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Using The Social Media Balance Sheet™ tool to measure social media presence – for sector and competitor research

Social Media Metrics have to date mainly focused on the view of their effectiveness from inside the company. At Evonomie we’ve been looking for a while for an external qualitative method to measure companies’ online activities as part of a strategic review.

Internal or in-company quantitative methods are in abundance and focus on activity, surveys and return on investment (ROI). These are certainly valid metrics and there is a comprehensive list in Jim Sterne’s book Social Media Metrics. The real question when conducting research is how can you capture the metrics if you’re outside the company? You don’t have access to their analytics so need to make a judgement on what’s important and whether the information is available.

Benefits of benchmarking competitor use of social media

Reasons we want to measure the social media activity from an external perspective include:

The review competitors’ activity, their strengths and weaknesses
To understand where and how the market segment is using social media
To identify opportunities
To identify threats
To review new markets companies may consider moving into

There are advantages of The Social Media Balance Sheet™ from an internal perspective too:

Once completed, it provides a benchmark and can be reviewed for ongoing comparative analysis of the market sector and / or key competitors
It is a tool for in house brand managers to ensure no brand creep is taking place
It is a great way to explain to staff how and why it’s essential to maintain key brand messages

Methodology

We needed a methodology that would provide a ‘one page snapshot’ of what was happening with several companies and after trial and error we’ve developed The Social Media Balance Sheet™. This provides a summary of the key issues. I’ve shared this here along with the rationale as to why these areas were considered important.

AREA	WHY
Using since	A way to identify early adopters. When did the organisation embrace social media or dip their toe into the digital waters? Are brand leaders leading the field?
Who updating	To understand their commitment to social media. Is it an internal person (junior, senior, IT or marketing) or an external agency? All the updates on one day or over a period of time?
When updating	Social media is 24/7, how does the organisation manage this? Monday to Friday or more?
Latest update	To measure activity and if the account is still current. Have they captured their brand name but not taken action?
Contribution	To see the impact of their communications. The number of updates (may be linked to number of fans) and interaction from their network.
Network size	To gauge their share of the voice in the sector.
Programmes used	To look at their management of social media. Multiple programmes or streamlined?
Joined up	To understand their approach to marketing and whether it’s integrated throughout all their communications. Links to landing pages.
Identity format	To identify brand consistency and brand creep. Some companies use a corporate face, others use the individuals within the company, what identity is being used?

We have been reviewing the top 10 UK FTSE 100 companies’ activities and their social media approach. So far we’ve reviewed:

Lloyds Banking Group PLC
Vodafone Group Plc
Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC
BP Plc
National Grid Plc
Barclays PLC
BT Group PLC
Income & Growth VCT
HSBC Holdings PLC
Prudential Plc

Initial results of benchmarking

Our initial conclusions as to the social media being actively used (i.e. within the last 2 months) show that Facebook and Twitter are the most popular vehicles for these companies. As you might expect, a telecoms company, Vodafone, is using the most social media tools.

Within this group of 10 we discovered that blogs and photo sharing sites were not popular. This may be as blogging requires more effort from the company and is less interactive and engaging than Facebook. Equally photo sharing sites represent a challenge for service businesses as I’m not sure I would stand in my bank and take photos! Five of the companies reviewed were in financial services and these companies are lowest users of social media.

The summary shown below illustrates which social media tools these FTSE companies are currently using (nb this is subject to change within any hour!)

Vodafone Group Plc uses Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
The Royal Bank of Scotland PLC uses Facebook and Twitter
National Grid Plc uses Facebook and YouTube
BT Group PLC has a blog and uses Twitter
HSBC Holdings PLC has a blog and uses Twitter
Lloyds Banking Group Plc uses Facebook
Barclays PLC uses Twitter for a competition and for its stockbroking arm
BP Plc (in the UK) uses Photo Sharing tools
Prudential plc and Income Growth VCT plc do not use any social media tools.

We were surprised that the adoption of social media as part of an overall marketing strategy was so low within this group. Over the next 5 years social media tools will change our business models yet these giant corporations are largely ignoring its potential.

Notably, BP, which has recently been in the news a great deal in the UK and US and yet their social media presence is restricted to the US only. A Sunday paper reported that BP had hired Brunswick (specialist financial PR company) to help with PR. Will this have an impact on their social media?

One of the challenges is that failure to adopt social media may result in others (detractors, campaigners) taking your share of the voice and controlling your message.

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