Social Media Metrics Secrets

John Lovett

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780470936276
• eBook ISBN: 9781118149027
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Business

Invaluable advice on analyzing and measuring the effects of social media

Do you wish you could sit down with an expert to figure out whether or not your social media initiatives are working? With Social Media Metrics Secrets, you can! Expert John Lovett taps into his years of training and experience to reveal tips, tricks, and advice on how to analyze and measure the effects of social media and gauge the success of your initiatives. He uses mini case studies to demonstrate how to manage social operations with process and technology by applying key performance indicators, and assessing the business value of social media.

• Highlights how social media can impact all aspects of your business and transform the way you quantify successful interactions with customers
• Shares innovative techniques for managing the massive volume of social analytics data by putting data to work in ways that contribute to your organizational goals
• Details techniques for adopting a Social Analytics Framework for understanding evolving consumer behavior necessary to compete in a socially networked future

Written in a conversational tone, Social Media Metrics Secrets goes behind the scenes to present you with unbeatable advice and unparalleled insight into social media metrics.

Part I: Addressing the Social Data Dilemma

Chapter 1: Going Pro with Social Media

Chapter 2: Riding the Social Data Wave: Churning Data into Information

Chapter 3: Activating Your Socially Connected Business

Chapter 1

Going Pro with Social Media

In This Chapter

• Demystifying social media measurement
• Making the digital transformation
• Incorporating social media must-haves
• Starting off with counting metrics

Welcome to the wonderful world of social media metrics! Social media has unquestionably entered the mainstream as consumers flock to jump on every social bandwagon, buggy, and freight train that drives past. This frenzied enthusiasm has helped the largest social networks to amass hundreds of thousands of users that rival the world’s most populous countries, while new platforms and channels emerge unabated. The early sparks of social media innovation have flourished into a raging inferno of opportunity for consumers and businesses alike.

These businesses include everyone from the largest global fortune 100 to the smallest mom-and-pop shop, who are winning and losing every day with social media. The losers are detached from their customers because they are unable to hear the

outpouring of ideas and feedback over the drone of their antiquated toiling. Conversely, the winners are tapping into consumer needs and wants and using social media as a method to:

• Increase their brand exposure
• Initiate dialogue with customers
• Generate interactions with their owned media
• Facilitate customer support
• Assemble legions of loyal advocates
• Spur corporate innovation
• Do much, much more

As consumers race to nascent social media channels, businesses are impelled to embrace the medium or risk losing their competitive edge. And most are electing to comply with the masses.

Research from numerous sources indicates that nearly 80 percent of organizations doing business today are using at least one form of social media for their marketing efforts. However, usage does not always include measurement, which leaves companies who deploy social media without measures of success effectively running blind. According to data from the Web Analytics Association, 35 percent of survey respondents cited measuring social media as the biggest challenge they will face in 2011. Among organizations in this group, nearly 65 percent are still planning to establish and implement social media Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in 2011—meaning that they haven’t deployed these measures yet. Thus, while social media is rampant, many organizations are still working to get their measures and metrics in place to quantify this powerful new medium. And hopefully, that’s why you’re reading, too.

Throughout this book, I will detail what it takes to measure the many facets of social media. I’ll introduce you to concepts that will allow you to construct a foundation for understanding the impact of your social media efforts. I’ll reveal the details behind social media metrics that go beyond just counting fans and followers to identifying real business value. I’ll offer methods to create a collaborative working environment whereby social media spans your entire organization. And I’ll help you elevate your social media game plan to truly benefit your business.

Going pro with social media requires a level of accountability that is only present with a program of measurement securely in place.

The secrets of social media metrics that I share will save you countless hours of time and frustration by allowing you to employ metrics that help identify social media activities that are critical to your business. Although the pages of this book hold many secrets and strategies to get you started on your way to a professional career in social media measurement, you are the key ingredient. By understanding what it takes to apply a holistic program of social media measurement, you can use social media as an instrument for success. Yet, make no mistake, it’s a big job, and there’s no shortcut to going pro with social media. Making the jump from amateur to professional requires not only the skills to go pro, but also extensive planning and preparation. Entering the world of social media as a professional means having a plan for success and the metrics to quantify it. It’s hard work, but the benefit of going pro is that you get paid. At the same time, social media is fun, exciting, and ever-changing. With the guidance and secrets offered in this book, you’ll be equipped to execute your social media endeavors with well-defined metrics that can accelerate your brand awareness, increase your customer pipeline, and elevate your bottom-line sales. So, if you’re ready and want to learn more, let’s go.

Demystifying Social Media Metrics

Almost since its inception, the entire genre of social media has mystified businesses and individuals alike. To many, it’s foreign, it’s ambiguous, it’s not exactly clear what social media is and what it isn’t. Confusion and bewilderment are common emotions evoked in businesses working to understand and participate in social media. And this makes measurement all the more challenging. Yet, making sense of measurement is what I do. Although I do not claim to be a social media guru, a shaman, a ninja, or a virtuoso by any account, I have built my professional career on measuring online properties. In fact, my business partner Eric T. Peterson wrote the original book called Web Analytics Demystified, and that’s the name of the consultancy that Eric founded where we both ply our trade today. Much of the knowledge that I have and the secrets that I share throughout this book emerged from my years as an industry analyst at the world’s leading research organizations; from what I learned from Eric about KPIs, metrics, and measurement; and from experiences with clients in my years of consulting. Thus, the secrets of social media measurement don’t come from guru-ism, but rather from diligence, experience, and hard work.

You’ll quickly see that I take a pragmatic approach to social media metrics, which is steeped in the fundamentals of measurement. To attempt to measure social media in any other way is akin to chasing the newest shiny object. All too often in my consulting practice, I encounter organizations that do just that. They approach social media as if it’s some kind of three-headed hydra that they’ve never encountered before. Although it may be true that they haven’t seen the specifics of the platform or the behaviors of their customers, social media is just another channel for your business and it should be treated as such. To approach it any differently creates an unwarranted mystique that typically needs to be unraveled before starting on the real work of measurement. Yet, with all this said, the “newness” of social media creates opportunities for organizations to deliver metrics, insights, and simply beautiful information that often slip through the grasp of many traditional digital measurement technologies.

Starting from a Solid Measurement Foundation

I can tell you with complete confidence that measurement can be simplified, but it’s not easy. It’s challenging because to measure effectively, you must not only understand the mechanics of the digital properties and be able to evaluate data with statistical rigor, but you must also comprehend the desired outcomes of your efforts from a strategic business point of view. These diametrically opposed skills require a balance of art and science in measurement. Finding individuals who have the technical chops for measurement along with the business acumen is exceedingly rare. What’s even more uncommon is finding an individual who has these qualities and the ability to effectively communicate results and findings to a wide range of stakeholders across an organization. These are rare skills indeed.

Thus, after spending the past decade focusing on online businesses and the art and science of measuring them, there’s one construct that I’ve identified that really works. We use this construct as a foundational element in our consulting practices at Web Analytics Demystified, and it has helped countless organizations to approach and understand digital measurement. It’s called the “Trilogy of Measurement,” and it includes People, Process, and Technology. Each of these elements is critical to building a solid foundation for digital measurement, and the absence of any single one can be debilitating. We’ve applied this trilogy to our consulting practice with great success because it offers the basic building blocks for any measurement effort. This is true for social analytics as well. Let’s take a look at each of the components within the “Trilogy of Measurement.”

Allocating People

People are your most important asset in any measurement initiative. Everything else becomes secondary if you don’t have people capable of creating measures of success, conducting analysis, and delivering insightful recommendations.

One of the most important secrets that I can share with you is that people are the most valuable asset in any measurement initiative. Although many businesses will look to technologies and tools as the panacea for their measurement woes, technology alone cannot deliver insights, nor can technology answer the tough questions about your social media programs. And it certainly cannot shape data into stories that resonate with the goals and aspirations of your business. These tasks require people. Metrics can help you to present the facts and communicate them in a way that transforms data from numbers on a page to meaningful recommendations for operating a successful business, yet metrics are not the endgame. The endgame is communicating across your organization about the successes (and failures) that you experience by participating in social media. The reality is that you will have failures, and the metrics you instill will help you to learn from them and to avoid them in future endeavors.

Additionally, the people responsible for measurement within your organization will hold the knowledge. Successful measurement programs have analysts who not only collect and analyze data, but also educate the business on the metrics that matter. People are the liaisons that translate business needs into meaningful metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). They also transcribe raw data from low-level metrics to business value. Yet doing all of these things requires that organizations recognize the value in the data and the analysts who make sense of it. Historically, the role of data analyst has been a thankless task that conjured up visions of statisticians crunching numbers with slide rules and pocket protectors. Yet, as data proliferates and digital channels become a mainstay for conducting business, measurers of digital media are gaining their rightful recognition. Organizations that are on the bleeding edge of innovation have voracious appetites for data, and their consumption is making them healthy with knowledge. As social media increases in importance for everyday business operations, the data that emerges from it and the measurers that create, manage, and analyze the metrics that arise will be the rainmakers within their respective organizations. It’s people who make this happen.

Building Process

Having the right people and adequate numbers of them is paramount to attaining success with your social media measurement endeavors. Yet, another critical secret that I’ll share with you is that no one individual can build a successful program of measurement singlehandedly. Measurement requires a chain of individuals because effective measurement originates from strategy, and then flows through a management process to operations; from there measurement is embedded within execution and evaluated across all stages of an initiative. The loop is closed when measurement surfaces back up at the strategic level and is assessed in terms of performance. This cycle is a continuous exercise that is made possible through process. Process dictates how measures are created, how they are socialized and shared, and how they’re implemented within an organization. Further, process ensures that all efforts are measured and that they support the strategic initiatives set forth by the organizations. Process makes measurement scalable and process brings together the appropriate stakeholders to ensure that programs can be evaluated in a business context.

The problem is that most businesses don’t have processes in place for measure...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Part I: Addressing the Social Data Dilemma
• Part II: Managing Social Media with Analytics
• Part III: Finding the Big Social Media Payoff
• Foreword
• Read This First