Ideas That Spread

Social Media Metrics

Metrics, Metric, Metrics! Some people love them, others say they are important (but don’t really care), others find them tedious –but- as marketers they are crucial for understanding and benchmarking to fill our funnel with more marketing dollars and to actually learn what works.
It takes courage and vision to realize that sometimes marketing dollars are not going to provide you the exact measurement you need to satisfy your measurement group. The measurement group can only benchmark against things that have been industry approved and agreed upon - an industry standard - and when this standard hasn’t been defined yet - you are often on your own.

What is important when it comes to Social Media metrics?

Social Media investment should not be driven by a bottom line, - “I need to see X number of impressions for my X investment”, but rather a longer-term (perhaps forever) relationship. A conversation that lasts longer than a Search Campaign that delivered 30K unique visitors, or a display ad that converted 10K people to buy something. Social Media is a process of creating a framework for your loyal customers, would-be customers and brand supporters to gather inside of a flexible structure that is portable, open and not overly marketing driven. This is why PR agencies and Word of Mouth Agencies understand Social Media. PR people are trained to get people to talk about your brand, ignite and manage conversations in the marketplace and form public relationships that last longer than an ad buy. Ad Agencies are good at getting people to notice your brand and buy things. Interactive Agencies are great at building web-sites, buying search ads and running rich media display units. They are all an important part of the marketing mix, but let’s make sure we are not measuring them all with the same metrics.

It takes a new set of metrics to understand how people converse and share information online. Metrics that are more based in PR and Word of Mouth Marketing than Ad Agencies.

Here are 5 Social Media Measurement Links to get the conversation going.

• Social Media Measurement Shouldn’t Matter
• Social Media FAQ – How to measure ROI
• The ROI of Communities
• Art of Conversation
• Hey Agency The Web Is Social