The Future of Social Business Analytics Isn’t Where You Think It Is
When I started working on Social Media ROI back in 2010, one of the dilemmas nagging me at the time was whether or not to devote any time to discussing (to an appropriate degree of practical detail) digital tools. On the one hand, it seemed difficult to map out how to integrate digital measurement practices into a social business measurement framework without illustrating the process with everyday examples. On the other hand, given the nature of digital tools, I knew that if I showed any screen shots of measurement and analytics software in use at the time, the book would have to be updated every six months just to keep up with changes in tech. I opted to keep the toolkit piece open, and mention social media analytics tools only in passing. Method was more important than tech anyway. It was the only way to ensure that the book would still be relevant a decade from now.
Having said that, the absence of specific digital tool recommendations remains a bit of a sore point with me and some readers, especially when they find themselves tasked with looking for said digital tools. I have no problem going through the process to people, and explaining that Excel is still, to this day, the best “app” with which to determine the ROI of social business activities, but it would be nice if something a little less hands-on were out there for me to recommend.
Case in point: I received two requests for tool recommendations Sunday morning via Twitter at around 5 am. (I’m not usually awake at 5 am, let alone on a Sunday, but I had an early flight out of JFK, and pretty wired after a crazy taxi adventure through Queens.) Anyway, long story short: even at 5 am on a Sunday, people are wondering about digital tools that will help them calculate the ROI of their social business activity. Maybe it’s time for me to give readers of Social Media ROI an update on what tools they should be looking at?
The answer is yes and no: Yes, it is time to give you an update; No, it’s still too early to point you to a specific analytics tool and give it the thumbs-up in regards to the Social Media ROI piece.
But the good news is that we’re getting close. Very close. More on that in a minute.
As you may or may not have noticed, I have been spending a little bit of time inside IBM’s ecosystem these last few months. As a freshly minted member of their influencer community, I get to attend conferences and events put on by IBM, sit down with developers and key decision makers to talk about what’s next, demo new technologies and products, etc. In other words, I have access to and visibility on some of IBM’s less “obvious” operational capabilities, emerging technologies and new services. Here’s where it gets interesting: while some influencers may talk about IT topics like “legacy stacks” and “hybridized IT,” (actually really fascinating topics, even for marketing pros), I have been busy looking for nuggets of social business opportunity and digital insights along the fringes of IBM’s cloud-focused discussions. … and much to my surprise, I have found exactly what I was looking for.
Let me reframe this for you: since about 2007, I have been looking for the best analytics suites and products on the market in all the usual places: independent developers, Silicon Valley start-ups, SxSW demos, Mashable reviews, TechCrunch articles, social media conferences, peer recommendations, etc. I’ve found some really great stuff out there (and some really useless, awful crap as well), but in all my travels, I never really seemed to find something that looked like a complete management and analytics suite. At best, each of these tools complemented each other in a sort of digital command center (or digital engagement center) model: lots of screens, lots of tools, and a Lego blocks approach to building customized digital analytics and management infrastructures for organizations… and Excel to painstakingly connect the ROI dots. (Insert sad face here.
