I’ve just been reading econsultancy’s report (based on a Nielsen study) on how people spend their time online. According to the text, “social media” was far and away the winner, which didn’t really surprise me. But what bothered me is how that term is being defined – time spent on “social networks / blogs.” I’ve seen this kind of definition a lot, and every time I think those two activities need to be separated (and by extension, we need to re-think what we call “social media”). Particularly since the terms “social media” and “social networking” are increasingly being used interchangeably, with “blogs” being considered part of the ever more confusing package.

I think of social networks and blogs as very different. In the first case, I typically go to a site (or application) and check out various short updates from an assortment of people. On Facebook, these tend to be my friends; on Twitter, these tend to be people that share interesting information in relation to my work or friends.

“Using” blogs is an entirely different animal for me – and particularly hard to distinguish from other forms of online content, as the term becomes ever more popular. For example, True Hoop is a basketball blog on the ESPN network. I check it most days. The process of doing so feels a heck of a lot more similar to simply reading an article on ESPN than it does to checking out Facebook or Twitter. Similarly, the business section of my favorite local paper – the Globe and Mail – has a markets blog section. Access to it is usually available through the main globe investor page. So if I click on one of those links, it counts as social media (apparently), but if I click on one of the other articles it doesn’t. That doesn’t make sense to me.

And the more I think about it, the more arbitrary the divisions seem, making the numbers less and less useful to me. For example, if I was to use one word to define how I use Twitter it would be “search” – it’s a medium by which I find links to useful and interesting stories. But since Twitter is commonly associated with “social media”, any and everything people do on there gets classified as “social media”, which in my mind skews the numbers a bit. and if I click on a link to an article, which happens to be on a blog, I’m (based on how it’s measured) continuing the same type of activity, even though what I’m doing has fundamentally changed.

So at a high level, I think the rise in use of “social media” is important. But I also think we’re at a point where the term itself is becoming rather meaningless. If you happen to have been on (say) Twitter, found  a link to this post, clicked on it, and then spent several minutes reading to this point, I believe you’ve engaged in two distinct activities that need to be measured separately - finding something, and reading it -  just like searching for something on Google is a separate activity from consuming what you actually find.

As I discussed in my last post, I’m intrigued about the idea of exploring how customers engage with brands on Facebook. I’ve started compiling some data with the hope of coming up with some interesting metrics. While there are still a lot of details to iron out, I thought I’d toss up a few ideas that I’ve had so far in order to see if the wikinomics community might be able to help. The four I’ve looked at so far are: An engagement index comparing fan to group activity, a Facebook group love/hate index, relative fan activity, and relative group activity. The first is kind of confusing, but the other three are pretty straight forward.

1. An engagement index comparing fan to group activity. The idea here is that becoming a fan of a particular brand is fundamentally different than becoming part of a group that associates with it. What’s particularly interesting here is that while groups are generally created by customers (i.e. totally outside of the company control), fan pages are increasingly “facilitated” by the company itself. While this isn’t always the case, and I still have to sort out exactly which ones are, I decided to explore how the fans and groups associated with particular brands might behave differently.

The figure above is a 2 x 2 I developed based on two metrics. The horizontal axis is the ratio of fans to members of the most popular group. In 25 of the 27 cases, the number of fans exceeds the number of people in the most popular group. The contrast in ratios is startling though – Wal-Mart is the lowest at 0.1, and Levi’s is the highest at 127. The vertical axis is what I call an average activity index – the ratio of wall posts per fan to wall posts per group member. In every single case, the per-person activity in the most popular group exceeds the activity on the fan page. The range is again quite high though – from 0.3% (the NBA) to 67.4% (Victoria’s Secret).

Now a lot more analysis needs to go into this to figure out what it all means – it’s not easy to say exactly what is “good” and what is “bad”, for example, and I’ve had to make a few judgment calls that will need to be handled a little more rigorously for the final analysis. But I think there’s some promise here – even just starting from the relative positions of Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and Levi’s, for example.

2. A Facebook Love / Hate Index. Here things are a little easier to understand. I’ve started going through the groups that have been created around various brands, and putting them in one of four buckets – love, hate, neutral, and employee (noting that the love/hate balance within the employee focused ones appears interesting to explore). Looking at it from a brand perspective, the love/ hate ratio seemed like it could be interesting. I’ve looked at a handful of brands so far, and the current ratios range from about 1.1 : 1 (Wal-Mart) to a startling 67.3: 1 (Disney). McDonald’s is down near Wal-Mart territory (1.5 : 1), and Starbucks is up in the 18.4: 1 range. Looks like it could be a simple, powerful metric to track.

3. Relative Fan Activity. Another easy one to understand: Wall posts per fan as an indicator of engagement levels. From the sample of brands i’ve looked at so far, the range is from 0.0013 (MTV) to 0.0526 (Avon Products). Others near the top are NASCAR, Molson, Bath & Body Works, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, and the NHL. Others near the bottom are The Gap, Levi’s, Nike, Sephora, and Abercrombie & Fitch.

4. Relative Group Activity. Very similar to #3 – wall posts per group member (in the most popular group associated with the brand) as an indicator of engagment levels. As noted earlier, the relative activity in the groups is greater than on the fan pages. The range from the sample I’ve looked at so far is from 0.0144 (Nike) to 3.67 (NBA). Others near the top are NASCAR, NHL, Crate & Barrel, and Avon Products. Others near the bottom are Victoria’s Secret, Somersby, Levi’s, and Abercrombie & Fitch.

Just from the process of writing this, I see another 2 x 2 in my future – relative group activity versus relative fan activity. But before I go there, I’m interested in hearing what people think. What looks promising? What might I be missing? Is there another lens that I could be taking? Any thoughts on #1 would be particularly appreciated…

For years marketers have been hearing the famous quote that “advertising on TV is like admitting you don’t know who your customers are.” In this light, diverting such ad spend towards things like Facebook seems like a compelling alternative. However, I’m increasingly thinking that “advertising on Facebook is like admitting you don’t know who your N-Fluencers are” – and if you do know who they are, the best thing to might be not spending any money at all.

I stumbled upon this thought as I came across this WSJ article about how Facebook is trying to woo marketers using “engagement ads”. The focus of the article is how, despite it extraordinary popularity, Facebook is struggling to sell ads. These new engagement ads are supposed to help by “blurring the line between marketing and social networks.” They do so by appearing on the main screen when you first log-in, and prompting you to take an action – provide a comment, RSVP to an event, add something to your personal list of events, etc. If you take the action, Facebook then shares a notice with your friends about what you’ve done, and BAM! A viral buzz ensues.

So it sounds great – but it got me thinking. Facebook (and other social networks) are now one of the foundational tools to be leveraged by viral/ word-of-mouth marketers. Sure, an ad on the main page might be able to help with that, and potentially draw in new customers. But at the same time, as I’ve referred to in some earlier posts, many established companies have their own fan pages (and associated groups) with thousands upon thousands of people voluntarily associating with them. Somewhere in these groups, in all likelihood, are the key “N-fluencers” – those who are willing, and influential enough, to spread your message around Facebook if it is attractive enough.

So if your a marketer for one of these companies, might the best play be to spend $0 on ads, and focus your efforts on creating a truly viral buzz / word-of-mouth campaign around your offering? And if so, does this create a bit of a conundrum for Facebook as they try to grow their ad revenue?

Very observant readers may note that this post has some striking similarities to what I wrote about three months ago – the collaborative experience economy. What I tried to do then was connect the “four forms of theater” idea from Pine & Gilmore’s “The Experience Economy” with the principles of wikinomics – hence the name of the post. For whatever reason I didn’t get a lot of traction with it, but I’m still intrigued by the underlying ideas, so I wanted to re-frame the idea directly in relation to social media. More to the point, I’d like to hear from wikinomics readers as to whether it’s a useful framework for thinking about the use of social media in relation to creating experiences both for and with customers.

In the previous post I walked through the examples provided in the book, which took a “day in the life” approach by focusing on a fictional executive named Linda. The basis for understanding the argument starts with platform theater – where one “scripts in advance every line and every gesture, practicing each over and over again until she can confidently give a performance so accomplished that it comes off as fresh and spontaneous.”

Platform theater represents the way many companies operate, from the most basic call center designs right through to the experience created for customers. It’s a comfortable way for many companies to operate, and relatively low-risk as well thanks to the controlled environment. But as anyone who’s taken Investing 101, it is through taking calculated risks that rewards are achieved.

So now let’s take a look at the definitions of more “evolved” forms of theater:

matching theater – where “disparate facts and events (are pieced) together (into) a unified whole, much like a film editor or director.”

street theater – where “small, atomic units of activity are called on demand to construct a performance.”

improv theater – where “surprising” problems must be handled immediately, and where Linda had to draw on “the reservoir of managerial techniques she has stored up from past experience.” The chapter notes that “Improv requires systematic and deliberate methods of originating creative ideas, fresh expressions, and new ways of addressing old problems.”

I would argue that various social media applications be be used to help move from “platform theater” to each of the other options. The most involved, of course, is “improv theater” – and here is where I think we could really dig into the opportunities that social media tools can create for companies. How much better could those “systematic and deliberate” methods be if wikis, blogs, social networks, reputation profiles, ranking systems, and the like where fully capitalized on? I also like the idea of taking improv theater to the next logical step – pulling customers on stage to participate in the experience directly (see: prosumerism).

So what do wikinomics readers think – would this be a useful framework to develop in relation to social media and customer experiences, and if so how might you go about expanding on it?