Social Media: Get Serious About Indexing

The social media phenomenon has attained a perception of commercial value because of how it has quickly generated a massive world-wide audience within a certain demographic profile. Combined with a relatively intimate framework, social media is now a prolific sub-set to every media buying opportunity.

In short, social media (including that rather quaint term, micro-blogging) has become a type of arterial network through which so much of our 1st and 2nd degree knowledge (friends and family first, interests and curiosities, second) relies. 

Attached to these streams of consciousness are product and marketing statements. These commercial elements weave their way through online discussions, opinions and comments, but rarely are they tackled in terms of what value (or lack of it) the associated products receive from being part of this intimate, personalised network. 

In the case of the music eco-system, social media has become an integral part of talent discovery, marketing and sales. Because commerce and art are so intertwined in this instance, it is logical that online ‘chatter’ should be measured or indexed, which in turn, produces the necessary insights to affect marketing strategies and sales results.

In this example, Music Sentiment Index or MSI, is now being applied to music artists and their album releases. The MSI is quantifying the chatter in a given time period based on the number of mentions, as well as the ‘quality of exposure’ of each mention. The former is relatively straightforward, the latter, however, less so. 

In this case, quality refers to the ‘authority’ number carried by each site, blog and forum; a number based on a similar ‘links-in’ algorithm used by Google, though in this instance, the links originate from social media properties only.

 In this example, the MSI for Eminem’s Relapse album in the weeks leading up to its launch on the 19th May has been something of a roller coaster ride, beginning with an initial burst of venom between fans and detractors about the album’s first single release. With traditional news sites blasting out headlines about Eminem’s first album in four years, the blog and forum space went ballistic, pushing the MSI beyond 1,000 in weeks four and five.

Eventually, every product, individual and event with its fortunes tied to social media ‘chatter’, including the leverage of the much-hyped ‘influencer’ segment, will require an index measure to validate performance and an ROI. The really interesting work begins when digital agencies, advertisers and publishers attempt to build MSI-type standards, or a common currency, to allow for benchmarking. Something else to add to the IAB’s to-do list!