A modest proposal for moving the needle on social media measurement
Posted by Matt Donnelly on Thu, Aug 20, 2009 @ 09:00 AM
I bring this up because of an interesting post from Forrester Research analyst Laura Ramos entitled B2B Marketers: Where Are Your Groundswell Award Submissions?
Ramos writes:
At the end of May, we opened up nominations for the 2009 Forrester Groundswell awards. Well, the contest closes SEPTEMBER 2 -- that's less than a month away -- and so far we have just 4 (ONLY 4!?!) submissions in the B2B categories. C'mon folks, I know there are plenty of B2B marketers out there doing interesting things in social media. You now have less time to submit, so shake out of the summer doldrums and show us how you use social media to listen to, talk with, energize, and spread success among your customers and prospects. (emphasis mine)
What interested me even more was a reader's comment on her post:
Perhaps the reason for few award nominations to date, is that B2B marketers are having a hard time finding ROI or the results they want from social media campaigns. I attended one of your Forrester marketers get togethers last year in San Mateo, and there was a lot of discussion around companies that are testing social media campaigns, but no one had figured out how to tell if they were successful yet.
This is a telling comment. It raises some interesting questions:
How does one define success in social media? This is related to metrics: How much measurement is going on, and what are the metrics we should be looking at?
On this latter point, the community-endorsed social media thought leaders (Brogan, Li, Scoble, Gillin, etc.), working with folks like Forrester, should get together (online and in person) and hammer out a consensus document on the right kind of metrics for b-to-b and b-to-c social media, and that in turn will help software devs create tools and new businesses around measuring these things and then offering companies advice for making the numbers better. I'd be happy to help facilitate this, since I think we're not going anywhere in this discussion until we can agree to sing off the same sheet of music.
If the measure is direct ROI (i.e., someone clicks a link to buy something), then measure that, if it's indirect ROI (e.g., engagement, buzz), then measure that. If the ROI of social media isn't dollars and cents, then let's be upfront and honest about it and make the case for its value on other grounds.
Are folks measuring and just not getting results they'd want to share with their managers or business owners?
Maybe there are agreed-upon metrics, but they're showing social media marketing (b-to-b or b-to-c) is a failure or at least that it needs to be refined for better results. I doubt that this is the case, however, but it is at least possible.
Is social media "strategy" too disconnected from other areas of the business, an island unto itself?
This is a key point. Social media measurement/ROI needs to be connected to other areas of the business, especially sales and marketing. It's odd to measure ROI of marketing on one hand, and the ROI from social media on the other. Both are two sides of the same coin.
Enough said. In the end, I think that even if Ramos does get the requisite number of b-to-b social media marketing nominations, she has another report or two just waiting to be written -- and a really exciting research project just waiting to begin.