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What are some of the metrics your organization uses to measure the effectiveness of 'Social'?
Are they 'soft' metrics (engagement, buzz), 'hard' metrics (leads, revenue), or both?
How do you measure?
How do you manage?
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7 Answers
well, i agree that the measurability of social media marketing ROI is limited. it's obvious, though maybe not as obvious as the limited measurability of a mother's ROI, @Matt. ;)
But as marketers, we have been in this tempting and misinformed haze that we would be able to measure anything online: email opens, clicks on an offer, forwards, engagement, you name it. And yet - unless we limit our metrics of success to those online efforts that generate immediate sales, we have never really been able to figure out true attribution: what was the single impact of one marketing interaction with the customer that made them buy?
In fact, for the most part we have no clue. All we know is the mix we have today and its results, and we'll have to compare it with alternative mixes and their results, and even then the combination can have a stronger impact than attributed to a single campaign. Some call it 50% of your marketing spend might as well be thrown out the window. To me, this makes it an art, as much as a science.
You can’t measure everything. You just can’t.
I’m a numbers guy. I like ROI, I like cause and effect, I like demonstrating results and weening out the weak or failed initiatives. But not everything is cut and dry like that.
Gary Vaynerchuk gets asked to quantify the value of social media all the time. A few months ago, after one too many questions about the “ROI of social media”, he responded with, “OK, then what’s the ROI of your mother?”
She raised you right, fed you, gave you life lessons and values. How do you quantify that?
How do you justify the company holiday party? A customer holiday party? Spending a little extra to hire a magician to walk around and entertain your guests?
Not everything is going to be black and white, or as measurable as we want. Sometimes it’s just right. The numbers guy in me hates that ambiguity, but that’s just the way it is.
I agree 100% with Matt's view point. The problem with social media is that so many "intangible" factors come into play! That's why; none of the available social media analytics tools can serve as a reliable indicator of your SMM ROI.
Your best bet is to follow what Jay Baer calls "Correlation". This concept allows to you drive a relationship between specific social media activity and your ROI. If there's a recurring pattern of more conversions with the same activity, then you can conclude that this activity contributes to your ROI and vice versa. You are still not aware of the exact How's and Why's but it's quite enough to know that something is working to keep doing it.
I hope this helps! Good luck :)
In continuation to my previous answer, there is a wide variety of KPIs (key performance indicators) that can give you a rough estimate of the effectiveness your social media marketing campaign. There is no golden rule for choosing metrics. Your best bet is to think long and hard of the top 3 most important metrics for your business and focus on them. For Garious, traffic, conversions and social reach are the key metrics that we focus on among others.
Jay Baer beautifully summed up and categorized the different SMM measurement metrics in this presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/jaybaer/the-6-step-process-for-measuring-social-media
I am sure this presentation will be a give you a solid foundation for designing your own SMM measurement strategy. Please check it out and let me know what you think. Good luck :)
We measure the ROI of a social media campaign in several ways. 1.) metrics available for that platform, ie on Linkedin it would be profile views, profile searches, connection requests, interactions with postings, group membership. 2.) Traffic increase - ISP statistics, Alexa rankings, Google Analytics, Blog subscriptions. 3.) Social Awareness - Social Mention, Klout, Google Alerts. 4.) The most important ROI is the number of new clients developed from social media.
I do agree that it is difficult to truly measure the effectiveness of a social media campaign just as it is difficult to measure the effectives of any traditional media campaign, but if the client isn't seeing new business within 6 months something is wrong.
The sole purpose of marketing is to get more people to buy more of your product or service, more often, for more money. That is the only reason to spend a single, dollar, loonie, yen, euro. If your marketing is not delivering paying customers to the cash register with their wallets in their hands ready to buy your product or service, don’t do it.
That is why we focus on calculating Return On Marketing Investment - check out how we do it http://www.inboundsales.net/blog/bid/37460/It-s-about-Revenue-not-Vanity
I recently wrote a feisty rejoinder to the ROI question and the challenge it often implies. Here's a link for folks who might want to check it out:
The Social Media ROI Challenge: What it Really Means (and 7 Related Faulty Assumptions)
http://www.sminorgs.net/2012/01/the-social-media-roi-challenge-what-it-really...
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