Three months ago I wrote a post about the importance of standing fast and explaining the reasons that we cannot always provide traditional measurements, such as ROI, as part of a social media campaign when questioned by our clients and peers. I still stand by this.

On Monday, Todd Defren wrote an excellent post, titled: ROI for social media marketing: it’s complicated, which summed up many theories and quotes from around the community, and has since received comments from even more influencers - great job Todd!

Reading Todd’s post, and looking back at Liberate Media’s own experiences, I thought it would be useful to share our thinking and progress, which has informed our position on the subject.

First of all, in reference to the big question of ROI for social media - Todd hit the nail on the head, it is complicated! In a traditional sense of: a rate of return used to evaluate the efficiency of a financial investment, ROI is specifically complicated by trying to apply numeric quantities to human interactions and conversations - as highlighted by Jason Falls.

So we fight the good fight and educate our clients - right? Right. But when speaking to metrics-dominated sectors such as retail and travel, as we have been recently, education is one thing, but in a harsh economic climate clients are far more likely to be swayed when they are told what they want to hear; that they can spend X on social media marketing and get X back.

Now don’t get me wrong, i’m not advocating that we just tell clients what they want to hear because the economy is tough, or in fact that we lost out on those clients as they went for alternative providers, neither are true. But, what I am saying is that while there are so many differing opinions on the subject, and therefore options, educating our clients on the issue is made even tougher.

This was a point of frustration, but over the same time period we’ve been busy continuing to develop our own metrics and frameworks to help clients to measure the tangible elements, while also communicating and evidencing that social media contains many points of human interaction that require a different approach.

As we developed our frameworks, and looked at the options of how social media relates to search marketing and other elements of the digital marketing mix, it became clear that as social media influences the function of digital marketing as a whole, the metrics that we use don’t need to be reflected through a single metric or score, so why make it so?

Furthermore, as has been mentioned previously on this blog and on many others, each campaign is unique, so a static metric framework, while undoubtedly useful, does not tell the whole story. In reality, the measurement points need to relate to core business objectives which will change from campaign to campaign.

This leaves us with an assortment of measurement points, including traditional metrics, all of which are useful, but need to be presented with a large dose of translation from the consultants involved, not by a single metric. So why try to distill the information down to a score when the power is in the detail?

I hope this brief overview has been a useful exercise, and helped in some way to move the conversation on, if not for many of the afore mentioned bloggers as they’ve undoubtedly considered this already, but from an education point of view.

The development of our own framework continues on an almost daily basis, different campaigns add new angles and considerations, and we will share more thinking as we continue to build.

Let me know your thoughts.

Anyway, virtuality has surfaced again in press agendas with the Second Life divorce story that Mark Lawson commented on in Saturday’s Guardian. and Victor Keegan’s full-page Observer Focus on the “virtual revolution”  the next day. Lawson warned about the emotional damage that could be caused in the real world from actions taken in a fantasy environment. Keegan wrote on the explosion of virtual worlds and the potential impact on real economies.

It was good to have the views of these two significant commentators so close together, with Lawson’s edgy assertion that popular culture needed to come to terms with the fact that fantasy actions have real emotional consequences balanced with Keegan’s economic perspective. Keegan warned that developing economies, particularly China, were building truly massive online 3D environments with the aim of luring customers in the developed economies to try then buy goods cheaply at source – collapse of middleman markets. A scary prospect but one that still has to wrestle with the realities of sub-prime service delivery, leading to lag, crashes and “unforeseen effects” (hardly conducive to making a sale, or for that matter, a “positive brand experience”) .

While Lawson confined his view to Second Life and reality TV, hooked around the suicide of an X Factor contestant in the US, Keegan named the usual suspects (SL, Entropia, Runescape) in his top picks, along with newcomers Twinity and Football Superstars. Keegan also made much of the European innovation and entrepreneurial spirit embodied in all the above, with the exception of SL and also doffed his cap to the Euro brilliance of Habbo, even stretching the Eurozone to include World of Warcraft (owned by French company Vivendi!)

At the risk of being unpatriotic, I could also mention Metaplace. I think this virtual space has everything – except an opening for me as a beta tester! It’s an open platform (world first?) that people can use to build their own virtual environments. The vision is to build a network of worlds, an ecosystem of business, education and pleasure. And the visionaries are Raph Koster, who you may know as former Sony Online Chief Creative Officer and author of one of my favourite manuals, “A Theory of Fun for Games”. He has easily completed his 10,000 hours required to become a Master in a given discipline (Malcolm Gladwell). Co-founder John Donham (also qualifying as a 10,000-hours Master) has helped to bring to fruition, among others, Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies. And investors include Mark Andreesson – another of my heroes. To cap it all, one of the advisors is Dr Richard Bartle, one of the most astute commentators on virtuality I’ve met.

I just begin to sense that the virtual universe has expanded again and moved out of the darker side that saw SL sign-ups fade away and investors lose their taste for these types of projects. And that is going to be good news for brands who want to find more routes to engaging with customers – and great news for those of us who love the sheer joy of a virtual world that connects and clicks.

Just going over some of my old bookmarks and I found one that rather amused me entitled @ Replys for Twitter - by The social networking weblog.

Very relevant at the time but now seems incredible considering the massive success of Twitter. The post is dated December 26, 2007, so less than a year old, which seems remarkable given the fact that Twitter seems to have been around for years and the endless number of applications that have been made for it over the past 12 months or so.

The post goes on to talk about how to set up your @ replies on Twitter which is now obviously one of the main everyday reasons for using the tool - personally I think this post should go into the archive for social media and web 2.0 classic blog posts!

Catching up with an old mobile games colleague today made me think again about potential for different genres on the infernal device. When we were busy at the codeface, the complexities of Java game development for different handset ranges were mind-numbing, even without the costs involved. Now, the focus seems to be on the iPhone and G1 on the one side, and Symbian smartphone, Windows Mobile on the other.

Whatever platform, the build and port costs have been contained, with coding dollars now used more productively in the complexity of the games themselves, rather than the on addressing the idiosyncrasies of Java implementation on different devices. That’s great news for the gamer, who has collectively suffered from poor quality games and for the producer, who has seen the majority of game revenues siphoned away by intermediaries. It’s quite an experience to see, for example, Metal Gear Solid running flicker-free on the N95.

I’d guess that the next big battle will be around distribution as third-party providers face a squeeze from the AppStore and clones that will spring up around the handset manufacturers. We might well see the vast majority of games and other apps distributed by five or six companies, including device manufacturers and network operators.

On the social media side, it’s still pretty clear that unless there is a rapid roll-out of high-speed, robust networks with always-on capability, the multiplayer environments will remain experimental and niche for the next five years at least, maybe double that.

Meanwhile, companies like Nokia continue to believe in group play and do embrace user generated content with a passion. As that matures, the sharing-community aesthetic should open new doors for brands seeking to engage in conversations with with their customers.

The Five on Friday webmaster is on holiday this week, so I’m filling in. I hope this week’s five are of interest, all themed around tools for your blog.

Normal service will be resumed next week:

1. iSpeech is first up today. It’s a useful tool that can convert your favourite websites, RSS, Blogs and documents into speech with any PC or mobile device, allowing you to easily podcast your favourite blogs and feeds.

2. Sikbox is next and don’t be put off by the name as it’s a search engine for your blog, offering full live search capabilities to your site in minutes. It’s easy to use and can be placed anywhere on your site using just a single line of Javascript code.

3. Feel like getting a bit more interactive with your blog subscribers? Then try Askablogr - an integrated blog question and answer service that allows readers to submit questions to bloggers who in turn can answer directly. Askablogr also creates an index of all the participating bloggers, readers and Q&A sessions, which opens you up to a world of new potential subscribers!

4 Zemanta is a useful tool that helps your browser to recognise what you are blogging about and then suggests pictures, links articles and tags to help you improve your post.

5. And finally for this week, if you enjoy commenting in the blogosphere, this one is for you: BackType is a service that lets you find, follow and share comments. Whenever you update the website field in a comment form of related site, BackType attributes it to you and adds it to a database profile featuring all the comments that you have published - lovely!

Until next week!

There has been plenty of discussion on the topic of how the current economic climate will affect the development of social media. Dawn Foster at Fast Wonder wrote a particularly good post on the subject earlier in the week, and her findings seem to match our experiences.

At Liberate Media we too have noticed an upsurge in enquires and opportunities, but as Dawn rightly points out, enquires are not the same as signed contracts. However, it still begs the question: why more interest now?

It will come as no surprise to suggest that PR, like the majority of other sectors, is being hit by the economic downturn. Traditionally PR is the first to be reviewed when times are tough and budgets are disappearing.

Now admittedly, Liberate Media straddles the realm between traditional PR and social media. We are comfortable in both areas and believe the two work well together, so we are positioned a little differently. Therefore, this upsurge may not be what traditional PR agencies are experiencing, although I would be interested to hear what traditional agencies think on the matter?

Either way, it still begs the question; why is confidence in social media and digital communications continuing to grow, at least on the evidence from our own experiences, when in the past PR and the comms sector has been hit hard and fast by a financial downturn?

You could argue that social media understanding is beginning to turn into social media spend, and we are now seeing the second layer of adopters dipping a toe in the water. Brands in general are at least realising that they need to get to grips with social media, even if it isn’t always turning into involvement just yet. That would certainly explain some of the interest, but surely that clashes with a reduction in available marketing spend, so there must be other reasons.

As many commentators have already pointed out, the more measurable nature of social media also makes it a more reliable strategy in a downturn. It must also be said that the current financial climate has given consultants an added incentive to find a final solution to the social media ROI and measurement issue much faster than during any of the preceding years, which also suggests measurement is a strong differentiator in attracting marketing spend.

So, are we experiencing a positive side effect from the current market conditions? Brought on because spend must be carefully allocated and measureable, and encouraged by a growing understanding of social media? Well, it’s far too early to say and if the worst of the economic issues are yet to be revealed it’s certainly not a safe bet, but the positive signs are there.

If this is a growing trend will it also lead to a growth spurt in social media service offerings from the traditional PR agencies? Who up until this point have been quick to talk about, but slow to develop, social media specialisms? Perhaps those that invested in the development of social media and related digital communications early can at least take some solace that their endeavors are baring fruit at the time it is most needed.

Before closing, I should also point out that we believe the recession will not be all bad for the PR industry, as my colleague Wendy McAuliffe pointed out recently in her excellent post: the role of PR in a recession.

Let me know what you think.

When things settled (departure of character with the Voice of Reason), it soon became clear at the MoSo Rising gathering that while there are no stellar new performers in the space, with established marques like MySpace and FaceBook leading the charge into always-connected social spaces, there are many positive signs.

Right now though start-up and niche mobile-only social networks are wrestling with the best revenue models, with white-label services a winning play at the moment, as ads and subscriptions largely fail to deliver.

More pressing for many agencies and PRs on the night was the need for clarity on how best to advise companies interested but fearful of mobile/social web. Panellist Alfie Dennen, CEO Moblog, suggested that brands and agencies need to think in more inclusive way, and embrace mobile as part of the communications mix, in much the same way that broadcasters have.

Harry Blunden. Head of digital at ?WhatIf! Digital advised that all agencies

should have at least one mobile savant -  the one who could read the current mobile terrain and map out the potential for clients. He and other panel members all felt that many agencies did not understand Mobile but needed to embrace it.

Ron Shelton. CEO Next2Friends also urged agencies to encourage client to experiment with Mobile now, educating them away from the fear of the platform.

The view from the panellists, not necessarily shared by everyone in the Slug and Lettuce, was that digital agencies don’t yet get the mobile space and that a focussed education programme was needed to pull agencies into the new age with clients still very reluctant to put money into mobile.

A positive view on the development of the mobile/social web came from the floor as Conor McKenna, business development manager at mobile search company Taptu who said that growing numbers of people leading quite disconnected working lives used mobile web and social networks to communicate and engage and as a form of escapism.

Bena Roberts added how Polish workers she had met were addicted to social networks on mobile as this was all they had to keep connected with their social groups.

And in Hungary, people in villages who had not heard of broadband were using their mobiles as web/social media access tools.

The key messages I took away from a thoughtful evening were that MoSo is only just starting as is going to be a greater part of the mobile, always connected web with massive opportunities for all the players: operators, service providers, brands and agencies. While “always on” mobile is maybe 5-10 years away, there are great opportunities for brands to engage with their customers and for agencies to build business.

At the moment, brands can harness Mobile by playing to its current strengths, keeping it simple and direct but also thinking creatively about how to use the at present limited functionality. It’s not just about delivering ads and brand messages one way.

And the simple questions for agencies and brands to ask around Mobile: “What do we want users to do? How do we create real value that engages?”

Nine applications, one space - ding dong! Seems that LinkedIn has hit upon another potentially lucrative ad-related revenue stream with the launch of its applications platform.

The first apps on the platform are pretty robust and add value to your profile. They might even encourage you to spend more time around your own LinkedIn page. As productivity tools, they are useful not crucial. The company is encouraging third-party developers and has also added its own platform launch app to help set the standard – Company Buzz. With this app you can tap into twitter to find comments and follow trends on a company, which I’m finding relevant and useful for PR research into our clients and other companies in our space.

Three of the third-party apps help you present yourself and work in progress online: GoogleDocs to embed presentations, SlideShare – which is wickedly good in delivering research resources from people in my network, and WordPress on LinkedIn you can use to promote your blog and latest posts.

My favourite sharing app is Reading List by Amazon, a mine of great book leads from trusted colleagues and other valued sources.

I’ve not had a chance to fully test the collaborative tools – Box (managing files online) and Huddle (shared online work areas) but kind of assume they would be useful if LinkedIn was my main work space, which it’s not at the moment. Great tools, and I might be encouraged to spend more time around my profile with them there. And MyTravel from TripIt is outside my needs - I no longer globe trot and don’t need to know if anyone in my network is going to be in Hellhole, Arizona next week.

Yesterday, in a moment of exasperation, I Tweeted the following about my mobile provider (after being on hold to O2 for 40 minutes):

“wendymcauliffe: O2 truly has the worst customer service I’ve ever encountered. Every time I need to contact them my blood pressure rockets!”

A couple of minutes later, I received the following reply:

“hellojp: @wendymcauliffe Hi there, I work for O2 and saw your tweet - anything I can help with?”

After briefing describing my predicament, I promptly received another reply:

“hellojp: @wendymcauliffe Oh no, not ideal! Definitely not what we’d be aiming for - sorry you had such a hard time! Did you get your problem fixed?”

The O2 representative then went on to give me his personal email address, so that I could email him with the details of my enquiry which he has promised to handle today.

I’m not sure who’s behind O2’s adoption of Twitter, but this is definitely a step in the right direction, and something that all public service companies should be doing. While there are still big improvements to be made with O2’s telephone customer service, it’s great to see them engaging with customers online in such a timely fashion.

It will be interesting to see how my case is dealt with today!

Back again with my usual weekly round-up of the best Web 2.0 sites and tools.

1, Sendo is the first Web 2.0 tool of the day. Sendo allows you to store all types of media and share them simply and easily with people you choose privately or publicly via a URL.

2, Scene Caster is next up, which allows you to build your own 3D scene using various objects and then add your own photos, music and video. After you have made your scene you can share it on your blog or social networking application.

3, This has to be my favourite site of the week by a mile. It’s yet another Twitter spin-off called Twitter Tickets. Simply follow the Twitter accounts for your chosen geographic area to receive upcoming ticket announcements - nice!

4, App Appeal is a Web 2.0 review site. The applications are categorised with extensive user reviews.

5, Finally  we have the Social media business list wiki. This is something Liberate Media has produced from a well-read Peter Kim post. The post was entitled ‘A List of Social Media Marketing Examples’, and the post looked at businesses using social media. Liberate Media has turned this post into an editable wiki for other businesses to add their own social media offerings to the list.

Below is a screen shot from the social media business list wiki:

More of the same next week!