Riche Zamor's Blog

1st Impressions of ThinkUp Social Media Analytics Dashboard

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:20:07 -0500

I just finished installing ThinkUp, the open source social media analytics application, on my server. Because it is built on PHP and MySQL, it was pretty easy to setup in a standard Apache hosting environment, no server configuration was needed. It was as simple to get installed as most open source CMS’s - you create you database, SSH (or FTP) into your server, upload the files to your root directory, then run the installer to connect your database to the application. It takes care of the rest of the installation for you to get the basic app functioning.

Now, things get a little cumbersome when you want to connect your social media accounts to the application. In order to connect Facebook and Twitter, you need to register custom applications on each social platform. This allows ThinkUp to access the data from your profiles and pages, as well as analytics. It’s not a difficult process, but it does take time to do.

The other issue I ran into was running the crawlers for Facebook and Twitter. The first thing I noticed was the message saying I had to leave the screen open while the crawler ran. It would be preferable to have that process run in the background. I then received internal server error issues when running the crawlers for both Facebook and Twitter. This may just require some server tuning, but I have the server set to connections for up to 10 minutes, so there may be some optimization that can be done in the app.

The analytics are good for a out of the box install. I haven’t installed any plugins yet, so I will post more once I get some more time to play around. Right now it’s time for the Super Bowl!

blkgirlblogging: Mariah Carey (featuring Dru Hill) - The...

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:13:58 -0500

blkgirlblogging:

Mariah Carey (featuring Dru Hill) - The Beautiful Ones (Prince cover)

dammit. i keep trying to forget this happened.

This nonsense was definitely a low point for Dru Hill. Don’t get me wrong, I was a big fan, but this song is horrible.

This is my new mantra, adopted from Mark Zuckerberg. Don’t...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:52:50 -0500

This is my new mantra, adopted from Mark Zuckerberg. Don’t let small wins send false positives that victory is at hand. Go for the gusto, keep cranking until you reach your true end goal.

Interesting infographic on the adoption of HTML5 for game...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:31:26 -0500

Interesting infographic on the adoption of HTML5 for game development.

Integrity in Dating

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:13:21 -0500

This isn’t a post about social media, but bear with me. I wanted to share an interesting conversation I had with a female friend of mine the other day.

She liked this guy she met through a mutual friend for a while and finally got an opportunity to talk to him at a party or some gathering. They hit it off, exchanged numbers, and made plans to go out on a date.

She meets another guy that same week who she really hit it off with as well. She now had a dilemma - call the other guy and tell him she just wants to be friends because she met someone else, or blow the guy off completely. She unfortunately decided to do the latter.

Sounds like a familiar story, right? Happens way to often - people choose to act without integrity when it comes to dating.

My advise - be honest with the person. I can’t think of a time in my life where I would have rather had a women lie to me so I don’t feel bad versus telling me what’s really going on. I bet most people can’t think of a time like that either. It doesn’t feel good having it happen to you, so don’t do it to other people.

Now back to my regular social media commentary.

How do you change culture within an organization?

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:06:29 -0500

Lead by example. Show people through your own work that your idea adds value to an organization and can make things better. There will be a learning curve, so you need to develop a curriculum for how you plan to educate people within the organization on the new approach you are proposing.

Start small. Create a small group that you incorporate in the process to get buy in. They will ultimately become your advocates. When it is time to spread change throughout your organization, they will be on the front lines with you.

Make change viral. Once you have a small group of advocates, have them go out and work with people on their teams and departments to implement their new learnings. Then have those people introduce this new process to their colleagues.

Create a sustainability mechanism. Change can fade. People easily revert back to their old ways. If you can reach a support network for sustaining the change you have introduced, such as ongoing trainings, support forums or meetings, or incentives, you will keep change afloat.

Change is progressive - it cannot be rushed or forced. Be patient when trying to being about change. Often times, you will slide backward and have to pivot to make things work. Approach it as an iterative process, give yourself small wins. Don’t move on to a new phase unless you are confident that you hit your mark and you should be fine.

What is the value of an impression?

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:51:00 -0500

I have had a lot of conversations lately about the value of an impression. A lot of people wonder what the value of an impression is, especially as it relates to digital and social media. Brands want to know what the return on their investment is for each impression they buy or earn.

Let’s first demystify impressions, because we often talk about them out of context. Impressions are just a unit of measurement for the display of a piece of content - whether it be on TV, online, OOH display, etc. Often times we talk about impressions as though they are tangible things, but an impression is a metric, just like a click through or a conversion. They are not digital assets.

I explain this to give some context to my POV on the value of impressions. Because impressions are just a unit of measurement, we should evaluate it in the same way we look at other metrics available to us as marketers. I will focus on digital, because…well…where I usually measure them.

My general opinion is that impressions are not a valuable metric to measure in digital and don’t tell us much outside how of how many times content, in whatever form it may be, is displayed to some target audience. The metric in and of itself doesn’t give brands any valuable information they can use to optimize marketing efforts because it has no valuable result. Knowing a piece of your content displayed 100,000 times to people visiting your site doesn’t actually tell you what the impact that impression has on your bottom line.

There are a few other reasons that I think impressions lack much value when measuring the effectiveness of marketing efforts:

The number of impressions can be deceptive. Although your page content may display X number of times, that doesn’t tell you how many unique people saw your content. There are also a lot of things in digital that can throw off the accuracy of the total number of impressions a piece of content was displayed.
Impressions need context to be meaningful. Without another metric to add depth to the total number of impressions, it is a meaningless number. Now when you combine it with the unique number of viewers, you get a sense of how many times a given person may have seen your content. Or, when you pair impressions up with the number of conversions, you get a sense of how many times someone needed to see a piece of content before they completed your desired action.
Not all impressions are created equal. The impact of an impression of a search ad versus a Facebook ad that shows you which of your friends liked that ad unit have different effects on people. Same thing when looking at the effect a TV commercial has on someone versus a them tweet. Comparing the impact of impressions in different channels, on different platforms, and in different formats is an apples to oranges comparison.

Given that, I would argue that impressions shouldn’t be measured. Focus on measuring the outcome you want to happen once someone is displayed that piece of content. Whether you want them to click through to your site, comment on a post, or make a purchase, focus on measuring those things that impact the actual goals of your marketing efforts.

Word.

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:04:51 -0500

Word.

staff: Awesome. This happened last night. :) Thanks for putting...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 16:47:31 -0500

staff:

Awesome. This happened last night. :)

Thanks for putting this together, Frankie!
You have an amazing collection of Jon Stewart GIFs.

And thank you, Daily Show!!

Infographic: The Science of Social Timing

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:14:42 -0500

by KISSmetrics via

staff: Tumblr in 3D! (with Firefox’s new HTML Inspector) This...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 19:57:22 -0500

staff:

Tumblr in 3D! (with Firefox’s new HTML Inspector)

This is gorgeous.

Worldshap.in is an awesome website that allows you to compare...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:58:10 -0500

Worldshap.in is an awesome website that allows you to compare the correlation between 6 development indicators country by country or continent by continent.

What attracts you to a woman? You have me stumped!

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:42:30 -0500

Simple… intellect above all, quirky sense of humor, natural beauty, worldly nature, humility, passion for changing the world, and a sense of style.

eatcakey: This kid was getting it ALL the way in!

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:14:13 -0500

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

eatcakey:

This kid was getting it ALL the way in!

"If you escaped what I escaped, you’d be in Paris getting f**ed up, too!"

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:06:05 -0500

“If you escaped what I escaped, you’d be in Paris getting f**ed up, too!”

- Jay-Z

WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD?

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:50:10 -0500

Working out, Tai Chi, or watching old episodes of comedy shows.

This my definitely my style.

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:47:11 -0500

This my definitely my style.

Chuch. Matt Damon Rips Obama - Would Prefer A ‘One Term...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:38:33 -0500

Chuch.

Matt Damon Rips Obama - Would Prefer A ‘One Term President With Some Balls’ (by TheYoungTurks)

thenextweb: (via Consumers go to Social Media for Customer...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:33:54 -0500

thenextweb:

(via Consumers go to Social Media for Customer Support)

"In moments of weakness we find a path to greater strength."

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:32:23 -0500

“In moments of weakness we find a path to greater strength.”

- Me.