Social Media Measurement

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!

Putting Some Numbers to Social Media

In post after post, we’ve explained why social media is an important outlet for reaching key audiences. But if you’re a believer of “truth in numbers,”  you probably need some figures. So we’ve compiled some statistics to help you see how social media has grown and how it’s being used.

The number of Americans who are 18 and older using social media increased to 35 percent in 2008. This was an 8 percent growth from 2005 figures, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

A June Nielsen NetView report revealed that time spent on Twitter grew 3,712 percent from April 2008 to April 2009. In roughly three months, 50 million people joined Facebook, bringing the total number of Facebook users to more than 250 million. According to the same June Nielsen report,  13.9 million minutes were spent on Facebook, a growth of 700% since April 2008. And it’s not  college students logging all those minutes anymore. Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is those 35 and older.

You may be asking what all those people are doing on social networks. Well, they’re uploading photos, chatting, letting their twitter followers know what they ate for lunch, sharing funny videos and reconnecting with friends from the past.

But that’s not all they’re doing.

They’re  opting-in to receive information from the 300,000 businesses that have a presence on Facebook (one-third of those 300,000 are small businesses, according to this USA Today article). They’re getting customer service requests fulfilled. They are reading reviews by prominent bloggers and influential review sites. Recent research from Universal McCann revealed that 77 percent of internet users are reading blogs.

They’re also adding their own two cents about brands and companies. According to a July Neilsen’s report, “Trust Value and Engagement in Advertising,” peer recommendations are the most trusted channel of advertising, trusted “somewhat” or “completely” by nine out of 10 people in a survey of 25,000 online consumers.

If you’re a number person, there are the numbers…and several more reasons why brands can’t afford to not be on social networks.

Tracking Your Brand Across Social Media Platforms

Ok, so you’ve started to research and engage your audience online. Now what? How do you know if it’s working?

This is a very important question to answer, because it will tell you what platforms/tactics/audiences are giving you the best ROI. Then you can adjust your social media strategy to become more effective.

There are several ways to track your social media presence and effectiveness, and a good social media campaign will involve a combination of tracking metrics, based on your goals.

Here are some of our favorite tools:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a must-have for any campaign that involves a website. Key statistics such as average time spent on pages, entrance sources (which sites your audience is coming from), and pageviews help you look at what is working and what isn’t.

Cheap (sometimes free) Tracking Sites

Recently there have been a rash of new or significantly updated tracking sites (notably Trendrr and Viral Heat) that have upped the ante in terms of tracking on a budget. Trendrr’s trial option lets you try the service on a limited basis indefinitely, and ViralHeat lets you do some pretty neat stuff, and cost is based on volume of tracking.

Proprietary Social Media Tracking Tools

You didn’t think we’d give away ALL our secrets, did you? Although the tools mentioned above can be helpful, sometimes they don’t offer the customization or complete coverage of specialized industry tools. These tools are more complex to use, but can offer higher-quality tracking because they can be tailored to each client’s needs.

Interns

Interns can provide cheap labor, and are really fun to throw things at. Just kidding! Seriously though, sometimes you need the eyes of a real human being researching your online presence. The obvious downside is that labor costs money, but if you have a good intern, you can catch potentially dangerous situations before they explode, or find a timely opportunity of which to take advantage.