On InnovationSocial Media Metrics - Measurement is Critical
Irfan Kamal July 11th, 2008
There are some brilliantly creative uses of social / conversational media - desktop apps, conversation monitoring, customer service programs, word of mouth and buzz creation services, facebook and myspace apps and games (to name a few) - that could potentially be very helpful for a brand seeking to expand its presence online and gain market insights.
From the perspective of a brand manager, marketing manager or agency seeking to maximize the value of their company’s /client’s marketing budget, however, it’s very important to understand how to allocate funds. What metrics make sense to use for allocation optimization?
Here are some suggestions based on popular social media objectives. A TNS Media Intelligence / Cymfony late 2007 phone survey of 71 marketing professionals in the US, Canada, the UK and France suggests that marketers generally have the following objectives for social media:
So, by objective, here are some suggested metrics to consider. There could be many more, but - for comparison & optimization purposes - where possible, I include those that are most easily comparable to existing metrics used for other types of marketing and brand analytics.
Building brand awareness
- Brand recall (aided or unaided)
- Brand equity (use your company’s existing measure for comparability)
- Conversation* volume
- Home site/ brand micro-site / application page views, unique visits, time engaged, etc.
- (assuming brand advocacy is included) Net Promoter Score
Increasing purchase intent
- Despite the critical importance of this objective, the apparent 0% interest (at least among this survey group) in this as a credible social media objective makes purchase intent worth exploring in greater depth, so I’ll address purchase intent and social media in a separate, dedicated post
Increasing customer loyalty
- Measures of brand awareness, plus:
- Repeat purchase rate
- Tone of customer conversations
Launching a new product
- Measures of brand awareness, plus:
- Demographics of conversation participants
- Tone of conversation
- Volume of conversation
- Velocity of conversation
- Content of conversation
Enhancing corporate reputation
- Measures of corporate brand awareness
Gaining consumer insights
- Content of conversation (with demographic/media data)
*”conversation” here is defined broadly, to include all types of user participation in social media, including blogging, microblogging, video & audio user-created content, applications, reviews and ratings
- Case Study , Interview , Metrics , Social Media , Strategy
- Comments(4)
I’m very surprised at the zero response on purchase intent- is this an indicator that these managers simply don’t understand how to go about doing this in social media? Because, though we’re a social media company and have the utmost respect for keeping overt pitches in their place, I still view social media as an incredible way to increase purchasing intent. And this POV is borne out by the success of my own social media engagement. As a form of lead generation it doesn’t return quantity, however it returns incredibly well-qualified leads at a very reasonable cost per lead. These leads have a very high purchase intent for what we offer and I consciously pursue that.
Having said that, I have to add that respect for the conversation you’re entering (like this one) is critical and this requires skills that can be hard to find and costly- I suspect a really top notch Community Manager will become a very valuable employee going forward.
Statistically I’m curious: Is it really possible to have a zero response on a survey large enough to be accurate?
Martin,
I’m also surprised by those findings.
I’ve edited the entry to include the details of the survey sample (size, date & location).
I expect social media campaigns focused on influencing intent to purchase will grow in popularity, although the other objectives will remain important.
Irfan
There is also something else missing: Reputation Management.
Now that Google’s keyword tool gives total number of searches for a phrase I checked on ‘reputation management’ as I started seeing a lot action on that phrase in my Adwords account:
- Total number of searches in year ending June 1: 8100
- Total numberr of searches for month of June 08: 4000!
Talk about a concept moving into the limelight… this is why social media measurement is so critical. Things move much faster than any conventional search or market research can track.
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