S(M-cubed): Social Media Marketing Metrics -
Metrics, Metrics, Everywhere, But Which to Use?
MarketingCharts has a good write up on a report issued by Paul Gillin, author of The New Influences. The good news for Social Media Marketers is that SMM tools continue to see strong adoption, with blogs and online video leading the pack. The bad news, however, is that there is little consensus on how to best measure their effectiveness, the absence of which makes calculating consistent, reliable ROI numbers impossible. Rather than questioning whether social media lacks strong metrics, I think we should rephrase the question, beginning with What are my organization’s goals with SMM campaigns? Defining campaign goals upfront can provide the framework needed to effectively measure SMM.
Why Are Organizations Employing Social Media?
*graph is from the report
Re-framing the Metrics Issue
As David Harry pointed out (he is referenced in a previous post), Social Media campaigns can be qualitative or quanitatively focused. That said, campaigns should clearly be designed with specific outcomes in mind based upon the business you are in. Lets examine media based and retail based businesses for example.
Media Based Businesses
Traffic and authority are paramount in media based businesses, and as such, efforts to distribute content and acquire an audience are of the utmost importance. I would think the SMM metrics here are fairly standard: Search Engine Ranking, Unique Visitors, Pageview Per Visit, and Engagement Metrics (length of time spent on site, etc). How many visits from the social bookmarking/networking tools have you received? How many of those individuals returned to the site? How may signed up for RSS Feeds? How may commented? Ultimately, if you are selling on a CPM basis, how many impressions are your SMM efforts collectively generating? Social Media Marketing is just another tool to drive (a) traffic to your media properties, (b) increase engagement, and (c) ultimately obtain more advertising and/or affiliate dollars.
Retail Based Businesses (Online Sales)
Retail based concerns are sales-driven, and therefore rely heavily upon PPC, SEO, and offline promotional tactics. The cost to obtain a new sale (from new and existing customers) should be less than the cost to manufacture and market the product. That is just business 101. The key benefit to retailing outfits, particularly small and independent outfits is in the interactivity blogging and online video provide. By establishing themselves as experts on the goods sold, and by remaining close to the customer, identifying and capitalizing upon trends are easier (first order benefits). Second-order benefits come back to PPC/SEO based items. A well designed, informative, *fun* blog that regularly attracts readers through SEO & Feedburner subscriptions can act as a substitute for more expensive PPC based approaches. They can lower the average cost per sale.
So why can’t we use conventional metrics?
I will leave my readers with a question. If SMM ultimately provides higher quality, more likely to convert traffic, why can’t we simply roll SMM activities into the traditional online market metrics that matter most to our businesses?
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My name is Arpan and this is my blog! I'll be writing about things I find interesting, and hopefully some stuff that you might too. Some posts are intentionally controversial and are intended to provoke discussion. Don't be shy!
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