I once sat in on a presentation given by Andru Edwards of Gearlive.com. Someone asked about the value of Twitter, and he responded something to the effect of, “It’s here and people are using it. You’re gonna have to get used to that.”
If you are working as a marketer, PR person, advertiser, or any other related job-type, you might have a hard time making the case to your superiors that your company should create a Facebook fan page or its own Ning group. Why? It is so difficult to measure the effectiveness of social media campaigns, because while they have the ability to create better public perception or increase share of voice, they do a poor job creating sales when they are not managed correctly. And, your managers do not even know those things yet. They likely just have the impression that it is an untested medium largely populated by people talking about how drunk they got last weekend or why they hate Britney Spears.
If you were to propose a new print ad campaign, you would argue for it using numbers: impressions, increased sales due to coupons or announcements, etc. Why not get some numbers on social media so that you can do the same when you, say, argue your fledgling record label needs to post videos on Vimeo?
One of the biggest movements I believe we will see on the web this year will be an increased need for and discussion around social media analytics. If you know your customer reps can turn unhappy customers into happy customers on Twitter, great! They should be on Twitter, but are you able to measure how many people you connect with there that are going to buy products from your website? Do you know if that ability exists?
How about this? Website analytics is fairly well understood now, but what about web (and I mean the WHOLE web) analytics? What about social media analytics? Do you know where people are talking about you and what they are saying? Do you know what people are saying about your competitors? Because, you need to if you are going to try to measure growth in a social media campaign in a serious industry. You need to know the size of the digital footprint your company has on the web and how a social media campaign can change that. Otherwise, when you go to your boss to argue for getting everyone on Twitter, you might be hard pressed to find more reasons than “Well, everyone else is doing it.”
Everyone can sign up for free Google Alerts and Tweet Alerts, but few hardcore social media measurement tools exist, and those that do are primarily used by social media marketing companies that are carving out their places in a field that is set for huge success or huge failure this year. If your company is hesitant to jump into the social media frenzy, that is fine, but when you make an argument for it, realize that people are talking about you and your competitors, and if you do not have the tools, counseling, or skills, you will not be able to participate in the conversation and will therefore miss out on the chance to use social media to grow your business.
Do you know of valuable ways to measure social media impact on your business? Working in the industry, I am aware of plenty, but so many impressive tools pop up everyday that I cannot always keep track of them. 
Social media and the phone are all we use. I couldn’t imagine a day any other way.
What do other people even do during the work day?
best,
Chris O.
Referral Key
“Your Trusted Referral Network”
http://www.referralkey.com/small-business-blog/
lol. Yesterday, I was talking about PR with some friends… about how it used to be that PR people could say, “Oh, I don’t do blogs,” or any other online medium, but it has gotten to the point now that, unless you are really big in PR, you have to either be active in social media or have a great contractor/consultant.
“Regular” media now pays significant attention to social media, so if internal or external PR people generate enough talk in the social media world, their stories can potentially be picked up by regular media.
Excellent post with many good questions – I will speak to one aspect of it — when you say, “If your company is hesitant to jump into the social media frenzy, that is fine, but when you make an argument for it, realize that people are talking about you and your competitors…”.
You are spot-on: Companies must realize that people are talking about you and your brand everyday. All of those conversations can have a huge impact on your reputation, stock price and bottom line.
The media world has changed dramatically over the last 10 years — 10 Years ago it was passive – TV, Radio and Print. Today it is instant, viral, and massively collaborative. To top it off, it is MAGNITUDES larger in respect to content.
Companies need to realize that those millions of conversations can hurt them, but from a business perspective they represent an opportunity to engage with a huge stakeholder group to generate positive momentum and build a stronger brand.
The ROI of social media will be solved – there are plenty of smart people working on this. The key is understanding that there can be huge LOST opportunity if companies don’t listen and participate in this new world.
Chris Johnson
Founder
dna13
Twitter: chrisjjohnson
Blog: blog.dna13.com
Great article. It highlight a lot of realities in the industry today! Yes, there are some great tools to measure Social Media, SM2 for one, that provide analytics for business execs. The missing link is not tools it is education.
Kevin Dean
http://www.twitter.com/manobyte
The fact of the matter is “If it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed.”
Thanks for your comments, Chris, Kevin, and Matt.
It seems to me that the lack of understanding, and perhaps adequate explanation, of social media leads to a lot of wariness on the part of executives, who may likely be worried about making any little mistake or about wasting the smallest amount of money in this economy. Social media is merely a set of tools, and certainly, it will not help everyone, but hopefully, with time and dedication, most companies can learn how to leverage it in tandem with their other marketing, customer services, sales, etc tools.
I really enjoyed this article.
To Matt Peters though, “If it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed” = not necessarily true. I think a lot of the problems that people come up against with Social Media is that they don’t know what they want to work with it for, and with that in mind how should anyone expect to know how to measure something that they cannot pin point a starting point for?
I purposefully don’t use the phrase ‘don’t know what they want to *use* it for’. Social Media is just that, it’s a social medium, a method of communication between disparate groups of people with shared interests or questions. I don’t believe there is a way to “use” or to “manage” a social network (and hence, I disagree a little bit with Seth Godin’s idea of Tribes). I agree that a little bit of education in how it can be useful and what elements might be of benefit to different organisations would be a step in the right direction.
Dang
I just spent ages typing a long comment, and when I tried to submit it my Internet Explorer freaked out.
Did it come though or is it lost and I have to do it again?
Amazing post . It’s all new to me. Bookedmarked your site for your next blog.