Social Media Marketing

Metrics

Measuring the cost effectiveness of social media is difficult; knowing what to measure and how to measure it are two of the biggest dilemmas within social media marketing. SMM is more aligned with public relations than traditional marketing in that social media marketing is primarily based in interactions, not quantifiable metrics. However, ROI can still be counted in terms of visitors, click throughs and many of the same metrics used for websites. It is important to also implement other metrics that are more qualitative in nature, such as the number of new ideas generated, customer comments and overall participation within a social community.

Since social media is relatively new to the world of business analytics, determining a dollar amount to account for ROI can difficult with social media. Many people are just becoming familiar with social media; they may or may not understand the purpose of an RSS feed or know why they should become a fan of your Facebook page. With social media, the ROI is based more in value than monetary terms. You can count the number of new “friends” within a certain timeline to determine a quantitative measure; however, you can also analyze the participation level (i.e., posting a product review, offering advice to another community member, etc.) of those “friends” within the same timeline to gain a qualitative measure of audience participation.

To quantitatively measure the effectiveness of social media programs, you can utilize tools such as Google Analytics, Feedburner, Xinu and AideRSS. Some programs, such as the WordPress blogging application, have metrics built into the application. For applications built into the company’s website, appropriate tracking measures will need to be included in the programming. These metrics will provide a quantitative baseline to begin determining ROI. Qualitative metrics will need to be determined prior to launching the application and be based on each social media outlet being used and the objective(s) to be achieved within that particular outlet. For example, a blog will require a different value scale than re-tweets on Twitter. An RSS feed will generate a different value than a new fan/friend on Facebook.

Many of social media outlets are provided for free or at a minimum charge. Some tools offer additional or upgraded widgets and metrics that may be added on for additional costs. Overall, the primary costs associated with social media are the sweat equity and personnel time used to maintain, participate and train others in the social media sphere.

Overall, measuring the effectiveness of a social media campaign will be difficult and sometimes non-traditional. Throughout the year, the applications used may need to be analyzed and repositioned to accommodate for evolving online trends and emerging qualitative metrics.