Two sessions in and a few key points are emerging:

• Twin Cities have a very talented digital community
• General confusion as to the reasons (objectives) behind digital campaigns / branding / video / marketing / advertising
• Accountability is key, but what kinds of measurement are meaningful

It’s like reliving the Obama campaign all over again (for good or bad). A feeling of ‘Yes we can’ is evident. But Obama had it easy – he had a clear goal – get elected. Maybe we can, but the true challenge lies in defining what ‘can’ can, or is, or does.

Objectives matter. I’m getting the feeling that many of us are not working with clearly defined objectives. Going viral certainly is not one.

Collectively, we get to work with great properties – web sites, blogs, social engines, video, applications and all combinations. Truly, clients are demanding more accountability in digital media than ever before.

I’m seeing a move away from branded properties. It’s now about more than the web site or email or branded campaign. Tracking the success of these social properties or off-site media requires attention to clearly defined objectives. This is where the ‘owned’ media becomes valuable. A company site is a transaction center. Video, social channels, blogs and applications support the transaction center by driving qualified traffic.

All the rest is becoming referral engines. It’s not good enough to only focus on Google referrals anymore. Why not put the same attention into these other channels?

Once we start to treat these other assets as referral channels, we can start to analyze and quantify attention and transactions according to the digital funnel. Someone might see a brand on Facebook, become a fan, view the YouTube video, follow the Twitter feed, learn more about the industry on Wikipedia, search blog posts, read product ratings and reviews or search comparisons on Google.

If the goal is to generate a transaction, let’s compare how each channel is performing against the best audience segments:

• Where are the highest spending customers coming from?
• How much time on the site does it take to generate a transaction?
• Where are the abandoned carts being referred from?
• Who is requesting more information?

These are but a few questions that can help us determine what content / channel combinations are best generating transactions.

Best method I have seen so far has been Eric T. Peterson’s Engagement Metrics.

Would love to know where there have been successes or failures in approaches similar to this.