Towards Actionable Insights: A Military Intelligence Approach

by Kelvin Posted on 7 April 2012

Question: How many of you social media practitioners and webmasters look and analyse your platform’s statistics on a regular basis?

I am guessing the answer would be not very many.

In my own experience, I think that many practitioners are focused on the concept, ideas and execution of many online projects, but few look really deep and hard into the desired outcomes of such projects and the resulting performance of the project.

I know what you’re thinking:

“OMG I’m so busy already trying to get the website up and running (not to mention this is the 3rd iteration after my boss’s boss asked for changes), and you want me to spend time on statistics?”

Well, the answer is yes. Resoundingly yes.

I think that the problem that most people face is that the tools are usually there (be it Facebook Insights, Google Analytics or any other reporting platform you own), but the complexity and features of such platforms usually boggles the mind.

In my mind, any form of statistics/analytics should be seen in the same way that intelligence (in the military context) is seen.

Intelligence Cycle: Direction, Collection, Processing, DisseminationDirection

Based on the mission, the Commander (the boss in a business context) determines the intelligence/information that is essential that would enable him/her to develop plans and make decisions. The Commander directs the collection effort to find essential elements of information.

In the business context, what would bosses need to know? Some ideas:

  • Awareness — how aware is the target audience of your brand?
  • Opportunities — what new opportunities are there? new markets, trends, customer segments
  • Effectiveness — how effective are our current marketing/publicity efforts?
  • Engagement — is our audience being effectively engaged by our brand?
  • Competitor Analysis — how is our competitor doing?

Based on your business objectives, you could then develop a collection plan which details what information you require and develop the metrics and indicators which would generate that sort of information.

Collection

The collection phase is pretty straightforward. You look at the plan and the relevant collectors (military: scouts, unmanned aerial vehicles; business: Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, online sentiment analysis tools) pump data back to your Headquarters.

In this phase, I think the important thing to note is that there is a lot of data that can be collected through various means (unlike military intelligence, where data is often quite hard to get). This may lead to data overload, and your human collectors need to be very focused on the key information that you require, and not be distracted by the mounds of data that is coming in.

Because of this problem, I believe that it’s important then, to create custom reports/dashboards/alerts, so you remain focused on a particular “mission”. Avinash Kaushik has a great post on how to produce actionable insights through custom reports.

Processing

In a military sense, there are four sub-sets under processing, namely:

  • Recording
  • Evaluation
  • Fusion
  • Interpretation

Recording, simply put, is reduction of information into key statements or graphics and arrangement of the information into categories. Most analytics software would probably take care of this for you, but I would spend time identifying the key metrics (e.g., hit rates, visitor demographics) that you want to capture and ensure that they are captured properly.

Evaluation is the examination of information to determine its value, as well as its accuracy. To be honest, at first I could not determine the business equivalent for this sub-step, because there is some overlap with the “determination of value” and the “setting of collection targets” in the Direction phase.

However, thinking a bit deeper, I realised that there were still applications to this sub-step, especially when thinking about verification of the accuracy of the information being received from external sources.

Most organisations engage a media buying agency or work directly with a media owner for advertising, and the agency/owner would provide the data on the success of the advertising campaign. I’ve always felt that there was a conflict of interest when a media buying agency or media owner provided the statistics of how well the ads performed – wouldn’t they rig the results? They could adjust the results of the ads performance to suit their business objectives (“these ads performed well/badly, so why don’t we buy more/buy a more expensive option”).

Note that the data received is still important, but because it comes from a source other than your own, the reliability rating would go down slightly.

What could help solve the reliability problem would be the Fusion step. This stage is to provide a current and fused picture of the situation by merging all the data available.

Taking the example of ad campaign performance, let’s say you want to determine how many users clicked thru on your ad. The data sources available could be:

  • Report by Media Buying Agency/Media Owner
  • Stats from URL Shortener (e.g., Bit.ly)
  • Website statistics’ campaign tracking (like campaign tracking in Google Analytics)
  • Surveys (Yes! Even though we’re talking about online performance, why not do some surveys of your target audience?)

By combining the data from above sources, you can get a reasonably accurate picture of how your ad campaign is working.

Interpretation is the process of looking at the fused information against information that was previously known and trying to develop patterns and deductions.

An analyst could probably look at the data on past ad campaigns and compare it against the initial results from the current campaign, to see if the data conforms to patterns or is going against the norm. He can then add contextual information (e.g., whether the time of year is better for sales – like just before Christmas) to form certain deductions.

The analyst could then make some postulations on how he expects the target audience to behave and the designers/developers could rework the designs in response to those postulations.

Dissemination

Dissemination is probably quite straightforward, but to challenge yourself, you could think about having different customised reports for the different stakeholders in your organisation (will elaborate further).

At the broadest level, you could produce an overview of the performance of your online and social media activities, similar to how the US Army does its weekly report.

Online and Social Media Weekly Report for October 16, 2011
View more presentations from U.S. Army

In addition, because your organisation probably has various social media and web platforms, you might have to develop your own recording charts, something similar to what the US Army has developed for their Online and Social Media Weekly Report.

At the stakeholder level, you’ve got to figure out what they would be interested in. For example, if you had a team producing marketing videos on your YouTube channel, they’d be interested in the viewership and also the audience attention. The customer service and feedback team would be interested in the number of feedback queries submitted through your website and social media channels. The sales team would be interested in how ads are driving sales.

Hence, each organisation could work with the various stakeholders to develop customised reports and dashboards, and the important thing would be the generation of actionable insights. For the video team, they’d want to know what kinds of video styles are more engaging so as to increase audience attention.

Conclusion

What I’ve tried to do here was draw parallels between online and social media analytics and the military process for intelligence gathering. While the similiarities are a bit strained at times, I think the principles are generally similar.

What you can do as a practitioner is look at your business objectives, your collection means, your resources and modify this process to fit what you need. Perhaps you don’t need something very rigorous, and you only have a small budget for analytics – cut down the steps.

The key thing is that you never ever try to fight a war in an information vacuum, so why should business be any different?

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles

- Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”

 

Posted in Analytics, Social Media, Web Development | Leave a comment

To spec or not to spec, that is the question…

by Kelvin Posted on 1 April 2012

… and after much reading and research, I think that the answer is “it depends”.

Background

I was recently called in to provide advice on a website design project being commissioned by a different department. You know the usual kind of “we need this website to do X, Y and Z and it has to be launched by yesterday” project.

I spent about an hour looking through a “version 2″ copy of the project’s functional specs and then gave my input that the department should not sign-off on the specs because it lacked sufficient detail on the functionality of the website (this was despite the fact that we were running late on the project delivery).

I then started questioning myself as to whether I was being overly anal about the details required – I mean, haven’t we all spent too much time developing a spec document instead of actually doing the work? Hence, I posted the following question on Facebook:

Hey web designers and web developers, how detailed are your functional specs documents? I want to get a sensing because I think as a client, I think I am a bit anal about such documents.

I feel that they should really capture what the user experiences and for things like form submission, it should show either the business flow in a diagram, or every single screen the user will see in the form submission process.

So tell me, am I being anal?

Got a bunch of answers which generally felt that specs were important, but it really depended on a project’s time and budget.

You think, I thought, who confirms?

I guess the reason why I’ve become so particular about having good project documentation is the fact that in most cases where there wasn’t much documentation, the project ended up delayed because there was a need to re-work parts of it because the client and the developer didn’t have a common understanding of what was to be delivered. As Andy replied to my Facebook post:

Functional specs should be as detailed as possible, because it costs a lot more to actually fix any disagreements about functionality later.

This is especially the case in larger, complex projects, involving multiple stakeholders. In such instances, we usually can’t afford to make an ASS out of U and ME.

Tell your client the purpose of a functional specifications document

I just realised that the problem can be solved to some degree if developers just told clients what the purpose of a functional specifications document is.

In most cases, developers give the clients functional specifications, without explaining the purpose behind it (and they expect a sign-off).

This is extremely dangerous because missing this step means that the client usually does not bother to think critically when reading the document, then they sign-off, the developer goes off to develop based on the document, client sees beta version and says that it doesn’t meet what they want. Client and developer fight, bad blood all around, project becomes something no one wants to touch and is forced to deliver.

So what’s the point of a funcation specifications document?

Tony Heap, in his blogpost “What Actually Goes in a Functional Specification?” captures the purpose quite elegantly:

This is the document that you:

  • Give to the developers so they know what to build
  • Give to the testers so they know what tests to run
  • Give to the stakeholders (and get them to approve) so they know what they are getting

After sharing this, the developer should then say, “If we don’t spend enough time getting this right, and make sure we have as much detail covered, we will end up making mistakes and endangering your project’s timeline and budget. We hope that we can spend some quality time on this”.

To be continued?

This blogpost is a classic example of how not having a functional spec can lead to disaster. I started writing this post knowing that I wanted to write on functional specs, but not being very clear on what key takeaways you as a reader should have. Now, I don’t know where I’m going with this blogpost! I feel that I’m just rambling.

Shucks.

I think basically my point is that functional specs (in some form or another, and with varying levels of detail) is important. To take either extreme — “Don’t write a functional spec” or “Spend 90% of the time documenting” — is wrong.

The level of detail probably boils down to a few factors:

  • Time available
  • Budget available
  • Experience level of the developer
  • Experience level of the client

Ultimately it’s about effective communication between all parties involved.

I’ll leave you with some of the links to the reading I did, and feel free to post your thoughts in the comments!

 

Posted in Project Management, Web Development | Leave a comment

Social Media, New Media, Digital Media – What’s the diff?

by Kelvin Posted on 30 March 2012

On Saturday, a colleague texted me this message:

Hi kel, my cousin’s doing a uni presentation and is looking for a distinction between social, new and digital media – is it correct to say that social media is the use of digital media for networking?

I think the terms “social media”, “new media” and “digital media” have been tossed around quite a bit in recent years, so much so that there’s no real understanding of what the terms are, and that they are used rather interchangeably.

I don’t profess to be an expert – so will be sharing my own humble opinion. However, before that, let’s look up some definitions* from Wikipedia:

social media: Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”¹

new media: New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century that refers to on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community formation around the media content.

digital media: Digital media is a form of electronic media where data are stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form.

So those are the definitions from Wikipedia.

For me, I replied that digital media is just any content that’s stored and/or delivered in a digital format (as opposed to analog). In essence, while this means of storage and transfer have some impact on societal practices, it’s still can be not too different from the media of the past (e.g., TV) where it’s usually one-directional, linear and the ability to broadcast is limited to a few big agencies.

With digital media, it became easier for the everyday person to create content and publish to a wide audience (e.g., personal websites, flickr pages), and also allowed for non-linear narratives (e.g., those CD-ROMs with “choose your own adventure” type narratives). This use of digital media was then termed new media.

Social media then is more about the interactions and relationships that are enabled by digital and new media technologies. The key in social media is the “social” element. Without that, it’s more new or digital media.

An example would be a digital broadcast of a TV show (digital media) that has an accompanying website (new media), and an online community on Facebook and Twitter that discuss the show as it happens “live”, and maybe feeds back to the producers and influences the outcome of the show (social media).

I don’t have the answer. What do you think? What are the differences between the three terms?

 

—

¹Kaplan, Andreas M.; Michael Haenlein (2010). “Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media”. Business Horizons 53 (1): 59–68.

*Quick trick for those who often search for definitions. You can type 

define:<word you need definition for> 

in Google Search and it’ll return results that are definitions of the words in the angled brackets.

define:photography

for instance, would give up a list of definitions of the word “photography”.

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Stuff That Every Social Media Practitioner Should Know About Social Media and The Law

by Kelvin Posted on 29 March 2012

On 16 February 2012, I had the privilege of attending a Social Media Week talk called “Navigating the Maze – the law and Social Media” by Lionel Tan from Rajah & Tann.

In short, it was a fantastic primer into the legal aspects of Social Media and how organisations can mitigate risk when it comes to navigating this maze.

I thought it’d be pretty useful to share some of the stuff I learnt (my note-taking skills ain’t that good) – I think that these are just some of the basic things every social media practitioner should know about Social Media and the Law.

Copyright and Intellectual Property

I’ve often come across clients, bosses and colleagues that have this misconception that as long as “it’s on the Internet”, there’s no copyright involved (“I downloaded it off the Internet, so we can use it in our logo/website/poster”)

Listen up, copyright applies both online and offline. What’s worse is that an organisation could be held vicariously liable for copyright infringement by its employees. You know how some websites post clippings of newspaper articles that their organisation is featured in. Well, that’s copyright infringement.

Trademark / Brands

We sometimes see users/individuals using a brand’s logo or trademark as their user profile. Because this may misled others that one is associated with the brand, you could be liable (in Singapore law) under the Trademarks Act.

Check out this case study where Oneok sued Twitter for Trademark Infringement because it allowed a user to use the username “ONEOK” (it’s trademark) http://mashable.com/2009/09/17/oneok-sues-twitter/

Defamation

Yup, this applies in social media too. Posting a defamatory remark on a social media platform amounts to publication. Matthew Firsht of Applause Store Productions was awarded 22,000 pounds in damages after he had been libelled on Facebook. (http://news.sky.com/home/technology/article/15052473). What’s even more interesting about this case is that apparently the culprit was traced by his IP address.

Use of Social Media Postings as Evidence

The courts are increasingly allowing social media postings to be admitted as evidence.

One case studies is Kourtesis vs. Joris where “the plaintiff testified that she no longer had a social life, yet photographs from Facebook which depicted the plaintiff in a celebratory nature, were introduced and consequently the claim for general damages was dismissed.”

(http://www.claimscanada.ca/issues/article.aspx?aid=1000224989)

What Can Organisations Do To Mitigate Risk

In general, there are three things any organisation should do to mitigate the risks that come about because of social media.

1. Have a set of proper and clear social media guidelines that are incorporated into the employee’s contract

2. Have training sessions on social media guidelines

3. Send regular reminders on proper use of social media.

If you do this, the courts would probably acknowledge that the organisation has mitigated the risks to the best of its ability, and the organisation could probably disclaim liability for an employee’s actions.

Conclusion

Just wanted to say that I’m not a lawyer, I don’t have any legal training, and I don’t profess to be an expert, either in law or social media. What I am sharing is what I learnt today. If you need legal advice, you should approach a trained professional lawyer for advice (Ok, cover ass statement is done)

In any case, I think social media is definitely here to stay and the law is catching up, so all social media users and practitioners should be aware of the possible risks and take preventive measures to protect themselves.

Good night!

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