A few weeks back we published an introduction to the 6 Pillars of Digital Business – an over arching strategy for online success. As a follow up to that post we are providing our readers with a guide to tracking social media as part of your online marketing mix. The info-graphic below was designed by Araceli Perez a Consultant in our Barcelona office and translated by Ollie Cochrane.
Are you measuring your social media activity correctly?
If you have any suggestions or ideas to add to this guide then feel free to comment below!
Philip Sheldrake Ð 17 August 2011 12:42 #
Hi Rob,
I commend your info-graphic in trying to clarify how social analytics might help organisations understand how well they’re doing online, but perhaps it’s a little too simplistic. For example, it might just be interpretted as a linear representation of the popular Plan Do Check Act sequence.
If I was to zoom in on one aspect in particular it would be the row with the three TVs asserting:
> define specific KPIs for social networks
> KPI objectives should be measurable
> Metrics should be in line with business goals.
These three steps raise a number of questions that, from my experience at least, present the trip points over which CMOs and Heads of PR stumble as they go through their “trough of disillusionment” with social media. For example:
1. Why should I define a KPI for a social network before ascertaining whether participation in that social network is good for business?
2. Rather than the metrics being “in line with business goals”, shouldn’t the goals some how inform or even dictate metric selection?
3. How does any KPI at the coal face (eg, number of retweets, friends, likes, +1s) relate to the achievement of my business objectives and the pursuit of the organisation’s vision?
As my fried Katie Delahaye Paine likes to say, ask “So what?” three times when faced with stats such as doubling retweets, tripling friends, quadrupling whatevermejigs. The respondent can usually find an answer to the first “So what?” but very rarely survives three in a row.
And as I like to say, I’ve yet to see a Chairman’s foreword in a company annual report that cites how pleased he/she is with the number of ‘likes’ the company has achieved.
Investment in communications (social media or otherwise) is an investment in an intangible asset. And intangibles only have meaning and value as part of a wider coordinated mix of investments.
I advocate an approach therefore that I call the Influence Scorecard that leans on the popular Balanced Scorecard approach for mapping strategy and optimising investment in an organisation’s human, information and organisational capital.
If anything, measuring the results of your social media strategy requires long-term, diligent and disciplined attention. It’s not simple.