Customer response to digital rewards and offers in social media is dictating marketplace strategy and consequently analytics. While attending the 2012 Social Media Week sessions in Chicago, I learned about research findings on the topic from two Northwestern University professors. Both findings exhibit the best lessons learned in examining the measurement of social media influence.
Professor Edward Malthouse, a 15 year Medill School of Journalism faculty veteran, first explained his team’s research into the connection between influence and purchase behavior. The research was based upon the membership social activity of the Canada Air Miles Reward program, a rewards program in which users earn miles and exchange accumulated points for airline tickets or consumer goods and services from program sponsors. The research team designed three contests as experiments to draw member participation. The contest objectives were to determine if participants would purchase from Airmiles sponsors after following a contest rule - announcing what they would do with earned miles – and to study any lingering message effects. The results revealed that the more participants reflected on a community’s benefits in their lives as they conduct social activity, the greater becomes the probability to purchase from a sponsor. The research also revealed a hypothesis on an engagement hierarchy. From lowest engagement to highest, the hierarchy revealed included:
The research also yielded further questions, for sure. Yet, the promise of companies being better able to craft engagement has become . The published report was nominated for best paper from the European Advertising Academy annual conference.
Alok Choudhary, John Searle Professor at the school of electrical engineering and CEO of consulting firm Voxsup, gave the following presentation, discussing the impact of big data analytics in social media. He shared the relationship of big data with respect to modeling. What most caught my attention about one of the modeling results was Choudhary’s mention that influence is tied to context, not solely to the number of followers. Anecdotally social media experts have expressed the thought, but Choudhary had empirical prove. Using a Twitter influence tool developed by the Voxsup team, Choudhary noted how one Twitter user, Mona Effahawy, was very influential regarding the twitter topics related to the Egyptian revolution. Yet she only had 300 followers. Choudhary noted that much of her influence was due to followers understanding the person, that they listened and considered her to be the most genuine. This supports his point in the presentation that the influence is dynamic – people look more at the source than the follower count. Italso counters much of the Twitterverse strategy of acquiring a large following to appear credible.
Social media has indeed revolutionized the way brands and organizations interact with customers. But in the process it has transformed what should be emphasized in measurement – new factors have been introduced, such as the speed at which information is exchanged and the way customers express their opinions on products and services. Northwestern has highlighted how much influence has become measurement’s new frontier.
