"Tracking the Influence of Conversations: A Roundtable Discussion on Social Media Metrics and Measurement" authored by Jeremiah Owyang, formerly with Podtech.net and soon to be with Forrester, and Matt Toll, with Dow Jones, begins the dialog about how an organization can effectively measure the value and marketing effectiveness of social media.
As collaborative Web 2.0 technologies continue to be introduced and proliferate the consumer and business environment, we are seeing increased interest and discussion about the value of social media tools - blogs, podcasts, videoblogs and social networking sites. But how important are these conversational vehicles, really, to overall buying decisions? How can organizations join in these conversations, and influence product-service evaluations and purchasing behavior?
The key to remember is that social media is about having two-way conversations, and that previously powerful obstacles between a seller and target customers are being removed with tools are simple as blogs. All of a sudden, information can be disseminated (locally to globally) in a heartbeat via some combination of social media.
For the findings below, about 30 marketers, bloggers and social media experts gathered together and came up with these measurement attributes:
- Analytics and Activity: Focused on traditional measurement elements like page views, unique site visitors, etc.
- Community Activation/Call to Action: Are recipients reacting to some call to action message?
- Conversation Index: The ratio between blog posts and comments-plus-trackbacks.
- Demographic/Who: Understanding who is responding to the message - who is reading, watching, talking, and for how long?
- Influential Ideas (Memes): The intensity or velocity of the spread of an idea or message over time - answering the question, who is creating a real dialog? (Bloggers and marketing consultants placed the most value on this metric)
- Participation and Engagement: Responding, and acting, on the message. (Corporate marketers placed the most value on this metric)
- Reach: Has less to do with sheer numbers and more with who you are influencing.
- Relationships and Connections: The concept of influence in a specific target community is growing in importance as small communities form and niche conversations start in every industry.
- Relevance: How relevant is a specific blog post to a given company.
- Sentiment/Tone: Tone-flavor of any given response.
- Content: Intrinsically linked to the focus of a given social media platform.
One interesting finding was that traditional Web analytics placed very low as a metric - suggesting that social media is relevant in ways different from traditional online marketing. "Reach" also was ranked very low, suggesting that forming closer relationships was more highly valued.
Although the group did not determine or endorse any particular standard method of measurement, they all acknowledge the pressure they experience to validate their investments in social media marketing. Clearly, this particular dialog has just begun.
Shivonne Byrne, Innuity CMO