Under Development: A Social Media Measurement Model

How do you visualize your social media measurement and reporting?

As social media becomes more widely accepted as a business tool, organizations embracing the medium are slowly becoming more adept at creating content and engaging with their audiences. The next step for organizations that are comfortable with the content side of things is the development of a strategy and tactics to measure the performance of their social media activity.

The following model is a work in progress that aims to build on a social media measurement framework developed by John Lovett and Jeremiah Owyang. Here are some notes about the model components:

• Business Goals – In order for data extracted from a measurement initiative to be useful or effective it needs to connect back to the business objectives of your organization.  These will vary by company and situation – but there are a handful of goals that are universal to most businesses or non profits. These include optimizing marketing programs, generating revenue , cutting costs, building brand equity and developing new ideas, products or services. For more information about the goals that I’ve included in this model check out the Social Media Measurement Compass in a report about social media analytics by the Altimeter Group.
• Metrics – These are the general measurement categories for each objective. For example, under marketing optimization, one common metric would be  Awareness.
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) – For each metric, list relevant performance indicators. For example, for the Awareness metric above one KPI could be Reach.
• Channel KPIs – Because each social media channel uses different analytics to measure performance it’s important to identify which unique KPIs will be measured for each platform. Continuing with the example above, channel KPIs for Awareness >> Reach could be as follows:

        Facebook – Total reach.
        Twitter – Potential reach, effective reach.
        Blog – Page views
        Youtube – Views

The most important steps in the measurement process takes place AFTER you collect your KPI data:

1. Establishing effective ways to report social media performance data so that information is easy to digest, understand and act upon.
2. Building time to analyze social media measurement reports into your social media workflow.
3. Using data to help inform decisions about social media activity in order to develop new program or improve existing efforts.
4. Acting on insights in order to achieve business objectives.

Do you have a social media measurement program in place? What metrics and KPIs are you tracking? The comments are yours.

by Mark Smiciklas
http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/