Tag Archives: Metrics

Social Media & Metrics – Where is the Disconnect?

Posted on February 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

Erik Sass for MediaPost writes, “Social media week has drawn a lot of attention to both the strengths and weaknesses of social media as a marketing tool — and it’s clear that measurement continues to be one of the main areas of weakness.”

Erik continues by discussing various reports and firms focusing on this area of social media.

And the points are fairly valid, but I believe we DO have the tools and metrics to make sense of our investment in social media.

Social media ROI analysis is in its infancy. I believe this is a result not because we lack tools and metrics, but rather there is a disconnect between data analysts who lack understanding of social media, and social media managers, who lack an understanding of analytics. Thus, we are at a bit of an impasse. I presented at Social Media Week DC on this very topic (how to measure the ROI of social media) in an effort to help social media managers take charge of their efforts and lead the analysis front for their organizations.

You can read Erik’s article here: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/168356/social-media-metrics-flourish-but-roi-is-still-up.html?c=93671#reply#ixzz1n9tHJiG1

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Posted in Analytics, Social Media

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Measuring Social Media – How to Get Started

Posted on September 22, 2011 | Leave a comment

Ron Jones at ClickZ wrote a fantastic article which breaks down how to get started measuring social media, by categorizing different outcomes and their corresponding measurements.

For small businesses, I’m not sure all of these are applicable, as it may take more time to measure than benefit gained from knowing the results. So don’t get hung up on daily, or even weekly monitoring. In fact, doing quarterly assessments is a great way to bench mark your long term growth in social media. Hubspot and some other companies have complimentary tools and checklists for evaluating how well you are covering social media, and Ron’s article will help you translate those results into some meaningful metrics.

Additionally, I suggest keeping a log of your most memorable successes and failures and producing a quarterly social media report which highlights your quarter from a narrative perspective (supplemented by metrics of course). It should outline what you accomplished and why it was important. You’ll also want to map out your upcoming quarter’s plans.

Here’s Ron’s article: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2102934/measure-social-media

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Measuring Social Media ROI

Posted on August 17, 2011 | Leave a comment
graph

Measure your Social Media Success

Jenna Lebel penned a fantastic article on Likeable.com that discusses how to get started with measuring social media. It is spot on! The first thing you must always do is understand what you hope to achieve. In this case, you need to ask yourself, why are we using social media, and why does that matter? Is it to generate sales opportunities, build relationships, create brand awareness, provide customer support, or something else? This is so important, as each of these goals may translate into a different set of metrics.

Now, as you go about your measurement and management of social media, you might be focusing on one particular area, such as lead generation, and realize you are also gaining in another area, say customer service. So, it is okay to update your goals AND metrics as you go along. An ROI strategy should not be without some elasticity.

I’m doing a number of presentations over the next several months looking at the next step of ROI. The step that comes after you have identified your goals… How to convert those goals into some sort of metric, report and dashboard. I will share that information hear soon! In the mean time, start documenting your goals!

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Posted in Analytics, Social Media

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