Tips and Tools for SM Measurement

Jeremy Liebman @JLiebman, Alex Strack @AlexStrack, and Saramaya Weissman @SaramayaFaye managed the Twitter conversation in today’s SSM #J412 class with 125 class tweets from 20 contributors from the SOJC and Eugene/Portland communities.  We welcomed @NickWBennett, who suggested using http://twitalizer.com as a measurement tool, and @AmandaIp from Fred Meyer who said that, “Customer satisfaction is our focus.  We measure by evaluating how their opinions/attitudes change because of our interaction.”

Accompanied by a company pitch from @CustomrConnect1, we started the class defending that social media can in fact be measured, and continued discussing the importance of it.  Although measurement is often ambiguous, it’s important to show how successful your efforts are.

Ways to measure interest include Web traffic, page views, click-thrus, blog mentions, downloads, Twitter followers, and Facebook friends.  When measuring attitudes, it’s important to pay attention to the tonality of comments and posts, inclusion of key messages in content, the share of conversation, measurement of relationships, and the number of “likes” via Facebook.  When measuring social media actions pay attention to interactions, revenue raised, items sold, purchase intent, new sales leads, and subscribers.

@Stadler_CJ helped stimulate the conversation about the seven steps to social media measurement when asking, “Is it just a template you can follow or do you have to understand it?”  @Jecondon and @Courtney_Larson added to the presentation slideshow when expressing their views and questions in relation to social media measurement.

@Aseits quoted @KMatthews, “Define your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) carefully because you become what you measure.”  What can you measure?  Look at cost savings, efficiency, productivity, engagement, trust, thought leaderships, and message penetration.

You shouldn’t only try to get people to your site, but focus efforts on getting them back to your site, too.  Look at posted comments, visitors, and repeat visitors to measure site engagement.

Final recap and top tips of today’s Twitter conversation: Learn what is the objective, what metric you are finding out, and what tool you are using to measure.  Learning there are “27 types of conversation,” that you’ll always have an opportunity cost, and the ways to effectively measure social media – you will ultimately learn how to consider what you want changed in your organization a year later.

Tagged key performance indicators, measurement, measuring attitudes, measuring interest, social media actions, social media measurement, types of conversation