Measuring Social Marketing & Media

Laura Patterson, president and cofounder of VisionEdge Marketing and author of Metrics in Action: Creating a Performance-Driven Organization, recently posted the following article on MarketingProfs.com. In it, she talks about how to measure social media and makes an interesting comparison to measuring PR. Here is an excerpt:

One possible approach is to measure your social media similar to how you measure public relations (PR) using outputs, outcomes, and business results as the basis of your framework. Why choose a framework similar to one used for PR? If you review the purpose of each—PR and social media—you can see that they are kissing cousins.

Public relations is about attempting to favorably influence the impressions and attitudes of a target audience primarily through endorsements (published articles, reports, reviews, etc.) by trusted, credible, objective third parties. Social media isn't very far afield from this idea when you consider that it is designed to have an impact on both engagement and influence through the participation and interaction of third-party networks and communities. They both rely on perceived trusted and credible third parties over which you have very little direct control.

Unlike other online media, you can't simply measure the value of social media in clicks or even audience size. Often, a direct-response model isn't the best approach in a social setting.

Think of it like this: Imagine you were at a party with some friends, friends of friends, and acquaintances. You're having a lovely conversation when all of a sudden someone breaks out a suitcase full of widgets, asking you if you'd like to buy them. Odds are, you'll just walk away and maybe even leave the party altogether. Imagine, though, that you're talking to some friends and someone mentions a great product they recently found. There's a pretty good chance you're going to ask more about it, look into it yourself, and perhaps ultimately buy the product. The company selling the product can't necessarily track your sale back to that party like they could had you purchased directly from the pushy acquaintance with the suitcase, but you're probably a more valuable consumer in the long run. They've managed to create demand without annoying potential buyers.

The challenge, of course, is how do you quantify that value if you can't measure it directly? Ms. Patterson's contention is that you could approach measurement similar to the way you value PR. You know it can help you, and you can measure audience size to some degree, but its very difficult to attach a specific revenue number to the effort.

You can read the full article here:
http://www.marketingprofs.com/8/measure-social-media-marketing-patterson.asp?sp=1