Like Danielle, failure is much less terrifying to me than a lingering death.  And unfortunately, without significant capital investment, I believe that Social Snap will begin to linger in the very near future.   Here’s why:

In my Marketing Land column this month, I wrote about the highly specific and unique requirements for social media metrics and reporting.  At the end of the day, almost every prospect we talk to has unique needs in terms of measurement.   Even at the most basic level, not every client uses the same mix of social channels (Linkedin and Google+ for one client; Tumblr + Pinterest + Instagram for another).  Almost every agency has its own “secret-sauce” metrics.  Every client has custom sources of data to integrate.  Even reporting styles and dashboards are highly divergent.

Ironically, Social Snap was designed and built to accommodate exactly this kind of highly customized measurement.  We created a platform that is highly flexible – not a set of canned, standardized reports.  But to continue in that direction, to build a single product that meets an ever-widening, ever-shifting range of disparate needs, requires money.  Quite a bit of money, in fact.  And the bottom line is that we don’t have it.  And we can’t get it, at least not on terms that we would consider sane or sensible.

What we do have, however, is a sophisticated base of code that can be used to build out many different types of social media tools.  For example:

• Our Influencer scoring system could be integrated into a social listening platform, a social CRM system, or any number of PR management tools.
• Our campaign tracking system could be used to enhance paid social ads management platform.
• Our top content report could be integrated with paid data to alert marketers that a particular post is worth paying to promote.
• Our very flexible reporting platform that connects the dots between social channels and Google Analytics could be used as the basis for an in-house reporting system on the client or agency side.

…and many more applications are possible.  (See this powerpoint for an overview of Social Snap.)

For all of these reasons, we are closing out our offering of Social Snap as a service (SaaS).  The Social Snap source code will be made available for the next 60 to 90 days on the basis of a non-exclusive, perpetual license, including all IP rights.  Any company in the process of making a buy vs build decision should consider purchasing a license to the Snap code, which could significantly shorten time to market and total investment.  Interested parties should contact us by e-mail at info@socialsnap.com, or by calling us at 1-703-556-3390, Extension 701.

Having had our fair share of joy and pain in various start-up projects in years gone by, we may possibly come to lament bringing the Social Snap product to an unruly market just a bit too soon.  Still, we will certainly look back with fondness on the challenges this allowed us to take on — and usually overcome — which included some of the most interesting technical challenges in social media measurement.  We think that it’s very cool stuff and that it will remain a worthy topic for the best and brightest in the field.  That’s why we hope to get Social Snap into the hands of some organizations that have the will and resources to drive it to its full potential as an application.

If you’d like to leverage a robust analytics infrastructure invested with nearly 3 years of design and coding, then we should talk…

Here’s the scoop:

• Vine is an iOS app that takes up to six seconds of video at a time.
• When you’re recording, you need to hold your finger on the screen.
• The recording will pause when you lift your finger up, making it possible to shoot multiple scenes or do stop-motion animation.
• You can include audio too – either live or recorded separately.
• The result is a looping GIF-like video and the possibilities are endless.

We covered some great Vine examples in a recent post, and that’s a good starting point for ideas. But there are also some best practices that you should follow with the platform. Not only will these best practices help with your video creation, you’ll also be able to quickly tell if Vine is the right marketing move for your brand.

Experiment with Stop Motion Animation

Get creative with time lapse video. Vine makes it quick and easy to have your company coffee cup travel across the table, or make objects appear out of nowhere. This can add to the fun and boost the viral reach of your video.

Dove’s first vine post uses this feature well and puts their product center stage. A Dove bar inches toward a group of Dove body wash bottles and knocks them over like bowling pins (with a little help from a staff member at the end).

Craft a Great Intro Tweet

Your video creation is only one piece of the Vine marketing puzzle. You also need to Tweet out your video (and share it on other social platforms). Vine’s Twitter integration makes it possible to share with just a click, but spend some time crafting the right introduction.

Just like all tweets, short and sweet is the name of the game with your video. You should not only keep it under the 140 character limit, but you shoot shot for an even shorter length to encourage retweets.

Twitter followers can’t see your video in their stream – they’ll need to clickthrough, so make that intro tweet enticing. Check out these examples:

• Sneak peek at Tim McGraw’s (hot) new body in this week’s PEOPLE!  - People
• Our #firstpost on Vine! Definitely a strike, thanks to some last pin #magic. – Dove’s aforementioned bowling theme video.
• From the past to present, the labels tell the story of our 1969 jeans. #denimevolved – GAP

Measure ROI

Like any marketing activity, you’ve got to track your ROI on Vine to determine if it’s worth your time and effort. Set your parameters for Vine usage – what are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to drive traffic to a specific landing page? Do you want to increase your number of Twitter followers? You need to set a specific, measurable goal.

Once you’ve set your goal, you can set up traffic tokens for different sources of traffic. Send out your Vine video, measure the results and then rinse and repeat if it’s successful. If not, it’s back to the drawing board.

Make sure you’re using these best practices – and see our recent Vine marketing article for more tips on how to make this new video tool work for your brand.

Are you using Vine? We’d love to see your videos – post your links below.

Impressions

As the name indicates, this metric gives you the number of times users were exposed to your post.  The exposure may take place on your page, but more often will occur in the user’s news feed or as a promoted post.  It is a good indication of the reach level that is being generated by each post.  While casting a wide net, especially if it is well targeted, is good, you really would like to inspire engagement with your posts.  This is what the next two phases of the funnel deal with.

Consumptions

This metric is a good gauge of basic engagement with your post as it measures how many times users clicked anywhere in the post, but without creating a story.  Examples of how users can consume your post include viewing the picture in the post, watching the video from the post or clicking on the link contained in the post.

Engagements

You ultimately would like your audience to interact with your brand through the post by commenting, liking, sharing or otherwise creating a story about your post.  The engagement metric is a measure of these interactions at an aggregate level and is a good indication of how compelling your posts are with your audience.

Negative Feedback

Generally, people like to look at the positive aspects of their posts, but understanding negative actions that users are taking regarding the posts is also important to understand.  Negative actions that users may take include hiding the post, hiding all posts from your page, reporting the post as spam or “unliking” the page.

With these four metrics, you have the building blocks that will enable deeper analysis of your Facebook posts.  At Social Snap, we started with these four metric categories and then built out from there to allow customers to segment each broad metric category down to its various components.  We also provide easy access to a slew of other post related metrics such as consumption rate and engagement rate that give even greater insights into how successful brands are at creating content that isn’t just broadcasted out to their audience, but that compels them to engage with the brand.

By jumping on board with Vine now and experimenting, you could potentially give your company a branding edge. Many marketers may write off Vine (is six seconds enough time to make an impact?). But Twitter took social media to a new level with only 140 characters just a few years ago — so short video seems to be worthy of at least a few tests.

Before you start, have specific conversion action in mind – like new leads or increased reach. Like all marketing activities, measurement is essential! Once you’ve figured out your goal, it’s time to get creative! Yes – six seconds is just a blip of time, but you can get a lot done. Here are three ideas to try.

Humanize Your Brand

In the social age, brands are becoming more about people and less about faceless corporations. Vine is a perfect opportunity to show off the people behind your brand.

Buzzfeed’s 6 second dance party in their office shows off some of the fun that they have, and makes you feel like you’re right there in the office. AL Monitor introduced their production staff in a short video, and put some faces behind their news stories. HubSpot showed off some of their newest swag and ended the vid with co-founders Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan.

Is there an event coming up that you can showcase on Vine? Do you want to give your top team members some love via video? Show off who you are and your followers will see you’re more than a tagline.

Give a Product Demo

Vine is definitely more accessible for product-based companies than service-based companies – and there are several brands that are making use of the platform for product demos.

Barcardi made a signature Cuba Libre cocktail in six seconds, and asked followers what they would like to see next. They could conceivably launch a whole series of cocktail demonstration videos using their liquor line.

Similarly, Tech Mag demoed their new iPad app on Vine. By showing off the app in action, they gave exposure to the new release and showed what the app can do. NoodleCakeGames used the same concept to introduce a new character in their game to the social web.

Do you have a new product to display? Is there a feature you can demo? Using Vine, you can increase interest and be helpful at the same time.

Get the Audience Involved

If you want to bring others in to market your company, you need to encourage them with an invitation to participate. Whether you launch a formal contest, or just prompt them to give you a shout out, look for ways to involve your audience.

UK retailer ASOS posted a video that encouraged followers to make Vine videos of their ASOS purchases. Not only does it help make the online shopping experience more fun, but the participants will expose the ASOS brand to their followers.

Is there a way you can create a contest to encourage participation with your brand on Vine?

Vine is new and a lot of fun – but only time will tell if it can drive profitable actions. In the meantime, why not experiment a little bit and track your results to see what works best for your brand?

(Thanks to Pace, HubSpot and Adweek for finding these Vine Shares.)

1.)    Successful Client Engagements:  Your agency may get lucky and score a social media marketing home run or two without a structured approach to data analysis and optimization.  But it will take more than the occasional win to build a successful, sustainable, high-growth social media practice.  Social data holds the keys to insights that will drive repeated successes.  For example, social data can help your agency determine the following:

• The topics and types of content that work best with a particular audience.
• The best tactics for each of the social channels in your mix (Pinterest, Twitter, Vine, Tumblr, etc.)
• Where your time — and the client’s money — should be focused.
• Identification of real time opportunities to engage in social channels (think Oreo and the Super Bowl power outage)
• Which of the bjillion social sites you can’t possibly keep up with that are actually worth attention.

Bottom line:  If you can’t optimize for success, how long will you hang onto the budget for social (and maybe the client)?

2.) Competitive Advantage: Let’s face it.  Measuring the impact of social media can be complicated.  Data lives in many different silos and it requires time, skill, and tools to collect and analyze it efficiently.  Some agencies just don’t have the resources or the expertise — which spells opportunity for the agencies that do.  Delivering quality measurement as part of your services is a way to get a leg up on the competition.

3.) Credibility:  A structured, disciplined approach to tracking, analysis and reporting sends a message loud and clear to your clients that no smoke is being blown — and hopefully, that your services have tangible, beneficial results.  This builds trust (especially when the numbers move in the right direction).

4.) Stickiness:  If you have a long history with your client’s data — you’ve tracked it over time, you’ve studied the patterns, you are familiar with its’ anomalies — they may think twice about replacing you.  Having Analytics chops plus long-term experience with your client’s data makes you an asset that will be expensive to replace (think of all the hours the new shop will burn getting up to speed).

5.) Face Time: Reporting is a great mechanism for establishing regular check-ins and communications with clients.  New data, results, or analysis can be a compelling reason to touch base in between regularly scheduled meetings.

6.) The Value-Add:  Any intern can print out reports, but as Arthur C. Clark once said:  “…information — in the sense of raw data — is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.”  Social media measurement and analytics can showcase your agency’s ability to provide added value that is essential to a client’s success.

7.) Profit:  Social media measurement and reporting can be profitable — IF data collection and aggregation can be automated.  And this is where Social Snap shines.  Our measurement platform can help you create reports in minutes (not hours) so that you can focus on finding insights that will help you create great marketing.

Instagram marketing can help you engage your audience without being overly promotional, and reach out to mobile users as well. While there are many ways to create a brand experience on Instagram, contests are one of the best techniques you can use to gather to new followers or drive traffic back to your website.

Major brands like National Geographic, General Electric and Surf Magazine are all making use of Instagram contests, and you can follow suit with these simple guidelines.

1. Make sure you’ve established your brand on Instagram before you try a contest.

Your brand needs followers in order to spread the word, so don’t try to launch an Instagram contest right out of the gate. You need to establish your presence over time and build an initial group of followers. Register your brand name as your account name, and post photos for a few weeks, while doing some basic community outreach. The general rule of thumb is to post at least once a day in order to keep your stream going.

2. Follow the Instagram contest guidelines.

There aren’t any official contest rules on Instagram, but there is a list of guidelines that they offer for brands. Using the example of a successful contest by the band the Deftones band, they outline five guidelines to follow – from getting involved to using the Instagram API to track results.

3. Select a hashtag for your contest.

Hashtags function on Instagram just like they do on Twitter, and it’s important to select a term that will tie your contest together. The official entry hashtag should be short, memorable and tied to your brand. For example, T.G.I. Friday’s used #myfridayfaves as a hashtag for their holiday promotion contest.

If you’re not sure where to start with your hashtag, register for free at Statigram and view commonly used hashtags. You’ll want to find something unique so you can track entries for your brand’s content.

4. Pick a reward that will appeal to your target audience.

Like any successful marketing campaign, your Instagram contest needs to resonate with your target audience – and the prize is a big part of that. While a Starbucks card or other gift card might be a good general fit, try to tie the prize into your brand. Give away a free product of yours, or a free month of service or something else equally as enticing.

5. Clearly define the rules of your contest (and tie them to your business goals.).

If you want your contest to lead to specific business goals, you need to make the entry rules relate. For example, if you want to increase brand awareness, create a contest that asks participants to take photos of themselves with your product.

As long as you know your audience, establish your brand and manage your hashtags you can make the most of Instagram contests.

Do you ever look at the Google Analytics (GA) social referrals report and wonder why the visit metrics seem lower than you had anticipated?  If you have, you are likely not alone and may well be justified in your assessment that the numbers should be higher.  The issue likely is not that GA is underreporting, however, but rather that it doesn’t know how to attribute the social referrals appropriately.  The main culprit is likely the GA UTM parameters that are used for campaign tracking.  To take a look at why this is the case, I’ll use Twitter referrals as an example.

If you are like many social media marketers, you are tracking all the links you put out on Twitter through campaign tracked URLs that make use of GA’s UTM parameters.  You may be using GA’s URL builder, the free URL tracking tool offered by Social Snap that also manages the UTM parameters for you, or you may be trying to do it manually through Excel.  In any case, you likely have standard nomenclature that you use for the various UTM parameters that may look similar to the two examples below.

• www.mysite.com/blog/awesome_post/?utm_source=Twitter&medium=social&content=awesome_post&campaign=blog_promotion
• www.mysite.com/blog/awesomer_post/?utm_source=Twitter&medium=social&content=awesomer_post&campaign=blog_promotion

Notice the utm_source that is used in both of these examples.  The text used for this field will override the actual referrer, which means GA will use “Twitter” as the source instead of twitter.com or whatever the referrer actually was.  This is where the root of the discrepancy is coming from.

If you filter your referrals with an advanced filter such as twitter\.com$|^t\.co$|^twitter$, you will be able to see all the visits that should be attributed to Twitter.  As you can see, there is a source named “Twitter” and another named “twitter”.  The reason why both exist is a result of using UTM parameters and not using a tool like the one offered by Social Snap to manage the UTM parameters.  That, however, is a separate topic that I’ll leave for a later post.

Figure 1: GA Traffic Sources Report

While you consider visits that came from the source “Twitter” and “twitter” to be Twitter referred visits, GA does not see it the same way.  The reason is that GA matches social referrals based on the domain name.  In the case of Twitter, GA is looking for visits that came from twitter.com, one of its sub-domains or t.co, Twitters URL shortener.  As a result, GA will omit anything that has a source of “Twitter” or “twitter” from its social related reports, which may drastically alter the number of visits that get attributed to Twitter.  In this case, the visit numbers attributed to Twitter has dropped to just 157.

Figure 2: GA Social Network Report

If you are using a reporting tool (reports from an SMMS system, a marketing automation system or any social media measurement tool) be sure to understand how socially referred visitors to a web site are defined/calculated.  At Social Snap, we do not pull this metric directly from Google Analytics.  Instead, we combine all visits that are actually driven bysocial (whether GA recognizes it or not) including  visits that result from using custom UTM parameters, so that our reports reflect an accurate total (see Figure 3 below for an example of our traffic reports).

Figure 3: Social Snap Report (showing visits generated by Social Media)

Hey, you’ve got enough on your hands trying to make the case for social media.  The least we can do is make sure your data is giving you full credit where it is due.

Direct-Engagement Opportunities

Facebook has launched a new gift card program that differs from similar cards in several key ways. Facebook members can send gifts, buy items from Facebook advertisers, buy digital apps and online gaming credits and reload their cards. Cards store balances from multiple retailers on each card, and positive balances never expire.

• Facebook members can send their friends these gift cards, which they can use instantly online. The physical cards follow in the mail, but members can access their card balances through their Facebook accounts.
• Promoters hope that consumers will increasingly view Facebook as a trusted payment option to rival competing e-wallets, dedicated payment apps, PayPal accounts and credit and debit cards.
• Facebook mobile apps could extend the card’s viability to real-world transactions through smartphones, tablets and laptops.
• Retailers can obtain comprehensive intelligence about these cards, find out how people use them, get instant sales conversions from their Facebook ads and develop stronger interactive relationships with their preferred clients.

Revenue Impact

Many major companies refuse to consider social media investments as direct revenue-producing strategies, but Facebook Cards could change people’s minds.

• Analysts can access the Facebook Ad Manager to get data on how many people view their ads, number of times they see it, social connections of people who view the advertising and actions that people take after viewing particular ads.
• Analysts can see if people order gift cards after viewing Facebook ads or whether they use their card credit to buy products.

Possible Drawbacks

Inaugural partners for Facebook Gift Cards include Target, Sephora, Jamba Juice and Olive Garden. The cards can keep different balances for each merchant, such as $100 for Olive Garden, $75 for Target and $25 for Jamba Juice. However, real-world usage depends on how many merchants choose to partner with Facebook in the program.   Another issue: the card program creates possible conflicts of interest for retailers who might balk at promoting cards that enable customers to buy products from their competitors.

Analytics Offer Undeniable Benefits

The need for stronger metrics may trump any concerns about convenience, applicability and practical usefulness of the Facebook Cards. The technology will allow industry analysts to obtain clear data on response, create simplified systems of bonuses and rewards for consumers and measure qualitative differences in conversion rates of advertising initiatives.

Overall, the Facebook Card looks promising.  It has the potential to help business owners connect the dots and build stronger social-advertising campaigns whether they use outside tools or measure results in-house.

Publish More Frequently

Blogs are the foundation of a strong content marketing strategy – but publishing once per week or so isn’t enough.  Businesses that publish at least three times per week see the biggest return on their content marketing efforts. Businesses that publish at least twelve posts per month see three times as much traffic as those that publish four. And businesses that reach daily posting get five times as much traffic. If you want better results, you need to publish more frequently.

Use Social Listening for Idea Generation

If you’re going to publish more frequently, you’ll need more ideas – and this is an area where many marketers are struggling. In Content Marketing Institute’s Marketing Research Report, over half of the respondents named content output as their biggest challenge in content marketing. With three to five posts per week it can be difficult to come up with ideas.

That’s where social listening comes in. If you explore the topical categories that you are monitoring on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and other social sites, you have your finger on the pulse of your niche or industry.  By paying attention to what is popular and controversial, you can generate dozens of new ideas.

Connect Your Content with Key Points in the Buying Cycle

There is a whole world of content you can create about your industry – but in order to get the best results, you need to focus on what your prospects or customers need and want.  Start by thinking through the key points in the buying cycle for your customers.  What are those make or break moments for them?  What are their biggest questions, their objections, or their needs in the process of making a purchase decision.  Use content to give them what they need at various points in the buy cycle so that they can make a decision more quickly.

And don’t forget that Blog posts aren’t the only type of content available.  Depending on the topic and goal of each piece of content, you’ll want to include white papers, reports, powerpoints and infographics as well.

Promote Your Content

Content marketing and social media are closely linked because social channels help your audience find the content you create.  Share your content on your own social media platforms and track the success of your posts.  For an example, see Figure 1, which shows a Social Snap report that highlights posts across channels that were shared the most.  Tracking your posts/updates helps you learn more about which topics, formats and delivery times work best for your audience. You can also reach out to Influencers in your industry so they can share your content with their followers. Having a well-defined social promotion strategy can help you ensure that you’re getting the eyeballs and clicks you’re looking for.

Track Your Results and Engage

Content marketing measurement is missing from many content marketing programs. As with any measurement initiative, you first need to understand what your goals are in order to measure progress.  Your goals may include some of the same goals publishers focus on (how much content is shared for example).  But, beyond publishing goals, you probably want to know how specific content is contributing to business goals as well.  This means you’ll need to track not only sharing, but also conversions associated with content.  For a more thorough discussion on this topic, see our recent article in Marketing Land or contact us for a demo of the content measurement features available in Social Snap.

These best practices will help you advance your content marketing from so-so to outstanding!