The big question all marketers are asking: “How DO I Measure Social Media?”
There have been many, many discussions around social media measurement especially over the last year. For some reason, nailing down the best way to measure has evaded us all. Most of the challenge is a result of having metrics that can be compared from one company to the next.
Without that, it is hard to say if what you are doing is good, bad, or ugly. This is exacerbated with a certain level of fear of measuring social because it can be difficult to correlate something like Twitter followers to new business.
This is certainly an understandable fear. Just remember that social media is just a tool in your marketing tool kit. If you measure social media using some of the same measurements you’ve always used, it will start to make sense and be easier to justify your efforts.
There are 5 categories in the social media funnel.
Exposure
This is just like the exposure you’ve been measuring for years. Essentially, you are choosing metrics which measure your reach. How many people are listening to you or talking about your brand? To actually measure this it is a combination of your normal web analytics, your Twitter followers, your Facebook fans, and running a search for your brand mentions. I use Radian 6 for this, but you could also do a Google search and look at growth in the number of returned results but this isn’t as accurate.
Influence
This is prefaced by saying that this category of measurement is a little harder if you don’t have Radian 6. By measuring the number of mentions for industry key words against the number of times your brand is mentioned with those key words you can get a measurement of your share of voice in the industry. You can also get a report on the top influencers from your industry. Finally, sentiment, while still imprecise, gives you a general measurement of whether people say you suck or you rock.
Engagement
This is fairly easily measured by tracking the number of clicks you get on the links you post, the number of times your messages are shared or retweeted, how many direct messages you get, and how many comments you receive.
Action/Convert
Is any of this contributing to the pipeline? Measure the pieces of content that tie to your sales process whether it be a white paper, webinar, lead generation form, pitch or proposal.
Sales
Oh, the elusive white horse. How much money are these efforts generating? If you’ve measured this far, you can measure what translate into dough.
Retain
The step many forget. Don’t forget to follow these customers and look at their repeat business and retention rates.
Remember, social media is like the almighty assist. It can help add more opportunities to convert business, but at the end of the day it is just putting leads in the funnel. Your normal sales process is responsible for converting those leads.
This post was written as a guest post for FolkMedia.org
[...] « 5 Categories of Social Media Measurement [...]
If you think of social media as being a newborn, how do you measure the baby? Size, weight, interaction, but then what do you know about the baby?
The organic nature of social media is a primary characteristic. I just met you. How do we measure that interaction? Can the value be measured? Is there a value, hopefully yes, is there a measurement for it? Is it really too small to measure? And yet it does have a value.
ROI is a frequently used excuse, I think, for organizations that hesitate to use social media. We all have many reasons for not doing what is good for us. If social media were a pill, we would take it. But only a few people want to compete in the Olympics, most only want to comment on it. Social media can be measured, but since it can be used well with small results and to many varying and different degrees, the pitfalls of measurement may not be as beneficial as the feeling that you get when you have the opportunity so solve someone’s problem using an efficient communications tool.
Gordon,
You have really brought forward some great thoughts here. ROI is important and I would never argue the reason to measure it. But I think some people are forgetting the importance of measuring other metrics that paint a equally important picture. We’ve been measuring brand awareness for decades, yet I’m not seeing social media measured in terms of awareness/exposure. It has been proven that increased brand awareness generates more leads. If it didn’t no company in their right mind would buy TV advertising. We know that developing relationships increases conversion of leads, social media is a vehicle to develop relationships. We know that continuing relationships after the sale increases retention, but so many are so focused on ROI that they are blind to keeping customers. We’ve known forever that it is cheaper to keep an existing customer than to get a new one.
Depending on your customer base and products ROI may not be the big winner for your company. But that doesn’t mean that increased brand awareness and/or increased customer retention aren’t important to the bottom line. It just means that social media may not be the best direct response vehicle for your company. But it certainly doesn’t mean that social media doesn’t have a higher conversion rate for the leads it does generate. See my point? So I encourage others to look at how social media impacts each stage of your customer life cycle and measure it’s success where it has the most impact and look at the other benefits as icing on the cake.
Thanks for chiming in. It’s only a matter of time before you catch the Buzz!
Nichole
N, get your points totally. even if I get lost around here. I lead a simple life.
I have been on Twitter and Facebook and utilize them heavily to watch Baltimore work. So my interest is purely local, although I watch the big people as well.
I have tried to maximize the @people that I follow in Bmore and have a hard time getting past 1000. I use FB to mostly follow companies and organizations and that tops out at about 200.
At this point whoever I am missing are not really paying attention. So that leaves a lot of room for growth. Of those participating, only a small number work at it productively. It seems to me that in a Bmore City market of 1/2 million, exposure to sm is pretty tiny particularly when you add the noise factor.
Not saying that we shouldn’t measure of course, but I can’t really go much farther than my brand meeting your brand and over time (perhaps years) what that leads to. (working the people economy here, not the product economy) Of course, when you deal with the big, established brands it is a whole different ball game, but I am really not interested in any brand larger than say a CenterStage or a Baltimore Community Foundation. Enough said, thanks for the brain stimulation.
Thanks Nichole. I enjoyed your thoughts and well as Gordon’s. Don’t forget about LinkedIn when discussing social media. That’s how I found your blog . . . . and you were a former customer . . . . so . . . . . keeping in touch.
[...] Nichole Kelly touches on six different types of potential returns on your social media investment, from sales and conversions to influence and retention. As she’d argue, aren’t each of those actions a return on your investment? [...]
I also promote some of my affiliate links on Facebook by making Facebook fan pages and also by advertising on Facebook.-*’