Week 8 – Social Media Measurement

“The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.” - George Bernard Shaw

The debate continues on what model (if any) can measure the effectiveness of marketing/ advertising. The challenge is that we first need to figure out what we need to measure. AllBusiness warns us: “Advertising is not an exact science. There's no precise way to measure the success of an ad campaign.” And while we're trying to figure things out, (quite annoyingly) the world continues to shift in its habits, mechanisms and the factors that influence consumer/ audience behaviour. The one good thing is: rate of change in technology is somewhat helping come up with new tools and services to facilitate measurement of various factors – these are our clues. And enough clues exist about the potential of social media's effectiveness to achieve some goals. So like good investigators, we take the clues, blend them well with expertise/ caution/ intelligent analysis, and produce the 'smoothy' answer to our whodunnit (i.e. what did the trick to help achieve our objectives, or not).

The process for measuring social media effectiveness is similar to any systematic cause-and-effect based activity. Answering a series of questions, thoughtfully and methodically, and acting on the answers with discipline is a time-tested technique. Works as well for weight-loss or personal financial management as for measuring social media effectiveness:

Pre-experiment:

1. What do I want to accomplish? (objectives)

2. How will I know when I've done it? (SMART success targets/ metrics; measurement mechanisms)

3. Where am I now? (baseline or starting measurement)

4. How do I get to where I want to be? (strategy and plan)

Post-experiment:

1. Are we there yet/ how far am I? (final or interim measurement)

2. Are my measurements reliable? (intelligent analysis)

3. How strong is the relationship between my strategy and my outcomes? (ditto)

4. What else/ what more do I need to do? (refine objectives, strategy, plan, tool selection, analysis... or my favourite: do nothing!)

While each step is important (and many have sub-steps), the significance of #2 and #3: understanding the data and strengths/ weaknesses of tools in piecing together the story cannot be over-stressed. Many a distorted number has led to many a distorted decision.

If all this is making you go “but where's the social media in this long diatribe”... well, there are two general paths in life. There's the “fly by the seat of one's pants” way. By definition, the method (or lack thereof) is unique to each situation and therefore as “tinglingly” (my word) exciting as a new romance. So fans of this philosophy may induce in me a heart-flutter and, at times, envy (because it can and sometimes does work). But this path of life has not yet gotten my followership (snacking habits notwithstanding).

And then there is the Stephen Covey way. He gave us 7 principles of highly effective people. Not 7 adventures or 7 short-cuts. But 7 principles. This method decreases the heart flutter, and increases the likelihood of repeatedly producing desired results. The process outlined above for measuring social media effectiveness is also a principle-based approach, therefore it is not specific to social media, and doesn't sound very flashy or exciting. When it's our clients' or audience's money on the line though, I'd rather decrease my heart flutter, and theirs.