MediaCamp BUCKS 08, Social Media Mafia + Bucks New Uni Event
May 17, 2008 by Paul Imre
Moo card?
Twittering on twitter?
Pod-casting?
A fashion show on Second Life?
Social Media Process Measurement?
An “unconference” held at the Bucks New Uni was well attended with people travelling some distance to get to High Wycombe. (Toby Moores of SleepyDog travelled down from Leicestershire!)
The event, if you chose, was 6 hours of non-stop presentations and around the table discussions. Great stuff. More events are planned and who knows, maybe IMRE will be brave enough to present next time!
Great event, and what good PR for the Bucks New Uni.
With this post I thought I would put up a diagram that neatly shows what could be measured in Social Media. Elements of the picture came about from the ideas expressed by various people from around the table.
Sketch explained:
- Think of social media as water or electricity. For the moment water seems to fit best.
- Pick a good spot, and build a dam. This is your investment. Water from streams, rivers and run-off will fill the dam.
- The water behind the damn is the network of people taking part in the community.
- The pump is the marketing spend required to bring more water / people. Again this is cost or investment. This can be from the “long tail”, canals and pipelines from other geographies.
- As you build up the reserve behind the dam wall you are effectively building the “tribal interest” and sooner or later the I.Q. begins to show. This is the value-add.
- The IQ can stimulate and take action. This is the potential.
- The impact has amplitude. (Example given during the meeting was the Chinese arms shipment to Zimbabwe)
- The negative and positive can also be seen as the charge.
Admittedly this is a rough model, but it does encompass the discussions and gives you an idea as to what could be measured.
- Tribal IQ
- Dam capacity (therefore the investment required to build it)
- Marketing spend
- ????????????Potential (flow, volume, power/energy generated)
- Impact (amplitude)
Who benefits? Who wins? Who “controls” the tribal IQ? What are the rules for business? Hits, pageviews and conversions have less meaning as the supra-intelligence is outside of the machine……. (wikipedia has shown the self healing animal)
More info on the event: MediaCampBUCKS08
Thanks for coming along and taking part in the process of digging deep to find measurement.
Looking forward to seeing you again soon:
http://mediacamplondon.pbwiki.com/
Interesting post. It is amazing how often water comes up in conversations about this stuff.
I’m not comfortable with the idea of damming the water with your investment though. It feels more like tapping in to tidal or wave energy as the conversations ebb and flow. This is more like joining in. Dams feel more like interrupting
I guess this is an extension of the debate we had at Chris Hambly’s session - each of us has our own mental model of the process. Weare back to shining light on different parts of the Elephant!
Cheers for your thoughts
Toby
[...] had some thoughts following my media measurement round table panel discussion yesterday: http://blog.imre.co.uk/?p=68 [...]
Hi,
That’s a really interesting, and fairly effective metaphor, and one I’d be keen to try and evolve. Especially in the midst of so much global debate on whether you can measure at all, and what and how to measure. (That’s right, I’m the evil person who kept claiming you can try to at least measure part of it!)
Maybe rather than an interruptive dam, it’s about creating a reservoir of knowledge/conversation/interaction/commerce, and the investment is to dig out stream-clogging weeds and rubbish, old trolleys and car tyres, to allow users to flow into your reservoir….
[...] and no sooner than we had got home, Dan Thornton, a community marketing manager with Bauer, and Paul Imre, a web specialist from High Wycombe, had translated our discussions into [...]
[...] and no sooner than we had got home, Dan Thornton, a community marketing manager with Bauer, and Paul Imre, a web specialist from High Wycombe, had translated our discussions into [...]