Well, I was actually in the room when the term was coined by Chris Shipley. This was back in 2004, and she was planning to launch a new event called BlogOn. She said, “Greg, I'd like you to be a speaker at the first social media conference.” And I asked, “Chris, what's social media?” It was a term that she had made up. And I said, “Well, if nobody knows what the term means, then why do you expect anyone to attend?” So, I was there when she defined the term for the first time. It included blogs and social networks.

Hey, since we're at the beginning of a good discussion, I should provide our listeners with some background. Greg and I are writing a book along with other co‐authors. It's entitled Digital Marketing Fundamentals: OMCP's Official Guide to OMCA Certification.

We're writing the chapter on social media marketing. As we were going back and forth about how we should do this with something that changes so quickly, I said, “Let's make a recording of us talking about it and put the edited transcript in the book.”

And I said, “That's a brilliant idea.” Except I had one fundamental disagreement. Your shorthand for what we are about to embark on was “Socratic dialogue.”

Socratic dialogue assumes that we're going to be engaged in a rational discussion with deep insight and penetrating analysis and all that left brain stuff. Right?

But a different metaphor came to my mind. I don't know if you remember it, but back in the 1990s there was a comic strip called Calvin and Hobbes.

Yes, yes.

Calvin, the little boy, and Hobbes, his stuffed tiger, frequently play a game called Calvinball. No sport is less organized than Calvinball. There is only one permanent rule. You can't play it the same way twice.

The improvisational game can feature the Babysitter Flag, Corollary Zone, Invisible Sector, Opposite Pole, Perimeter of Wisdom, Pernicious Poem Place, or Very Sorry Song. That makes it a contest of creativity and adaptability rather than skill and stamina.

Scoring is arbitrary, whimsical, and capricious like, “Q to 12.”

And the lack of fixed rules leads to frequent debates over who scored, where the boundaries are, and when the game is finished.

That is the right metaphor for social media marketing because it is hard to learn. And then next week, you have to learn the new rules, and you have to adapt. And if you adapt well, you have a chance of winning.

And that's hard to do. In fact, the only other player beyond Calvin and Hobbes who picked it up quickly was Rosalind, the babysitter.

Oh, I love the metaphor because I can't think of another industry where as soon as we can explain the rules, somebody will change them.

For example, in June of 2021, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, declared,

“We're no longer just a square photo‐sharing app.”

And he added, “Right now we're focused on four key areas: Creators, Video, Shopping, and Messaging.”

So, once again, the rules changed in the middle of the game. There were winners, there were losers, and there were people standing there wondering what had happened.

So, it has nothing to do with your digital marketing skills, education, and experience. These decisions were made on high for the profitability of a company and they filtered down into algorithmic changes.

Yes, and then the boundaries shifted.

Yes. here's Wikipedia's definition.

• “Social media are interactive digital channels that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks.”

That's not a bad definition. But I will tell you that when people use the term “social media” today, there are two definitions that float around. One includes Facebook and anything that they've acquired like Instagram. But somehow it does not include YouTube. Oh, no, no, no. YouTube's in a different category.

And that sort of made sense until 2015, when Facebook decided to adopt a “video first” strategy. And they started to cram features borrowed from YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok into either Facebook and/or Instagram wherever they could.

And some industry analysts still said Facebook and Instagram were social media. But YouTube wasn't. Excuse me. YouTube is an online video sharing and social media platform. So, just what puts them in a different category? That's why you have to start off any discussion like this one with the question, “What do you include in your definition of social media?”

Well, okay. So, I'm going to throw out my definition. And when I was doing my master's degree just a few short years ago, a lot of content that had to do with social media was referred to—hold on, Greg—Web 2.0!

In university level content, they're still using terms such as Web 2.0, which is what we now call social media. Here's what I would say defines social media: it is content on a platform that integrates or allows community participation. It's posted content or information that allows a public response. It often produces this in a threaded view so that you can see subsequent comments, shares, or likes in an organized view. So, it's not always based on the entire site or page, but it's per post.

I agree. Somebody may post some content—a video, photo, or text—which gets a lot of comments or replies, shares or retweets, and likes or reactions. And, this can kick off a discussion among other members of their niche audience or broader community that goes well beyond what the person who initiated that thread may have had in mind. That's why Chris Shipley called it “social” media.

So, how do you define social media marketing?

I use Search Engine Journal's definition. They say, “Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to market a business's products or services, connect with existing customers, reach new audiences, and build their brand.”

That is great. So, let's talk about what areas we associate with social media marketing. Businesses often ask,

“What channels should I use?”

My response to them is, “What do you want to do?” That's the first question.

Yeah. Too many people jumped into social media because it was the new, new thing. Everyone else is doing it. So, I've got to go do it, too.

What are you doing? “Well, I'm trying to learn how to write in fewer than 140 characters.” Okay, why? “Because it is new.”

So, we all focused on the quirky little features that we had to contort ourselves to learn how to use as opposed to asking, “For what purpose, what reason?”

You're right. It's great to define your goals and objectives ahead of time. And maybe social media will fit into them and maybe they won't.

So, how does that fit into content marketing?

Content marketing overlaps with social media marketing because there's some of the content that you can create that you might post on Facebook, you might upload to YouTube, or you might put on another social media platform.

You may have a message that you then tailor for the quirky, individualistic nature of a particular platform. That's fine. But guess what?

You can also communicate by posting new content on your website. This is where the blog comes back. If you consider blogs social media, then putting your content on a blog is part of a social media marketing campaign.

But the way Facebook has redefined things, there are a lot of people who not only forget YouTube is a social medium, but they also forget that blogs are the original social media, even before Facebook came along.

In fact, Facebook's biggest challenger—once upon a time—was Myspace. So, Facebook wasn't even the first social network that was out there. They just are the biggest surviving network that is out there.

Content marketing focuses on creating valuable and relevant content that can attract a clearly defined audience. And oh, by the way, the purpose of attracting that clearly defined audience is to make money one way or another.

Start by asking, “What is my audience interested in?” Then, “How can I get them to visit my website, visit my blog, visit my social media platforms, listen to my podcast, or listen to my executives speaking at events?”

And, you know what? Events—digital, in‐person, and hybrid—are very effective content marketing channels and for some reason they aren't considered social media.

Content marketing starts off trying to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. And there are a lot of reasons why businesses and other kinds of organizations want to do that.

Finally, content marketing, in some ways, overlaps with social media marketing. But in other ways it's different and broader. And, okay, there's a lot of elbowing at the table when people are fighting over budgets. But at the end of the day, you've got to ask, “Did we move the needle when it came to achieving our goals and objectives?”

I see content marketing like a capstone activity because you need social, you need SEO, and you need some paid channels to get your message out. Content marketing requires these disciplines to do it well.

Well, it gets messy.

But show me who your brightest leaders are, put them in charge, and don't worry about the name of the team. If your content marketer is the director and your social media manager takes direction, that's fine.

If it's the other way around, if it's a social media director who is telling the content marketing manager what kind of content will resonate with an audience, then that's fine too. Just tell me who is strong or weak in your organization and structure it accordingly.

But content marketing and social media marketing are frequently confused, and people do need to define where they overlap, where they don't overlap, as well as who's playing the lead role, and who's following.

I think that also goes along with reputation management.

I see that in local businesses. They want people to find their listing on Google, but they're concerned that people can also leave a review. What reviews are added, what people say—that is part of reputation management.

But that's the nature of social media itself. We're allowing community participation. And I forget who it was, but they said that if you allow anyone to say anything, someone's going to start complaining. And social media has really allowed people to comment now on anything.

Recently, we had a bad accident in my town. I went to the local paper online to see some details about it. Then I went to the bottom of the article and started reading the comments.

Greg, why do they add comments to the bottom of a well‐researched article from a reporter who was on the spot? Why do we think it's a good idea to let the general public comment on an article?

Oh, I can answer that as a former editor of a local newspaper. It's because there are 57 percent fewer newspaper reporters and editors today than there were in 2008.

In the New England town where I live, our local newspaper suspended its print edition last month. And the online edition, which is called Wicked Local, rarely sends journalists to cover local events.

So, now we're using social media to crowdsource the news.

Wow. Which brings me to the big elephant in the room that is filling this vacuum. And it's not just the public who's asking questions, making comments, and leaving reviews. That's actually just a good, healthy conversation. What is more problematic is disinformation.

This is not misinformation, which may be spread without the sender having harmful intentions. We're talking about disinformation, which is the deliberate spread of misleading or biased information.

You see this more often than not in politics, although, frankly, there've been a lot of disinformation campaigns around COVID‐19, which 75 percent of Americans believe has prolonged the pandemic, according to a survey by the Institute for Public Relations.

In late 2017, Facebook said that as many as 126 million of its users had seen content from Russian disinformation campaigns over the previous 2 years. And Twitter said that it had found 36,000 Russian bots spreading tweets related to the 2016 U.S. elections.

So, one of the problems is that anybody can post a comment. Okay. Are they a real person or are they a Russian troll? Or, heaven forbid, are they a bot that's just been turned loose?

And that is a much more problematic area for social media marketers.

Absolutely. It falls under the astroturfing label as well. We're going to make something look like it is a groundswell of citizen demands when in reality it's a bot farm, and it is creating a false sense that's something's important.

Yep. SparkToro and Followerwonk conducted a joint analysis in May 2022 and found 19.4 percent of active Twitter accounts were likely to be fake or spam.

Well, this leads us to a discussion on monitoring conversations.

Some businesses have set up alerts just to see what people are saying about their brand, their product, or their CEO. They're using it more for crisis communications because they want to make sure that everything said about them is good. If someone complains, “We're on it.”

The next level is actually participating in conversations where I'm not proactively going out and creating content, but I'm going to participate when the conversation rolls around.

But the danger of that is the so‐called “1 percent rule.” In Internet culture, the general rule of thumb pertaining to participation in a community states that only 1 percent of the users of a community will create original content, only 10 percent of users will like, share, or comment on a post, and 90 percent are simply lurkers. They're just there to read and watch, but they don't engage.

According to data from Tubular Labs, video content on YouTube and Facebook got a total of 5 trillion views in the last 90 days and 206 billion engagements, which includes likes, comments, and shares. So, about 4 percent of people who watch social videos, engage with them.

So, there's a danger to using social media as a primary listening device to get the voice of the consumer, or to pick the customer's brain to find out what they're thinking. What you're actually reading is the vocal minority.

And you can tell pretty quickly that vocal minority is disproportionately male. So, one of the things as you start digging into social listening, you're listening to a bunch of loudmouth guys who've got to express their opinions. And you're not listening to the more reasonable guys or, in a lot of cases, women who seem savvy enough to say, “I'm not going to get dragged into that mud pit.”

Yup. I'll read it, but I'm not going to add my name to the comments. So, I think that it's important to remember it's a very vocal minority that are actually creating and commenting. If you want to hear directly from the types of audiences you care about, then you should be using other ways to acquire market intelligence.

And make sure you also use some audit tools to discover if the people who are making the loudest noise are real people or fake followers.

Which brings us to the next area that often overlaps with social media marketing and that's influencer marketing.

Now, most marketers tend to target social media influencers. But I would consider a journalist to be an influencer. But most marketers say, “Oh, that's PR. That's a whole different thing altogether.”

Well, I love the distinction that's being made in the industry right now between the title “influencer” and the actual influence that they can create. I'd like to call them “a person of influence” rather than an influencer.

I was in a crisis communications lecture just yesterday, and they were talking about how part of your crisis communication plan is deciding when you bring in an expert. And that expert speaks to their level of knowledge. That is an influencer because they have established authority. They speak to that, and this assists the credibility of your response. So, an influencer is not always a want‐to‐be fitness guru.

Well, it can be a want‐to‐be fitness guru. It depends on the topic.

When most people talk about influencer marketing, they're talking about social media influencers. But, here again, you've got to be careful.

Most social media influencers learned early on that they got compensated better if they had more followers. So, guess what? Many found a way to pump up their fake followers.

Then, marketers figured out how to detect fake followers. And said, “Now we're going to look at engagement. That's our new metric.”

And then many social media influencers figured a way to generate fake engagement metrics.

So, if you're going to work with influencers in your social media marketing campaign, then you've got to vet them. You've got to double‐check that they're real. And, this is much more important, their audience is real.

Fortunately, a lot of tools and platforms have been developed that detect influencer fraud. As a result, the percentage of influencer accounts impacted by fraud has fallen across the board to less than 50 percent, according to “The State of Influencer Marketing 2022: Benchmark Report.”

But that's still a huge percentage.

So, vetting them is becoming even more important as influencer marketing budgets continue growing.

The Influencer Marketing Hub says over three quarters of brand marketers out there have dedicated a budget to influencer marketing. And they estimate that brands will spend about $16.4 billion on influencer marketing in 2022.

That's big bucks.

That's why you've got to be able to measure what matters to make sure that the influencer is actually influential and that the influencer's audience is even remotely interested in your product, your service, your brand, or your cause.

Absolutely. There are so many more methods of measurement now that are assisting us to measure the true influence that is wielded by an individual who has a following.

The next section is digital advertising, which is interesting because I remember some of the conferences that we were at a couple of years ago, everyone was saying, “You've got to get on Facebook. You've got to build your audience. You've got to put hours into your organic posting.”

And a few short years later, Facebook changed the algorithm, and they reduced their organic reach. So, if you are a brand or a business, you are now reaching about 2 percent of that audience.

And if you want to reach more of that audience, you've got to pay. You've got to boost your posts. You've got to use their network in order to reach the same level of audience that you were reaching before.

And this goes to what we were talking about before. The rules changed all of a sudden and all that work that companies put into developing that organic presence on Facebook pretty much evaporated overnight.

And, hey, you know what? It's the social networks being completely honest. They are money driven. And they're going to make decisions that enable them to create more revenue.

So, every platform adjusts their algorithms to favor certain types of content, reduce corporate content, and force you into using paid media to ignite earned media. Which is not a bad business model if they have the audience—like Facebook does.

They know all the demographic information. They know what you like. They know what you're looking at. They know what groups you're a part of. So, you can actually be a bit more targeted by advertising on these platforms to people that follow certain hashtags, follow certain personalities, or express that I like this content.

And now you can target them based on the hamster wheel of content creation, when you're trying to build an audience on a third‐party platform. I'm just going to target my ad campaign on whom I want focus on.

But there's often a problem with targeting the people I want. Too many small businesses, medium‐sized businesses, and even very large brands think they want a demographic audience.

“I want women who are 18 to 35.”

Okay. Why?

“Well, because in the television era, the only information I had about an audience was its size and composition by gender and age. And I used to be able to pick TV shows to run ads against based on those factors. So, that's how I'm comfortable targeting.”

Well, as you just said, when you get the social media, you can get a whole lot of information about people's intent and behavior.

And if they've been visiting 14 sites in the last 2 days looking at different cars, then guess what? They're interested in buying a car! And, oh, by the way, whether you're Facebook, YouTube, or any of the other social platforms, they can target these people too.

They can serve up audiences based on their affinities. You know, I'm an auto enthusiast. I'm passionate about cars. Or, based on their in‐market behavior, I'm planning to purchase a motor vehicle.

If they're only using demographics to reach the people they want to reach, then they are stuck on a 20th century model of market segmentation.

It's time to wake up and smell the coffee, which seems to be the right thing to say on an Endless Coffee Cup podcast. And understand that you're not leveraging other information that's available for targeting that you should be using instead.

Absolutely. Regardless of their demographic, people have needs. And when we understand their needs and have a product that meets their needs, then I don't care what their age or gender is.

So, if you are using two‐dimensional thinking in a three‐dimensional world, you're going to get hit from below or above.

It should, but way too often it doesn't.

One of the things that a strategist should do at the beginning of any campaign, let alone during any ongoing program, is to ask, “What are we trying to accomplish?”

If you tell top management, “Our strategy is to send out 47 tweets a week,” will they approve your plan? No, they won't. They'll want a strategy and plan that will move the needle.

So, the question you may be asked is, “How many tweets do we need to sell a car?”

That's a good question. And there's no answer. Why? Because there's no correlation between marketing inputs and business outcomes.

That's why you want to start with “My objective is to sell a car.” Or pick a different product or service. Whatever it is, start with your objective. And then work backward.

According to Luth Research, one consumer journey included more than 900 digital interactions before a 32‐year‐old mother of two decided to lease an SUV.

Did social media help her during any of these shopping moments? If it did, then great!

So, what was the return on marketing investment for the money that you put into that social media campaign, social media advertising, or influencer marketing program?

Top management will probably know how much you spent. What they'll want you to do is “show a return” on your activities.

Did your strategy increase brand awareness, consideration, or purchase intent? If it did, then by how much? Did your plan generate high‐quality leads? If it did, then how many?

We'll talk more about social media measurement later in this podcast. But how do you determine the value of influencers?

Actually, I wrote an article about that in September 2021 for Search Engine Journal. It's entitled, “How to Calculate the ROI of Influencer Marketing Campaigns.”

The demand for the top celebrities and influencers is so great that Clear, a global brand, paid Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the most popular soccer players in the world, an estimated $619,497 to $1 million for a single Instagram post.

With so much money getting poured into reaching Ronaldo's 339 million Instagram followers, you can bet dollars to donuts that someone at Clear asked, “What's the ROI of our latest influencer marketing campaign?”

That's a great question—and it's one that all of us need to know how to answer.

So, how do you calculate your Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI)? The formula is [Incremental Revenue Attributable to Marketing ($) × Contribution Margin (%) – Marketing Spending ($)]/Marketing Spending ($).

So, let's say Ronaldo's #sponsored Instagram post cost $1 million, just so we can use a round number. And let's say that the contribution margin on Clear shampoo is 60 percent, which is just a completely unscientific, wild‐assed guess.

If Ronaldo's post generated $5 million in incremental revenue, then you multiply that by 60 percent to get $3 million in gross profit. Then, you subtract the $1 million spent on influencer marketing and then divide the $2 million result by the $1 million spent on influencer marketing to get a ROMI of 2.

Like this: [$5,000,000 * 60% – $1,000,000]/$1,000,000 = 2.

In other words, every dollar that Clear spent on influencer marketing generated an additional $2 on the global brand's bottom line.

Now, how can you be sure that you can attribute $5 million in incremental revenue to Ronaldo's post?

Well, one way is to leverage the fact that Ronaldo was promoting the new Clear Men Legend Shampoo by CR7, which has a design, scent, and texture personally selected by Cristiano Ronaldo, who wears the number 7 on his jersey.

In addition, Clear Legend Shampoo by CR7 was only available at leading drug stores and supermarkets in Malaysia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Greece, China, KSA, Gulf, Levant, Mashreq, Maghreb, Russia, Romania, and Greece.

All the marketers at Clear needed to do was track incremental revenue from this sub‐brand and compare that to revenue from Thailand, Italy, and Portugal, where Clear Legend Shampoo by CR7 wasn't available yet.

Now, social media marketing strategists may not want to bet their jobs on the possibility that a celebrity or mega‐influencer with more than 1 million followers can generate $5 million in incremental revenue with a single post.

Well, they'll be relieved then to discover that smaller influencers will probably give them an even better ROMI.

For example, micro‐influencers with less than 15,000 Instagram followers might make around $100 per post, although it depends on the profile.

However, the calculation for your return on marketing investment remains the same.

So, let's say a micro‐influencer's #sponsored Instagram post costs $100. And let's say that the contribution margin on your brand is 60 percent, which is as good a guess as I can make without knowing more about your product category.

If the post generates $1,000 in incremental revenue, then you multiply that by 60 percent to get $600 in gross profit. Then, you subtract the $100 spent on marketing and then divide the $500 result by the $100 spent on marketing to get a ROMI of 5.

In other words, every dollar spent on micro‐influencer marketing would have generated an additional $5 for your bottom line.

Now, generating $1,000 in incremental revenue isn't going to get you a promotion. But let's say you identified 10 micro‐influencers and were able to generate $10,000 in incremental revenue. Do you see where this is headed?

That's how you determine the value of influencers.

Which brings us to the new buzzword: social commerce.

Terrific. But before you jump on the social commerce bandwagon next week, ask yourself: “How many cars can we sell with that?” Or “How many bottles of shampoo?”

And once you use your business goals to determine if your strategy and plans will move the needle, then a lot of the silliness in social media marketing falls away. And some of the serious opportunities actually begin to emerge because there are times when social media marketing pays its way.

And it gets right back to what we talked about at the beginning. One of the biggest questions is, “How do I justify this? How do I rationalize the time and the investment that we're making in that?”

And you're establishing a very clear connection between business goals and marketing strategy. And without that, we're not going to impact anything.

But what I like is how social media is a distribution multiplier. If I'm doing content marketing, then social allows me to distribute content across a wide variety of channels in a wide variety of media. And I can target different networks based on what type of reaction I want. What do I want people to do?

For example, if I want someone to click‐through, then I may not want to use Instagram because it doesn't allow me to put a link in the post. Whereas, I might use Facebook because I can put a link in the post. And I can put a strong call to action and make that happen.

And you can use Google's free Campaign URL Builder tool, which allows you to add campaign parameters to URLs so you can measure custom campaigns in Google Analytics.

All you need to do is:

1. Enter the URL of the landing page.
2. Enter Facebook, Twitter, or blog in the box for the Campaign Source.
3. Enter Ronaldo or microinfluencer_2 in the box for Campaign Medium.
4. And then enter a term like CR7 in the box for the Campaign Name.

The Campaign URL Builder tool will generate a campaign URL for you—and you can even use Bitly to shorten the URL. Then, all Ronaldo or a micro‐influencer needs to do is use this URL in their post or tweet and the marketers at Clear can track the results in Google Analytics.

But this doesn't work for all products and services. A couple of years ago, there was a brand that came to us to launch an influencer marketing campaign for their jock itch solution. And we had to tell them that we couldn't identify any social media influencers talking about the jock itch problem, for obvious reasons. So, they were going to have to find a different way to market that product.

I think the greatest example that we've seen recently is TikTok, which has forced Instagram to launch Reels and YouTube to launch Shorts.

And before that, Snapchat had everyone ripping off their Stories idea.

So, if you've got a really cool feature, you've got about a 3‐week head start on your competitors, who are going to try to knock it off.

One of the first categories was a social network, which I think would be more defined by building networks of people.

Facebook and LinkedIn are the two big ones. I think it's interesting that when you chart the growth of both, LinkedIn has a slow, steady increase over the years, where Facebook had huge growth, and now seems to be in decline.

Another category was the video‐sharing site. And in the early days, that meant YouTube and Vimeo.

This is why some people still think Facebook and YouTube are in different categories. Well, they were until Facebook zigged. And even LinkedIn now says, “We have video too.”

The next category was microblogging. The big examples were Twitter and Tumblr.

Twitter started out with a limit of 140 characters of text. Well, now I can upload video. I can upload images. And Twitter has doubled the character limit for tweets from 140 to 280. So, this is a great example of changing functionality to accommodate what people want to do.

Then there's the photo‐sharing category. I used Flicker extensively when I was promoting the Search Engine Strategies conferences.

And then Flickr added short videos, but their user base revolted. “No, we're for photo sharing, not video sharing.”

So, it is amazing to watch what's going on in Instagram now because they started off as a square photo sharing app. But now over 45 percent of Instagram accounts like, comment on, or share Reels at least once a week.

And you mentioned earlier that blogs were considered a category of social media. And when WordPress came out in 2003, I was at a digital agency and the bread and butter of the company was building websites.

And when I saw WordPress come out, I was taking it and showing it to people. I said, “This is going to change everything.” And today, 40 percent of the billions of websites on the Internet are on WordPress.

Now, that brings us to the blender. Is short‐form video just a feature? Is it a category? The answer is: “It depends.”

That means any good social media marketer needs to pay a little bit of attention to the lessons of history because, okay, maybe it doesn't repeat itself, but things come back again and again that seem awfully familiar. So, there are lessons you can learn, even if they aren't exact.

So, the poster child for evolving their definition of who they are and what they're about is Facebook. And some of that was forced on them.

Facebook's first crisis was in 2012, when it was just a desktop application. And the iPhone was turning everything into a mobile first world. And Facebook decided to pivot and become a “mobile first company.”

Then, in 2015, Facebook decided to pivot and become a “video first company.”

In 2021, Facebook changed its name to Meta Platforms.

And in February 2022, following the greatest single‐day stock drop in recorded history, Mark Zuckerberg, the co‐founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta Platforms, announced the company's focus would shift to growing short‐form video.

YouTube.com got 1.953 billion unique visitors worldwide in May. The platform received 35.083 billion monthly visits that month, with an average visit duration of 21:41.

Now, some social media marketers may be shocked—shocked to find YouTube ranking ahead of Facebook. But SimilarWeb's data is only for desktop and mobile web channels. It doesn't include data for connected TVs, which became the fastest‐growing screen among YouTube viewers in 2020.

This makes it imperative to know how YouTube's algorithm works.

So, how does it work?

YouTube's algorithm tries to match each viewer to the videos they're most likely to watch and enjoy. But with over 500 hours of video content uploaded to YouTube every minute, this is a Herculean task.

YouTube's search and discovery systems tackle this challenge by focusing on:

• What viewers watch
• What they don't watch
• How much time they spend watching
• What they share and like

Next, you need to learn that YouTube has multiple algorithms, including ones for:

• YouTube Search: Videos are ranked based on how well titles, descriptions, and video content match the viewer's search and which videos get the most engagement for a search.
• Up Next: The rankings of suggested videos are based on machine learning's understanding of which ones viewers are most likely to watch next. These videos are often related to the video a viewer is watching, but they can also be personalized based on the viewer's watch history.
• Your homepage: Videos are selected based on how often viewers watch a channel or topic, how well similar videos have interested and satisfied similar viewers, and how many times YouTube has already shown each video to a viewer.
• YouTube shorts: YouTube wants both short and long videos to succeed. So, relative watch time is generally more important for short videos, while absolute watch time is generally more important for longer videos.

So, search engine marketers need to stop treating YouTube like a red‐headed stepchild.

What about Facebook? I know the platform isn't growing. They have the same target audience of the generation that started using it. The kids have moved on, so now I would call it the legacy social network.

Well, according to SimilarWeb, Facebook.com got only 1.620 billion unique visitors worldwide in May 2022. The platform received 19.739 billion visits that month with an average session duration of 10:05.

Now, Facebook's unique visitors started dipping worldwide in February 2022. But there was a substantial drop in unique visitors in Russia in early March, after Russia blocked Facebook in an effort to control the spread of information on the invasion of Ukraine.

This had a negative impact on Facebook's total unique visitors worldwide, which were already losing momentum. Nevertheless, the platform is still too big to ignore.

So, how does Facebook's algorithm work today?

Well, we thought that we knew how Facebook's News Feed ranking process worked until mid‐June 2022, when a leaked internal memo revealed Facebook's near‐term plans to restructure its main feed around video content, such as Reels and Stories.

So, what should social media marketers do next?

Read Matt G. Southern's article in Search Engine Journal, which is entitled, “Facebook to Restructure Main Feed around Video Content.”

Then, follow Southern's expert, authoritative, and trustworthy advice: “The best way to prepare for this change, if Facebook is a priority for you and your business, is to get comfortable with creating and publishing more short‐form video. While Facebook will continue to surface text and photo posts, they'll be ancillary to the main attractions of Reels and Stories.”

What about Instagram?

Instagram.com got 1.050 billion unique visitors worldwide in May. The platform received 6.497 billion visits that month with an average session duration of 07:51.

Now, Russia has also banned Instagram, but growth in unique visitors from other countries around the world has offset that. So, you still need to know how Instagram's algorithms work.

And how do they work?

In June 2021, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, wrote a post entitled, “Shedding More Light on How Instagram Works.” He revealed, “Instagram doesn't have one algorithm that oversees what people do and don't see on the app. We use a variety of algorithms, classifiers, and processes, each with its own purpose.”

For the Feed and Stories, the key ranking signals are:

• Information about the post: How popular a post is, when it was posted, how long it is, if it's a video, and if it's attached to a location.
• Information about the person who posted: How many times users have interacted with that person in the past few weeks.
• User activity: What a user might be interested in and how many posts they've liked.
• User history of interacting with someone: How interested a user is in seeing posts from a particular person.

For Explore, the key ranking signals are:

• Information about the post: How popular a post seems to be as well as how many and how quickly other people are liking, commenting, sharing, and saving a post.
• User history of interacting with someone: (See above.)
• User activity: What posts a user has liked, saved, or commented on as well as how they've interacted with posts in Explore in the past.
• Information about the person who posted: (See above.)

For Reels, the key ranking signals are:

• User activity: Which Reels a user has liked, commented on, and engaged with recently.
• User history of interacting with someone: (See above.)
• Information about the Reel: The audio track, video data such as pixels and whole frames, as well as popularity.
• Information about the person who posted: (See above.)

What about Twitter, Greg? In a video chat with Twitter employees, Elon Musk said in mid‐June 2022 that he wants one billion users on Twitter. Is that even doable?

Well, according to SimilarWeb's data, Twitter.com got 979 million unique visitors worldwide in May 2022. The platform received 7.056 billion visits that month with an average session duration of 10.39.

How much of this traffic is coming from fake or spam accounts? I don't have a dog in the fight, Greg. I'm just getting some popcorn and watching this movie.

SimilarWeb's data does not screen for fake or spam accounts. Nevertheless, it's probably worth investing the time and effort to keep up with how Twitter's algorithm works.

And how does it work?

Like most social media platforms, Twitter has multiple algorithms.

Twitter says its “algorithmic Home timeline displays a stream of tweets from accounts you have chosen to follow on Twitter, as well as recommendations of other content we think you might be interested in based on accounts you interact with frequently, tweets you engage with, and more.”

If users want to, they can click on the star symbol to see the latest tweets as they happen. But few people choose to drink water from a firehose.

If they want to, users can click on Explore and see trending tweets or ones about COVID‐19, news, sports, and entertainment.

If users want to, they can click on More to see the topics that Twitter thinks they're interested in.

And like most social media platforms, Twitter's algorithms use machine learning to sort content based on different ranking signals. And it's worth noting that Twitter is currently involved in analyzing the results of its algorithms as part of its “responsible machine learning initiative.”

So, here's what Twitter has said publicly about its Home timeline, trends, and topics ranking signals:

Relevance

• Users' previous actions on Twitter, like their own tweets and tweets they've engaged with.
• Accounts they often engage with.
• Topics they follow and engage with most.
• The number of tweets related to a topic.
• For trends: Their location.

Engagement

• For tweets: “How popular it is and how people in your network are interacting with [the tweet].”
• For trends: “The number of tweets related to the trend.”
• For topics: “How much people are tweeting, retweeting, replying, and liking tweets about that topic.”

Recency

• For trends: “Topics that are popular now, rather than topics that have been popular for a while or on a daily basis.”

Rich media

• The type of media the tweet includes, like an image, video, GIF, and polls.

What about TikTok? It's where all the cool kids hang out now.

According to SimilarWeb, TikTok.com got 690 million monthly visitors worldwide in May 2022. The platform received 1.766 billion visits that month, with an average session duration of 03:48.

This data doesn't include Douyin.com, which is counted separately. But TikTok.com gets about 98 percent of the unique visitors worldwide for both of the ByteDance apps.

So, you should probably learn how TikTok's algorithm works ASAP.

In June 2020, TikTok revealed how its recommendation system selected videos in a post entitled, “How TikTok recommends videos #ForYou.” Little has fundamentally changed since then, except the U.S. government is no longer trying to ban the social media platform.

TikTok's For You feed presents a stream of videos curated to each user's interests, making it easy for a user to find content and creators they love. In other words, there isn't one For You feed for over one billion monthly active TikTok users. There are a billion For You feeds tailored to what each user watches, likes, and shares.

TikTok added, “This feed is powered by a recommendation system that delivers content to each user that is likely to be of interest to that particular user.” And recommendations are based on a number of factors, including:

• User interactions such as the videos they like or share, accounts they follow, comments they post, and content they create.
• Video information, which might include details like captions, sounds, and hashtags.
• Device and account settings like their language preference, country setting, and device type.

TikTok also revealed: “All these factors are processed by our recommendation system and weighted based on their value to a user. A strong indicator of interest, such as whether a user finishes watching a longer video from beginning to end, would receive greater weight than a weak indicator, such as whether the video's viewer and creator are both in the same country. Videos are then ranked to determine the likelihood of a user's interest in a piece of content and delivered to each unique For You feed.”

What are some of the other top social media channels today?

Well, Pinterest.com got 409 million unique visitors worldwide in May. The platform received 945 million visits that month with an average session duration of 05:29.

With Instagram declaring it is “no longer just a square photo‐sharing app,” this is probably the time to ask, “How does Pinterest's algorithm work?”

The ranking factors on Pinterest relate more to engagement metrics and social shares, but it also involves keywords. And Pinterest autocomplete provides ideas by automatically suggesting semantically related modifiers to a core keyword.

Pinterest's search feature then curates a user's “feed” based on what they're searching for and how those key terms are used in the pins being shared by content creators. Pinterest also categorizes and subcategorizes topics to make it easy to find keywords for your particular niche.

To optimize your pins, use:

• Long images: The optimal pin size is 1,000px by 1,500px, or a ratio of 2:3.
• Eye‐catching colors: Catch users’ attention with high‐contrast colors.
• Enticing, keyword‐rich titles: Entice users to click through to your content.
• Detailed descriptions: Include your target keywords in your descriptions.

Then, optimize your boards. Boards provide a great opportunity to tell Pinterest's search engine how you categorize your products and/or organize your content, which will only aid visibility.

Finally, aim for engagement, which can increase your pin's (and your profile's) visibility in search, increasing your traffic.

What about LinkedIn? You can't leave them out.

They are the largest business‐to‐business (B2B) social network. If you're trying to do any B2B social media marketing, then LinkedIn is it. There isn't even a close competitor.

According to SimilarWeb, LinkedIn.com got 306 million unique visitors worldwide in May. The platform received 1.479 billion visits that month with an average session duration of 07:32.

So, social media marketers—especially ones at B2B organizations—need to know how LinkedIn's algorithm works.

So, how does it work?

In June 2019, Pete Davies, senior director of product management at LinkedIn, wrote a post entitled, “What's in Your LinkedIn Feed: People You Know, Talking about Things You Care About.” He explained, “The more valuable the conversation, the higher in your feed the post will be.”

How does LinkedIn's algorithm know if a conversation is valuable?

It uses the following framework:

• People you know: LinkedIn's algorithm looks at a user's connections and prioritizes whom they've interacted with directly through comments and reactions; the user's implicit interests and experiences based on information in their profile; explicit signals, such as whom a user works with; as well as who would benefit from hearing from the user.
• Things you're talking about: A lot of sophistication goes into understanding a good conversation. As a rule of thumb, the better conversations are authentic and have constructive back‐and‐forth.
• Things you care about: LinkedIn's algorithm also looks at whether the content and the conversation are relevant and interesting to a user. It considers a number of signals, including joining groups and following hashtags, people, and pages.

Well, it turns out, Matt, that you and I have both been involved in a launch, but we don't think we were working on the campaign. So, the case study that I'm going to tell you about is one that you know intimately, but you may think, “I didn't do that.” However, we did.

And the case study is the launch of the New Media Academy, which is based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). You and I are both instructors there. So, we helped to train some of the content creation community. We played a role. I'm teaching another module tomorrow.

Yeah, I taught one today.

Okay. So, interestingly enough, when the New Media Academy was launched in June 2020 during the beginning of a global pandemic they did a couple of things that were cross‐platform. They created Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter accounts.

Basically, they were trying to inform potential students in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that they could learn about social media marketing and content creation.

Yeah, a couple of the instructors were English‐speaking experts, but we were focused on putting our students on the path toward success in an ever‐evolving digital landscape.

So, when they launched their YouTube channel, it obviously had zero views and no subscribers. Today, it has a total of 145 million all‐time views and 1.7 million subscribers.

And when they launched their Facebook page, it obviously started from scratch too. Today, the videos on their Facebook page have 81.3 million all‐time views.

Now, I don't know about you, but I think that's a success story.

How did the New Media Academy accomplish this in just 2 years? They re‐launched the “El Daheeh” program, which is presented by the Egyptian YouTuber and content creator Ahmed Al‐Ghandour. It aims to simplify science in a comic way (Figure 6.2).

The debut of “El Daheeh” increased subscribers to the channel from 9,000 to 323,000 in one night. It also added two million views in one day. By the end of the first week, subscribers to the channel had doubled to 650,000, and six million views had been added, which was equal to the total number of views the channel had achieved since its inception in the summer of 2020.

And the rest is history. The New Media Academy now has an audience that is theirs. This enables them to launch enlightening shows like “Ektisadiyat,” which simplifies the world of economics, or participate in inspiring campaigns like “The World's Coolest Winter,” which highlights the various tourism destinations in the UAE.

But the point is this: talking about yourself, “Hi, we're an educational institution. We offer courses,” was okay. But putting your audience first, “Hi, we've got an entertaining nerd who pokes fun at science. We also offer courses,” was the recipe for success.

And that's what we were teaching in the first Impact Digital Creator Program at the New Media Academy. We taught 22 content creators and social media influencers to start by asking, “Who is your target audience?” And continue by asking, “What content do they seek?”

Then, we asked our students, “Why will they love your content?” And we taught them that nobody will visit their social media account twice because they like it; they'll only come back if they love it.

Now, what you and I didn't realize at the time was that some of the New Media Academy's staff was also watching our modules. And later, some of the content creators and social media influencers who we'd taught joined the New Media Academy's staff.

And they applied the lessons that we were teaching. They experimented with new initiatives and learned that their target audience in MENA liked educational video content that “teaches me something new,” but loved entertaining video content that “makes me laugh.”

So, that's why I think we were indirectly involved in launching a new product across multiple platforms without realizing that we were working on the campaign.

But, I think I'd share some different advice for this new era of social media. You can't rely on your organic social reach.

The platforms want you to pay to reach audiences. So, you can't take what you've built on one platform and move it to another. And so the solution then becomes: build your own community. And then use social media to populate that new community.

So for me, I focus on my website, and I use social to drive people to the site.

Same with the podcast. That's my community. It's my destination. And the listeners I get are mine.

I think one of the greatest examples is Yoga with Adriene, a YouTube channel (Figure 6.3). Adriene Mishler is an actress, writer, international yoga teacher, and entrepreneur from Austin, Texas.

Now, the channel was already doing well in the yoga community. But once the pandemic hit, searches for yoga fitness just went crazy. It exploded in popularity.

Now, here's the thing. She has a YouTube channel, and it's her main social channel to expand her audience. During her videos, she encourages comments and subscriptions. But she directs people to her website.

And on her website, you can get branded clothing and yoga equipment. You can sign up for her newsletter. You can also join her community on an app.

And it's estimated that this membership‐based app drives more revenue than her YouTube channel, which has more than 1.2 billion all‐time views and over 11.2 million subscribers.

So, she's created her own community on her own platform. And now she's moved people from being passive subscribers on YouTube to paying members of a community. And now she can do whatever she wants.

If YouTube's algorithms change, that won't affect the monetization of her app. And she uses YouTube now to build her audience and develop her own community independently. This is what's going to distinguish companies moving forward in the next decade with social media.

Strangely—and this is coming from a Wolverine—I find myself agreeing with a Buckeye. And if we're in agreement, then I need to go back and double‐check my assumptions.

I think we're in agreement a lot more than we are in disagreement.

Well, if we disagree one day a year during “The Game” between the University of Michigan and the Ohio State University, then I think we've got the right balance.

So, we're in agreement on engaging a target audience across multiple platforms.

When I'm driving audiences to a destination, such as a landing page, I'm also going across platforms because I'm going to retarget them. I'm going to drive them from social media to maybe a blog or a website or some other destination where I'm going to engage with them. I'm going to try to get them to convert. And if they don't convert, then I'll switch to another discipline and do more ad buying to reach them and drive them back.

So any campaign is going to involve multiple platforms. And if I'm buying ads on LinkedIn, then I absolutely must do retargeting because your first pass with ads on LinkedIn never works. You get lots of interest, but no one converts. So, retargeting is absolutely essential to maintain that contact and bring people back because they're inundated with so many messages.

I agree.

And here's where it's headed. It's all about the sale.

The platforms are all moving to get users to buy products right from the social site. So, this is not leaving their platform. It's leading into social commerce, which is growing.

But I like to caution people that social commerce has been called the “next big thing” for the past 12 years. So, every year there are headlines telling us to watch out for social commerce.

“It's going to explode!” And they've been saying that year after year after year. I think we're getting to a point where it is growing faster. But there's a level of caution to take there.

Well, there was an accelerant that nobody could have predicted called the global pandemic. All of a sudden a lot of people's behavior changed and started doing things online that they hadn't been doing as much online. So, the growth curve mutated quickly—almost as quickly as the virus. And more people are doing more things online now.

So, you should be testing social commerce. You should be trying to figure it out. But one of the things that a lot of social media marketers get wrong is they think that the process is push.

I'm going to push people to buy my product. And if I can only tack on this social commerce thing at the end of a post, then I can actually get you all the way to where the cash register rings.

I know, cash registers don't ring anymore. Pardon an old metaphor from an old marketer. But I don't think it's a push process. I think it's a pull process.

So, one of the things that Pinterest has done brilliantly is this: if I pin something to my board, then it's because I plan to come back and do something with it later.

It's my wish list. It's my planning tool. In other words, I'm providing the motivation here, not the marketer. And if you're aligned with the plans of your community, target audiences, or your business buyers, and if you're providing them with useful information to get them to the next step in their plans, then that's not push marketing. That's pull marketing.

Right?

Absolutely. And we could probably do an entire podcast on social commerce.

I'm looking at a headline right now that says social commerce is expected to grow to $1.2 trillion by 2025. But you don't get numbers that big without including China.

It's massive, but when you have an audience of 1.3 billion, everything becomes a big number.

China has something driving social commerce that isn't a big driver in other countries. It's Singles Day, and it's the biggest day for sales in the world.

China had their biggest Singles Day in November 2021. It's called Singles Day because it's November 11, which is 1, 1, 1, 1.

I did not know that.

Yes. And it's about going out and buying yourself a gift. It's a reward for yourself. Alibaba and JD.com racked up a record $139 billion in sales across their platforms on China's Singles Day shopping event in 2021.

That's bigger than the $10.7 billion spent on Cyber Monday that year.

Or the $8.9 billion spent on our Black Friday in 2021.

So, I always recommend: take these numbers for social commerce very lightly and be aware that they may be driven by unique holidays that don't occur month in and month out.

So, when your target audience interacts with a social medium, what are they looking for? Are they shopping for a product or do they just want to be entertained?

Are they there to dig deeper into something that interests them? That's okay. Are they there for product reviews? Well, they may look somewhere else. It's a complex process. And, yes, you want to be providing different content at every touchpoint that you can.

But again, focus on the customer first, as opposed to some kind of narrow model that tells you to “push on a string.” Because you'll be more effective in moving things if you pull.

Well, the next part in our outline is reputation management. And the first level is just simply being aware that someone is saying something.

So, using a social listening tool or setting up Google Alerts can help you discover when someone is saying something about your company, your CEO, or your products.

Oh yeah. And, the most brilliant thing I think I've ever seen was the “US Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment.” David Merrman Scott wrote about it in a blog post back in 2009. And, believe it or not, the United States Air Force has a flowchart that helps individuals decide how to participate in online discussions.

The flowchart was developed and revised by Captain David Faggard, chief of emerging technology at the Air Force Public Affairs Agency in the Pentagon in 2009 (Figure 6.4). That means it's public domain and may be used freely by social media marketers today.

Back then, Captain Faggard acknowledged, “We obviously have many more concerns regarding cyberspace than a typical Social Media user.” He added, “I am concerned with how insurgents or potential enemies can use Social Media to their advantage. It's our role to provide a clear and accurate, completely truthful and transparent picture for any audience.”

Social media marketers should take a look at the assessment tool and consider applying something similar in their own organization today. There are trolls, and there are haters. And sometimes, “Don't feed the trolls” is the right policy. But there are other times when someone has just alerted you to a crisis. Then, you need clear guidelines on when to respond and when to pass that on up the chain of command because this is one that they need to respond to.

Absolutely. And it always scares me when people say, “The youngest person on the staff is the one in charge of social media.” I think this used to be a joke. I pray it's not the same way now. If an intern is running your social media, then an intern is managing your reputation or your crisis response.

And you don't want that. But that's where having that flowchart or your own policy is so key to how you do respond. And just some simple crisis management techniques are crucial.

And the majority of crises that you will face can be categorized as operational or reputational.

An operational crisis creates an actual or potential disruption to organizational operations. Examples include fires, explosions, or a chemical release, which can disrupt your operations in some fashion. Crisis management initially was created to address operational crises.

A reputational crisis threatens to inflict serious damage on an organization's reputation. This includes irresponsible behavior by management or corporate messages that offend some stakeholders. These will cause stakeholders to perceive the organization much less favorably.

So, a key difference between the two types of crises is that an operational crisis typically creates some threat to public safety and/or stakeholder welfare, while a reputational crisis is far less likely to produce the same level of public safety or stakeholder welfare concerns.

So, a policy or flowchart can help you know what to do in a crisis.

Well, according to “The Digital 2022 Global Overview Report,” from We Are Social and Hootsuite, the average organic reach on Facebook is 5.2 percent and the average organic reach on Instagram is around 1.0 percent. Other research has found that Twitter's organic reach is only 0.045 percent.

I think that's still overestimating organic reach on Facebook.

Well, that's average organic reach. But that's not the average engagement rate. According to the “Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report 2022,” the median engagement rate on Facebook has been dwindling steadily to less than 0.1 percent, and the algorithms of most social platforms are actively discriminating against posts made by business users.

And this doesn't factor in fake engagement by fake accounts that are run by bots. In the first quarter of 2022, Facebook removed 1.6 billion fake accounts.

Well, I wouldn't mind if the declines in organic reach were entirely driven by purges of fake or spam accounts. But there's something else at work.

Earlier, I mentioned that SparkToro and Followerwonk had conducted a joint analysis of Twitter accounts. And they found that 18.4 percent of “active” accounts are fake or spam.

But they also took a rigorous look at Elon Musk's Twitter account and found that 23.4 percent of his 26.8 million “active” followers were fake or spam.

But Mr. Musk's Twitter account had a total of 93.4 million followers at the time. That means 66.6 million were “inactive” accounts. In other words, they were older profiles that hadn't tweeted in the last 90 days.

And as we've learned about Twitter's algorithm, nonactive accounts are far less likely to see Mr. Musk's tweets. And that's an even bigger reason why organic reach is declining.

Now, this isn't nefarious, but it's still problematic.

So, one of the things that social media marketers need to focus on is metrics. And I know we're going to spend a lot more time talking about measurement at the tail end of this.

But whether you're trying to increase your organic reach, or you're buying advertising to promote your posts because you're trying to beef up your numbers, one of the things that you really need to think about long and hard is, “How are you measuring your results?”

And if you are only using the metrics that the social media platforms provide you, then you can get in trouble fast.

I think you've nailed it right there. If I'm just using the platform numbers, then all I'm doing is measuring “platform reach and engagement.”

And you're getting sucked into what the platform wants, which is to sell more ads. And so the metrics are all built around, “Do you need more? Okay, you've got to spend more.”

Oh, absolutely. And it also means buying more reach and engagement on the platforms, which may or may not drive more people to a destination.

Marketers need to view social media as a way of building their community, not on these platforms, but driving people to a destination where they become yours, where they sign up for something and you get their email address.

Right. So, one of the things that social media can teach us is what works and what doesn't—whether you're creating organic content or crafting an ad.

And one of the things you learn quickly is that “corporate propaganda” doesn't work. This should be obvious, right? But, I can't tell you how many brands and businesses are still using social media to push out their corporate propaganda.

Avinash Kaushik, the Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google, lamented this tendency in a post entitled, “Stop All Social Media Activity (Organic) | Solve for a Profitable Reality.” It was posted back on June 17, 2017, on his blog, Occam's Razor.

Avinash said, “Businesses of all types, including Google, got on amazing platforms like Facebook and started pimping. All that their collective imagination could manifest in a Utopia‐possible environment was: ‘LOOK AT ME! I AM SO PRETTY!! BUY NOW!!!’ Stuff that is a turn‐off.”

So, that doesn't work. What does?

One of my first lessons in social media advertising was on YouTube.

We developed a video campaign on YouTube for a library levy. And it wasn't too popular in the community. So we decided, “Let's go to YouTube. Let's start informing people.”

This was one of the earliest campaigns I did. We targeted women with children because women with children were much more sympathetic to funding the library. But older people, who don't have children, did not want their taxes to go up to fund a library that—in their mind—they don't use.

So, we created a video ad campaign that targeted women with children. One of the things I loved about YouTube advertising was I could see what video people were watching when our ad appeared.

But as the data started coming in, I started seeing a lot of ABC songs, learning the alphabet, and Minecraft walkthroughs. Having children that same age, I realized, “Oh no, the kids are watching YouTube on mom's account. They've got the iPad in their lap and they are being entertained. Kids are watching the ads that we wanted their mothers to see.”

A more recent example that I'll never forget was when I turned on my connected TV and immediately saw a video ad on YouTube TV that grabbed my attention. It was about pets and dogs specifically. And I watched this 3‐minute ad well past the skip button. I was hooked.

A great hook made me stay past the skip button. And a great story. The only way they could have done that was by targeting me, what I searched for, my interests, my behavior. That showed me right there that this legacy 30‐second ad thing? Throw it out the window.

Oh yeah. And believe it or not, before the legacy 30‐second ad, there was the legacy 60‐second ad. The whole arbitrary “You have to tell your story in 60 seconds.”

Oh, wait. Nobody could afford that anymore. So, then you had to tell your story in 30 seconds. Oh, wait. You can't afford that anymore. So, 15 seconds is the new standard.

When you're selling television time, everything had to be arbitrary in order to fit into the hour‐long or half‐hour‐long programming concept.

On social media, your story can be as long as it needs to be until it gets boring. Right? And people will watch it as long as it's interesting. And as soon as it gets boring, they're out of there, which is not television behavior, but it is social media video viewing behavior.

It's interesting that a lot of people in social media advertising think, “You've got to keep it short.” Why? “Because the attention span of a goldfish is only 8 seconds.”

If your target audience is a goldfish, then that's great. But guess what? There are people who will binge‐watch episode upon episode of TV shows for hours, if they're interested.

To be an effective producer of social video advertising, don't ask, “How long should my video ad be?” It should be long enough to reach a point.

If you need examples, look at the organic video content being produced by YouTube stars, Instagram influencers, and TikTok creators.

They're making videos worth watching. They're creating content worth sharing. Now, they often make short‐form videos, but many of them also create long‐form content. But no matter what the duration of their videos are, their content is entertaining, inspiring, educational, or enlightening. And that is changing people's hearts, minds, and behavior.

And if you can even come close to doing what they're doing, then you can be successful. And if you can't come close, then maybe you need to move some of your social media advertising budget into influencer marketing. Why? Because sponsoring people who can create enchanting content may get you further, faster than running more social video ads.

What I like about social media advertising is the ability to target by needs. Or to set up my targeting regionally. I use those options instead of targeting demographically.

Dr. Augustin Fou was on the show a couple months ago, and I loved it when he said, “Why would you target men instead of women? You've already excluded half your audience.”

And the more you target by age, you're excluding more and more people. So, you're excluding people who might need and want to buy what you offer.

I love that aspect of targeting, especially on Google and YouTube, which are built on behavioral targeting, because they know what people are looking for. They know what people have searched for in the past week.

I'm targeting based on need or behavioral aspects because this is what grabs your audience much more than focusing on their gender, age, or all that demographic stuff.

Gender and age was the only data that television could provide marketers back in the 20th century. So, that's why most traditional marketing is focused on demographics.

And, that's okay. If that's the only data you have, then as Erasmus observed back in 1500, “In the land of the blind, the one‐eyed man is king.”

But one of the more powerful ways to tap into what your audience is actually, already interested in can be discovered with a free tool that YouTube offers. It's called Find My Audience. Now, that's a cryptic name. And it helps you find in‐market segments—people who are actively researching or planning to purchase products or services like yours.

How does YouTube know this? Like you said, they know what you've been searching for on Google. They know which videos you've been watching on YouTube. Oh, by the way, they know what websites you've been looking at on your Chrome browser. So, they know that you're in the market for a car. They know when you're planning to travel. They know if you're in the market for 20 other products and services.

They can serve up that audience, so you can advertise to people whom you don't have to take from “0 to 60.” They're already traveling at 55‐miles‐an‐hour on their customer journey. So, you just need to accelerate their pace the rest of the way.

YouTube's Find My Audience also helps you to target affinity segments—people whose interests and habits relate to what your business offers.

You can target travel buffs—people who enjoy traveling for pleasure and planning vacations. They often spend a considerable amount of time online, researching the locations they want to visit and planning their trips. While traveling, they immerse themselves in the cultures of their destinations and love experiencing the local cuisine, entertainment, history, and sites. They often come to YouTube to scout their next trips.

They may not have traveled for pleasure or vacations during the global pandemic. But they're already planning to do a lot of “revenge travel” as soon as it's safe.

The planning process may be a little longer and interest in travel insurance is higher than it used to be. But guess what? Whether you're advertising air travel, hotels and accommodations, or trips by destination, you can target travel buffs even before they start researching or planning to purchase travel‐related products or services.

You can see what videos they watch, which channels they visit. You can target those specifically with your advertising. You now are leveraging what customers want to do anyway. You're just helping them complete that journey by providing them with information about your brand or your service.

One thing I love showing people is Google Ad Settings. And I'm amazed how many people don't know this is there.

If you go to adssettings.google.com, you will see how Google sees you as a consumer. There will be some basic demographic information there, but you'll find probably 30 to 40 behavioral categories.

This is based on your activity on Google services, such as Search or YouTube, while you were signed in. Greg, if your ad personalization is on, and you use Google Search to find the results of “The Game,” or you go to YouTube to watch the highlights often enough, then Google estimates that you are interested in American Football. Then you will be included in the American Football affinity group. Now, you're going to see ads that target this affinity group on Google services, such as Search or YouTube, as well as on websites and apps that partner with Google to show ads.

It's not always completely accurate. It's based on your activity.

For example, Google Ad Settings had me down for cats, but I don't like cats. I can't stand cats. But we were trying to find a home for a cat, and because I was on cat adoption sites, the next thing I saw was ads for cat stuff. It's because I was visiting these sites.

So, I go into Google Ad Settings. I say, “Ah‐huh, they think I like cats.” And I can turn that off. But it is amazing sometimes that, based on your YouTube watching, they'll just assign you to a group. And, then all of a sudden, I notice I started seeing ads for horror movies.

And it's because I watched a clip from an old movie years ago that I was showing to someone. And because of that single activity, it said, “You love horror movies.” So, it's not always accurate, but it might answer some questions.

I have looked at my Google Ad Settings and, yes, American Football is one of them. And I have no problem with that whatsoever.

But it also told me that I'm “35 to 44 years old.” Heck, I have kids who are that old. So, how could they possibly make that assumption?

Well, I also have grandkids, who come over and watch YouTube Kids on my laptop. So, is that the behavior you were talking about earlier, Matt? Does Google think I let my grandkids watch a little too much stuff on YouTube? Does Google think I behave like an irresponsible parent, when I'm actually an irresponsible grandparent?

Greg, I think the age is from when you signed up on Google. You had to give your birthdate. So, did you put the wrong date as your birthday?

No, But, here's another possibility. Back in 2011, my Google+ account was created by someone who is a generation younger than I am. Maybe he put in his birthday.

Let's go with that.

Okay. I like that explanation better than being considered irresponsible by Google.

But things are constantly changing tactically on these channels. The biggest anticipated changes are the rise of TikTok and short‐form video content. These changes are pushing other channels, especially Instagram, to announce new features, new ad formats, and new layouts on a weekly basis.

When you look at all the changes in advertising on social platforms, it's on you to keep up with the latest tactics. But from a strategic standpoint, it's all about your objective. And you really have to plan a series of ads to tell your story because your average social media user doesn't want to watch the same ad over and over again. So, you need to prepare a progression of ads.

That's really the more strategic view.

Let's do it. I like starting with the vanity metrics. Let's start with what not to do. And then we'll get into what to do.

Well, one of the metrics that you've got to question is “Followers.” Now, YouTube calls them Subscribers. Facebook initially called them Fans and now calls it Page Likes. But Instagram, Twitter, and Linked In call them Followers.

So, different platforms have different names for it, but the number doesn't measure how many people you're reaching. Why? Well, all of the social media platforms have adopted algorithms because they can't show everybody everything posted by an account that they followed, liked, or subscribed to once upon a time. They show you some of them.

So, those old numbers—your Followers, Page Likes, and Subscriber—were devalued. As we mentioned earlier, the average organic reach on Facebook is 5.2 percent, if you're lucky. And it's around 1.0 percent on Instagram and only 0.045 percent on Twitter.

It's an even harder thing to get real metrics around how many people you reached when you run social media advertising campaigns across multiple platforms. What happens if the same person sees your video ad seven times? Do your metrics tell you that you reached seven people, or do you realize that all you reached was one person who got very annoyed?

Maybe they were a big fan.

Yeah, right. So, one of the vanity metrics you've got to question is Followers.

Another one that I see people getting into trouble with again and again, is “Views.” People keep saying, “Look how many views my social video got.”

Well, how do you define a view? Because YouTube defines it as up to 30 seconds long. Facebook and Instagram define a view as anything over 3 seconds long. And TikTok says, “As soon as the video starts playing, that's a view.”

So, a “view” is not a “view” is not a “view.” You're comparing apples to kumquats and grapes. So, that's another vanity metric that you need to question.

There's one more vanity metric. And that is “Impressions” on a lot of platforms.

When I am teaching analytics to marketing teams, I will give them a multiple choice option, “Define an impression,” and I give them five options.

I get a pretty consistent distribution of responses. That tells me the team doesn't have a single definition of an impression. After I point this out, I ask, “What made you select that?”

I point out that as a human, we are thinking of an impression in a human term, which is I physically saw it.

However, several years ago, the Media Rating Council (MRC) created a standard definition of viewable ad impression: “At least 50 percent of an ad must be in view for a minimum of 1 second for display ads or 2 seconds for video ads.”

Here's how YouTube and Facebook calculate an impression for a video ad: When “50 percent of the ad's pixels” are viewable for “2 continuous seconds.” Facebook's definition of an ad impression is anything greater than 0 pixels that is shown for more than 0 seconds!

So not everyone in the industry adopted the MRC's viewable ad impression measurement guidelines. That's a big problem. Because when consistent advertising viewability standards aren't used, marketers may come to inaccurate conclusions about the effectiveness of their ads, which could lead to misguided buying decisions and suboptimal results.

And when I'm reporting up the ladder, when I say, “a viewable ad impression,” what are they thinking? They're thinking less and less in digital terms and more and more in human terms.

Viewability has proven to be a valuable metric for brand campaigns. Research has found a consistent relationship between how long an ad is viewable and increases in awareness and consideration.

Other research has found viewability is as important for performance outcomes, such as conversions, as it is for brand outcomes. So, it may sound obvious, but video ads that have a chance to be seen are the ones that drive business results.

So, it's important to understand the vocabulary and have an organizational definition so that we all know what it is we are buying, reporting, and making decisions about.

Yeah. And those are things that you do not want to take for granted and just use because they're convenient and available. You really need to think about and adopt metrics that matter. So, maybe we should begin to segue to, “How do I get out of this predicament?”

So, what do you measure?

Well, let me tell you about an organization called the Global Video Measurement Alliance (GVMA). They were formed in 2019.

They are developing cross‐platform standard metrics for social video, including ones that are significantly better than “Followers” and “Views.”

For example, the GVMA developed a new metric called de‐duplicated “unique viewers.” Instead of using Followers, Page Likes, or Subscribers, you can use this new metric to measure reach more accurately. It also enables you to leverage the power of de‐duplicated viewership to make better content and media decisions on both platforms.

Another new metric developed by the GVMA that you'll want to adopt is “quality views,” which uses a 30‐second view as a qualifier. Any video shorter than 30 seconds is counted only if it is watched to completion.

Now, these are relatively new definitions. They have not been widely adopted as industry standards yet. But I would certainly encourage social media marketers who are serious about solving the problem of vanity metrics to pay attention to the GVMA. They are tackling the biggest problems of social video audience measurement.

And it's worth noting that Tubular Labs, which helped to establish the GVMA in 2019, expanded their Audience Ratings suite in 2021 by adding ecommerce measurement capabilities. These provide a unique view into how product‐related social video viewing influences online sales through Amazon.

We both think that “Impressions” is a vanity metric. So, what should you use as a key performance indicator (KPI)?

There are different answers to your question, depending on whether you're launching a brand‐building campaign or running and performance marketing campaign.

For brand‐building campaigns, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, and LinkedIn all offer “Brand Lift” studies to advertisers. These measure the impact of video ads on metrics that matter like brand awareness, consideration, and purchase intent.

They work by dividing the people into randomized test and holdout groups and showing your video ad to the larger test group, but the smaller holdout group doesn't see it. Then, they conduct surveys comparing the performance of these groups over time.

To measure the impact of organic social video campaigns, you can conduct one brand lift study before a campaign is launched and a second one after it ends. Or for ongoing social video programs, conduct periodic brand lift studies—at least one per year and up to one per quarter.

For performance marketing campaigns, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) offers a new metric called YouTube Engaged‐View Conversion (EVC) events. An EVC event indicates that a user has watched a YouTube video for at least 10 seconds and has completed a conversion event on your website or app within 3 days of viewing the video.

This new metric is a game changer. Why? Because 70 percent of YouTube viewers say that they bought a brand as a result of finding the brand on YouTube. But YouTube video viewers have strong intent to continue watching the content that they're in the middle of watching. As a result, they're very likely to stay on the platform when they encounter an ad as part of their viewing experience.

Absolutely. I'm really excited about that. I think that's going to be great.

And there are other social media metrics that we should use as KPIs. They've been hidden in plain sight since October 2011, when Avinash Kaushik first defined them in a post on his Occam's Razor blog entitled, “Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value.”

The definitions have evolved over the years, but here's what each one measures and how it's calculated:

• Conversation rate: Indicates how many Comments/Replies on average each of your posts has received (e.g., Conversation rate = # of Comments/ # of Posts)
• Amplification rate: Indicates how many times on average each of your posts was Shared/Retweeted (e.g., Amplification rate = # of Shares/ # of Posts)
• Applause rate: Indicates how many Likes/Likes each of your posts has received on average (e.g., Applause rate = # of Likes/ # of Posts)
• Economic value: Shows how much economic value each visit from a social network brings to your site by completing your site's goals (e.g., Economic value = Per session Goal value, which is calculated by Google Analytics when you assign a monetary amount to each completed activity, called a conversion, that contributes to the success of your business)

You and I have both been training marketers to use these metrics as KPIs since our good friend Avinash came up with them. And I absolutely love that he came up with three different metrics for measuring the real active engagement of users with your social media pages.

Avinash is the Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google, so you'd assume that the vast majority of marketers would be using these “best social media metrics” by now. But they aren't.

Why? Because they make most social media marketing activities look like a total waste of time and money. So, most marketers stick with vanity metrics and hope that no one notices.

But it turns out that we need to adopt Conversation, Amplification, and Applause rates as KPIs. Why? Because the social media platforms are using them.

For example, Facebook freaked everybody out in January of 2018 when they announced what the industry called the Facebook feed apocalypse. That's when they acknowledged that their engagement metrics were a little whacked. They needed to readjust them.

What they did was decrease the impact of Reactions in their algorithm, increase the impact of Comments, and maintain the impact of Shares. So, even Facebook was using these metrics to make adjustments in their algorithm. And you should also focus on them if you want to create content that gets higher engagement and interaction rates going forward.

And if your posts aren't engaging your followers, then you shouldn't expect your social media accounts to generate much economic value.

And economic value is already an important metric. Increasingly, it will become your most important KPI. Social media marketers are going to have to struggle with this ugly transition between now and then.

But guess what? You're struggling in the right area.

After Willie Sutton, a famous bank robber from the 1930s, was arrested, a reporter asked, “Willie, why do you rob banks?” And he said, “Because that's where the money is.”

So, if you're not measuring economic value, then learn how to. Because that's where the money is. And one of the things that may require you to do is connect the dots.

As Matt said eloquently at the beginning of this podcast, you need to think beyond your social media platforms. If people need to come to your website before they can buy your product, generate a lead for your sales force, or do something that can be monetized, then figure out how to create a conversion event in GA4. And, then:

• Link your property to Google Ads to make YouTube Web EVCs available in your GA4 reports.
• Activate Google signals to see conversions from users who are signed in to their Google accounts.
• Add a monetary value to each conversion event.

Finally, use Predictive Audiences to target “likely seven‐day purchasers” or create a remarketing campaign to re‐engage users based on their behavior on your site.

Now, this won't be easy to learn at first. But it will eventually enable you to compare the economic value of all your social media accounts. So, when the often predicted social commerce trend finally takes off, you'll be in a strong position to measure what matters.

Well, that requires a better understanding of KPIs.

Now, Greg, I don't know if you saw the report entitled, “Media KPIs That Matter,” which was published in 2021 by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA). The most important KPI for Media was Return on Investment (ROI)/Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

And ROI/ROAS is an outcome metric that's directly tied to business growth. It's used to calculate: “For every dollar spent, what is the expected return?” It guides marketers on whether their advertising investment paid off this quarter. Measurement of ROI/ROAS can be done via marketing mix modeling, which is often used to optimize advertising mix and promotional tactics. This metric was not only ranked first in importance, but also fourth in use. It was identified as a top new/emerging KPI for media.

And I went through the list of most important KPIs saying, “Five of the top six are outcomes. That's great.” Then, I looked at the second list of most used KPIs and only one out of the top six was an outcome.

And the most used KPI was CPM (Cost per Thousand). And here's where my nerdiness comes out because I said, “CPM is not a KPI. It measures efficiency, not performance.” And the second most used KPI was CPC (cost‐per‐click), which also measures efficiency.

So, it blows my mind that most social media marketers don't know that a key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric that helps you understand how you are doing against your objectives. And efficiency is nice. Not thrilling, but nice. But your KPIs should be tied to outcomes.

Yeah. And that reminds me of a story that I told on one of your earlier podcasts. It was about my father, who was the director of marketing at Oldsmobile.

Now, some of our listeners are too young to remember what an Oldsmobile was. It was a car. It had been around for more than a hundred years. And my father became the director of marketing back in 1988, before many of you were born. So, you may not have heard about his classic advertising campaign, which declared, “This is NOT your father's Oldsmobile.”

And that was really ironic for me because it was my father's Oldsmobile.

The campaign's slogan became a meme. But sales went down.

So, my father asked his ad agency, “How are we measuring success?” And their answer was gross rating points (GRPs).

So, my father asked, “How many GRPs do we need to sell a car?” And the agency couldn't answer his question because there is no correlation between GRPs and sales.

So, I learned the hard way from my father's unsuccessful ad campaign that you need to measure what matters. That's not inputs or even outputs. What you need to measure are outcomes.

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head because that story is so good at showing what can happen when you use the wrong metrics as KPIs.

And beyond ROI/ROAS, there are other metrics that matter, including customer satisfaction and lifetime value that you should focus on.

This is why so many social media marketers fail to get a seat at the big table. They often measure inputs and sometimes measure outputs. But they rarely measure outcomes.

This gets to the final topic in our outline: The “action dashboard” versus the “crappy dashboard.”

One of the reasons that most dashboards are "crappy" is because they are data dumps that provide few insights and little analysis of key trends. And they rarely recommend what actions or next steps should be taken.

To create an “actionable” dashboard, you need to take your engagement metrics for Conversation, Amplification, and Applause and do an analysis of your best/worst posts. Then, you need to uncover the best and the worst topics and keywords for successful posts. And discover which types of content perform the best—videos, pictures, or text.

Or you can compare your social media stats against your competitors and against industry average results. Do this both in absolute and relative metrics (per 1,000 followers).

Or you can analyze how user activity on your social media accounts has changed over time and compare the percentage of increase or decrease for each metric by week or month.

And you need to have the courage to let your executives know if corporate propaganda doesn't work. Why can you afford to make this kind of career‐damaging move? Because, if you do, then you will become more successful and valuable to your organization. And if you don't, then your job will remain pushing corporate propaganda into social channels.

Right. And then compare the performance and economic value for all your social media accounts. Then find the most effective content and platforms for your business.

Then, you should recommend what needs to be done next. Most executives actually want insights tied to action recommendations. This is what gets you a seat at the big table.

So, you've got to know which KPI to use at every stage of the customer journey, so that you can measure brand lift in the early stages and conversion events in the later stages.

Otherwise, you end up trying to measure a fish by its ability to climb a tree.

I like that metaphor.

Well, it's attributed to Albert Einstein of all people.

But one of the things that you need to understand about the customer journey is it's a process. It's not a one‐time event. And if you try to move people to the next stage too rapidly, or you ask for the order too soon, then they feel pushed.

So, the process may be longer and more convoluted than the old sales funnel model. But your ability to interact with people as they return again and again for different information is building a relationship. That is really where social media can shine.

The final topic that we need to talk about is reporting. “Whom are you reporting to?”

If I'm reporting information to a product manager, then they will typically have access to as much data as I have. So, I can share more data, graphs, and tables because they know how to read these. They will understand the opportunities and can respond to the threats.

But if I am reporting up to the C‐level, I do not use dozens of platform metrics. I get straight to economic impact. I have less data and more analysis, more recommendations, and more focus on the customer or company because that's what they want. C‐level executives want you to be quick, concise, and to the point.

And if you can speak in dollar signs, then you've made them happy.

Absolutely. So, when you are the social media manager, you'll want to go beyond reporting inputs, and report outputs, which product managers will love, because they are like Rosalind, the babysitter who picked up Calvinball quickly.

So, you can report the Brand Lift and Engaged‐View Conversions generated by your new YouTube ad campaign, as well as the Conversation, Amplification, and Applause rates for your ongoing social media marketing program. They'll know what you're talking about.

But down the road, when you become the director of marketing, you'll want to go beyond reporting outputs and report outcomes, which top management need to know, because they have to make decisions about the organization's performance and growth.

So, your report will also include recommendations like moving some of your budget out of social media marketing on Facebook and into social media advertising on YouTube and influencer marketing on TikTok. Why? Because this will give us more bang for the buck.

That's a great way to end this social media marketing segment, Greg, because I don't think enough people focus on outcomes.

So, thank you again for your time. This has been one of the more fun podcasts, which has turned into a series. Hopefully, we are still relevant in 3 days or 3 weeks.

Yes, we should stamp this with a “best if used by” date of today.