What metrics for the social web?
Hervé Pépinfounder of Nexize and a member of the Adetem board, one of the leading experts on the social web, talks to us today about social web metrics.
Adwise : Socionauts and brands are multiplying their interactions on social media, and marketers are counting down the "likes", "RTs" (pronounced Retweets), and so on. Out of all this avalanche of metrics, which do you think are the most relevant?
Hervé Pépin : The unbridled pursuit of "Like is effectively a smoke and mirrors operation.
While each network offers a simple click to express interest ("like for Facebook, "favourite for Twitter, " +1 " for Google+...), these "Commitments are of relatively little value because they require little effort on the part of the web user and can be automated, incentivised or remunerated.
Article sharing is already much more interesting, insofar as an Internet user who shares content is vouching for its quality: by submitting content to their own community, the person who shares it is implying that they have found it interesting, or even (unless they comment to the contrary) that they approve of it. This generally implies that they have read it (at least diagonally!), to ensure that they can share it without risk.
Sharing is therefore greater than "like And even if it's just the result of a simple, more or less automated curation process, it's still positive, because it generates additional traffic to your content.
Then there are the comments - which are sadly becoming increasingly rare - and which are perhaps the most valuable sign of commitment: they require more effort than a "like or a share, because it's no longer just a question of clicking, but of writing, which is much more demanding: you have to think, format... in short, add something extra. A relevant comment adds value to your content, and is a real asset to your site. social proof.
In the pyramid of engagement, it is not the race for 'likes' that takes precedence, even though it is the most scrutinised metric because it is the most visible.
Now you know everything... and can forget all about it!
Because these fine - theoretical - rules only apply if the content "LikedThey don't take into account the continuing decline in reach on social networks.
Increasingly, however, the talent of the community manager is coming up against the algorithms of the social networks, which alone will decide whether the content in question is worth presenting on the user's NewsFeed.
Like all algorithms, the one used to decide whether to display a site depends on a number of criteria: for Facebook, for example, as Siècle Digital explains hereIts simplified form can be summarised as follows:
VISIBILITY = CREATOR X POST X TYPE X RECENCY
It's the popularity of the creator/publisher with their audience that comes first, before the engagement generated by the publication itself... hence the importance of engaging the famous influencers in its social media strategy.
Let's be reassured... or not: the best - if not the only - way of bypassing relevance algorithms to boost your visibility is still to invest in social ads... but that's getting us off the subject a bit.
Adwise : Are there any simple ways or tools to manage your communication on social networks?
Hervé Pépin : There are legions of them out there, but none of them really offer comprehensive management. Most tools will excel at a single aspect of social media management (fine-tuning publication management, for example, or buzz monitoring and intelligence, or social CRM, etc.) or a particular network (often Twitter, because it has the most open API, etc.) without managing to cover the whole spectrum.
Behind the unmissable - and historic - HootSuite and KloutIt's interesting to play with AgoraPulse, SocialPilot, Buffer, Socialoomph... to determine which is best suited to your objectives, depending on the networks involved in your strategy.
Adwise : Today, solutions are beginning to emerge for perverting data, such as the Data Corrupter The German government is preventing Facebook from correctly analysing "likes": the start of a revolt?
Hervé Pépin : Resistance, rather, in the sense that only a tiny minority of social network users will seek to "hacker the system, either to protect themselves or to take effective advantage of it.
Let's not forget that the mass adoption of social networks - now 10 years old - has considerably changed the way users perceive their privacy. And while the targeting capabilities of social networks are constantly evolving, we have to be honest and admit that the same is true of the options available to users to better control their privacy. privacy and exposure to advertising, In fact, these options are being used on a massive scale, a sign of real maturity in terms of usage.
The vast majority of Internet users seem to be happy with this, and it seems to me that we are a long, long way from seeing a widespread outcry.
Adwise : Finally, at the beginning of 2018, the new European regulations on the protection of personal data will come into force: will this put the brakes on Big Data and the proliferation of metrics?
Hervé Pépin : For years, the EU has been trying to make its voice heard by the web giants... none of whom are European companies. In other words, the scope of the EU's efforts is bound to remain relative.
The new regulations, which have taken so long to come into being, therefore appear to be just another avatar of the eternal gap between political and legislative time on the one hand, and that of the digital economy... and the vast ecosystem of solutions and start-ups that it has developed around the GAFAs on the other.
In this respect, it is striking to note the extent to which the invalidation of the Safe Harbor in October 2015 has done absolutely nothing to change things.
The new regulations - and in particular the concept of enhanced consent on which they are based - will no doubt lead to some minor adjustments to the networks' Terms and Conditions of Use... but who reads them?
Those most affected by the new law will undoubtedly be subcontractors, who will in future share responsibility for data processing, and who will have every interest in taking extreme care when it comes to the processing of data relating to European citizens.
In the space of 10 years, social networks have turned all the rules upside down: firstly, those of interpersonal communication, then those of access to information, and finally those of marketing... with the "complicity of their hundreds of millions (and specifically for Facebook 2 billion...) of users.
It's a whole new world of media that's self-generated - and sometimes even self-regulated - by creating its own rules.
We're going to have to live with it for a long time to come, for better (there is some!) and for worse (too!).
