As another way to look at the 100 ways to measure social media, I've broken it out into how the metrics answer six key questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How.
I welcome your thoughts on this in the comments and look forward to exploring more ways to organize this.
WHO – Who interacted?
What do you know about these consumers?
1.  Fans
2.&0160; Followers
3.&0160; Friends
4.&0160; Growth rate of fans, followers, and friends
5.&0160; Second-degree reach (connections to fans, followers, and
friends exposed – by people or impressions)
6.&0160; Influence of consumers reached
7.&0160; Demographics of target audience engaged with social
channels
8.&0160; Demographics of audience reached through social media
9.&0160; Social media habits/interests of target audience
10.&0160; Languages spoken by participating consumers
11.&0160; Customers assisted
12.&0160; Number of chat room participants
13.&0160; Wiki contributors
14.&0160; Responses to socially posted events
15.&0160; Attendance generated at in-person events
16.&0160; Employees reached (for internal programs)
17.&0160; Job applications received
WHAT – What was
discussed? What was shared? What did consumers engage with?
1.&0160;&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; Buzz by stage in purchase funnel (e.g.,
researching vs. completing transaction vs. post-purchase)
4.&0160; Asset popularity (e.g., if several videos are available
to embed, which is used more)
5.&0160; Rate of virality / pass-along
6.&0160; Embeds / Installs
7.&0160; Downloads
8.&0160; Uploads
9.&0160; User-initiated views (e.g., for videos)
10.&0160; Ratio of embeds or favoriting to views
11.&0160; Likes / favorites
12.&0160; Comments
13.&0160; Ratings
14.&0160; Social bookmarks
15.&0160; Subscriptions (RSS, podcasts, video series)
16.&0160; Pageviews (for blogs, microsites, etc)
17.&0160; Effective CPM based on spend per impressions received
18.&0160; Change in search engine rankings for the site linked to
through social media
19.&0160; Change in search engine share of voice for all social
sites promoting the brand
20.&0160; Percentage of buzz containing links
21.&0160; Percentage of buzz containing multimedia (images, video,
audio)
22.&0160; Share of voice on social sites when running earned and
paid media in same environment
23.&0160; Time spent with distributed content
24.&0160; Clicks
25.&0160; View-throughs
26.&0160; Number of interactions
27.&0160; Interaction/engagement rate
28.&0160; Frequency of social interactions per consumer
29.&0160; Percentage of videos viewed
30.&0160; Polls taken / votes received
31.&0160; Number of user-generated submissions received
32.&0160; Exposures of virtual gifts
33.&0160; Number of virtual gifts given
34.&0160; Relative popularity of content
35.&0160; Tags added
36.&0160; Contest entries
37.&0160; User-generated content created that can be used by the
marketer in other channels
38.&0160; Volume of customer feedback generated
39.&0160; Leads generated
40.&0160; Products sampled
41.&0160; Buzz by category / topic
WHERE – Where were the
conversations happening, whether in terms of the social channels or the
geography of the consumers reached?
1. &0160;Buzz by social channel
(forums, social networks, blogs, Twitter, etc)
2.&0160; Mainstream media mentions
3.&0160; Links ranked by influence of publishers
4.&0160; Influence of publishers reached (e.g., blogs)
5.&0160; Geography of participating consumers
6.&0160; Registrations from third-party social logins (e.g.,
Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth)
7.&0160; Registrations by channel (e.g., Web, desktop application,
mobile application, SMS, etc)
WHEN – When did the
results happen? When did other promotions or programs run that could have had
an impact?
1.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Shift in buzz over time
2.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Buzz by time of day / daypart
3.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Seasonality of buzz
4.&0160;&0160;&0160;&0160; Competitive buzz
5. &0160; &0160; Change in virality rates over time
programs or buzz
WHY – Why were consumers
engaging or feeling this way?
1.&0160; Increase in searches due to social activity
2.&0160; Sentiment by volume of posts
3.&0160; Sentiment by volume of impressions
4.&0160; Shift in sentiment before, during, and after social
marketing programs
5.&0160; Attributes of tags (e.g., how well they match the brand&39;s
perception of itself)
6.&0160; Customer satisfaction
HOW – How much of an
impact did the social marketing have? How do results hold up against
benchmarks? How do they translate to brand metrics? How does this add to the
bottom line?
1.&0160; Method of content discovery (search, pass-along,
discovery engines, etc)
2.&0160; Influence of brands participating in social channels
3.&0160; Time spent on site through social media referrals
4.&0160; Percentage of traffic generated from earned media
5.&0160; Brand association
6.&0160; Purchase consideration
7.&0160; Savings per customer assisted through direct social media
interactions compared to other channels (e.g., call centers, in-store)
8.&0160; Savings generated by enabling customers to connect with
each other
9.&0160; Impact on first contact resolution (FCR) (hat tip to
Forrester Research for that one)
10.&0160; Research & development time saved based on feedback
from social media
11.&0160; Suggestions implemented from social feedback
12.&0160; Costs saved from not spending on traditional research
13.&0160; Impact on online sales
14.&0160; Impact on offline sales
15.&0160; Discount redemption rate
16.&0160; Impact on other offline behavior (e.g., TV tune-in)
17.&0160; Visits to store locator pages
18.&0160; Conversion change due to user ratings, reviews
19.&0160; Rate of customer/visitor retention
20.&0160; Impact on customer lifetime value
21.&0160; Customer acquisition / retention costs through social
media
22.&0160; Change in market share
23.&0160; Earned media&39;s impact on results from paid media
People reacted to this story.
Show comments Hide commentsHey thats an insight filled of awesomeness, Thanks for digging in the concept of measuring social media.As this seems to be the most important thing to do now all your posts on this topic would be of great help.
This shouts out loud that there are a lot of things beyond conversations, which usually the brand champs and social media gurus don’t really understand.
Forgot to mention–Thanks !!!!
Great post! props on all the work put into this. I think it will be a benchmark for a lot of companies and I may just rip a few of these off myself.