It’s also the first get together after eMetrics New York, which was a major, and had big time Canadian attendance. These tend to be among the more interesting evenings. It has also been some three months since the last WAWTO event, so there should be quite a few fresh stories.

Among other reasons:

• 43% said “My wall was becoming way too crowded with marketing posts and I needed to get rid of some of them”.

• 38% said “The content became repetitive or boring over time”.

• 19% said “The content wasn’t relevant to me from the start”,

• 17% “The company’s posts were too chit-chatty – not focused on real value”.

All of these reasons cited go directly to the concept of relevancy.

When does content become too much? When it ceases to be relevant.

When do you want to make some content go away? When it ceases to be relevant.

When does content become boring? When it ceases to be relevant.

This competition for relevance is one half of the defining challenge for social media marketers. To a certain extent, paying for the privileged of pushing an unwanted message into the yawning maw of consumers provided a specific degree of insurance. Relevancy was always theoretically important to marketing effectiveness. It’s just that it wasn’t a big enough factor to truly matter. Or rather, it didn’t matter to enough people.

It’s not a new problem. Rather, it’s an intensification of a latent one.

8. They deliberately use an odd sounding number for the length of a list. Round numbers like 10 sound engineered.

7. They know that there’s a high reading completion rate on such a list. That is to say, the probability of a person clicking through to another page, right below the list, is high, thereby increasing overall ad impressions on a single visit.

6. They know that some of the most effective list titles contain a promise of insider information.

5. They know that a small percentage of the population creates lists, but a large percentage of the population cares about them.

4. They know that some people love to be ranked by other people. More specifically, the adulation that goes with being top ranked.

3. They know that at least 200,000 US People (Quantcast definition) visited one of the top five sites dedicated entirely to top 10 lists. It’s an industry unto itself.

2. They know they are an effective layout to embed ad units.

1. They know that lists are an effective, engineered, design pattern designed to evoke a very specific reaction.

And they really don’t care if you know it.

And there’s your jolt below:

ICE is not the successor to Value of a Fan, abbreviated VOAF. We asked different questions.

Last year, in response to VOAF, many of my cohorts came forward with brilliant follow up questions, and the dialogue that ensued contributed to the subsequent study and model design. Work continues.

I welcome, in the spirit laid out by Tsang, engagement on the topic.

What do you think about Increasing Campaign Effectiveness using social media? What would you consider and explore?

The goal of target setting is to make a statement about a desired future state – with or without a forecast.

Targets are political artifacts. You can read all about such dynamics in public policy here.

Forecasts, ideally, are scientific artifacts.

The interplay between forecasts and targets is particularly interesting. Those who produce sophisticated forecasts should understand that the motivation of those probing models is to assess whether or not a future state is possible, or, in certain situations, just how probable a given scenario could be.

Don’t become trapped into the mindset that a trend is locked in permanently. Actively explore what needs to be true, in which circumstances, to produce a better outcome. Most importantly, and I’m learning this the very hard way, make every attempt to make affirmative recommendations.

My original hypotheses are rejected. A piece of the world doesn’t really work the way that I expected.

The great news is that I’m forced to look beyond the clean dataset and write new hypotheses. Even failures can be great. However, it doesn’t make for good commercial reading. Instead of having that nice, clean, nugget:

Brands that did x realized y.

There’s a much messier message:

Neither a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i , j, k, l, m, n, nor p had a significant impact on y.

That messier message works among marketing scientists. Usually a sound of surprise. Then acceptance when they see the summary tables.

It’s not commercially actionable.

It’s far more effect to give very clear ‘to do’ recommendations than clear ‘do not’ recommendations. Memory and recall is precious. It’s hard to get things to stick and even harder to fish it out. A laundry list of ‘not significants’ is not effective. Moreover, being unethical and pulling out a statistically insignificant term doesn’t quite settle it, either.

So instead, tomorrow, I’ll have to change the dependent variable. Y will be e. Or f. or i. It’s a lot more work, but there are actionable recommendations in there. It has to be commercially interesting- knowing full well that if I poke without hypothesis in mind the odds of being fooled by randomness increases. And, I’m energized by having more justification for a chosen paradigm of social media analytics.

In sum, it’s been rough. And I’m charging on.

It’s what we do.

I told the story about how different versions of ROI is rooted well before anybody in the room had been born. And it’s such a contentious issue because it goes directly to one’s being. ROI is the reflection of your own worth to an organization, and naturally, as such, it’s going to be contended.

The approach taken in the Syncapse Value of a Fan study was selected for a very specific reason – emphasizing a longer view of time and an emphasis on the monetary value of relationships. The approach taken with Earned Media Value is selected for being very direct, rapid, and comparable with other mediums. They both correspond to a personal concept of time and the value of relationships. Recurring LTV versus instant Impressions.

The biggest cleavage that emerged in the subsequent hour was around a different fundamental belief. For a marketing scientist, CEO, CFO, CMO – the dependent variable is always money. There are many independent variables, of which, one of them is relationships. Relationships can be an important source of sustainable competitive advantage. However, relationships are an independent variable, not the dependent one. In business, the reason why you build relationships with customers, suppliers, governments and employees is to realize sustained money. It’s not simply or purely out of altruism.

Other organizations seek good relationships to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Typically though, it boils down to money, even for a non-profit or a not-for-profit.

I didn’t anticipate this difference in belief, and I’m happy to have discovered it.

I thank Joseph Thornley for the opportunity to come out and speak to a new audience, and look forward to carrying on the discussion.

The legitimacy of the answer has a lot to do with your mental model of the world.

When I talked first in this space about it in January, I made the distinction between how Direct people and Brand people would answer the question. It turns out that the difference predates the invention of Radio and TV as mass mediums.

There was a difference between Claude C. Hopkins approached it, and how Earnest Calkins approached it, as far back as 1890.

Hopkins argued for the hard sell and scientific advertising. Hopkins view of time was narrow, short-term, and of instant reaction.

Calkins argued for the soft sell and branding. Calkins view of time was broad, long-term, and of building a lasting relationship with customers.

Both men had a huge influence in the creation of the modern advertising industry, and this cleavage between the Brandsters and Analyticals persists to this day.

Assume both types agree on what is meant by the term ‘investment’. A cost is a cost and it’s relatively straightforward to derive that figure.

The term ‘return’ is far more contested.

When is a return a return?

At the root is the amount of time that must elapse before a judgement about return can be made.

An analytical, Hopkins type of arguement would define Return as the amount of money the firm earned as a direct result of a given campaign, during a given campaign or very shortly thereafter.

A brandster, Caulkin type of argument would define Return as the amount of money the firm earned, over the long run, of all the customer relationships.

That question of time is incredibly important when it comes to which variables are used in the final attribution calculation. For instance, in a Hopkins mental model, there would be no attempt to even calculate ‘brand equity’ or ‘goodwill’. These are deferred, potential, monetary value, and as such, cannot be considered a ‘return’ at all. In a Hopkins mental model, return is the immediate dollar return and/or cost offset as a result. Time is an enemy because it dilutes the accuracy of a controlled test and exacerbates cost.

On the other hand, a Caulkin argument would follow that relationships in social media marketing are incredibly important, and that there is a potential to lengthen the loyalty curve. As such, how the social media marketing is executed has a massive impact on the value of the entire customer base, amortized. There’s real brand equity and goodwill there, and it should be valuated as a return. It may be months or years before anybody would know for sure if a given campaign had a lasting effect. In a Caulkin mental model, that view is perfectly acceptable, because to question this bit or that bit of a marketing mix is like asking what the ROI of the wing on a jet is. It’s a nonsensical question to them.

“What kind of return can one expect from social media?”

It’s a social question. So I answer it with a question: ‘what is that you’re trying to do?’

If the goal of a social media campaign is to drive immediate sales through to the website – then there is a very well known Hopkins attribution model in place there.

If the goal of a social media campaign is to drive delight and build relationships – then there are very well known attribution models in place there.

Each types of thinking lend themselves to a social Return on Investment figure that will have validity, depending on where you come from.

A single, unified, model of social media ROI is certainly possible. It would have to be heavily abstracted for anybody to use it. This, in turn, goes to an argument about which pieces must be abstracted, to which degree of accuracy, for which audience, for what reason.

A fact-filled, evidence based approach would be required to answer that question with a high degree of certainty. And as such, measurement and marketing scientists alike can craft a proper predictive model. It is from that basis that you can calculate the Return on Investment expected. Until that time, there are excellent proxies from both points of view.

I knew most of my followers by name, and met with most of them monthly. It was just a coincidence that 95% of them were in analytics. Even though I was living between Toronto, Calgary, Chicago, Vancouver and New York, Twitter was a localized, central hub.

I was in 5 places at once.

Twitter was a place where conversations happened out loud, in public, and other people who were interested in what we were interested in could come along. It was an always-on Web Analytics Wednesday. There’s somewhat of a Lwaxana Troi quality to it. And that’s what made it so grand.

This was the period of Twitter as a true conversation medium.

Twitter itself hasn’t changed of course.

I have. And I’ve noticed it has changed for many of my friends, too.

It’s increasingly an RSS newsfeed, each neatly organized into their own columns. So, usage changes.

I’ve long since stopped following the people who RT mashable and TC. (Seriously. Stop it.)

In return, I’ve long since stopped live tweeting major TV events. I don’t tweet from conferences as intensely. Sharp exchanges of image macros has settled out. There’s considerably less fun. Naturally, these are all changes in my own behavior – the difference between daytime Berry and nighttime Berry. And twitter is now the channel of choice for daytime Berry.

I’m still generating just as much content as I always have. If not more. I just don’t generate it on Twitter. I generate the funnest material anonymously. And at the root of that – of course – is becoming captive to those who follow you.

The pattern is only interesting because I went through the same thing with Facebook prior to May, 2008.

The same should go for everybody. From commenting, blogging, to writing books. Repeating somebody’s work in its entirety is pretty unnecessary when a citation would do. What you build off others, how you do intellectual parkour and create something new out of many things old, is what’s valuable. You advance everybody that much further and faster by doing so.

And a gap in the literature doesn’t always need to be filled. There might be a very good reason for such a gap.

It’s finally time for me to make an original contribution because I have something original to say. There’s a gap that needs to be filled. And I can fill it. I should fill it.

The question is how.

I know I have to fill the gap with a story. A story is stickiest and understanding more complete when I tell a story.

I know it has to be accessible.

I know it has to be sound bytey and meatey.

I’d love to be able to say that I’ve spent 8 months putting Original Content together and can share it now. I can’t. There’s loads of OC to be sure. It’s just not in any sort of coherent format. The hiccup is because I’m less skilled at inserting conflict or drama into a story.

My good friend Romy Klaus, head of Unlike.net, insists that I must triumph over myself and do so. This notion of a protagonist and an antagonist is absolutely vital to produce drama. And she’s right.

I’ve had four false starts in eight months. Each time I’ve tried I’ve fallen into traps.

The degeneration of unpacking the onion until even I’m in tears.

The degeneration into scapegoating.

The purposeful avoidance of saying anything people don’t want to hear.

It’s a trap.

I’ve come back around to my original position. I’m going to tell a story. I’m going to do it my way. And even if it’s in a buzz killington style, dammit, I’m going to try.

Here’s to a DRY Original Contribution.