RonAmok!

Only two Major League Baseball teams won 103 regular-season games in 2002. Each couldn’t have been more different. The New York Yankees built their team the way that it had been done for over a century, by combining individual player statistics (batting averages, stolen bases, RBIs, etc.) with the instincts of talent scouts. Since the rest of the league used the same evaluation system, the resulting player-economy favored large-market teams who could afford to fill their rosters with the highest rated ballplayers.

As General Manager of the smaller-market Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane didn’t have the financial resources to pick from the top of that list. So, rather than following the herd, he created his own. Rather than agonizing over RBIs and batting averages, he looked at a player’s ability to get on base. He theorized that a team stacked with such players would statistically score more runs and as a result, they’d likely win more games than their competition. And the best part of Beane’s ranking system? Since the players that he desired were ranked so low by the herd, he could sign them at bargain basement prices.

When Beane fielded his team of “misfits” for $40 million, the herd laughed at him. But at the end of the regular season, he had the last laugh. You see, the New York Yankees had spent $125 million to win their 103 games. The Oakland Athletics spent less than one-third as much to do the very same thing.

While watching the movie, Moneyball, this past weekend, I was struck by the similarities between the baseball herd and the social media herd. When it comes to evaluating the value of social media investments, companies rely on the same herd-like tendencies.

• Those from the advertising side of the herd see the value of social media as measured in impressions and click-through rates.
• Those from the marketing side of the herd see the value in terms of “brand messaging/awareness.”
• Those from the public relations side of the herd see the value in terms of influence.

A slew of analytics companies have stepped up to feed the herd. Their pretty little dashboards serve tasty, herd-favorite morsels such as impressions, click-through rates, fans, and page views. They’ve even invented new measurements such as “klout” and “engagement.”

But here’s the problem. Generic measurements mean nothing without considering the reason for them in the first place. The goal of a MLB General Manager is to field a team that wins more games than the competition. The role of corporate communications is to support a customer’s entire journey to, through, and beyond their purchasing decisions. If the metrics that your company measures don’t support that goal, then why measure them at all?

It’s time to bust away from the social media herd. If your company has been investing in social media this past year, you have a responsibility to analyze it. All of it! Look underneath the pretty dashboard data. Start at January 1st and look at every tweet, every Facebook update, and every blog post. Study every retweet, comment, and “like” that a specific piece of digital content sparked. Look for patterns. What content resonated most with customers? What content did they ignore? What was the single most valuable piece of content that helped the most customers in their moment of truth? The answers to such questions will reveal two things: the value of your efforts and a digital program road map for next year.

But let’s face it. Most companies won’t do this. Analysis is hard work, which is why so few do it. Add the fact that running with the herd is less risky, and most communicators will continue throwing more money at meaningless things.

Billy Beane could have accepted his fate as a small market GM. Instead, he changed the rules. Are you willing to change the rules? Are you willing to dig deep into YOUR data and find out what YOUR CUSTOMERS need to support their journeys to, through, and beyond their purchasing decisions? Or will you acquiesce and continue to run with the herd?

The MLB herd scoffed at Billy Beane…well…that’s right up until he won all those games.

Photo Credit: freefotouk

Update: 07/30/2010: Google Gadgets for Spreadsheets are now working on HTML pages after being down for ten days. Today, the fix works for newly published gadgets, but legacy gadgets are still broken. I have a manageable number of pages that I maintain, so I’m satisfied with this workaround, but there are some folks on the forum who are less accommodating.

As a small business owner, I use technology for competitive advantage. I’ve bought-into the concept of cloud computing, and as such, I’ve built parts of my business around cloud-based tools. It’s also no secret that some of my favorite tools come from Google.

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with Google Docs to help illustrate how Social Media activities can be measured, tracked, and analyzed. By combining Google Spreadsheets, Google Gadgets, and a little HTML, my Social Media Dashboard offers an at-a-glance view of my client’s social media efforts. Here’ s a screen-shot of what my dashboard should look like:

Unfortunately, it hasn’t looked that way since last Tuesday morning, when I noticed that Google Gadgets stopped working. Today, my dashboard now looks like this:

I first noticed the problem while calling it up live in front of a business prospect. Having just talked-up the use of these great tools, I felt a bit red-faced, but shrugged it off as a minor hiccup in technology. Software breaks and I figured that Google would have my dashboard back up and running within a few hours. Unfortunately, 96 hours 120 hours six-days one-week ten-days later and the problem still persists.

I’m not the only person affected by outage. The following thread on the Google Docs Help Forum shows four examples–just from last Tuesday:

“I was going to do a training which included motion charts tomorrow morning.”
(newbopke)

A part form the disruptions this problem is creating to my website, what I find amazing is that after 24 hours Google doesn’t come out with a solution, and none even says “well, we will find a solution in 48 hours, and we will do this and that” or so.
(Jorge from Burgos)

I’ve been using “Gantt Chart” to follow projects progress of an ONG I’m working with. Gadget stopped working yesterday! Please! Jules: Help me, Help US!
(sosa.0991)

Is google working on this? I too have a presentation tomorrow using motion gadgets. Very stressed! Any alternative motion chart options out there for the computer illiterate?
(wmkay87)

I believe in cloud computing. I also understand the risks involved with new technologies. But if cloud computing is going to be a viable option for companies, downtime will need to be measured in hours not days.

Tags: Google Spreadsheets Gadgets Cloud Computing Broken Ron Ploof Orange County Social Media Social Media Dashboard

Last Monday I wrote a post called Real Time Communications, describing how mass communications tools in the hands of average people are having a profound affect on our lives. At the end of the article, I posed a question about business implications of such access.

The difficulty with this question is manifested in the sheer magnitude of the problem. How does a company monitor mass communications channels, save the data, analyze it, and act upon what it finds? That’s when I ran into a simple and very understandable example.

For the past few months, I’ve observed how one company uses the real-time information of a competitor to set pricing. The company is Amazon.com, the competitor is Barnes and Noble, and the product is my book Read This First: The Executive’s Guide to New Media–From Blogs to Social Networks. The chart below demonstrates what I mean.

My book was released in November 2009. Since Amazon was the first bookstore to carry it, and thus had no competition, it chose the retail price of $17.95. That price held for a few weeks until it dropped suddenly to a seemingly arbitrary $12.21. It didn’t take me too long to figure out what had happened. Read This First had just debuted on Barnes and Noble’s site at that price.

Three months after the book was released, Barnes and Noble decided to increase its price to $15.34, triggering a corresponding and almost instantaneous increase on the Amazon side. But this time, instead of matching the price increase as it had earlier, Amazon only increased it by 10%, to $13.46.

Finally, about a week later, Amazon returned its price to $12.21 while Barnes and Noble has held its at $15.34 — where both prices remain today.

To me, this chart represents a simple example of how future businesses will use real time mass communication. Computer programs will watch for specific information, events, triggers, social graphs, etc… They’ll run that information through algorithms, perform pre-programmed actions, and closely monitor the results of those actions. Over time, the algorithms will be adjusted to optimize the results.

Perhaps companies will be able to better predict mass demand for a product. Perhaps they’ll be able to automate the purchase and sale of goods and services at an optimal price. Perhaps they’ll be able to predict large earthquakes, based on disparate and seemingly inconsequential data that on a whole paints an accurate picture.

I can’t predict what they’ll do with the information, but I can predict one thing with certainty: Technology is not the limiting factor…our imaginations are.

Photo Credit: Tolomea