How to Measure Results from Social Media Ads, Efforts
When evaluating various metrics and tools for tracking social media, what should marketing and communications professionals look for?
First, know what you want to measure. The most complex tools in the world won't do you any good if they don't measure what your business needs to measure. So start with that.
Second, look for tools that simplify your job rather than complicate it. If you can find one tool that measures everything you want to measure, invest in it. The alternative may seem cheaper on the front end, but the amount of work required to manage several tools and a dozen separate data sets may end up costing you more in labor and headaches.
Should putting the proper tracking mechanisms in place come before trying out new social-media strategies/activities?
From a business-management standpoint, sure. You want to establish baselines for your activities to track resource use, progress and changes (to eventually determine the specific successes and failures of your social-media activities).
From a program-management and execution standpoint, however, the launch of a social-media program should typically begin with a discovery plan whose goal is to simply learn how to listen.
Social-media programs should never start with the creation of content or active engagement or anything "outbound." That comes later.
What are the three most common mistakes you see companies make when trying to measure the effect or value of their social-media efforts?
- Focusing too much on digital measurement. Sure, social media seems to live in the digital space, but digital is just the medium. The relationships, the engagement, the consumer behaviors, these things exist in the real world, as well.
- Not understanding the difference between nonfinancial impact and financial impact. Nonfinancial impact is a precursor to ROI. For example, 1,000 net new daily visitors to a Web site attributed to Facebook fans is of immense value to the digital team, but unless these new visitors transact as a result of their visit (or their recommendations result in a transaction), the value of that traffic is limited (and irrelevant to the sales manager). So the difference between the value of a program and the financial value of a program are often not clearly delineated within an organization.
- Not establishing clear goals and objectives when launching a social-media program. "Engagement," "increasing brand awareness" and "having more conversations" are not real objectives. Soft goals create soft strategies. Soft strategies turn into weak tactics. Weak tactics turn into bogus metrics. The more specific the goals, the more likely it is that organizations will see real (and quantifiable) results every month, quarter and beyond.
-- Article courtesy of SmartBrief on Social Media Senior and written by editor Mary Ellen Slayter as an abridged version of her recently conversation with Olivier Blanchard, a brand strategist with 15 years of marketing-management experience across a variety of B2B and B2C industries. The full text of the interview is available at SmartBlog on Social Media.
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