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THREE THINGS TO DO (AND WHY)
Measure Social Media
Now that listening and collaboration have been discussed, the fi nal “must do” topic for
this chapter is measuring the impact of your social media efforts as they are connected
to your business or organization. Measurement is the key to understanding effective-
ness, and ironically is too often overlooked or simply dismissed out of hand. This is no
longer acceptable: social media can—and should—be measured, and done so in ways
that press the application of metrics beyond correlation and the use of surrogates.
Take a step back in traditional marketing and advertising measurement.
Common measures like reach and frequency are accepted surrogates for effectiveness:
One generally measures reach and frequency often, but conducts formal pre/post stud-
ies of actual effi cacy only occasionally. While these traditional measures of advertising
are themselves concrete—reach and frequency can be directly measured, for example—
they have become surrogates for the more important measures of effectiveness, derived
generally through the observance of correlation and implied causation.
It’s important to note the distinction, covered in Chapter 6, “Social Analytics,
Metrics, and Measurement,” between causation and correlation. It’s important to rec-
ognize that measures such as a blogger’s reach, or the number of comments in regard
to a post, or the number of times a photo was viewed or shared are also concrete, eas-
ily obtained measures of the use of social channels. Make measurement a formal part
of your social media program.
In addition to the more obvious quantitative metrics (views, measures of con-
tent sharing or pass-alongs, comments on a blog as a ratio to posts and similar), social
analytics often involves dealing with large amounts of unstructured data (comments,
recommendations, videos, and text posts, for example) that present a challenge when
looking for concrete measurability. This same condition has long existed within tra-
ditional media and the metrics that defi ne it all along: Verbatim comments are an
oft-cited component of a typical advertisement effectiveness or customer feedback pro-
gram. Social media analytics tools (see Chapter 6) provide much of the “horsepower”
needed to make sound use of this unstructured data—for example, by extracting trends
in positive versus negative comments, overall conversational levels, and similar.
K. D. Paine
Tired of hearing “The problem with social media is that you can’t measure it”? Encourage people
within your organization to look at K. D. Paine’s PR Measurement Blog.
http://kdpaine.blogs.com/K. D. Paine
Tired of hearing “The problem with social media is that you can’t measure it”? Encourage people
within your organization to look at K. D. Paine’s PR Measurement Blog.
http://kdpaine.blogs.com/