Time 25:48

When people ask me what is the ROI on a social media relationship I often think of my wife. Let’s see we are married 22 years, have 5 kids that have yet to complete college, braces, went through 2 Suburbans vehicles for the last 10 years, I mean there are not many cars that can hold a family of 7. I figure financially this relationship might not be the jackpot most CFOs would appreciate.

I raise this point first because as the web becomes more social, the quantification that corporate America has come to rely on for every action seems a bit callous when it comes to time spent online. Long before the social web, plenty of sales managers said this to a less than stellar sales rep, “you seem to be playing a lot of golf with John, when is he going to sign a contract?” Perhaps the same phrase can apply when it comes to the time spent on twitter or in social communities, blogger sites, and Twitter, however, I suggest online relationships have a more complex nature than golfing with a “targeted prospect.”

In this episode of the Marketing Edge podcast, we discuss what to measure in a PR relationship with KD Paine, author of Measuring Public Relationships: The Data-Driven Communicator’s Guide to Success It is not just about the number of press clips. Today’s measurement equation, if you have the patience for it, goes deeper in both the measured topic, and with whom to cultivate relationships around your business objectives.

Some of the tools KD uses are:

1. Buzz Logic
2. Twinfluence
3. Xinureturns

A Twitter Tip

Twitter is most noted for being a great tool to promote your cause and otherwise build relationships that are primarily focused on externalizing a message. There are other ways Twitter can be used to learn more about the market and competitive information. One of them is creating key words in www.search.twitter.com or using hashtags to attempt to collect the tweets around a topic, conference or other category you select.

Let me share a non-business example. When you are driving, do you ever go just a little bit faster when a certain song comes on? Yeah you know what I mean, so for the fun of it while on Twitter one night, I created a # (hashtag) called #Gofast which started a running dialogue about songs that make people Go Fast. I suspect a couple of insurance companies are monitoring this string right now and will update their applications to include this very question.

In this podcast, I highlight another Twitter tactic that flies under the radar which may give greater insight into what competitors are doing.

More Shout Outs

I get just a tad over the top in responding to listener comments. Apologies in advance to any friends with Boston accents, but you gotta admit, the running battle between who speaks better Bostonians or New Yorkers is pretty funny. Thanks to Kevin Newnan for the sound files used in the podcast of Boston phrases, his website The Wicked Pissah is hilarious. It hasn’t been updated in 10 years, but it still ranks high in searches for Boston Accent sound files.

Also a hat tip to the Guy’s Guide to Marketing to Women by Stephanie Holland a.k.a. Sheconomy on Twitter – I suspect this has both business and personal application (Mother’s Day is coming up and all).

Hope to See You at the NewComm Forum and InBound Marketing Summit

A terrific conference is scheduled for April 27-29 in San Francisco. It is a combination of the Society for New Communications Research of which I’m a senior fellow and the marketing conference produced by Chris Brogan, Paul Gillin and David Meerman Scott. Here is a $100 discount code for Marketing Edge readers and listeners, SNCRFRIEND if you only want to attend the New CommForum (see agenda) or if you want to attend the New CommForum and the InBound Marketing Summit use this code NCFCOMBO2 to get $200 off the listed price.

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