Nate Linnell (@nathan_linnell) will be running today’s Twitter Chat on Social Media Metrics on the topic of “What Metrics Are You Using to Track/Monitor Your Social Media Efforts?”(at 1pm Eastern).

Want to join in?  Just Tweet your questions with the hashtag #SMMetrics, or do a search for #SMMetrics on Twitter and listen in on the discussion.

If you missed last weeks chat, you can download the transcript

When I started researching this post it was a little guy… errrr… pigeon against the big, nasty telecom company. I wanted to tell a story about how this poor little call center firm turned a liability into a strength. But after researching it, I’m not sure I can tell that story anymore.

Here’s what happened:

Employees at The Unlimited, a call center firm in South Africa, regularly transfer large amounts of data from satellite locations to their home office for backup. These backups often take a rather long time, prompting one employee to quip that a carrier pigeon could do it faster. Pigeon Race 2009 was born, complete with a small social media campaign (a twitter account, a blog, a contest for naming the pigeon, a few videos and a second contest for predicting the winner and time).

Here are the rules of the race as set at pigeonrace2009.co.za

1. No Cats allowed
2. The same amount of data will be sent on the landline and via the pigeon, on a SD card ( 4 gigabytes)
3. The race is from Howick to Hillcrest
4. The Pigeon flys from Howick to Gillits, and then will be transported via car to the finish site ( where the landline data will arrive)
5. The day will be announced closer to the time
6. Birdseed must not have any performance enhancing seeds within.
7. Data is not to be compressed.

They held the race on 09/09/09. Winston completed his journey in a little over an hour. It then took another hour to upload the data to the destination computer. By that time they had completed 4% of the upload from their satellite office. Here’s the BBC’s coverage.

That’s mind boggling. How could a pigeon beat their ADSL that badly? Sure we have far better speeds here in the US but 4%? That works out to approximately 176Kbps. Which isn’t audaciously horrible, but not quite the up to 512Kbps their connection touts.

What interests me too is that it took an hour to upload 4 GB to their own system. That’s about 9.1Mbps. That’s a snail’s pace for uploads from a memory card to your local computer. That’s slower than USB 1.1′s 12Mbps rate and a far cry from USB 2.0′s 320Mbps effective rate. I have no idea what their technical setup is, but if it takes an hour to transfer the data locally, I can at least better understand why it would only hit 4% in a little over two hours from off site.

But what was Telkom’s response? In short: it wasn’t our fault. Now at first, I sneered at this reply. “Yeah sure it wasn’t,” I thought, “it’s not your fault that a pigeon can beat your data rates?” but then I read their full response, and read through some of the discussion board on mybroadband.co.za (It’s pretty much Telkom hating until you get to about post #10). And I’m not so sure that Telkom is completely to blame. It feels in some ways like The Unlimited stacked the deck against them. Yet at the same time 4% of 4 Gigs in 2 hours is far from ideal.

So in the end I’m not sure what to think.

Telkom definitely earns points though for their Winston Edition Broadband Service.

Could The Unlimited have set up a more fair and scientific race? Absolutely. Could Telkom work on providing better and cheaper services
to their customers? If the number of Telkom haters that I’ve found on the web can be believed, then yes.

Both companies, however, did do something right. They both tried to take a liability and turn it into a strength.

I leave the “winner” and the company in the “right” up to you. What do you think? Is there clearly a company in the “right” and one in the “wrong”?

In the September 2009 issue of Serengeti’s Newsletter, Nan Dawkins discussed some of Serengeti’s social media offerings and outlined 5 Warning Signs That Your Agency Lacks Social Media Expertise.  If you missed the newsletter and would like to hear her words of wisdom you can click on the giraffe in the top left corner or go directly to our newsletter sign up page.  (I’ll send out a “catch up” newsletter to everyone who signs up by COB Monday Sept. 14th).

Recently my husband and I joined a boating club. I can’t tell you how great it has been.  If you are thinking of buying a boat, I recommend re-thinking that idea and looking into Freedom Boat Club.  You show up, the boat is ready for you, clean and full of gas.  You take it out for a few hours and just return it.  No hassle of towing the boat back home or cleaning the boat, etc.  You get the picture.

For the past few weekends we’ve gone out on the boat.  Being a nice guy, my husband has been ‘captain’ each time, allowing me to hang out on the bow (front) of the boat, enjoy a few cocktails and get some sun, while he responsibly drank bottled water and drove the boat.

I knew at some point I have to actually learn to drive the boat.  Although I passed the online boating course, I had not ever driven a boat.  Not being the best (car) driver, I was not so excited to learn how to drive the boat.  This was largely because many vacationers who rent a pontoon boat or jet ski don’t have to know anything about the boating rules and regulations.  So driving a boat is a much more proactive, defensive experience than driving a car.

But to be fair I had to learn.  Suffice to say this past weekend was not my favorite boating experience or my finest moment.  Paying attention to the other boaters, trying to prepare for and then react to their actions is a LOT of work.

Take one example, the wake.  In my previous, front of the boat experience wake made the ride fun.  My only concern was to make sure the cocktail was in the cup-holder so my drink didn’t spill.   My ‘at the helm’ example was completely different – slow down if I was going too fast so I wouldn’t flip the boat (probably wouldn’t have happened, but in my mind it was a possibility), steer into the wake (what?) and then speed up to get through it as the boat shook and bounced from side to side.  To me that feeling was completely out of control.  The ‘going fast as the boat shakes from side to side’ was fun while lounging comfortably on the front of the boat.  The experience at the wheel, terrifying!

But I will, in time, get better and more comfortable with driving the boat.  And even become able to take the boat out myself with friends.  It definitely will be worth it.

Now how does that long story relate to analytics?  Many companies are still in front of the boat mode with their analytics.  Each month the marketers present a powerpoint with their web reports – visits, unique visits, year over year or quarter over quarter, and maybe some revenue (revenue that if you compared to actual sales data was not even close).  Everyone left the meeting happy since the lines on the charts were slightly larger and the trends were moving in positive direction, even if ever so slightly, or if there was a bad month, everyone understood, the economy is bad.

But effective marketers drive the boat.  It is scary.  It takes time and work.  But the results are worth it.  These data-driven companies excel at using information from their web analytics, teaming it with actual sales and maybe even competitive information and creating a plan that is fluid.  They analyze what is working and what is not.  If they can’t fix the ‘what is not’ they stop spending on those campaigns and move their budget to what is working.

Their presentations go beyond simple metrics.  They explain their results in business terms that executives can understand and appreciate.  They get bigger budgets (and even raises…even in this bad economy).

So what is it going to take to get you off the bow and behind the wheel?

1. Over at Take it in-house, we just posted an audio interview with Philip Maher, founder of Intuitive Investments and former Director of Interactive Strategy at RH Donnelley.
2. Check out Li Evan’s latest article on Search Engine Watch, Can Social Media Be Measured?
3. And if you haven’t downloaded it yet, grab our newest white paper on measuring social media, Social Media Impact: Unicorn or Elephant?