hopefully receive a boost new year traffic boost
• Bing’s launch will now challenge Google to be even more cutting edge, as we have started to see from the integrated twitter search
• Bing is now using Wolfram Alpha results within its search results. Another refinement that could give a boost in market share to both these Google competitors. It will be really interesting to see how Bing applies it, because it will provide very accurate responses to technical questions, but it may take time for the results to load. Bing may need an infrastructure update similar to Google’s Caffeine update that will be launched shortly
• Bing’s offline marketing will challenge Google to market their brand in areas that it might not feel so comfortable
• Just like Ask have been running PPC campaigns on Google, and offline campaigns in the tube, etc, but has that helped their market share.
• Ultimately it doesn’t matter how much you spend on marketing if your product does not deliver. Bing needs to make sure it is consistently return valuable, relevant results to confidently challenge Google – for generic and niche terms. Otherwise this will all be in vain.
• In actual fact will Bing eat into Yahoo! and Ask’s market share instead of Googles

Find out more at Revolution Magazine

Here’s a quick word to introduce our Connected Brands Index that has been making the headlines recently in the UK.

The research, which identified Google as the ‘most connected’ brand of Interbrand’s top 10, was conducted by iCrossing in the US - with plenty of input and support from the team here in the UK. It is based on the model of Connected Brands that iCrossing has been working with for the past 12 months.

The Connected Brands Index is iCrossing’s grand unification theory of measurement that starts to look at a brand’s effectiveness online - not just on their own properties, but also across search and social media. It accounts for the five attributes we believe make up a successful brand online: visibility, usefulness, usability, desirability, and engagement.

The first thing to say is that the newest research does NOT tell us the most connected brands on the web as the survey measured only the top 10 global brands according to the Interbrand study. However, now that it’s done (though it will constantly evolve), it is a benchmark against which any brand or set of brands can be evaluated.

As we rapidly become a full-service agency, with creative services sitting alongside our core competencies in search and social, we considered it important to be able to measure the effectiveness of campaigns across all digital activity - both onsite and offsite. And, following on from the US research, we’ve found it useful as a competitive benchmarking tool that has already helped some of our clients. We’ve found it can be used in its entirety or for benchmarking around the 3 disciplines of search, site and social independently. ‘Visibility’, for example, naturally focuses on search;  ‘usefulness’, ‘usability’ and ‘desirability’ are about the effectiveness of the user experience of a brand’s online properties; whilst ‘engagement’ applies to its endeavours in social media.

There are 65 different metrics used in the Connected Brands Index and while even this is by no means exhaustive, we do believe it’s a robust collection of metrics that provides valuable insight based on both industry best practice and our own experience of online evaluation.

The key is to realise that the research is not about enabling or informing strategy but for benchmarking performance against competitors and how that performance develops over time.

So, for more information on our Connected Brand Index, download the full research, tell us what you think and feel free to get in touch with more feedback and questions.

I knew before I went on holiday to Japan that my husband is concerningly excited about QR codes but I was impressed to see just how much more excited he could get with every turn in the shopping malls as more and more QR codes appeared round every corner.

He is a creative/designer, mainly for print and is massively excited at the potential that QR codes can add to any advertising and marketing campaigns. Now having seen these QR codes in action, whether be on leaflets, carrier bags or billboards, I can’t help myself to join in the excitement.

For those of you who don’t know, QR codes (Quick Response Codes) are two dimensional barcodes which can hold more data than the usual barcode and can be read by many mainstream cameras on phones, like the iPhone, providing particular reader software is installed. Here is an example of what a QR code that links to the iCrossing website looks like.

QR codes can be used to hold a variety of information, including hyperlinks and can prompt web pages to load as a result of taking a photo of the QR code. When used in conjunction with offline marketing material these QR codes can provide quick access to online material on the same subject.
Japan is using QR codes everywhere on their print material to send traffic to their online domains, whether it is for further information or via promotions. At the Muji clothing store, they were using a QR code for discount offers, sending traffic to their online store whilst visitors are browsing their high street stores, owning both your physical and virtual self at that very same moment in time.

Read more…

Google have recently released yet another feature for its registered users. After the release of ‘SearchWiki‘ some months ago we got a glimpse of how Google may use people’s profiles to help navigate (based on search history) and place their own judgement of relevance and reviews around sites.

So after adding functionality to be able to comment on search results Google have now introduced Sidewiki, which allows users to “contribute helpful information to any webpage“.

Here’s an example of Sidewiki in action on apple.com.

Note: you can only view Sidewiki at the moment using the new version of the Google toolbar, which you can install on Firefox or IE.

In the past reputations can be made or tarnished offsite in the networks, or onsite when we allow it through comments etc, but Sidewiki allows people to come and write anything right on your front page. This is a form of social media which is even harder to ignore, ‘if you can’t see/hear it it’s not my problem’ will no longer apply, the reviews are coming directly to the site.

I imagine Sidewiki could have some pretty large implications for brands.  Will there be a need for an ongoing monitoring and engagement strategy?

Site owners are able to place a ’sticky’ post to their own sites, some sites appear to have placed purposely large entries here, perhaps to block out negative comments below the fold.

Links can be placed within Sidewikis. I’ve seen some sites using the space for ‘quick links’. It has also been used as another way of introducing a site, with a quick intro paragraph,  in a more informal style knowing that most of the audience at this stage will be early adopters and technically minded.

I see Sidewiki potentially being very useful from a brand engagement and customer service point of view if it becomes more widely adopted.

So is Sidewiki something that brands should be worried about or embrace? Do you think it will take off or remain relatively un-adopted functionality much like Searchwiki?

Google’s Vince update, which first affected the US results early in 2009 and then later the UK results in July, is still a mystery. It looked at first like an update designed to boost brands, as Aaron Wall first mentioned - but how could Google, a search engine that relies on algorithms, possibly determine which sites were brands? Matt Cutts later announced that “within the search ranking team we don’t really think about brands”, and mentioned that “we try to return whatever we think the best results are for users”. Which makes sense, but doesn’t help to explain how brands might have received a boost.

There was some talk about how the large brands that gained a boost after Vince also frequently appeared in the related search results. And this is where we think we’re close - here’s the science part (concentrate):

Theory #1

The related searches are now driven by user data. In the past a search on something like “hotels” used to bring up results that looked very similar to the “hotels” keyword, almost as if it had been run through the AdWords keyword tool. Search terms like “hotels ireland”, “hotels in scotland”, “hotels in newcastle” and “hotels england” appeared in the related searches. At some point, quietly, around December of 2008 this changed significantly. Looking at them now for the UK (and using Google’s fairly new expanded ‘related searches’ option) I’m seeing more brands being listed like Travelodge, Last Minute and Premier Inn. The most likely idea here is that Google is now using more user-data to populate these related searches. Theory #1 is that for high volume terms that have a large number of people refining the query, Google records all queries that are refined and the most often searched terms following the original query form the related searches. That sounds complex, but really it just means when people search for “biscuits”, don’t click on the results but instead search for “mcvities”, Google records that and will list it in the related searches if enough people refine their search like that.

Theory #2

When people search for “X”, can’t find what they are looking for within the results and instead refine the query to “Y”, and then one of the results gets a much higher click-through rate than expected (e.g. the result in position 1 gets 70% of the clicks instead of the usual 50% or so), then that listing becomes a candidate to rank for “X”. To put that into context, if people search for “biscuits” and then refine the query to “mcvities”, and one of those results gets a huge click-through rate (which will probably be UnitedBiscuits.com who own McVities) then that result gets a chance to rank for the original search term “biscuits”. So, in short, related search results that do well may be brought into the original search.
Read more…