Originally published in MediaPost's Social Media Insider
If there&39;s anyone out there left who says you can&39;t measure social media, here are a hundred answers.
At most of the events I&39;ve been to lately, measurement continues to be a hot topic. The first question that comes up is, "What can I measure?" That&39;s where this cheat sheet can come in handy: a list of 100 thought-starters.
Some entries here can be interpreted several ways. Depending on how you define them, some of these metrics may seem redundant, while others may seem so broad that they can be broken out further. Many of these can be combined with each other to create new metrics that can then be tracked over time. It&39;s a start, though, so dive in and consider which ones may apply to programs you&39;re working on.
1. &0160;&0160;&0160; Volume of consumer-created buzz for a brand based on number of posts
2.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Amount of buzz based on number of impressions
3.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Shift in buzz over time
4.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Buzz by time of day / daypart
5.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Seasonality of buzz
6.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Competitive buzz
7.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Buzz by category / topic
8.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Buzz by social channel (forums, social networks, blogs, Twitter, etc)
9.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Buzz by stage in purchase funnel (e.g., researching vs. completing transaction vs. post-purchase)
10.&0160; Asset popularity (e.g., if several videos are available to embed, which is used more)
11.&0160; Mainstream media mentions
12.&0160; Fans
13.&0160; Followers
14.&0160; Friends
15.&0160; Growth rate of fans, followers, and friends
16.&0160; Rate of virality / pass-along
17.&0160; Change in virality rates over time
18.&0160; Second-degree reach (connections to fans, followers, and friends exposed – by people or impressions)
19.&0160; Embeds / Installs
20.&0160; Downloads
21.&0160; Uploads
22.&0160; User-initiated views (e.g., for videos)
23.&0160; Ratio of embeds or favoriting to views
24.&0160; Likes / favorites
25.&0160; Comments
26.&0160; Ratings
27.&0160; Social bookmarks
28.&0160; Subscriptions (RSS, podcasts, video series)
29.&0160; Pageviews (for blogs, microsites, etc)
30.&0160; Effective CPM based on spend per impressions received
31.&0160; Change in search engine rankings for the site linked to through social media
32.&0160; Change in search engine share of voice for all social sites promoting the brand
33.&0160; Increase in searches due to social activity
34.&0160; Percentage of buzz containing links
35.&0160; Links ranked by influence of publishers
36.&0160; Percentage of buzz containing multimedia (images, video, audio)
37.&0160; Share of voice on social sites when running earned and paid media in same environment
38.&0160; Influence of consumers reached
39.&0160; Influence of publishers reached (e.g., blogs)
40.&0160; Influence of brands participating in social channels
41.&0160; Demographics of target audience engaged with social channels
42.&0160; Demographics of audience reached through social media
43.&0160; Social media habits/interests of target audience
44.&0160; Geography of participating consumers
45.&0160; Sentiment by volume of posts
46.&0160; Sentiment by volume of impressions
47.&0160; Shift in sentiment before, during, and after social marketing programs
48.&0160; Languages spoken by participating consumers
49.&0160; Time spent with distributed content
50.&0160; Time spent on site through social media referrals
51.&0160; Method of content discovery (search, pass-along, discovery engines, etc)
52.&0160; Clicks
53.&0160; Percentage of traffic generated from earned media
54.&0160; View-throughs
55.&0160; Number of interactions
56.&0160; Interaction/engagement rate
57.&0160; Frequency of social interactions per consumer
58.&0160; Percentage of videos viewed
59.&0160; Polls taken / votes received
60.&0160; Brand association
61.&0160; Purchase consideration
62.&0160; Number of user-generated submissions received
63.&0160; Exposures of virtual gifts
64.&0160; Number of virtual gifts given
65.&0160; Relative popularity of content
66.&0160; Tags added
67.&0160; Attributes of tags (e.g., how well they match the brand&39;s perception of itself)
68.&0160; Registrations from third-party social logins (e.g., Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth)
69.&0160; Registrations by channel (e.g., Web, desktop application, mobile application, SMS, etc)
70.&0160; Contest entries
71.&0160; Number of chat room participants
72.&0160; Wiki contributors
73.&0160; Impact of offline marketing/events on social marketing programs or buzz
74.&0160; User-generated content created that can be used by the marketer in other channels
75.&0160; Customers assisted
76.&0160; Savings per customer assisted through direct social media interactions compared to other channels (e.g., call centers, in-store)
77.&0160; Savings generated by enabling customers to connect with each other
78.&0160; Impact on first contact resolution (FCR) (hat tip to Forrester Research for that one)
79.&0160; Customer satisfaction
80.&0160; Volume of customer feedback generated
81.&0160; Research & development time saved based on feedback from social media
82.&0160; Suggestions implemented from social feedback
83.&0160; Costs saved from not spending on traditional research
84.&0160; Impact on online sales
85.&0160; Impact on offline sales
86.&0160; Discount redemption rate
87.&0160; Impact on other offline behavior (e.g., TV tune-in)
88.&0160; Leads generated
89.&0160; Products sampled
90.&0160; Visits to store locator pages
91.&0160; Conversion change due to user ratings, reviews
92.&0160; Rate of customer/visitor retention
93.&0160; Impact on customer lifetime value
94.&0160; Customer acquisition / retention costs through social media
95.&0160; Change in market share
96.&0160; Earned media&39;s impact on results from paid media
97.&0160; Responses to socially posted events
98.&0160; Attendance generated at in-person events
99.&0160; Employees reached (for internal programs)
100.&0160; Job applications received
There you go. I welcome other entries in the comments. It&39;s also just the start of the answer to the broader question: "How do I measure it?" Ultimately, you need to start with figuring out your business objectives and then apply these metrics accordingly.
People reacted to this story.
Show comments Hide commentsDavid
This is great … let’s go ahead and add the holy grail: sales from social.
We’ve got a social attribution model that tracks and attributes targeted behaviors, e.g. user activations, sales etc. based upon three degrees of social specificity — from white lists of social domain referrals baked into the web analytics thru to short URLs embedded and tracked within distribute social assets.
Thom
Thanks, Thom. I do have online and offline sales on the list – but it is a LONG list, and I'll be the first to admit I can't keep track of everything on it.
Terrific list, David. +1
#76 struck a particular chord with me: “Savings per customer assisted through direct social media interactions compared to other channels (e.g., call centers, in-store)”
Whenever someone uses the “What’s the ROI?” or tries to immediately tie social media back to sales, I always pull out a variation of this from the proverbial ROI deck of cards: “Savings from reduced call-center volume based on social media customer service or consumers helping each other.” To find this, you simply compare call center costs from one fixed point to another (e.g., Q1 to Q2, month-to-month, etc.)
Bottom line, social media ROI affects the bottom line just like other marketing disciplines. While revenue is debatable, people have a very difficult time arguing with customer service as a KPI.
Hey, David —
I’m with Thom. It’s a good list.
And quite thorough. Initially I was wondering, as Thom was, where “sales” was on the list. But then I got to #95, “change in market share,” and felt that settled the question.
I was also looking for any actions listed that might show changes in measurable interest in a site’s content, such as bookmarking, printing or sharing via “Share This” (which is a social action, I know, unless it’s sharing with Email-a-Friend).
I’m using the term “interest” as it’s defined in the web metric “Content Interest Index.”
The premise in this case would be this: Anyone directed from social activity to a page of a site might be so intrigued by its content as to somehow preserve it. They could preserve it by printing it, bookmarking (socially or privately), or share it with a friend, colleague or family member via email. My theory continues to be that measuring these actions over time and providing them to the content manager for each page of content could potentially improve the engagement quality of these pages. That would lead to some level of increased sales, especially if there is a call-to-action embedded in the page.
So here’s an “interest” action not listed: Hitting the “printer-friendly-format” button of a page.
Perhaps your #101 could be, simply, “Printing content” — a quaintly analog action that is still taken by more consumers than we would imagine. And I should know; I’ve been looking at that stats. 😉
I missed #84 and 85 (online and offline sales) as well! D’Oh!
Awesome work David! We will use reference this list internally to develop our marketplace.
Is it more important to ask the HOW or the WHY, in your mind?
As in why measure social media? Or why engage with social media in the first place?
The focus of your list is on the WHAT: 100 ways to measure. The implication is measurement is the WHY to use the WHAT. You don’t mention the HOW. So, I wonder from your perspective if the WHY or the HOW is more important.
I don't think any question is more important than another, but if you don't get to the HOW, all of this is worthless. I already went over my word count though for this one. 🙂
I can’t get too serious about a form of “measurement” that includes the word “buzz”. How exactly don’t one measure buzz?
There are quite a few ways to do so. Buzz is really shorthand for the number of mentions of a brand or topic. And I like to use buzz broadly sometimes to denote chatter across forums, blogs, Twitter, social networks, etc.
So wonderful to hear, thanks!
Love the list of 100 David – just to prove a point that “just in case a Top 10 list doesn’t cut it”:)
I’m sure it’s buried somewhere but I would add – Cost savings compared to conducting expensive and often time draining focus groups (i.e., Facebook polls). If used appropriately I’ve seen companies reduce budget significantly by cutting out a previous spend due to the great functionality enabled by social.
Keep up the the great conversations…glad I could be a part of this one!
Hi David,
This has to be one of the best efforts in aggregating the ways in which social media can be measured.As the social buzz is becoming more and more important everyday, it feels like there should be separate departments in firms to implement these strategies of measuring social media.
Thanks so much for your feedback and thoughtful reply here. Cost savings over traditional research is in there but I don't think I spelled out focus groups. We're on the same page though, and I'm open to any other metrics relating to improvements around customer service, whether it's efficiency, savings, number of people assisted by channel, etc.
great post and breakdown of all of the ways to measure your social media reception (not using ROI since people immediately think $). But hey, if the holy grail of a sale comes from it then there you go. It is important to measure the effort, understand how to segment your audience and what is successful and what isn’t.
Not sure if it makes the list but what about “offline to online conversions”. The migration of folks that were once offline and are now online specifically because of your online engagement.
Hi David,
Thank you so much for writing this post!
I’ve always felt that as a business professional one requires accountability from one’s suppliers and employees, and is accountable to them and to one’s clients.
I’m proud of this accountability – In Yiddish it’s called being a “Mensch”.
One of the reasons I was originally drawn to web-based marketing was my realization that here, finally, was a marketing platform that was bullsh*t proof in a way that no platform or media ever was before. Web analytics guarantee marketeers are immediately and unequivocally accountable for the strategies they recommend and promote. I think this is “A Good Thing”.
It should come as no surprise therefore that I’ve always had a suspicion posts proclaiming: “Social Media Can’t Be Measured”, might be slightly self serving. As in written by social marketeers in need of excuses…
At the end of your excellent list you ask:
“How do I measure it?”.
Funnily, about an hour before I ran into your post on the 360i blog, I published a list of a few tools I find helpful for collecting Social Media performance data (http://blog.treepodia.com/2009/11/measuring-social-media-roi-can-it-be-done).
What is the final ROI for Social Media activities?
That’s up to each and every one of us to figure out according to our goals and investment.
I can only hope my list of tools makes the task a tad easier…
: )
Cheers,
Mike
@treepodia
I'm totally on board, Mike. There's a lot of the offline to online and then online to offline that should be tracked where they make sense. Thanks for the feedback.
This list is great! I’m sorry that I didn’t discover it sooner. It will definitely be included in in my 2010 social media strategy as a checklist for review. There are so many mechanisms for measurement that we never think of, it’s great to finally have a comprehensive list to work with. Thanks again!
Tessa Carroll
http://www.blogs.vbpoutsourcing.com
This list is great. I have taken a great interest in learning more about marketing through social media, and this article at least gives me ideas on how to see the fruits of the labor. I will for sure be back to view more of your blog. Thank you David
Thank you !
What can I say ?
I bow you on my knee.
All right?
Jg
Hey Thom,
I am from Vetra Analytics. We are researching on the social media attribution models ourselves are quite interested to explore with you on any partnership opportunities. We have done several interactive attribution models with ClearSaleing and were covered in the Forrester report on digital interactive attribution of October 2009.
Best Regards
Ravi
Hi David,
I miss PageRank in your list, do you have any comment on that?
Thanks for your comment, Fredrik. I did include change in search engine rankings but didn't mention Google specifically with PageRank. You could definitely break PageRank out as another metric if it's something you monitor closely, absolutely.
Good list. You could add # of Mayor badges on Foursquare 😉
I agree with some of the others in that this is good but will overwhelm the common social media and biz leader. As I am sure you know there are endless variations and correlations that are a data junkie’s dream!
Do you have any recommendations on social measurement tools as well as when to use a tool? For larger implementations WebTrends is great and offers tools that also take into consideration what phase of social media adoption and execution you are in (i.e., listening, engaging, refining etc.) What are your thoughts on Radian6?
This is a very comprehensive list, but I think what many, if not most, business leaders want to know is how to measure social media’s impact on sales and customer service?
That’s all I got. A “top 2.” 🙂
Seriously, a lot of your list seems to me to be “in between” social media and profits, right? Like “buzz.”
Does anybody even know how to measure buzz, and – more importantly – whether “buzz” impacts the bottom line? My guess is that sometimes buzz matters, sometimes it doesn’t. So going after buzz may or may not matter, except that you will have spent money on trying to create it and will have NOT spent money on other, more profitable ventures.
I don’t know. Thoughts?
Bill, thanks for your thoughts here.
Sales is of course a great metric, and you could argue customer service doesn't matter because that comes down to sales too (e.g., higher retention, profit margins, etc). But, there are two issues with that: a high percentage of marketers are not judged directly on sales, and an accordingly high percentage can't directly trace the results of their labor to sales. Additionally, with social media, for large brands budgets are still too small currently to judge their impact and marketers need other metrics beyond that. Even with something as celebrated as the Old Spice program, the TV spots are amazing, but so was their PR. The bit where the character responded to people's tweets on YouTube as a tiny part of it but generated a ton of buzz. It'll be extremely difficult to measure how much that YouTube+Twitter component had impact, and whether that impact came from YouTube, Twitter buzz, Facebook shares, or the blogger and mainstream media coverage of it all, but the marketers can amass enough information to know if it worked or not.
I’m with Ari, I’d like to know the How too – and how you suggest measuring this.
Many of the items listed here I could see someone showing as
a metric if they were engaged to guide a business on social media, but
frankly, I’d be asking the owner:
“What makes that (X) important and where precisely is the value in that to your business?”
Lindy
Great point, Lindy – totally with you there and that's something all of us in this space need to really work to apply.