Student Blog Posts

Beneficial Measurement on Social Media, But Need Opportunity Costs

May 27, 2010 by SSM Student in Student Blog Posts with 2 Comments

Can you measure your daily conversations? Or, do you want to measure your conversations on social media like Facebook or Twitter? Organizations may sometimes want to measure how often their conversations on social media take place, and you may personally want to know as an individual how much the comments are stack up on social media. But people may not try to do so because they think it seems difficult to measure people’s attitudes on social media because they cannot read body languages or tone of voice.

One of the best ways to measure conversations is Conversation Index. The formula is comments and trackbacks divided by the number of posts.

According to the Social Media Group (SMG), the Conversation Index will help organizations and people analyze the current market situation, identify influencers, rank influencers by reach and influence, and measure the number of influencer comments. Also, compare.com helps people to compare up three brands and measure the share of conversation.

But just be careful.

Social media is not free. Although it is almost free to use them and implement the measurement, you have to pay opportunity costs! It usually takes time to do something else, especially when you are doing what you have not done yet. In this case, you would try to implement the Conversation Index to measure your organization’s social media conversation or measure by yourself. It may take much more time your than you imagine, and that is your opportunity cost.

In case you will try to introduce something new like the measurement on social media, you have to weigh the benefits and costs in the balance. When considering, your organization may want to understand AIDA pyramids and define and evaluate what is important to your stakeholders.

Seiga Ohtani is a journalism student at the University of Oregon, focusing on news reporting and being interested in photojournalism. Follow him on Twitter @SeigaOhtani and connect on LinkedIn.

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2 Comments

kmatthewsMay 27, 2010 at 3:06 pm

New from SSM: Beneficial Measurement on Social Media, But Need Opportunity Costs http://dlvr.it/1GF4J #J412

This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Rob ClarkMay 28, 2010 at 10:08 am

I’m a senior analyst with Social Media Group and the developer of our Conversation Index.

I just wanted to clarify a couple of points in your article. The ratio you mention (comments to posts) is actually Stowe Boyd’s idea of how to measure the effective health of a community. A blog with a low ratio is one that is not likely to thrive. A blog with a high ratio would have a thriving community.

This is an excellent measure of engagement, and one that anyone with a blog should be keeping an eye on. However our Conversation Index is a bit more encompassing.

First – our process allows companies to identify who their key influencers are. Monitoring these voices in your vertical can provide insights and give rise to opportunities that may not have been accessible otherwise.

Second – our process gives a meaningful share of voice, by ranking the importance of each post in the context of the brand. Which pie are you looking at to determine the slice of your brand’s share? Compare against the entirety of the internet and even the most global of brands become mere slivers in the waves of information.

Third – over time, our process allows you to see just where and how the needle moved in terms of the conversation around your brand.

You are right that this requires a commitment of resources and time. But it is important to remember that if you don’t measure, you can’t manage. You need the right data in order to enact the right strategies. The costs of acting on bad or no data far outweigh what it takes to get the proper lay of the land.

-Rob Clark
http://disclz.me/RobClark