As a nice follow up to my post on online metrics in the world of user generate content, I had the chance to have lunch with Sam Flemming of CIC / IWOM fame. While I have been somewhat critical of CIC's reports, I do admire Sam as a visionary and Chinese internet pioneer. CIC almost single handedly popularized Social Media marketing and measurement (they call it Internet Word of Mouth or IWOM) in China, a market that has not even started to measure online activity on company websites effectively.
Most of our discussion focussed on how to integrate social media measurement, an area where CIC has patent pending technology, with web analytics data, CIC's positioning towards agencies, using social media effectively and the Chinese Social Media environment in general. But one thing after the other (or Step by Step, as NKOTB said, yes I still can sing that song)

Chinese Social Media environment

• China has a very vibrant social media scene that is driven by BBS culture
• Social networks are growing out of successful BBS' and this history makes them unique and uniquely different form popular western networks
• These networks are populated mainly by young netizens, highschool and university students
• The discussions hosted on these networks cover a wide range of topics, many of them relevant to major consumer brands
• Currently there is no equivalent content rich network for business users (while there are LinkedIn clones they do not feature discussions), although companies like Alibaba and Xing are moving into this space
  

CIC's positioning towards agencies

• Sam sees online agencies as partners for CIC and has positioned the company as a compliment. They will measure social media conversation and consult clients on a IWOM strategy, but it will not execute or manage IWOM campaigns or seed posts.
• In reality both agencies and clients don't see this distinction as clearly and advertisers do position CIC and agencies as competitors. More communication is needed to create a win-win situation. Our discussion was good step into this direction.

Effective usage of social media

• Once marketers understand that their brand is talked about online and how this influences their brand equity, their natural response is asking "how can I influence the ongoing discussion". While this is a valid question, the easy answer (seed your own posts or hire a 3rd party vendor to control the debate) raises serious ethical issues and will, in the long run, destroy the trust and effectiveness of internet word of mouth. Especially multinationals should be aware of the risk to their reputation that comes along with faking posts.
• Sam believes that this traditional media approach (just shout larger than everyone else to make your message heard) is too simplistic and recommends advertisers to listen first then be understood. (Wise words if you ask me) Understanding the discussion going on online can inform advertising campaigns, since it works like a giant focus groups (free of charge). In a next step advertisers are also able to get almost real time feedback about users take aways from ongoing marketing efforts, and can adjust their campaigns to better resonate with their audience.
• IWOM tracking can also be an early warning system. Brands can learn about problems with their products, communication or distribution by listening to the unfiltered voice of the customer
• For brands to participate in the discussion (note the difference to 'control the discussion') Sam recommends a more sincere approach that centers around 'real people' sharing their personal opinion in a casual language. He notes the example of Dell, a company that effectively used the 'personal' blog of senior managers to enter into an open discussion with users that previously voiced their frustration on sites like Dell Hell. An interesting question will be how to translate such blog based effort into the BBS culture in China (Any ideas? Let me know in the comment section). I do strongly agree with Sam that in the long run only sincere and real participation will be rewarded. But China being China, many a company will look for quick fixes that will in the end harm their brand.

Integration of social media measurement & web analytics data

• To enable a better integration of IWOM data into regular web analytics reports, along the lines of Dennis Mortensen's Online Business Media Quadrant Model, I highlighted some challenges of CIC's current offering to Sam

1. Timeline: My main gripe with CIC's "CIC data" report is timing. It usually covers a 1 month time frame, while ad campaigns usually start sometime in the middle of the month and end 4,6,8 or 12 weeks later. Aligning these timelines is almost impossible. In addition CIC's report arrive with 2 weeks+ time delay after the month is over (most of this, I am sure, due to the insight mining that takes place), that is too long for kind of near time reporting I am looking for. Sam assured me that their "CIC Alert" product provides more flexibility in terms of timing (daily, weekly or monthly) and can be adjusted to follow the campaign duration. This type of reporting would integrate with Web Analytics efforts more effectively. To take that one step further we talked about access.
2. Access: Currently CIC delivers its reports in PDF formats by email. I would love to have a web interface, much like my web analytics tools, or IResearch's IUserTracker (link in Chinese). That way I could download the quantitative info (number of posts, share of positive, negative, neutral) whenever I need it (I can wait for the qualitative insights by PDF), manage the keywords I would like to have tracked (product names, campaign names, competitors etc.), organize them into campaigns, specify the timeline I want to analyze and then export all this data to an Excel spreadsheet and compare and correlate to my other online data. Doesn't that sounds like a nice little IWOM vision

• While I am not at liberty to share more details, I can say that Sam was certainly listening intently and I am curious what they have in the works. Stay tuned. I certainly will.