Commentary

Social Measurement Grade: F!

by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, June 9, 2011

It’s test time, and the industry’s current ability to measure social media ROI gets a big fat F. So said every panelist on OMMA Social’s first panel of the day, “Bridging the Gap: Linking Social Media to ROI.”

Along with the majority of conference attendees, every panelist said social measurement currently gets a 4-to-6 on a scale of 1-to-10. Even Mark Kovscek, SVP of Enterprise Analytics at Converseon, gave social measurement a 4, although “It’s tough to say you all suck.”

Harsh as it is to hear, the poor ratings are good medicine, said Steve Latham, panel moderator and CEO of Encore Media Metrics. “We’re all looking at our budgets carefully, today” Latham said. Everyone, therefore, needs to be asking: “How’s [social] helping us grow the top line?”

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Bruce May from Bizperity, June 10, 2011 at 10:08 a.m.
There cannot be a single method for measuring ROI in social marketing because there is not a single strategy for implementing social marketing. Key variables that determine how you approach social marketing include size (enterprise vs. small business), your market, your industry, the role of your business in your industry ecosystem, just to name a few. Social marketing must also leverage local communities (either geographical or defined by interest/specialty). As a practical matter, this means that social marketing is not easily scalable, unlike every other ad product/approach in history which always created significant advantages for enterprise business over small businesses which struggle to use advertising effectively. Small businesses have the advantage is social marketing because they live in the communities where social media lives and breathes. Professional marketers continue to overlook these key factors when thinking about social marketing in general. The implications for ROI are equally important.
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