Social Media Metrics & Measurement Continue to Evolve

This week on 11/12 June, AMEC is holding their next International Summit on Measurement. Many of you will recognize AMEC as the framer of the Barcelona Principles at their annual meeting in 2010. The theme this year is upping the game to deliver relevant insights along with traditional measurement reporting on performance against objectives and KPIs, in order to provide a richer environment and context for making strategic business decisions.

 

 

In this post, I wanted to shine the light on a workshop during the Summit called, Metrics that matter: Making sense of social media measurement. The session, led by Richard Bagnall, promises to look at the latest social media measurement trends, provide a look ahead at what might be right around the corner in the next 12 months, and unveil a revised and enhanced AMEC social media measurement framework guide that should make it easier to implement the frameworks in your own planning environments.

At last year’s Summit in Madrid, we presented the initial work in developing models and frameworks to support rigorous and valid social media measurement. It consisted primarily of three elements – a new model for social media measurement, a couple of alternatives ways to think about populating the model with relevant metrics, and a social media measurement planning framework/template. The initial metrics approaches focused on two alternatives, metrics focused across programmatic, channel and business dimensions as well as an approach based on the Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned integrated channel metrics approach which enjoys traction in many organizations. Based on using and customizing the approach for multiple clients, here are a few things to consider as you review and think about using the new frameworks and usage guidance to be unveiled this week.

As campaigns become increasingly integrated across media types it makes sense to also reflect this integrated view in measurement. Ideally, measurement should reflect a similar level of integration as the campaign or program being measured. As we measure performance from the four channels, we should keep in mind what we really would like to understand is how the channel efforts amplify or build on each other.

The work presented at last year’s Summit showed example or illustrative metrics for each of the media types across the measurement model. Expect this year’s version to take a stronger view of the most relevant or best metrics to use when employing this approach.

Another key development would be the presentation of different metrics models to use with the measurement model. The intention all along was there could be a range of choices to fit different corporate cultures and planning environments.

 

Measurement Planning Template

The measurement planning template is the heart of your social media measurement planning effort. It is best used by conducting a facilitated discussion with all measurement stakeholders around each of the key elements in the planning template. Setting aside half-a-day to complete the exercise is not excessive. Here is how we think about using the template in our social media measurement planning.

Business or Organizational Objectives: The agreed upon overarching organizational objective(s) the social media effort is designed to impact. These objectives may be given to the social media team or they may be the result of conversations and negotiations.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators): One or two high-level metrics that are aligned with the business/organizational objectives and are outcome-oriented. Again, the KPIs may be given to the measurement team or the measurement team can help guide the conversation to develop them.

Program Elements: Outline the major elements of the program. The elements should reflect the scope and integration of the campaign. They could range from a simple social media program to one that includes social media, online advertising, influencer outreach, e-mail marketing and other elements.

Program Objectives: Capture or write the measurable objective associated with each major aspect of the program above. Frequently you will need to help rewrite the metrics to make them measurable. You may also need to rewrite them to actually make them objectives (what) and not strategies (how).

Measurement Story: This is an attempt to marry the concepts of measurement and story telling. At the end of the program, what measurement story would you like to be able to tell your key stakeholders? This should be based on accomplishing your specific KPIs through the success of the programs used and your ability to prove that through data and measurement. We typically develop the measurement story right after settling on the business objectives and KPIs, and use it as a guidepost to ensure we have the means and methods to tell the desired story.

Key Metrics: The metrics directly tied to program objectives. Should be aligned with the objectives as well as the higher order KPIs. The most important KPIs and metrics and often captured on a dashboard for monitoring and/or reporting.

 

Determining the importance of metrics

A question sometimes comes up about the best way to determine the most important metrics – what rises to the level of inclusion on a high-level dashboard? Here’s a few tips to consider:

Place metrics in their respective place in the measurement model (Exposure/Engagement/Influence/Impact/Advocacy) Metrics that appear toward the right side of the model are generally more compelling than those addressing just Exposure or Engagement. These generally get to the outcomes rather than just outputs of program activities.

Examine how closely aligned each metric is with program objectives. Metrics that directly support the objective are generally more important than those that indirectly support the objective.

Look at the degree to which the metric is explicitly part of the Measurement Story. Metrics directly aligned with the Measurement Story represent better potential dashboard metrics than those that are tangential to the story.

Metrics that provide context are generally stronger than those that don’t. For example, RTs per 1000 Followers tells you much more than just the Number of RTs – it gives an indication of community engagement. Likewise, Engagement Rate (Number of Engagements divided by Total Reach) is a better metric that just the Number of Engagements.

Remember the audience – at the end of the day, when you’re showing your stakeholders what you accomplished this year, what would they be most excited to hear? What will they want to see that ultimately demonstrates the best use of their dollars?

 

After the Summit I’ll post a reaction to Professor Jim Macnamara’s unveiling of his new his new paradigm and model for measurement and evaluation. Jim is incredibly smart and thoughtful so I’ll be curious to see and discuss what he proposes. Enjoy the Summit in person or through social media and contribute to the dialogue.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

I would like to acknowledge our colleagues at R/GA for their contributions to the thinking you see here.

Social Media Measurement at a Crossroads

We are at a crossroads in social media measurement. Expectations for rigorous and relevant measurement have risen more quickly than delivery. Too many are fixated on quantitative outputs – speeds and feeds – at the expense of understanding the outcomes achieved by social media marketing and social business. There is still too much emphasis on vanity metrics and not enough on business results. And, if you take a step back, there is simply too much talk about all this and not enough action. At the risk of exacerbating the last point, let me explain.

 

Social Media Measurement Started with the Wrong Orientation

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, digital measurement focused on website analytics. The orientation was heavily quantitative. How many unique visitors? How many page views? How long did people remain on site? By 2007, with Facebook now three years old and Twitter completing it’s inaugural year, social media measurement was becoming a hot topic.

Early social media measurement practitioners generally came from the web analytics world. Early social media measurement efforts focused on quantifying outputs and not addressing the outcome of the program. The orientation was on ‘How Many?’ and not ‘What Happened?’ The quantitative orientation also came at the expense of qualitative assessment. The emphasis was on getting easily accessible statistics and not on content analysis to understand meaning and implications. These issues remain today, although we have made significant progress toward shifting the orientation to outcomes and business results.

In the early adopter phase of social media, social media measurement was under little pressure to go beyond quantitative output analysis. Many brands, companies and organizations viewed social media participation as a bit of an experiment to see how it best could be used within their organizations. But this was soon to change.

Struggle Between Easy/Superficial and Hard/Meaningful

It is difficult to pinpoint when social media crossed the chasm into a mainstream business activity. An IDC study in the Fall of 2009 suggested the state of social media still best fit the early adopter and not mainstream use pattern at that point in time. 2011 felt like the year the leap happened to me. With it came a new and emerging set of expectations around social media measurement.

In measurement, it is a truism that the metrics that are easiest to measure are seldom the ones that are most meaningful. It may be easy to measure outputs, but it is often much more difficult and expensive to measure outcomes. It is much easier to determine brand mentions in social media than it is to assess whether or not social programming has changed opinions and attitudes of the target.  It is infinitely easier to measure unique visitors per month than it is to determine the return on investment of a social media initiative.

Now that social media clearly is a mainstream business activity, the pressure to demonstrate the impact and value of social media has greatly increased. As the resources and investment against social media and social business become meaningful line items in the budget, the game changes. Demonstrating business impact and value requires an understanding of the business model of the company or organization and how social media/business creates impact (e.g. change in awareness, increase in purchase consideration, increase in active advocates around an issue) in that environment. Measuring impact is more difficult than measuring audience or engagement. It often involves primary audience research so the price tag is higher.

This is a key struggle we face – will we continue to take the easy, less expensive, minimal-value-of-the-findings approach or we will take social media measurement to another level, focusing on outcomes, investing in audience research and applying rigorous analytics to get at meaning and insight? The imperative is clear, how we respond will be telling. 

A Final Turn to the Right

One of the key themes at this year’s AMEC measurement conference in Madrid was creating a bias toward action. The time to (just) talk about measurement is in the past, the time for action is now. I might suggest this goes double for social media measurement. Here are three areas we can address that will help make the leap from talk to action.

1. Every social media initiative has a measurement plan. Let’s make this happen. Literally any social media initiative, program or activity should have a measurement plan defined before implementation begins. Start with writing social media objectives that are measurable. Align social media metrics with business KPIs. Select metrics across multiple dimensions – programmatic, channel-specific and business-level metrics, for example. Or perhaps paid, owned, earned and shared metrics if your program is integrated across these dimensions. Collect data. Assess performance against objectives. Rinse and repeat
2. Take a stand on standards. An exciting cross-industry effort has produced a set of proposed standards for social media metrics. Adopting standard definitions and metrics for social media is an important stage of measurement maturity that other marketing disciplines like advertising and direct marketing have already reached.
3. Understand, articulate & demonstrate business impact.  The heat is on to demonstrate how social media is helping drive the business or organization forward. We must do a better job of connecting the dots between business KPIs, social media objectives and social media metrics and measurement. In some cases, we want to go beyond understanding attitudinal and behavioral changes to understand the financial value of the impact created. Capturing the financial value of social media requires expertise, data, time and money. We would always like to measure impact, and when it makes sense, we may push further to attribute financial value.

It will be interesting to see what the next year in social media measurement brings. The move toward standardization alone should be fascinating to watch. I have tried to make the argument we are at a crossroads or inflection point in social media measurement maturity. What ‘worked’ for us in the past will not work in the future. We know the expectations. The great unknown is how we respond.

Note: This post was inspired by a Carma webinar,co-sponsored by PRNews, I gave recently. You may download slides from that webinar here.

Social Media Measurement at a Crossroads

Please join me on August 6, from 2:00 – 3:00pm EDT for CARMA’s fourth quarterly webinar, co-sponsored by PRNews, titled “Social Media Measurement at a Crossroads.” Here is a little more information on the webinar:

With social media clearly entrenched as a mainstream business activity, the need to measure the impact on the organization has never been greater. While social media practitioners talk about Like or Follower growth, organizations want to understand how social media is helping drive the business or cause forward. 

Another challenge in social media measurement is the lack of standard definitions, approaches and metrics. In response, a cross-industry push to define social media standards was initiated and initial standards recently published. Social media measurement is clearly at a crossroads where new thinking and approaches are emerging.

In this session you will learn:

• How to align KPIs and metrics to demonstrate organizational impact and value. 
• What industry efforts are being made toward standardization and the implications for how you approach social media measurement
• New models, metrics and frameworks you can use today to develop more effective social media measurement programs.

I will be joined by PRNews Group Editor Matthew Schwartz, who will moderate the discussion and lead a Q&A session.

Here is a link to register for the session. Feel free to leave a comment with any questions you would like answered during the webinar and I will do my best to address them. Hope you can join!

Digital Analytics – From Back Office to Front Page

Analytics have exploded into prominence in the past 15 months. What was once a mysterious statistical discipline understood by few has been elevated as the enabling technology that allows companies to unlock the potential of Big Data. Big Data was everywhere in 2012. There was a track devoted to it at the World Economic Forum in January, 2012. In October, the Harvard Business Review had a cover section on Big Data which characterized analytics as sexy and dubbed its leading practitioners Data Scientists. And at Ketchum, we made analytics training mandatory for ALL employees in 2012, a first for our industry.

The digitization of all forms of analog data is at the heart of the Big Data explosion.  From our click behavior online to purchases we make with a loyalty card to places we go in our vehicles, everything is captured as digital data potentially available for analysis. And with the accelerating use of cameras and sensors, the volume of data promises to keep rising for years to come.

For all the talk about Big Data, no one really wants Big Data. They want the insights hidden within the data that only digital analytics can unlock. Probably the hottest area within digital analytics is predictive analytics. Predictive analytics essentially predict how consumers will behave given certain conditions, assumptions and stimuli. This has powerful and tangible benefits to marketing. An Aberdeen Group study published in December 2011 found marketing organizations that applied data mining and statistical modeling to optimize marketing efforts saw as much as a 2X lift from marketing campaigns, a 76% higher click-through-rate and a 73% higher sales lift.

Marketing organizations are seeing the tremendous power and potential of predictive analytics across a broad spectrum of marketing activities. For example:

• Proactively optimizing marketing campaigns to improve engagement and conversions
• Identifying customers most likely to switch companies and targeting offers to them designed to keep them as customers
• Delivering customized offers designed to appeal to a prospect’s specific interests or life situation
• Predicting which ‘first visit’ customers are most likely to return or not return, and sending offers targeting the ‘not likely to return’ group while avoiding the costs of making offers to those likely to return anyway.

In 2013, we have seen analytics continue to be a mainstream news subject. Analytics is only in the early migration phase from early adopters to mainstream use. Expect this trend to continue and accelerate in the coming years as more marketers discover analytics are a clear path to improving marketing effectiveness, efficiency, and ultimately, the bottom line.