The Measurement of Social Media Marketing and the Necessity of Objectives
November 28, 2007
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Nathania Johnson recently tagged me to respond in her post “A Meme about Measuring Social Media Marketing” - asking me to answer the question that is plaguing us all these days regarding the best way to measure social media marketing.
This isn’t the first time that this should be asked, nor shall it be the last (at least I hope). After all, measurement boils down to making sure that money is well spent, audiences are reached, and determining tactics that worked versus those that didn’t. This valuable information should always be at the forefront of a social media marketing campaign.
And yet, unfortunately, I’m afraid that I can’t provide an answer that is a “one size fits all” recommendation- because quite simply one does not exist, nor should it. Instead, I agree with Sam Harrelson’s response that the measurement of social media marketing should be tailored to the business model of the particular company, and I will add to this that in order to measure, a company’s social media marketing objectives must be clearly defined.
Undefined social media marketing objectives are basically blogging just to “start a blog”, or having a Facebook group page to “have a Facebook group page”. Companies that employ this “strategy” going into their social media marketing campaign will likely find it nearly impossible to quantify or measure its success. However, if objectives are set from the beginning, measurement is much clearer and easier to quantify.
Objectives should be inspired from the needs of the company. If an e-commerce company wants to start a blog about “product reviews”, then it should measure the funnel of traffic from the blog to the e-commerce site. Through that, the site should further analyze the percentage of products purchased from this segment, and analyze the value of these purchases against other methods of entry.
To give another example I’ll use Ignite. One of our objectives of this blog is to ultimately to gain more clients and further expand our network in this space. With this clearly stated, we track the source of all business leads, so we can quantify the number that are a result of our blog and the quality of those leads. To measure our network, we monitor and track comments, trackbacks, and the social network activities that we are involved in.
Hope this gives a snapshot of how setting objectives in social media marketing can actually determine the particular tactics of social media measurement. If anybody has a specific question or anything to add, feel free.
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12 Responses to “The Measurement of Social Media Marketing and the Necessity of Objectives”
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Great answer! Thanks for responding, Lisa!
By grouping behaviour, eg critics, joiners, spectators etc - and designing social media integrated onto thier websites companies can further measure results
Great point Louis - defining the type and value of participant in social media marketing is an important factor. Thanks for mentioning!
Great points all around. It really pays to first have a strategy for what you’re trying to measure as an objective first, then understand the different attributes.
I wrote a white paper with Matt Toll of Facetiva Dow Jones on the topic, it’s free for download at
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/08/20/social-media-white-paper-tracking-the-influence-factiva-of-dow-jones/
You might want to check out the paper on How to measure naked conversations on our website: http://www.measuresofsuccess.com/free+measurement+resources/research+reports/default.aspx
and also the Institute for Public Relations white paper on measuring social media:
http://www.instituteforpr.org/research_single/how_to_measure_social_media_relations/
Thanks for the feedback Jeremiah and KD. Great whitepapers…
[…] The Measurement of Social Media - Great post on setting objectives in social media markets. […]
This is a conversation that can’t happen often enough!
Knowing measurements of success is critical to any solid campaign, whether social media or mainstream media.
I ask clients two questions right away:
What do you expect to experience from this campaign?
What is your measurement of success?
I have learned that many clients in the industries I serve (events, cultural and community related issues) don’t have a measurement of success. Often they are so eager for short term gain (ticket sales) that they forego long term advantage (building credibility/visibility), or are unrealistic in their expectations (”Only 75 people came to my first public presentation. I expected the pr to bring in at least 250 people!).
It really helps to educate clients (especially start-ups) about the various barometers for success. So often they just don’t know what the pr landscape really looks like.
I include a one-sheet along with my proposal that outlines how pr works so the clients don’t fall prey to “magical thinking” about what it will take for them to gain the visibility they are after.
[…] While this is topic is still a debate among the social media community and marketers - this is undebatable to me. If anything - social media has shown huge ROI through increased search engine optimization alone - […]
I love the way you given the example… it categories as a short-term (traffic generation) and long term (client generation) objective of social media marketing efforts / initiatives.
I have two observations in this space with my limited understanding…
first being have measurable SMART (Specific - Measurable- Achievable - Relevant - Time bound) objectives which then translate into converting them post the campaign. This you have already mentioned.
Second being that compare it to the effectiveness of other promotional activities. Example: we know that 1% effectiveness in direct mail promotions, is brilliant!!! Social media marketing can do much better than that!!!
[…] sites but the rise of social media marketing is leaving a lot of people scratching their heads and wondering how to track social […]
[…] sites but the rise of social media marketing is leaving a lot of people scratching their heads and wondering how to track social […]