Recently a client asked us how to measure the success of social media campaigns. This client is in the early stages of planning Facebook pages, Twitter, blogs and forums initiatives.
There’s a great quote about measuring social media from Avinash Kaushik of Google Analytics…
“Social media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it’s finally done there is surprise it’s not better.”
Social Media is in its adolescence. Fortunately, we are all moving beyond explaining what it is to examining how it can deliver on its promise. If you pay attention and have the right tools, you can track, report and analyze your brand’s perception on twitter, facebook, blogs etc.
Every marketer wants a measurable return on their marketing investment. Yes we want profits, sales and leads but one should remember that it’s the combination of the little marketing pieces that will get you there. So before we start thinking about “how” to measure we should first determine “what” to measure.
Keep it simple, start with just a few of your company’s inadequacies that if improved, would have a positive effect on your bottom line. Perhaps it’s reducing customer support calls, building customer loyalty, or employee retention. Once you’ve defined the metrics, work with your interactive agency to create campaigns that, if successful, will achieve your goals. Insist on A/B testing and frequent reporting especially in the early stages of your campaign. Be prepared to stay flexible, move with the conversations – contribute to them and adjust your metrics if your customers are screaming about the unexpected.
In a recession, we are all under pressure to produce results so lets get back to the question, “how do we measure…?” The good news is there are an enormous number of tools out there and plenty of lists linking to them. It reminds me of the early days of the internet when there was an overabundance of web analytics tools until Google acquired Urchin in 2005 and the entire sector consolidated.
Here are a few free tools that you should start with:
Facebook Lexicon (track your Facebook presence)
Google Alerts (find out when you are in the news)
Compete (compare website traffic with your competitors)
Alexa (similar to Compete)
Virtue (compare your brands social media activity to others)
SearchTwitter (search all mentions of you on Twitter)
Tweetbeep (similar to Google Alerts but with Twitter)
TweetGrid (Real-time Twitter dashboard for following topics)
Backtype (share and follow yourself )
Boardtracker (track your brand on forums and bulletin boards)
Trendrr (social and digital media tracking)
Social Mention (search yourself across all media)
There are tons of paid and professional tools out there too, so please share your best tools or social media experiences with us. Here are a couple bloggers that have generated nice lists:
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