Every company, every marketer often dwells on the ROI for social media, and there's a popular misconception that relevant metrics are lacking. While it's true that standard metrics are evolving, there are many ways to measure the impact of social media on a company's marketing performance.
You can benchmark and track changes in the amount of conversations about themes or content relevant to your company. You can track the number of inbound links to the company's Web site or blog, and thus track your online influence. You can track the growth of engagement in the company's social media programs. You can track the increase in traffic to the company's Web site after engaging in social media programs. And of course, you can measure participation in cross-channel marketing programs simply by establishing tests against a control campaign without social media components.
What you are looking for is the beginning of a measurement dashboard and "report card" - a standardized data presentation that you can build and sustain, and that you and those on or around your team can use to direct the social media program.
Take a look at the fundamental metrics and how they relate to the elements of influence, engagement, and more. Starting with the most basic measurement - page views, click patterns, and referrers, for example - you can track and create a trend for unique visitors to the company's social content in the same way that you would do with any Web asset. Below is a chart that links together metrics that you very likely already have - or could have relatively easily - with the kinds of questions that are of particular interest to you as a marketer:
Metrics. . . |
Interpreted As. . . |
Answer these Questions: |
Page views, visitor info, blog mentions, click analysis, traffic patterns, referrers, bit.ly clicks | Who's reading, and what (unique) audiences and habits | Audience: Who is reading and what is being said? |
Time on site, blog context, review polarity | Memes and their intensity over time | Influence: What are people saying about your offer? |
Time on site, pass-alongs, comment-to-post ratio, blog mentions, reviews, bounce rates, re-Tweets | Items clicked onLength of stayConversational qualities | Engagement: How involved is your audience; how likely is your message to spread quickly as a result? |
Pass-alongs, conversions, reviews, inbound links | Conversions, actions taken in support of your objectives | Action Taken: What happened as a result of participation? |
Pass-alongs, blog mentions, time on site, bounce rate, new vs. returning visits | Trends: subscribers, repeat visitors, referrals | Loyalty: How likely are people to return and to refer what you offer to them? |
Many of the metrics you are likely to have at hand are related to both conversion and the number of people expressing intent versus the number who actually convert. Add to this direct observations of social media: reviews, increases in audience, recommendations, posts on Twitter, and similar social forums, all of which provide guidance in understanding the role that social media is playing in driving (or dissuading) conversion. Look to your Web and commerce analytics tools, your reviews or review platform, and of course the company's Google Analytics to determine trends over time.
Don't let the pressure for accountability turn ROI into a barrier against innovation. There may not be a ready-made dashboard to filter up top-line metrics to your C-level management, but that doesn't mean relevant measurements are not available. Get involved in defining what business outcomes are relevant for your social media program, and look for ways to measure progress toward the goal.
You should never move off the starting mark without clear and measurable business goals. Measurability doesn't always mean revenue, but that's always a good place to start.
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