Radian6′s Amber Naslund had a great social media trend piece 28 July. One topic was measurement. She writes, in part:
Now the discussions center around what, specifically, businesses should be measuring in their own context of goals and objectives, what social data points actually matter in a business context (and how they’ve evolved from more traditional metrics), and how to derive insights and map out plans based on what we learn.
I commented that the measurement move from outputs through outtakes to eventual outcomes in mainstream media measurement would be repeated in social media measurement. We do a lot of descriptive measurement in both spaces — tonality, reach, message congruity and share of voice/discussion merely observe what is happening, with little connection to behavior on the part of the recipient. It’s a somewhat passive perspective, in part because the formation of opinion is so complex. Pesky humans — always drawing on multiple influences before deciding on something.
The next phase is outtakes (sometimes called communication outcomes). Web traffic, email open rates, click-throughs, changes in awareness or understanding gleaned through surveys still don’t connect to revenue or expense as directly as the C-suite would like. In some organizations, that’s not a problem. The boss trusts the communicators to do their thing and is satisfied that the thing is meaningful for the business.
The Holy Grail is measuring business outcomes, answering the question, “how does communication activity affect the bottom line?” Much social media case work is on the marketing side of the line. Just as our cousins in advertising can establish a minimum number of impressions needed to predict number of qualified leads (and sales), they can use e-commerce to assign dollar values to social media activities. The boss understands the advertising/marketing impact on the business a lot better than the PR impact because of that frame of reference.
We know that reputation depends much more on actions than on words. But, is there a minimum number of media impressions (regardless of social or mainstream) required to move public opinion positively regarding reputation matters, rather than sales-related matters? Does increasing your share of voice/discussion with positive messaging lead to improved awareness, favorability, etc. ?
What do you think?
Good post.
I think that the more positive mentions around your brand can never be a bad thing. The more people see positive things around your brand the more inclined they might be to thinking positively about you. Whether that translates into an actual sale is a different story, but having a positive attitude towards a company can definitely help in the consumer decision process.
Cheers,
Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos
Hey Sheldon – thanks for inaugurating the comments on this post.
Two things stand out: “The more people see positive things around your brand the more inclined they might be to thinking positively about you. ”
The “inclined they might be to thinking” is the problematic part as regards measurement. This is where frequency and consistency are so important. No exec thinks that one ad in a magazine is going to drive sales right away. they know that building awareness takes time. They do not, however, have the same thought about PR in general, nor social media. For some reason if it’s online, they think the effect should be immediate.
Or, they see no connection between the online piece and any outcome (the WSJ still carries a lot of weight that online doesnt)
If we’re building corporate reputation, we need to know how effective each input is, which is a justification speaking point, btw. Research can do that; back of the envelope cannot.
Thanks again for commenting!
Sean
I think you’re right that outcomes are where brands need to focus. It really will come down to education before execution, though. I think we are seeing many focus on how many positive mentions they receive, rather than also focusing on what it means to their overarching strategy.
Impressions are two-fold – where it’s being shared and the type of audience its being shared to. Brand recognition will also weigh heavily on what brand ambassadors are saying about you. It’s all how you position your brand, where you are building and HOW you are doing it.
Interesting post that sparked a lot of thought.
Lauren Fernandez
Community Manager, Radian6
@cubanalaf
Lauren! Thanks for your comment. We should be helping to connect the dots — and I’ll agree that the brand impact is critical, especially if we widen the definition of brand. Brand is still too often restrictive to marketing — but the reputation aspects of communication work depend on the various brand characteristics and inputs.
Thanks again for your kind participation!
Cheers.
Sean
@commammo
Having knowledge from both a PR measurement and marketing measurement perspective can be the perfect mix for effective social media measurement. I like to think that tying social media activity into some sort of sales funnel (i.e. increased web visits-> leads/conversions) can show good ROI and at least satisfy the C-suite skeptic who doesn’t understand the impact of reputation and the importance of metrics like prominence and tonality,
So while that will get buy-in, you can then focus on long-term goals like awareness and reputation management (which, I believe at least, do at some point lead to an ultimate outcome of sales). In the end, everyone wins. Unless of course your strategy is not resulting in improving either.. In which case at least you know from measuring it, right?
Kelly — thanks for stopping by. Agreed, we need to think about all the various inputs to the communication mix, but I’m wary of trying to claim credit absent the statistical modeling that parses various inputs out. The old saw is that when sales are down, PR gets the blame. When sales are up, it’s brilliant sales management, expert marketing and salesforce execution, not great PR. The mix modeling can help address that — though the sales leadership doesn’t want to think that PR had anything to do with success.
Many times we’re better off with the outtake measurement (communication objectives that speak to extrapolating our outputs toward outcomes without necessarily taking credit for those outcomes), especially if the measurement strategy is well-informed from business objectives and a participative exercise among the stakeholders.
thanks again, Kelly!
Sean