Social Media Marketing

162

c h a p t e r

6 :

SOCIAL A

NALYTICS

, M

ETRICS

, AND M

EASUREMENT

■

Turning to the acceptance and rejection measures—take defect reports or

calls abandoned as examples—a second and equally rich measurement area is found.

Tracking a defects report, the issues that result in difficult or repeated service calls or

call satisfaction are very powerful in identifying those specific aspects of a product

or service that are likely to be talked about. In addition, these types of measures are

very likely to be indicative of what will be said, and so can be expected to correlate

strongly with the conversations observed and tracked through the social media analyt-

ics programs.

The net of the measurement discussion is this: Given that you already have a

solid understanding of your business and your business objectives, begin an aggres-

sive measurement program that ties social media analytics to your business. The eye

candy—the sentiment charts, trend lines, and radar plots—are all cool. But the con-

nection to business is what matters: Connect up web analytics and business analytics

to get more out of your social media measurements, and more out of your social media

and social business programs.

Review and Hands-On

This chapter covered the fundamentals of measurement and then showed how to take

the basic metrics that are readily available further. By moving beyond counts and trends

and into correlation and causation and by aligning social media analytics with business

metrics, you can move your use of the Social Web in business to a whole new level.

Review of the Main Points

The main points covered in this chapter are summarized in the points that follow.

The essence of Chapter 6, with credit to Katie Paine, is “Yes We Can! (measure social

media”).

•    Understand quantitatively what is happening on the Social Web, on your web-

site, and in your business.

•    Tie these measures together to create a complete feedback loop that includes the

delivery of what is learned to the functional areas within your business or orga-

nization that can act on and respond to this information.

•    Use quantitative techniques such as correlation to find relationships in available

metrics that you may not have considered, and that once identified can lead you

to new understanding of what the impact of social media and Web 2.0 really is.

•    Move beyond basic metrics in all of your measurement areas, and press into a

complete understanding how these metrics indicate where you are heading rather

than simply where you have been.

By taking the time to connect the dots, to link together the fundamental sources

of data that are available to you, you can significantly increase the likelihood of