The Buzz Bin

Last month, The Buzz Bin posted a measurement meme to discuss measuring the success of a social media program as well as the ROI. We have received almost 30 ping-backs to the posts, and from those countless others have been tagged to respond as well.

It’s been great reading some of the excellent thought leadership that has come from this meme. Some of the key takeaways:

1. Quantitative and qualitative methods are discussed from an interview with Dr. Tiffany Derville, Assistant Professor of Public Relations at the University of Oregon.
2. A great look at socnet ROI measurements and metrics from serious about camo. Clay talks about updating our knowledge tools to shape success measurement and determine the best designs for tools to measure social networks.
3. Beth Kanter provides us with a list of metrics from the New Metrics of Scholarly Authority, which include the prestige of the author, commenters, and other participants as well as the amount of links and attention received, the value and type of attention (positive or negative) and the quality and significance of the work provided.
4. Katie Payne comments on the lack of actual case studies for measuring social media success.
5. Mack Collier at the Viral Garden gives us ways to judge if the blog is creating value for readers or not – based on web traffic, comments, and incoming links. Mack also discusses the ROI of blogging, and whether or not the time you spend blogging benefits you, and others.
6. Peter Imbres talks about measurement in terms of ROI, but focuses on the “I” or, investment in social media that companies face. The challenge of showing value to the company is something that marketers have often struggled to quantify.
7. Trend Junkie talks about the core “building blocks” of social media and the social web: identity, presence, conversations, sharing, groups, relationships and reputation. Instead of ROI, he looks at R.O.WE. (Return on Engagement) to measure the impact of participation on his relationships and business. He looks to develop his expanding network and build leads and business development through cultivating his subscribers and audience.
8. Bill Sledzik guest posts on PR Conversations. He cites interviews with mainstream media as one of the benchmarks he uses, but also includes case studies and asks us to measure the relationships we are creating and maintaining. The bottom line outcome for Bill follows that of the boardroom, including sales, cross sales and reduced service costs.
9. The Human Voice gives us a pretty cool graphic from Avinash Kaushik that presents the “who, what, where, and why” of web analytics.
10. Connie Benson has some great examples of quantitative and qualitative methods and benchmarks that she follows. She also includes this quote which I think summarizes the question: “Numbers tell a story, but numbers only tell part of the story. Metrics are important – page views, new threads & posts, etc all tell you hard growth facts. But part of community is organic — how the culture is developing, how many people are forming deeper relationships with each other — these are important things for community growth that can’t be measured.”

As we continue to develop ways to measure the ROI of social media, it will be interesting to look back and see how measurement success evolved over time. Thanks to everyone who participated in this meme. A (somewhat) comprehensive list:

• A Human Voice, Tom O’Brien and above
• Chris Brogan (a little ahead of the meme)
• Connie Benson
• Conversation Agent, Valeria Maltoni
• Communication Overtones, Kami Huyse
• Direct2Dell
• Gauravonomics
• KDPaine’s PR Measurement Blog, Katie Payne
• Point Oh, Peter Imbres
• PRNewser
• PRos in Training, Kelli Matthews and above
• PRWorks, Dave Jones
  
• Search Engine Guide, Jennifer Laycock
• Serious About Camo, Clay Newton
• The Constant Observer, Tish Grier
• The Secret Diary of a Bonafide Marketing Genius
• The Trend Junkie, Greg Cangialosi
• The Viral Garden, Mack Collier
• Tough Sledding, Bill Sledzik (via PR Conversations)
• Verge New Media, Jim Long
• WebMetrics Guru, Marshall Sponder