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Social Media Metrics: Don't Be A Hater, Be A Helper

Social media ROI. It's a hot topic, and rightly so. As social becomes more prevalent and important, brand marketers need best practices to follow based on reliable metrics and analytics. Solid data, based on a wide-ranging, timely sample, can help marketers more effectively reach and engage consumers to prove an ROI. And that data is coming out, prompting discussions from all sides. Discussion and constructive criticism are good. But flat-out negative feedback, with no real aim to help the discussion, is not. And we are seeing a lot of that lately.

Our social marketing platform manages more than 500 million Facebook and Twitter fans worldwide for our clients. That's a ton of consumer data. And while we are not a "research" company, we feel it's our responsibility, along with other companies, to provide solid insights which can move marketers and the industry forward, improving the brand and consumer experience, which leads to better, more engaging relationships. This data should not be claimed as "de-facto" standards; merely solid "best practices" for marketers. It's a starting point towards the ROI standards every executive is craving.

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Now, as expected, this type of data will and should provoke wide-ranging opinions. And that is precisely the point. The industry, weighing in with constructive insights and thoughts, is an important part of the process. That's how these things become standard.

Gary Vaynerchuk made this point in his most recent book, The Thank You Economy. He noted that ROI for social is coming ... and companies are driving, pioneering towards that.

"Everything we count on today to tell us how our marketing efforts are working was once brand-new and risky. And then it wasn't. So it will be with social media and the metrics that accompany it. In 2010, AdWeek reported that Vitrue, a social media management company, had calculated that a million Facebook fans were worth $3.6 million in 'equivalent media' over a year ... If that number had come from Nielsen, everyone in the marketing and advertising industry would have treated it as gospel. The metrics already in existence are being refined with incredible speed, and the fixed standards execs crave so much are on their way."

Although I wouldn't say our data should be treated as "gospel," I understand his point completely. And Gary is exactly right. Our industry is pushing it forward every day.

The metrics won't be exact or perfect. But it will keep moving us closer. In fact, that was Vitrue's reason behind our "Value of a Fan" white paper in April 2010: to put a stake in the ground and give the industry a point to help shape and drive the ROI debate. And that has been the case with all of our white papers.

Feedback is essential for new data and insights. We listen to it all, even reading the flat-out hateful stuff, albeit we take it with a proverbial grain of salt. But the truly insightful and thoughtful feedback, whether negative or positive, is most helpful for the industry.

Our friends Buddy Media recently released research on Facebook social media metrics. As expected, the results produced impassioned responses from all sides of the argument, including many over-the-top negative comments seemingly made to just point fault, not help shape the discussion. But we applaud Buddy for publishing their data. Again, it's about moving the industry forward.

Our industry is moving and innovating at a lightning pace. Part of a leadership role is to continue to innovate, share and move the space forward. And although it's not an "exact science," the industry must keep pushing and shaping the data. And constructive feedback -- positive, negative, or a combination -- will help the debate. After all, it'll be as an industry that we push forward, moving closer to true standards for measuring social media ROI.

I think Gary said it best: "Everything we count on today to tell us how our marketing efforts are working was once brand-new and risky. And then it wasn't. So it will be with social media and the metrics that accompany it."

Let's keep pushing forward. And please, don't be a hater, be a helper.

1 comment about "Social Media Metrics: Don't Be A Hater, Be A Helper ".
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  1. Malcolm Faulds from BzzAgent, May 17, 2011 at 9:18 a.m.

    We agree that the ROI of social media is coming. In fact, we think it's already here. Companies are already using social channels to boost revenue and cut costs.

    As large marketers invest more in social channels, they will need to measure program ROI - otherwise they simply won't be able justify the expense to executive management.

    From a revenue creation standpoint, here's one model marketers can adopt for evaluating the ROI of social: http://bit.ly/l1FYsw

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