Chris Writes.

Robert Gourley, Creative Director at Mojave Interactive, recently released a “social media report card” that gauged 4 big North American bike brands (Trek, Cannondale, Cervelo, and the one I work for) on their “social media performance” during the Tour de France. I appreciate what he’s trying to do – I really do – and in the comments he astutely points out that they’re not out to make sweeping proclamations, since he’s doing this as a (totally valid) way of promoting his own Social Media Analytics services (and they’re probably very good). But this post is written in a way that is more likely to attract non-cycling customers by wowing them with the cool of cycling and the promise of social media services. As a cyclist and cycling marketing guy, a few minutes of critical thought started to quickly unravel the specifics of his report.

As just one example, his assertion (made in the comments) that his report leads one to be able to see the relationship between paid media spending vs social media conversations is simply false: nowhere in the report do they discuss paid media spending (nor is this data published anywhere else). Further, they then go on to rank the four brands with their own proprietary “social media index” which seems a bit watery, based on their descriptions. Granted, this is a service they’re trying to sell, so I guess it makes sense that they’re not about to give away all their measurement secrets. Call me crazy for being skeptical though.

Overall, I think the report is interesting, but oversimplified to the point of being irreparably flawed (at least in so far as any conclusions may be drawn from it). Subsequent interpretations that have been drawn from it suffer similarly, maybe more so. Let’s recognize what this is: a demo sales pitch for a media company, not a decision making tool for the bike industry.

This oversimplification is mostly because of two simple points: attribution, and context.

Attribution As just one example: the vapid “mentions in blogosphere” graph offers neither source information, nor the methods by which they filtered specific terms like Cervelo and Cannondale against more common synonyms such as Trek, or the even more google-unfriendly term Specialized. These are notoriously difficult terms to search against. Plus, the scale on the y-axis of the “mentions in blogosphere” graph references a peak of 150 – if that’s the absolute number of mentions they found, this graph is nothing short of violently under-indexed. Either that, or this entire report was merely indexing my own personal twitter feed and nothing else. Further down the report, their 5-point x-axis score on the Performance Summary graph approaches poetry in it’s inspiration.  Why 5?  Why not 10?  or 12?  What are the units?  I suspect it rhymes with marbitrary.

Context As the often-clever Josh Kadis pointed out in the comments of this article: a brand like Cervelo rises to the top of search terms because they’re title sponsor of their own team (which is, for sure, an enviable position to be in!). Further to this, if you’re relying on search terms to index comparisons here among brands, it will fail: too many of the most important conversations happen without mentioning the brand directly at all. Consider interviews with Andy Schleck, or photos of Pozzato, or retweets of @lancearmstrong. All entirely valid conversations, many entire devoid of branded search terms like Trek or Cannondale. To put it another way, do you imagine you’d find yourself more often saying casually to your friends “I like my car” versus saying “I like my 2008 Ford Focus SVT”? Measuring social media relies on understanding how people actually talk to each other, rather than how brands sometimes wish they would.  Sadly, this makes it very, very hard.

So, enough with the whining – I hate whining, especially that sound of it echoing inside my own head after I say something whiney. What *would* I like to see here, as a guy who works in marketing at a company that is experimentally active in a wide array of social media outlets? Here are three things I can think of that would help (ie we’d consider paying for):

1. A way to monitor the social reactions to specific single actions: if a single tweet earns us (or costs us) 35 followers on twitter, we should know what that was so we can do more of that (or avoid it).
2. A way to measure the effects of our corporate social media efforts at a retail sales level: blog comments and tweets are great, and a good source of feedback, but are we doing anything more than conversing with the converted? How are our ‘corporate’ social media efforts helping our dealers, if at all? And what specifically should we be doing more of to incresase this positive effect?
3. A way to measure social media efforts of all our retailers, versus all the retailers of our competitors (or retailers in competing industries). This is where rubber meets pavement (or dirt), and I strongly believe that social media offers far more promise at a widely dispersed micro-regional level (ie the collective power of 2500 different bike shops) than it ever will offer to the global brands that support those same dealers.

Despite the fact that our myriad efforts at Specialized sometimes get us accused all kinds of things (we’ll never escape criticism, ever), we are still exploring this space because we believe it has real, demonstrable value. Even more: it’s fun, and it’s honest, and it’s authentic to the cycling culture that we’re all part of. Cycling is social, and so for us, social media is something we see as having the potential to do something that’s different than the print ads, Pro Tour sponsorship, and other legacy marketing programs that the industry relies upon. And it’s NEW. It still has that smell of new vinyl and those plastic static-clingy screen covers on everything.  So we’re still experimenting, and doing our best to pay close attention. And if we make a mistake, we find out about it pretty darn fast, cuz we’ve got thousands of fans/followers/friends out there that tell us. And we appreciate that!

As one final thought: why is the assumption with social media that it’s necessary to “win” – given that conversation topics change daily, or hourly, does it really matter if Cervelo scores 4.5 bizwits versus Cannondale scoring 3.75 zeehas?  Social media, if it is really engaged discussions, can probably help the entire industry make the sport cooler and more approachable.  What if we all just looked at this phenomenon as a rising tide, and realized that all of a sudden it’s not the crochety mechanic at the local shop with the only opinion that gets heard?  In the long run, this is probably good for the sport more than it’s good for any brand in particular.

So, I offer every respect to Robert Gourley, and I mean that; his blog post has sparked lots of interesting discussion, and I suspect that his company does fine work. But at the risk of sounding arrogant, I’m not going to pretend that his blog post taught me anything about the cycling world. It probably didn’t teach you anything either. Now, as my old friend Eric G used to say: get back to work.

UPDATE: within seconds of posting this, saw that Josh also posted another interesting series of points around this topic. Read that too.

Quite the name, huh?  Death Ride.  129 miles, with 15,000 feet of elevation gain.  It’s basically five monster-sized hills, with no flat sections, and a few very short miles of rollers between the hills. And somehow, the 3,500-or-so riders that each pay about $100 to participate have to fight for their spot.  It sold out within hours, back in January.

There are plenty of interesting insights about cyclists and their bikes that an event like this is fantastic for shining a spotlight upon.  Some favorites:

1. There are way more DuraAce Triple-equipped bikes out there than you think there are.  Unless you already think there are A LOT OF THEM.
2. There are lots of riders, typically 40-50 yr old men, on titanium bikes from 1994-2001.  They bought their bikes from salespeople who told them that titanium would last forever, and they’re out to prove the point by NEVER REPLACING IT EVER.  But most were rocking new wheels, new drivetrains, and new kit.
3. There are people out there putting the hurt into these hills on bikes built (and sometimes not maintained since) the 1970’s.  Totally awesome to be reminded in no uncertain way that the equipment does not make the rider.
4. I saw two guys riding road bikes with flat pedals & sport sandals.  One was a vintage Motobecane, the other a brand new Cannondale SuperSix carbon bike. Also saw more than a few riders with MASSIVE backpacks full of I-don’t-know-what.  One had running shoes tied to the outside, because the backpack itself was clearly overstuffed.
5. Saw several riders with iPods and speaker systems – this is the modern day Ghetto Blaster, folks.
6. Spotted plenty of tandems (including the one with the “just married” flag behind it), one tiny kid struggling up the hill with mom (go kid go!!), a couple guys on bizarre upright ’stepper’ bikes, and a healthy dose of women, including my own pink-haired princess.
7. Big contingent of riders out raising money for great charity called Turning Wheels For Kids – check out what these guys are up to, and help if you can.
8. Generally, seems like the promise of closed roads and beautiful surroundings helps people find motivation they might not otherwise find on their own.

For sure, it’s been awesome to see Gnat progress through 7 months of training under the VeloGirls coaching program, and was doubly awesome to be there along the way. I made a little documentary of her day, check it out if you’ve got 11 minutes to spare and want a pretty honest peek at what a 13.5hr day of riding might look like.

Let me begin by saying that I’m about to comment on something i read about today in the news, and because it’s something I read, I could be interpreting it incorrectly. That (somewhat ironic) disclaimer over with, I’ll carry on…

BR&IN today included a short online story about the challenges of honesty vis-a-vis social media sites like Twitter: to boil down the ocean of their article, the concept is basically to say that because the sources on Twitter can’t always be fully validated, the medium itself becomes questionable and is therefore inferior to well-researched, fully-referenced journalism.  Steve Frothingham from Velonews was quoted in the article, and in following up to a tweet I posted about the article, he wrote to me to clarify a few things that BR&IN might have included in their article to improve clarity and completeness:

1. Coyle is an AP writer, not an E&P writer. That was an AP story that E&P picked up.
2. Velonews did not participate in the Armstrong twitter boycott at the Giro
3. Velonews discourages the use of twitter-sourced quotes regarding the cycling news they cover

I agree that great journalism is an invaluable resource, and is something to be both revered and respected at its highest level.  It’s one of the backbones of humanity: being able to accurately inform one another about things that matter, or to make things matter when they’re going unnoticed.  We need great journalists, just as we need trustworthy and reliable sources for the important news and related investigation that journalists work hard to uncover and demystify.  I can’t help but bring to mind some of the more investigative work that Hunter S. Thompson did for Rolling Stone, back before he was shot out of a canon.  I have similar and deep respect for the great work done by The Economist, and I greatly enjoy the work of Velonews writers.  These are sources of journalism, and sources of meaningful education.  There are thousands more.

However, I have some concerns about applying this enthusiasm for journalism in any broad way that universally drapes it overtop of social media such as Twitter.  Journalism is not always better, and not always right.  Fox News comes to mind here, and I’ll leave it at that.  There are simply too many easy targets.  Again, thousands more.

I would submit that readers want two things from news: they want it to be true, and they want to be among the first to know it.  Speed and accuracy.  And online sources such as Twitter have the luxury of being immediate – in many cases, delays are only a function of thumb speed on a tiny keyboard.  So accepting that we can’t fault twitter for it’s speed, we’re left with considerations about accuracy.

In his email to me, Steve points out, quite correctly, that Twitter can be one-sided, and does not guarantee that a reply or request for clarification will be provided. On rare occasion, individual Twitter accounts been hacked, and sometimes people masquerade as celebrities.  Because of these factors, Steve said, they never use Twitter to establish facts without independent reporting, and they never present Twitter posts as “quotes”. But this misses a pair of fundamental attributes about Twitter, which make it both effective as a news media, and trustworthy as a social source of information:

1. Any significantly large number of people tweeting about something can sometimes be faster and more correct than traditional media, because the twitterati are not individually subject to the thinned and soupy opinions of group think, the sway of advertiser politics, or the threat of full-blown censorship. For an example, take a look at #iranelection

2. The twitter model allows you to select who you follow, leaving you to make educated decisions about the validity of their identities and their credibility.  I typically know within one or two tweets whether or not I’m following the person I intended to.  And let’s face it, with 1.1M followers on Twitter, the identity of @lancearmstrong isn’t really up for dispute.  To quote from his twitter account is no more suspect than quoting him from his statements on www.livestrong.org, his email, or any other (hackable) web-based source.

Taken together, these two elements suggest that there is a substantial difference between following someone because they have a habit of posting links to cute pictures of kittens, versus following @BBCbreaking, which you can validate easily by noting that it’s linked from www.bbc.co.uk.  Twitter is a social information system first.  The fact that it’s also become a news system is largely a function of it’s eleventy bazillion members, and the twitter platform that allows the social averaging of their collective comments.  As just one final example to illustrate the point: in February, spectators at the Tour of California provided roadside coverage of the race that was in every way faster, more complete, and more exciting than even the live broadcast could offer.  When Ivan Basso abandoned the race prior to the start of the TT stage due to a self-sustained knee injury, people who followed him on Twitter knew this more than 30 minutes before the live TV commentators.

For sure, Velonews utilizes Twitter in a meaningful way that complements their cycling coverage, and I am thrilled to see them and others using Twitter to extend the reach of their work. However, when any news source steps away from Twitter as a potential source of both leads and related expert opinions that can be easily found there, I find myself questioning how long they’ll keep that up before admitting that it could already be one of the most powerful sources of information in their arsenal.  Just like any other source, Twitter should be subject to the requisite amount of fact checking, corroboration, and second opinions that any source should be.  This gets to the true value-add of the journalist, the part subscribers pay for, and Pulitzers are awarded for: to make those decisions about what’s really going on, and report back to the rest of us.  For journalists to cast off Twitter so universally is to abdicate their most valued skill and the foundation of their craft: to find out what people are doing.

A few weeks ago, I had the impulsive idea that my girlfriend and I should buy tennis racquets: we now have tennis courts a few hundred feet away from our apartment, so it seemed like a fun idea – something (for once) unrelated to cycling, it’s a sport we were both equally unpracticed at, but not totally unfamiliar with.  So, we went off to the BigSportingGoodsStore ™ to buy the necessary hardware.  Seemed like an easy enough task.

Credit GapingVoid

Cortex.  Aerobeam.  4D.  Magnetic Speed. FLEXPOINT.  Intellifiber. TWINTUBE. SOFTAC.LMS. EXO3 Energy Bridge Technology. Morph Beam. Triad Technology with Iso.Zorb.  (K)ompact Center.  And my personal favorite: Nano, which claimed it was “redesigned at the molecular level”

All of these terms are real terms that you can find written in BIG BOLD FONTS across the marketing cards that are stapled to each racquet on the wall.  They offer little-to-nothing in terms of explaining what these terms might actually mean, or why they might be good (or horrible) for me, a tennis newbie that just wants to feel the weightless *thock* of a tennis ball lofting off the strings in a harmonious way, arcing across the net, and smacking (probably) against the back fence before it ever so much as touches the court.  I am not a budding tennis pro, this much I know.  But this is a game to me, not a sport, so I don’t really much care about being *good*.  I just want it to be fun.

The wall of tennis racquets was not unlike trying to read a japanese restaurant menu, in Tokyo.  One without english.  I was lost.  I ended up, after much consideration that was based entirely on intuition, buying the one that was the most on sale, under $60, and red.  Gnat bought the one that was pink.  It was also on sale, but the discount was not as substantial, so as far as I know, mine is clearly a superior racquet.  We both found out at the checkout that our racquets included fancy carry cases, which were excavated from some unseen back room by a small troll they employed.

I have a point to this, I promise.

I know for sure that when new cyclists walk into a bike shop, this is probably how they feel.  Even more so when they walk into a general sporting goods shop hoping to buy a bike – nobody there knows much more about bikes than how to ride one, so the staff are functionally useless.  And the product itself isn’t giving you any clues about why one racquet/bike costs $bigNum, while another one costs 10x that much.  They look basically the same, and seem to have been designed for similar purposes, right?  And why didn’t I go to a proper Tennis shop, rather than a general sporting goods shop?  Intimidated by staff who would think I was a plebeian?  Afraid of being unwilling to spend what their “basic” model costs?  Expecting to get upsold?  All those things.  Plus, how many pro Tennis stores can you think of?

So, the point here is that I have said to myself and others for years that cycling is an intimidating sport that has a big hole where new cyclists should fit into; it’s tough to approach and unfriendly to newcomers by way of obfuscating technologies that often mean little or nothing at all, and unless you’re lucky enough to find a truly helpful shop that will treat you right, you’re often going to feel like you’re entirely alone.  I’ve *said* this for years.  But I’ve never really felt what it must feel like until I went to buy a tennis racquet.  It’s a worthwhile experience.  Go try it.