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Measure what matters when it comes to social media

Just read a great eMarketer interview with Nationwide’s Director of Social Media, Shawn Morton.  Check out this quote from Shawn on social media measurement:

“Social media and digital are really easy to measure, but we don’t always know what the values are. You can easily count clickthroughs. You can easily count Facebook fans. You can easily count Twitter followers. But until you put a value on those, as a company, or sometimes for a specific campaign, they can be difficult to evaluate.”

Bingo.  The same thing we were talking about when we discussed fixing a broken social media strategy.  If you are going to measure Twitter followers and use it as a way to quantify the success of your efforts, then you’d better have a internal value attached to each Twitter follower.

Pretty interesting interview with Shawn (who’s a great guy, BTW), so check it out!

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About Mack Collier

My name is Mack Collier and I am a digital marketing and content strategist located in Alabama. Since 2006 I've helped companies of all sizes from startups to global brands such as Adobe, Dell and Ingersoll-Rand, create customer-centric programs, content and experiences. A long-time internet geek, I've been online since 1988 and began using social networking sites in 1991 when I joined Prodigy. Today, I help companies understand how new technologies like web3, crypto and artificial intelligence can integrate with existing marketing strategies to lead to exceptional customer experiences.

Comments

  2. Sankar says

    Dear Mack

    Thank you for bringing out the topic of measurement often. I believe any social media/co-creation strategy should start with such measurement goal in mind.

    In my understanding, I think that instead of going by just the number of fans, followers, friends, a company has, it would be practical and logical to understand their level of participation.

    Just to give you an example, if we are going to find out the success of Starbucks’s the Betacup challenge, we can see how many have read/viewed/tweeted/bloged about it – first level of participation, and how many have become registered members and reviewed others ideas, (this denotes a higher level of participation), and how many have actually proposed new ideas (obviously, a higher level of participation).

    Thank you

    • Mack Collier says

      Sankar, love your thought process on levels of participation and engagement. I think it does two things:

      1 – Points out that something as simple as reading a blog post denotes engagement. I think we can sometimes forget that.

      2 – It clarifies that there are different levels of engagement. And this can help a company solidify exactly what their goals are for social media, and gives them a framework for reaching the desired level of engagement.

      Great comment, Sankar, I think I may use this comment as the basis for a post on this subject. I’ll link to your site when I do, of course 😉

  3. Sankar says

    Hi Mack

    I am happy that you consider the HOPE concept making sense to you. I agree that a comment to a blog post also shows a sense of commitment people have for the idea. The whole thing is part of what I am trying to package as P6 framework. http://www.younomy.com/insights.html.

    Looking forward to enjoy reading your writings, as ever. Many thanks.

  4. Kristofer Mencák says

    Hi,

    I totally agree that we need to put a value on fans, followers, likes, tweets, blog posts read as well as the higher levels of engagement. It is only when we do that, when we have real dollar values on our efforts that we can say what works and what doesn’t. And we can compare it with other marketing activities.

    Also, let’s not forget that in the end we still need to sell more through our efforts making fans, getting likes and comments, or registered users. This also needs to be measured and evaluated of course.

    Thanks for the post!