Measuring Social Media
More often than not when meeting with a new client I am asked questions surrounding Social Media ROI or Return on Investment. Potential clients who are unfamiliar with social media as a form of lead generation, brand awareness, networking, research, or customer service platform are extremely skeptical and quick to ask the ROI question. While I understand that numbers are used to determine business success, social media is extremely hard to measure mainly because social media is in its infancy and has recently became a recognized form of business marketing within the last year. Much like in business, there are qualitative or soft benefits to social media like loyalty, trust, passion, interaction, and brand awareness among the clients, colleagues, and customers you interact and engage. Business owners understand that you can’t put a price on things like the smile on a customer’s face and social media is no different.
These qualitative factors, in addition to the fact that social media is extremely fragmented, make it difficult to provide tangible and measurable results.
Measuring quantitative success starts with business leaders having a clear and specific strategy with measurables in mind and that starts with business leaders having an understanding of social media. When determining these measurables, I recommend that business professionals consider the following:
- Define your metrics and what success looks like with many stair-stepped goals along the way.
- Ignore metrics like number of followers.
- Focus on relationship building with influencers and buzz marketing.
- Keep detailed records of touches and brand mentions.
- Record web traffic, retweets, and number of mentions or links.
Keep in mind that driving web traffic on social media is only half the challenge in selling a product or service. How you determine your social media success largely depends on your organization’s culture, industry, and ultimate goal within the space. Creating value and differentiating your product or service using online marketing and social media can help.
Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is an author, new mother, and human resources professional with a passion for recruiting and all things social media. Her company, Xceptional HR provides businesses with social media, recruitment, and human resources strategy and consulting. Jessica’s upcoming book, Tweet This! Twitter for Business will be released in February 2010. Follow Jessica on Twitter, LinkedIn, & FaceBook.
