What stage is your social effort at?
Other companies are active in social media.
Where does it fit for your company?
Everybody says “begin with research”
Exactly what does that mean?
Not just about Yes or No
Creating a strong commitment company-wide
Building a goal oriented specific plan.
One that your CEO can summarize too.
Foresight beyond ideas to...
Ensuring all the key pieces are in place
Not just getting off the ground.
But getting up to speed as fast as possible.
Maintain efficiency and momentum.
Consistently aligning to the core plan.
You defined your company's social goals.
Now it's time to measure against them.
Defining your key metrics
The ways to measure social impact
Here are some key metrics we recommend and
provide to clients:
- Key messaging penetration levels
- Audience impressions numbers
- Message impression numbers
- Overall impression rates
- Conversion rates
- Comparative performance of messages and platforms
The value calculation
Set the expectation of business impact
Starting from the reasons why your company
pursued a social strategy, the reporting effort
should specifically answer the question:
Did we create the value that was sought?
As example, if the goal was to increase visibility on
a brand advantage of your company, then the
value reporting should give an indication of
impression rates for that message before and after
social programs were implemented.
Multi level reporting
Meaningful insights for the top and the middle
The art of roll-up reporting is something that we
mastered as C-level executives. We wanted a
near continuum of reporting detail to high level
summary so :
- our mid level managers could have actionable data
- while we (C-level) had a broad view and insights into ROI / business value
The same is both possible and critical for social
programs.
Why measure?
Defining the need for concrete results
Social marketing (unlike other platforms) offers
high returns -- but for high investment. That
formula is one of the unbreakable truths of social
media. In past client engagements, we've seen
successful social campaigns fail because of loss of
support (engagement) of other departments.
why? A total lack of measurability. Other
departments had trouble putting priority on social
content generation -- when other tasks had more
concrete results for the company.
Aligning social to marketing
Why performance metrics are the connection
Anywhere in business (or life), alignment is created
by sharing common goals and using similar
measures of success. Your social programs are
no different. To achieve strong alignment with your
marketing programs, the key is to measure them
the same way:
- By audience reach
- By impression numbers
- By message delivery %'s
That's where alignment comes from
When it's budget time
Where does the money get spent
Once a company is through the initial “social
euphoria” -- where everyone loves the idea and
supports investing in it, then the attention turns to
ROI and value. The second, third and fourth time
you ask for budget, it's often an uphill battle unless
your social team acts like it cares about ROI.
Putting in place performance measures is key -- it
reflects both a focus and an ability to measure
results -- both key for confident investment by
financially minded executives.