Social media AVE

I was recently asked if there was an AVE for social media. While I don't believe that AVE is a good measure of anything, particularly evaluating a PR campaign, the question inevitably comes up.

So, I had a go at working it out. For the sake of argument, compare the average time people spend reading a blog with, say, the length of a TV Ad. This blogger reckons the average time spent reading their blog is five minutes.

The average TV ad is 30 secs. A factor of ten difference.

So, therefore, to get the same level of engagement via TV as you would via the average blog, you could argue that you need to reach ten times as many people.

So, for a blog that has 2000 readers, to get an equivalent level of engagement via TV you would need to get 20,000 people to see your ad.

So, could you say that if it costs £5,000 to reach 20,000 people via TV, then the AVE for the blog read by 2000 people would be £5,000?

I guess you could, but there are quite a few holes in the theory, to say the least.

Still, it's a theory.

Geo Says: FourSquare meets Twitter

A colleague of mine showed me this nifty app called Geosay on Friday. It combines data from Twitter and Four Square to show you what people are saying in and around a certain location.

It was built by two British guys: Dan Singerman and Stewart Robinson, and uses the Twitter and Four Square APIs. It only takes info from tweets with an accurate geo location. You can create your own geosay by adding hashtag geosay to any geo located tweet.

It's great for seeing reviews of bars and restaurant, seeing what people are up to and where. I hope it takes off.

YouTube Best of Advertising

There is a handy channel on YouTube that shows the best of advertising on YouTube. Its called Bubble. Its very simple and very useful. Which is nice.

The virtual human - is a bit scary

I saw that Microsoft have created a virtual human - announced at TED. It's really cool technology - it reacts to what you say, recognises you etc.

But is it just me or does this remind you of the iRobot story?

I wonder what it will learn about human emotions? Maybe we can give it a few copies of the Daily Mail and see how it reacts. Can you get virtual hoodies?

Social media gets physical

I've noticed more and more organisations promoting their social media properties in their mainstream advertising and in their physical outlets - stores etc. This trend really struck home when the presenters on the BBC Business Breakfast directed me to their Facebook Page rather than their website.

So, I was pleased to see that PRBlog had started a Photo Group on Flickr of how different brands are promoting their social media activities in real life. Have a butchers here.

I hope this is a sign that organisations are now treating their social properties more seriously - rather than just a low cost form of advertising.

Klout: influence measure

I came across this nifty little tool called Klout that works out the influence of a twitter user. I know there are loads of tools out there, but I liked this one because it looks at the true engagement of the audience rather than just number of followers.

It discounts all the inactive accounts that are following a profile and takes into account the influence of the people following a profile. It classifies 'influence' as the ability to drive people to action and looks at how one twitter user influences other users by looking at click thru rate on links, RTs, etc. It also looks at Amplification Probability - the likelihood your content will be acted upon.

Plus it looks quite neat.