Polygraph Media Blog

Polygraph: Solving & more importantly Explaining Big Social Data, Facebook

Howdy everyone -- it's been awhile since I've posted here.  Lots of work on Polygraph and a new addition to my family in the form of a baby.  Margot Ellen Treadaway was born on December 14th and is our first child.  Lots of life changes -- all good.  But the blog has taken a bit of a back seat recently.

That's a-changin'.  Regular blogging is back for us as we bring Polygraph v2 to market.  I'll tell you more about that later.

But for now, I thought I'd better explain how our business has evolved and where it is going.  For those of you who have followed the Notice Technologies ride, you know that we've had quite the journey.

We started in 2009 with a couponing platform for local businesses.  We hit the streets and talked with as many local businesses as possible -- in an effort to build something perhaps a little less one-sided than Groupon in terms of who benefits from the transaction.  Local businesses were tough to work with because they demanded immediate results -- and didn't have the time or energy for anything that failed to generate immediate, incremental revenue.  Hence Groupon.  Groupon built tremendous value for itself, at least early... but much of it was at the *expense* instead of the *benefit* of the local business.  That's why Groupon remains a largely unsustainable business model -- and why we didn't (right or wrong) pursue group purchasing aggressively.  It's also why local businesses haven't gotten a revolutionary marketing platform yet.  It takes iteration, which local businesses simply aren't willing/able to do unlike other classes of customers.

We tried salvaging those couponing assets by offering them to newspaper groups.  But that became its own set of problems as you can imagine, and local media didn't prove to be much of a gainful opportunity for us.

All the while, we'd been hearing from people in agencies, brands, and other larger companies that measurement of social media was a huge pain point.  Facebook Insights didn't do the job well and still doesn't.  We saw an opportunity with our v1 of Polygraph to jump into the analytics fray.  And that's been a very positive move for us.

But we see a bigger trend and a bigger pain point in a lot of companies.  Businesses large and small are trying to better understand what value they're driving from social media.  It isn't enough for the world's leading companies to conduct best practices, adopt a social media management system, hire a consultant, or outsource social media to an agency.  The C-Suite really wants to know a few things:

• What business metrics are being affected by good social media execution?
• Is there a statistical relationship between social data and revenue or other mission-critical business outcomes?
• Do Facebook Ads and the like really work?
• How are competitors grappling with Facebook for customer outreach, customer service, and other marketing purposes?
• Is the social channel truly worthwhile?
• Should social earn a greater or lesser investment moving forward?

Who do CEOs and CMOs turn to for clear, data-driven answers to these questions?  They certainly can't turn to existing agencies of record -- they're too invested in a positive answer.  C-suite execs need a BS detector to tell them what the data says, and we're increasingly that BS detector.

Polygraph does an inventory of available data and collects it from Facebook for a company, its brands, its competitors, and its portfolio of Facebook assets.  We cache it, analyze it, and find relationships in the data.  Companies will sometimes give us other data sets that we'll add to our analysis -- such as web metrics, e-commerce results, or other mission-critical data.  We look at it all holistically to understand the customer engagement system -- how people discover the brand and make decisions to engage, interact, and make purchases (where applicable).  We seek understanding of the customer walk and conflict resolution -- are people using the brand's social assets as a customer service vehicle.

Ultimately, all of this data tells us a compelling story that can drive next steps.  Should you keep your existing agency or find a new one?  Does your portfolio of assets provide a return on investment?  Does social data correlate to real-world business metrics that matter to you?  Can we find evidence of causation?  Does social data move the needle or vice versa?

Understanding is what the C-suite craves today.  But the C-suite doesn't have it today. Agencies aren't independent arbiters aligned with the interests of a C-suite exec responsible for driving revenue and profit.  Unfortunately, very few marketers are equipped with the analysis chops necessary to make the case effectively also.  Sometimes, a marketer is equipped but isn't viewed as an independent, disinterested judge.

We're doing some fascinating projects right now in several major consumer industries that I wish we could talk more about -- but we're under NDA.  It's admittedly a little frustrating in that regard.  But you should know that the data unlocks fascinating insights that leading brands are beginning to uncover today. Truth lies in the social data. That's what we do -- collect, analyze, and drive insights from social data.

Social, the Salesforce acquisition of Buddy Media, and Real Value

Tonight, this blog post summarizing year 1 of the Salesforce acquisition of Buddy Media.  The numbers, if taken on face value, are brutal as the endeavor is a big money loser so far.

The picture painted is probably a tad on the pessimistic side.  If your Salesforce, you don't buy a Buddy Media to harvest but rather capture market share.  I'm sure a conscious decision was made to spend whatever necessary to win share asap -- so costs are going to be higher in the short-term than revenue.  This is why people invest in Salesforce.com, for the prospect of future cash flows and the benefit of capturing share now at the expense of optimizing short-term financial results.

Remember also that this particular business is super competitive with Salesforce, Adobe, Google, and Oracle all competing in the SMMS space against a few independents (Sprinklr, Spredfast).  Keep in mind also that a lot of SMMS work is still being done manually by service businesses from IBM to digital agencies to traditional agencies now competing aggressively in social marketing.

But I do think there is a lesson lurking in here -- that social is still an unproven commodity in the short-term.  Folks like us and others are doing what we can to find value in social media.  Investors who get into social media plays, whether through publicly traded companies or those selling privately held stock, do so on the belief that their picks will help the marketing ecosystem in some way.  But it's still the wild west when it comes to delivering real value.

Whether it's Buddy Media struggling or Facebook ads struggling or folks like Mark Cuban questioning whether or not he should pay for Facebook News Feed visibility, it all comes down to one critical and unanswered question -- what is the value of social marketing for marketers?

When the answer to this question is as simple as it is for search... i.e. Google Adwords... billions of dollars of new shareholder value will be unlocked.  Now where exactly will that be, and when?

Social Marketing & The Quantified Self

The "Quantified Self" movement is something you've probably heard of over the last few years -- the idea that you can quantify previously mundane activities that you've otherwise ignored to attach a number to the things that you do.  There's plenty of reading about it on Wikipedia if you'd like to dig deeper.

In real life, the movement has manifested itself in successful consumer products in/around the fitness industry, such as the FitBit, numberous nutrition apps on the iPad, Garmin products, and the Nike+ line of products.  

In fact, Nike is releasing a product specifically for basketball so you can quantify your vital stats on the basketball court.  Allow me to let the expert, LeBron James, explain it.  

 

Sidebar -- but as a 38 year old, aging weekend warrior, I just don't want to know how bad my numbers are and especially as they compare to friends... but I digress.

Others have added a social element to tap into how we respond to peer pressure and/or social humiliation -- such as Strava and the Withings Scale that tweets out your weight.  Yikes!  

Why do people quantify themselves?

• People quantify themselves when something is wrong and they want to fix it.
• People quantify themselves when they're doing something right, and want to make sure they continue to do things right.  
• People quantify themselves when they want discipline to do the right thing, even though their natural inclination is to not do the right thing.
• People quantify themselves when they want an objective measurement of how they are performing at something, relative to peers or competitors.
• People quantify others when they want to use data & milestones to understand things they cannot understand, or as a proxy for heavy-handed, micro-management.

Numbers have a way of cutting through the clutter and capturing only what really matters... outcomes.  Combining numbers from different sources can give you a quick, objective look at everything that really matters to you.

If you take numbers the next step to analysis, you can begin to draw conclusions based on the data but also including human judgment where it's appropriate.  Leave analysis to others, and you're getting their interpretation of the data.

We found it interesting that Jeff Ma, formerly of the famed MIT Blackjack team, recently ventured into this space to quantify what people are doing in the workplace with his new startup, TenXer.  Right place, right time -- like Facebook, this would've never flown even a decade ago.  But times change and now it's a brilliant idea.

We're seeing it in social marketing and we're seeing it move into other areas of marketing that were thought to be a "black hole" previously.

We're at the beginning of a bigger trend where the "Quantified Self" moves into areas beyond personal improvement, fitness, etc.  People are learning the value of numbers, metrics, and how to apply them to make better decisions.  We're happy to be here at this critical time.

Crowdsourced ideas for using Social Data Mining & Analytics

Happy Friday, everyone.  We launched Polygraph 2 1/2 weeks ago, and have been floored by the response.  Clearly, a lot of people have wanted access to & analysis of Facebook Page data but haven't known exactly where to go to get it.  And as "the wisdom of the crowd" would indicate, you (collectively) are a lot more creative and a lot smarter when it comes to uses of Polygraph Reports -- either as currently packaged or as you have requested we make the data and analytics available in a customized manner.

Not mentioning any names, companies, or other identifying characteristics, here are a few of our favorite ideas:

Real-time campaign & community management analysis -- Community managers have responded particularly well to Polygraph, citing its affordability and its easy to understand interface.  We've been told repeatedly that it is a "community manager's dream" although I can't personally verify that, as I'm not a community manager. ;-)

Next generation market research -- Market research used to be conducted entirely over the phone or in person.  But now, people are telling us their preferences in social media updates.  This data can be aggregated and can accentuate more traditional market research methods.

Deep competitor/industry analysis -- Several of our customers at launch are systematically pulling down reports on all the major players in their highly competitive industry.  One has already requested over 1,000 reports to survey the target market for his product/service. 

Watching trends -- Social data can be used to watch broader trends among consumers.   This data can then be applied to other data sets -- both public and private -- to better inform business and investment decisions.

Measuring offline advertising lift in social -- Marketing today is a multi-screen, multi-dimensional activity.  Social certainly gets a lift anytime you do things in other areas, and vice-versa.  Marketers around the world are trying to better understand the interplay of different marketing activities to better understand purchase intent.

I mention these really to exercise your creativity.  If you could analyze mountains of social media data, what would you do?

The Next Phase of Social Software -- Measurement

A few quotes from Deloitte's recent study, Social Business: What are Companies Really Doing?

"To capture this value, however, companies will need to more systematically assess the operating metrics that have the greatest potential to move the needle and then strategically deploy social software to ensure near-term performance impact with modest investment."

"Social business depends on leadership.  Metrics may not be critical when companies are experimenting with social software, but as it becomes more important to an organization, having metrics in place can help managers assess and reward related behaviors."

We agree!

Social business is increasing in popularity -- but as it does, executives will want to know just how they are performing in both absolute terms and contextually against competitors and within an industry.

The best managers will need to get beyond what they're told and use a "left-brained", numbers-driven approach to augment the "right-brained" work necessary to creatively engage with new and existing customers.

The Origins of Polygraph Facebook Data Mining Analytics

First a quick thanks to all of you who visited the blog yesterday.  Our blog traffic exploded yesterday, which means I'll be writing here frequently. :-)

Today, I thought I'd talk about where we got the idea for Polygraph and the feedback we heard from the marketplace in the 9 months preceding our launch.

As some of you may know, our company's origins came from the couponing world.  Our first product was a couponing system that businesses could use to publish coupons on the Web, Facebook, Twitter, and to e-mail lists.  We built this as a DIY system for local businesses and brands, and as such talked with a bunch of customers.

The feedback we got was that couponing really needed to be conditional for businesses to get really fired up about it.  Businesses pay significant $$ for new customers, but treat existing customers as people from which the ARPU (average revenue per user) must be raised.  So if you offer say a 20% coupon to anyone who would take it, the business might get some new customers but it is much more likely to be giving a discount to the very people who will be a customer anyway. 

Businesses market to existing customers differently than they market to new customers, and so if couponing is going to deliver a real ROI, as a tactic it has to become "intelligent".  (Incidentally, I think this is a problem that Groupon and LivingSocial have today.)

So we went back to the drawing board and asked "are there any ways for us to get an idea of if someone is a customer?"  And we turned to Facebook and said "well, Facebook Pages might be an interesting proxy for loyalty."  If someone is associated with a Facebook Page, they are probably a customer of that business in some way.  And hence, Polygraph was born.

We took our core technology to brands and agencies, and surprisingly (to us at least) heard a number of other related requests.  The core of the feedback was that Facebook Insights (or any existing analytics provider) did not adequately explain cause & effect on Facebook.  For example,

• I post something, what happens?
• I don't post something today or for a week, what are the implications?
• I use a particular agency to manage my pages, are they doing what I want?
• I think my competitor is beating me, how can I tell?
• What goals should I set for my team/consultant/self?
• What are the right metrics?
• Are we winning?
• Are we getting closer to something resembling a ROI?

The problem was that social metrics had not "grown up" to answer basic questions about marketing and the competitive landscape.  The ones that had existed were almost all built using Facebook Insights data, which is incomplete, confusing, and does not give you any information on your competitors.

So we applied the same data mining techniques we used to determine Fan activity to all the analytics a marketer would/should care about.  This is probably our #1 differentiator.  We record every social interaction on a page and discard absolutely nothing.

Take for example the illustration below, from the Healthy Choice Facebook Page.  This one User Post was written by Julez, liked by Jennifer, responded to by the Healthy Choice Page 4 hours later, commented on by Tim, and both the comments were liked by someone.  Apply this rigor to any Facebook Page, and you can learn some truly insightful things.  Apply it across multiple pages, and you can learn a lot about a competitive market, an industry, or how people are interacting with Pages on Facebook as a whole.

Polygraph is the only product that dives deep into the available data and makes sense of it for marketers.  We think there is a ton of knowledge trapped in this publicly available data, and we're unlocking it using data mining, data science, and world-class analytics.

More to come as we go along -- examples, how people are using the information we provide, creative uses of Polygraph, and where we're going in the future -- but now you know how we conceived of Polygraph!