As more brands follow consumers onto Facebook and Twitter, agencies and tech specialists are tagging along with all manner of measurement service.
The most recent example is Media Logic’s “Retail Social Juice Index,” which purports to measure social engagement for roughly 500 brands across social networks, which it then distills into a single metric.
Published daily, the scores are supposed to represent the effectiveness of brands’ social-promotional efforts.
In addition to publishing an industry average on a daily basis, the Juice Index highlights each day’s biggest movers. Subscribers can also track up to five brands of their choosing and receive free weekly updates and analysis.
“We have designed the Index specifically for national retailers, but we think businesses and institutions of all sorts will find it quite valuable,” said David Schultz, president of Media Logic.
Using the index, Schultz says retailers can also more easly link to the Facebook and Twitter pages of the biggest movers, up or down, to discover what might be driving social engagement.
The formula Media Logic is using to arrive at the Index number is based on a review of published data, as well as the agency’s own analysis. Schultz said the agency worked to create an algorithm that adjusted for key factors and properly weighted various types of brand and fan interaction.
After testing and adjusting the formula for several months, Schultz said he was confident the index will provide an accurate measure of social engagement between brands across all measured retail sectors.
Still, that doesn’t mean that marketers will pick Media Logic’s tools over others.
Among 100 Facebook advertisers, Coca-Cola ranked the world’s No. 1 brand, with a following on Facebook of 34 million fans -- and growing at a monthly rate of nearly 3% -- according to a recent white paper from Covario,
The purpose of the white paper, released in October, was to develop a series of metrics and best practices for managing continuous improvement on Facebook in order for advertisers to better measure their relative performance.