Our final post for Georgetown’s Social Media for Social Good class is on measurement. I like what K.D. Paine (our guest lecturer) wrote last week on the topic, that measurement allows you to model the future (image: feed store scale by whiskeytango).
Measurement has always been positioned as a benchmarking tool to prove results. And in social media right now that’s important because folks seem to be struggling to demonstrate results. Yet in the midst of a campaign, measurement can show you what’s working, what’s not, and how the effort will play out. This gives cause communicators the opportunity to change course midstream — if necessary — to affect a different result. So K.D.’s point is prescient for the communications strategist: Good generalship demands that you do more than just report results.
Much of the dialogue around measurement deals with what to measure. People always want to affix a hard number on something like page views or number of impressions. And that’s a good start, but does it tell you anything substantive? Good measurement involves a quality benchmark as well as quantity.
In reality, if someone has architected a strong strategy with a desired outcome then the measurement benchmark should be fairly easy to determine. So instead of impressions, a social cause may want to change perceptions of green cars with a more favorable impression of hydrogen fueled cars versus fuel cells. Would you just measure hydrogen fuel posts? Or would you measure posts that mentioned both technologies as well as tonality? You would also want to see tonality at the start as well as throughout the campaign to determine progress, course corrections and future direction.
There are so many things a non-profit can measure:
- Donations resulting from social media relationships
- Number of attendees who decided to attend an event and engage beyond the socnet/blog
- Increased volunteer base
- The development of self identified community members who serve as an activism core
- Political action as a result of campaign
- Changed societal behavior (lower carbon emissions, safer school zones, reduction in speeding incidents, etc.)
- Number of people who have volunteered for a deeper interaction with the organization (via email, volunteering or some other activity)
- Heightened awareness of the organization (simply put, branding) as a thought leader in space
- Increased conversations on a matter (Earth Hour, for example)
- The list can go on ad infinitum.
- There are many, many tools you can use for measurement. Free ones like Google Analytics to paid ones like Radian6 offer a variety of different quantitative to qualitative factors. But don’t let numbers drive the measurement. It’s not enough to site page views, unique visitors, or even simply positive or negative posts. Analysis of the numbers in context with the original goals should be provided.
- Social media measurement is really not that hard. What is hard is having the discipline to incorporate measurement from the beginning, and then to follow through on using it. What are your thoughts on measurement?
Aha!! “Social media measurement is really not that hard. What is hard is having the discipline to incorporate measurement from the beginning, and then to follow through on using it.”
Yep.
There’s also a vast difference between measuring something just to have a measurement, and being able to track how that something actually influenced or caused the behavior you wanted to happen (and the one that’s in context with your goals, as you so importantly point out).
Measurement for measurement’s sake isn’t valuable time spent. But measurement to understand progress toward goals and identify trends is absolutely crucial to not only achieving those goals, but setting better ones moving forward.
Thanks for keeping this topic at the forefront, and for your practical approach. I can always count on you for that, and I’m grateful.
Cheers,
Amber
Sticking to a plan for measurement can be hard, especially in SM, where the things to measure aren’t necessarily clearly defined. But it is absolutely necessity. You have to follow through with your plan for measurement, like Amber said.
I think I need to take this concept and tattoo it to my forehead.
You nailed it with “don’t let numbers drive measurement.”
Rating campaigns or performance solely on numbers isn’t the key but seeing how many positive conversations come from x number of people helps tell a much bigger story. It may seem like ‘intangibles’ to some people, but the ability to monitor these things are there – just have to think outside of the box a bit.
Great reminders here, Geoff.
I’d argue it’s more important to run metrics BEFORE one launches a campaign than after. If you include measurement as part of the long-term strategy development by running benchmarks and comparing statistics of either past/current campaigns you run or against comparable metrics of other organizations and their campaigns, your next campaign will have a higher statistic of success.
Geoff – a great post and I am glad more people are talking about it. As you noted, there’s plenty of value in evaluating the qualitative aspects of a campaign. However, something about the terms, “measurement” and “ROI” conjures up images of advanced statistical formulas that give PR/marketing pros a headache.
I think the other critical point that you make is that if you have created a sound strategy with MEASURABLE desired outcomes than the measurement portion should be easy. Unfortunately, this step is often neglected/overlooked when companies began a communications campaign.
Great thoughts, Geoff!
This post is right on! Numbers alone are meaningless unless you use them to help you harvest insights. To do that, you need reflection questions and look at qualitative data.
Many more thoughts on measurement and ROI here:
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/roi/