How do you Measure Social Media ROI?

It’s oh so typical that just when most of us start to feel pretty good about our knowledge and methods for measuring our own web sites, everyone starts asking us about what’s going on in the greater online space. Measuring communities, conversation, and social media is at once fascinating and absurdly challenging. The tools are primitive, the infrastructure almost non-existent, the questions largely undeveloped and even the business goals are poorly understood. It’s just like old times! So I’m delighted to be doing a webinar on measuring social media with my friend Scott Wilder.

Scott and I worked together for the last few years as he built-up Intuit’s impressive online communities. He’s that rarest of breeds – someone who uses social media and technology with true passion and combines that with real business acumen. Like lovers of ballet and football, neither one nor the other is particularly rare, but the two almost never to comingle!

Our plan for the webinar is to start with an examination of online communities and measurement. We’ll cover some of the basics of community measurement then dive into measurement based on both audience and organizational segmentation. This is interesting stuff. If you have or are thinking about a community, it should really help you understand how to measure your success. We also hope to provide some perspective on whether – if you are on the outside looking in – building a community is right for your business.

For many organizations, it’s cheaper and more practical to take the conversation to where your customers already live. The second part of the webinar will focus on the different uses of measurement in this broader online space. Scott and I will talk over how to find your audience online, how to measure the success of your brand-monitoring and customer support efforts, how to measure influencer programs, and how to track impacts on your own sites. Don’t expect miracles – this stuff is hard. But we’ll try to provide real solutions and along the way we’ll cover everything from old-school techniques like opinion research to new fangled tools like Radian6.

At this early stage in the game, it isn’t really sensible to talk about measurement without regard to strategy. Social Media strategies haven’t developed to the point where tactics are the primary focus of measurement. So our focus will be on how to use analytics to target your social efforts and establish whether you’re effective enough to continue.

For a take-way, we’re putting together a “Metrics Menu” that captures what we think are the most important types of measurement to focus on when you’re getting started.

Scott is the most effective and thoughtful strategist and practitioner in this space that I’ve yet encountered. I think you’ll really enjoy hearing him. If you’re thinking about a social marketing strategy or are responsible for social media measurement, do join us!

Comments

[Lauren Vargas]

Looking forward to the webinar. You are covering my favorite topic!

Lauren Vargas
Community Manager at Radian6
@VargasL

[Rudi]

Gary & Scott,

Great job on the webinar! It was both enjoyable and educational. I hope that you will continue to collaborate and produce more of these!

@rrs_atl

[social media applications]

Great article! This topic has come up multiple times in my conversations with business owners. Now I have a better way to explain it to them thank you very much.

[Matt]

This is by far one of the best and most in depth posts i’ve read in quite awhile about social media ROI and analytics.

Not to say that ROI can’t be measured, it can. It will take some of the old tactics such as surveys and asking “where did you hear about us” in order to measure lift and changes in behavior. Ironic that as the Internet evolves we may be making full circle where businesses at some level do have to make that leap of faith … at least on some marketing activities.

Cheers,
Matt