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

The Value of a Beer...hanging with @JBluhm et al

Using social media tools you can expand your network with people you know and those you don’t know. I’ve connected with friends, former classmates, family members and others via FaceBook. I’ve connected with former colleagues and peers via LinkedIn. I’ve met other marketers through LinkedIn groups. I’ve followed and been followed by fellow marketers who I probably wouldn’t have ever met naturally thanks to Twitter. I see people connecting with new people all around me online. I’m curious about whether it is increasing or decreasing traditional in-person networking.

Are people hiding behind their computers and not getting into the real world to really meet others? Is the value of traditional networking associations declining? I don’t think so. I think it is even more important than ever to continue traditional networking activities. But the business reality is that the recession has led to shrinking reimbursement policies at companies for membership in local networking associations and business travel for conferences. What are you doing? Are you attending conferences and networking events? Is it status quo at your company or are you paying the bill on your own? Or just dropping out? Are you still meeting others at local tweet ups and meet ups?

As individuals are working to create their online personal brand it is equality important to step out from behind the computer screen and continue to meet and learn in person. Personally, the in-person connection with those I’ve met online has been invaluable. It helps to transition a follower into a friend and friends into followers. It lets people see a whole other side to who you are.

While you are growing your online network, don’t forget the basics. Take every opportunity to meet those around you face-to-face. If you met online, step offline and meet in person to learn what happens between tweets, status updates and blog posts. If you met in person, connect online and keep up to date on what is going on with each other between events.

Regardless of where you met, get out of your every day environment and share a beer, a cup of coffee or a couple of sodas…have a laugh…and share your stories. Get out from behind the computer screen, out of the office and join networking associations, attend tweet ups, meet ups and the like. Use the opportunity to deepen your relationships and develop new ones.

What are you doing? Has social media decreased your traditional networking efforts or expanded them? How are you prioritizing your time between online and offline events? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

At IMS09 with Brian Solis

I came to Boston knowing that I was going to meet amazing social media folks and learn some amazing things. What I didn’t know is that I would also develop amazing friendships that I will carry long past the 2 day summit. And that really is the interesting thing isn’t it. We spent 2 days talking about social media and how people are people are using it to exist and participate in conversations where their customers are. We heard case studies, talked with thought leaders, and a lot of authors as it turns out and at the end of the day it all came down to one thing for me.

Social media is a tool that helps you develop deeper relationships with your customers and prospects. The relationship is truly what it is all about as has been true for the last 100 years. I really loved Shiv Singhs modification of Peter F. Drucker’s quote ”The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.” Shiv said, ” The purpose of business is to create a customer that creates a customer.”  That doesn’t happen if you don’t have a relationship.

“The difference is that social media makes the distance between you and your customers nill”, stated brilliantly by Tim Walker. Why? Because you can easily SEE what they are saying, WHEN they are saying it, WHERE they are saying it and WHO they are saying it to.  Marketers in the 50’s would’ve gone biserk over this type of information. And knowing what is being said about your brand is critical. But the most important thing is WHAT you do next.

There was a lot of talk about listening at the summit. And I agree with the speakers if you aren’t listening you are an idiot. It’s too easy to not be doing it. The question is when do you engage?

Are people complaining about your brand? A simple How Can I Help You can go a long way, “the first thing to do is answer the phone and say how can I help you” from David Alston. Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s 3 A’s that they define in Trust Agents are a great way to manage complaints. “Acknowledge, Apologize and Act.” This really goes into the authenticity theory. Actually care that people had a bad experience and FIX IT! It’s amazing how fixing someone’s problem will deepen your relationship with them. If you can’t fix it, be honest about it.

Are people raving about your brand? “Always say thank you when someone praises your brand online.” Another great thought from David Alston.

This really is simple stuff. It’s not rocket surgery as Chris said. But we all know that it does sound really simple but in practice it can get really complicated…really quick. Questions like how do you get buy in? How do you assemble your team? What do you do when you make a mistake? There were great insights into this as well. I’ll cover some of the tips on that in my next post!

Thank you to all of the presenters who really are game changers and some of the most down to earth, genuine people I’ve met. And of course to Justin Levy and Chris Brogan who gave us the opportunity to connect. And the real magic happened with the attendees who connected over a few drinks and forged friendships.

If you missed it go to slideshare and search for IMS09. Most of the presentations are there.

The question of the day is how do you measure social media? It’s the question brimming on every marketers mind as we look at how social media will fit into our current marketing mix. Because let’s face it, if you aren’t looking at social media you might just be left in the dust. So for those of you who are trying to tackle this daunting task, I’ve put together a few tips and a social media value index model that you can use to guide you in the process.

In looking at the #smroi conversations on Twitter recently, one of the big discussions is the ongoing debate of whether or not social media will prove a positive ROI.  In addition, there are many who are using ROI to talk about value rather than an actual monetary return and it is causing confusion about the true value that social media can bring to an organization and how to explain it to stakeholders in a meaningful way.

To get started you need to develop a plan. I’m not a huge believer in the let’s try it and see what happens strategy. Not that you can’t try and see, but the trying it out should lead to a well-defined plan. There are four-steps to creating your plan.

1. Define Goals and Objectives
2. Align Strategies to Meet Goals and Objectives
3. Create Metrics to Measure Success
4. Develop Execution Plan

As I’ve said in my previous posts, I focus on three core goals. Will you use social media to retain existing customers, generate brand awareness and/or acquire new customers? For social media newcomers, I’d be very cautious about starting a social media plan geared towards acquiring new customers. This takes finesse that comes with experience and I’d wait until you’ve mastered the other two before broaching customer acquisition. Once you have determined what your goal for social media is, you can then start to align strategies with those goals, determine how you will measure if those strategies are successful, and put together a plan for execution. I’m not going to spend much time on those areas in this post, perhaps in a future post if readers are interested. Rather, I’m going to focus on how to create a model to measure success and then give you some ideas on different metrics you can use to build your model.

In order to be able to explain the value of social media to your stakeholders I prefer to use Key Performance Indicators as the term of choice.  Mainly because this is a standard term that people are familiar with and you don’t have to do a lot of explaining about what it means.

So here I’ve defined 10 Key Performance Indicators for social media and I ranked them in importance from 1 to 10. Then I assigned a weight to each ranking.

Click here for the full list. Social Media KPIs

Social Media KPIs

Social Media Monthly Worksheet

Then I took the 10 KPIs and put in metrics for how to measure them on a monthly basis. For each one I used a baseline measure of 0-1 either through doing a percent to goal or a ratio. I used a 1,000 point system to determine where I stand on each of the measure and apply the weight to determine how many points each measure received. The actual formula is (Score on 0-1 scale)*(Percent Weight*1000) to determine the number of points that indicator received for the month. To see the full worksheet click here. Social Media Value Index Worksheet

Finally, I took the sum of each KPI score as the total for the Social Media Value Index. This gives you a baseline measure for how the all of your social media activities are performing over time. The closer you get to 1,000 the better closer you are to reaching your goals.

Social Media Value Index Score

You can chose any key performance indicator that you believe adds value to the organization. You can also choose more than 10 if you like. I chose to use ROI as one of my KPIs, but on its own I don’t think it tells the whole story, which is why I developed this model. Choosing your KPIs may be the hardest part. So I’ve included some ideas of what you can measure below.

Twitter

• Number of Followers
• Number of People You Follow
• Relevance of Followers (I only follow people that are relevant and use a ratio of followers to those I follow to measure this)
• Number of Retweets
• Number of @replies to you/from you (you can do a ratio here also)
• Number of Clicks on Links Posted
• Twinfluence metrics
• Twitter Grade

Social Networks i.e. LinkedIn, Ning, FaceBook, MySpace

• Number of Connections Made
• Number of Discussions
• Number of Comments
• Number of Groups Participated In
• Level of Involvement in Groups

Video Sharing/Live Webcasts

• Number of Monthly Views/Attendees
• Monthly Average of Views/Attendees
• Number of Linkbacks to Videos

There are many more I could list here. Joe LaTona did a really nice job of providing a list to start from in his “What Are Your Social Media Goals” post.

Now that you have your plan it’s time to execute, measure, and refine!

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on how you are measuring, suggestions you have for refining this model and what you would add to the list of possible KPIs.

If you would like a copy of the excel worksheets used to develop the model please email me at nichole@nicholekelly.com and I’ll send you a copy.

As web 2.0 is just starting to take hold I’m envisioning what’s next.  We have more information than we ever have about our customers and prospects.  How are we going to use it to make each experience unique? Get ready for web 3.0, it’s coming faster than you may think.

As a marketer who likes to push the envelope on creativity and innovation in the field, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what is going to be the next “big thing” in the industry.  I’ve also worked on many extensive web projects and have been watching the latest trends with web 2.0 and social media integration.  Well, MLK Jr. put it best, “I have a dream.”  I envision that my website experiences will be customized to me and provide me with the information I want – when I want it, the information I need – when I need it, and the information I don’t know I need or want – when I don’t realize I need or want it. I want every web experience to have an “A-ha” moment for me and extend that to my customers and prospects.

Today, we all pretty much start our web search at Google.  We type in a search term and review the organic listings which are comprised of a few things: Business listings with relevant content, Individual blog listings will relevant content, and Business sponsored content provided by individuals, think reviews etc, and then we might move over to peruse the paid search options.  If your company comes up anywhere in the organic listings(first) or paid results (second) then we’ll take a look at you.  If not, we quickly determine that you aren’t swimming with the big dogs and aren’t worth our time or the risk of our professional reputation to investigate further. Once we get to your site, you have either pointed us to a page that provides content based on our search term and/or we find ourselves needing more information. So our typical web experience may start by checking out the navigation on the page and see if we can find what we are looking for. If I’m really interested I may resort to the little search box on your site.  We type in a word that we think will deliver the result we are seeking. Depending on the sophistication of the website it either delivers a relevant result and we take a look or it doesn’t and we leave. I could get into an even lengthier discussion on what stage I am in the buying process and how it changes this, but I’ll leave that to another day.

With the advent of marketing automation we can now track every action a prospect and/or customer takes on our website and respond based on their real activities rather than information provided on a form or what they tell us they want.  This is the first step towards being able to provide relevant and actionable content.  The days of site visitors being lost in the black hole of the “unknown” are dwindling.  Through progressive customer profiles we can now collect information in little bits and reconcile it back to who you are and act accordingly.  As a marketer it truly is a beautiful thing!  Now, I have the ability to truly test, monitor, and refine campaigns and content based on your activity in ways that were impossible as little as 5 years ago.  Even more beautiful is that I can measure the results in terms of action/inaction and ultimately the Return on Marketing Investment, put simply the revenue that is returned to the organization over the investment that was required to generate that revenue.

These are huge steps forward for marketers, steps I honestly never even considered a few years ago.  At the same time, it opens new doors and new avenues to truly be able to satiate the known and unknown desires of people who WANT and NEED what my company has to offer. But as my husband would tease, like any woman I am never satisfied! I want more…I want to take it to another level…I want to drive us into a web 3.0 world now!

Why?  Because we are on the cusp and with today’s technologies it is possible.  So why wait? As Marketers we are all shifting to become content producers for our companies as we are learning that content is king, so why not take it to a new level?

Imagine producing content in bits, chunks, and larger heaps but giving it to people in the serving size that suits them best? To put it into context, perhaps you would produce an excerpt that leads to a blog post then to a mini e-book then to a technical white paper. Okay, so maybe you do it backwards and start with the  most extensive and build backwards, whatever suits your fancy.  The next question is, “What do I do with this progressively expanded content?”

Remember, those progressive customer and prospect profiles that marketing automation is allowing us to create and all the previous web activity that we are reacting to? What if we could turn that into a concept similar to a tag cloud so that we understood what truly drives THAT customer? Sure we can look at an entire segment, but the actions of the whole do not tell the story of the individual.  And web 3.0, well I’m hoping it will focus on one-to-one marketing. What does that mean? It means that the real estate  of your website can be divided into dynamically generated sections of content based on the profile of the individual and the activities you have logged for him or her. It’s Amazon’s personalized recommendations concept flipped upside down, spun around and thrown at you in a website that changes based on what you say you want, distilled by who you say you are, and refined by the actions you take over time.

What a web 3.0 site might look like

Hard to picture? (Well, don’t knock me for my lacking graphic design skills but look at this in terms of dynamically generated content buckets that would obviously look a heck of a lot better with a web designers touch.)

As you can see, the concept is that each bucket has content that changes based on what I know about you.  I allow you to tell me if you like the content either through rating or by watching your activities and if not I try something else until I find content that you are responding to and clicking to take a deeper look.  If I find out that you really like e-books, I may show all e-books on the left side, etc.  If I find that you like 3rd party blog posts and product reviews, I may focus on showing you those.  Every time you answer the customer profile question, the next question appears.  Bits, pieces, chunks, of your “Digital Body Language,” as Steven Woods coined, add up to deliver a custom one-to-one web experience.

Now, I’m not a techie so I don’t know how to tell you to do this.  I certainly have some ideas from my web experience.  But I know it isn’t as hard as it sounds.

I certainly could be wrong, but I’m hoping that this is the direction web development starts moving and I’ll certainly be pushing it that way.  And if it finally catches,  I’ll be a customer for sure!

Where does your company stand on Web 2.0 adoption? [polldaddy poll=1657249]