Tim Trefren recently wrote one of the best blogs I’ve ever read in regards to social media tracking (although that’s not necessarily saying much, because people seem to write vaguely about the issue).

I wanted to commend him on his “3 new ways to measure the social web” even though none of them are new. We’ve been using them to track social media and online interaction for several years now. I might sound a little cynical (I am) and I might be using a lot of parenthesis (it’s just my style), but I sincerely thank him for getting the word out about conversion tracking, engagement tracking, and repeat visitor tracking. For some of us in the industry, this stuff isn’t new at all, but many businesses refuse to acknowledge the extreme trackability of social media, and how to use that data to make informed marketing decisions.

I’m not going to take the time to outline our tracking system here because I already wrote a blog post about it several months ago. Some of our metrics change depending on the client, but our philosophy hasn’t changed: social media is as trackable as you want it to be.

What does that mean for us as marketers? I’ll lay it out, plain and simple for you:

- More data = more information = better market research.

- More data = more accurate ROI = better informed marketing decisions

- More data = more targetability = more effective advertising

And these points say nothing about the other obvious benefits of increased communication, positioning, search engine optimization, promotions, etc. Hopefully social media tracking doesn’t seem as daunting as it once was.

If you have any questions, give us a call (410-280-5451) or send us an email. We love to teach companies how to measure their social media efforts!