SMCSYD: Measuring Social Media

Measuring Social Media
View more presentations from Jye Smith.

I’m actually really eager to hear from anyone who is having trouble measuring either the activity, results, or business case/ROI for social media — last night’s sell out audience really demonstrated a need and desire for more information on the topic – so please, if you have any questions at all, contact me and I’m more than happy to share my thoughts on where to start, continue or finish.

Best,
Jye

Presentation:

There’s only two things I want you to walk away with today, and here they are.

Always measure social media with context and understand that Search and Social influence one another

Now this may be simple, but it’s the simple things we need to remember.  It’s also important to remember that while measurement mightn’t be sexy, it is critical to the success and to demonstrating the success of social media.

The Lord of the Rings is about as long as every blog post stuck together. And Frodo and Sam sure had influence: the fate of the whole world.

Know your objective

Don’t bullshit anyone.  Businesses exist to make money. Do good things, and get paid to do good things. Be interesting.  But more importantly – have clear business outcomes to meet.  Whether you work in community management, PR, marketing or administration: your purpose exists – make people happy and make the business money.

Everyone in the Middle Earth knew they were after the ring. Destroy the ring and save the world.  Or for your competition: use the ring against those who are beneath you.  That was the outcome, the objective. Work together (whether good or evil, and we’ll get there).

Business Wide vs Department Lead Social Media

Have a clear strategy lead from the business team at hand: but don’t forget it’s still about your customer, not the person with the loudest blog.

The fellowship was created because they all held significant roles – but they all wanted to achieve the greater goal.  They were greater from the sum of their parts. Put away your ego.

Know what your success looks like

What is success? Make sure you understand what you value. And if you’re doing good work – then demonstrate it.  If you can’t articulate what you’re doing – then how can you value it?
For PR companies: make sure you know why the blogs you reach are important. A good blog measure could be (1) inbound links (2) average comments per post (3) average # of commenter’s per post and (4) avg views per post.

Sam knew Frodo and the ring were both important: they were the campaign here.  Sam knew he had to save Frodo, so Frodo could save the world.  He knew why he was important, because he’d listened to Gandalf. He understood his role and he was willing to sacrifice to meet the outcome.

Measure the right and useful stuff, with the right tools

I don’t know what the tools are going to look like in 6 months – but I still know what I need to measure.  Yes, we’d consider using both BuzzNumber and or Dialogix. And we use up to 12 different tools depending on what the client values and wants to measure. I learned so much more joining the switched on team because their search guys knew so much about reporting from SEM and SEO.

With Trivett Harley-Davidson, it was converting traffic from Twitter to booking Test Rides, with PayPal it was converting ticket sales.

Golem was the way. Not for the whole journey. Only for part of the journey – but that’s OK. Sam was rightfully wary, but without Golem, then they’d surely perish

How to measure with context

Identify what you are measuring, and why you are measuring: and make sure that social media activity leads to a business outcome.  Focus on the relationship between social media activity and business outcomes – and your measurements will be useful.

These are the steps we take to determine how to measurement engagement, influence or what ever you want to call it – it comes back to measuring whether we’re reaching a business outcome.  Look at success, understand what it is. Understand why you want to get there. Ensure it’s meeting the business outcome. THEN decided how you’re going to measure it. 4 steps here – no more, no less.

They needed to get to Mount Doom. Why? To destroy the ring. The business outcome is to save the world. How is final step – use Golem, use the Fellowship.

Understand Search

Last social media club session, Mark Pollard articulated the future. That search will ultimately be influenced by social.  If you or your client doesn’t understand search, then start learning. It is continuing to be one of the most important areas of online.  Start basic, and always remember the basics around inbound links, page ranks, authority etc.

Social and Search Influence One Another

1. Stimulus: We all hear about some ring with awesome power
2. Search: We go see what we can find out about the ring via the Goog’
3. Found: Social articles with good page rank Other articles
4. Social: We tell our friends, write in our blogs

We’re going to do a full workshop on search and social because its so involved.  Contact us to find out more.

In other words; Gandalf knew much about the ring, told Frodo.  Frodo needed to find out more, found out the important pieces and recruited a fellowship.  Then he saved the world.

Social influences search: measure how this affects outcomes

We looked at how this works as a shape. Because shapes can help you remember stuff. Now, this shape isn’t social media in its entirety, nor is it all of digital. It simply demonstrates how we think search and social interact with one another and how they affect the business outcomes.

Whenever looking at social media remember your audience is the leader, driving your business outcome. Understand what the right things are to measure, and how search and social influence one another.

The Relationship between Social Media activity and business outcomes

This is all about measuring ‘engagement’ and everyone wants a definition of engagement. I think a better way of looking at it, is measuring the business outcomes fueled by social media activity.

5 Tips to Measuring Social Better

1. Understand what your business outcomes are
2. Identify and measure SM activity leading to outcomes
3. Report/analyse all relevant social media activity regularly
4. Understand your search and how it influences your social
5. Compare and analyse search and social data

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 09:52 and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.