Taming the social media beast
Marianne Madden
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The Challenge
How to quantify relationships,
communities, influence
and engagement
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The Challenge
How to stay focused on
meaningful metrics and
ignore the noise --
in the midst of hoopla,
skepticism or impatience
3

The Challenge
How to draw a straight line
from social media activities to
profits
4

The Challenge
How to find out what’s working
and what’s not –
so you can refine and optimize
5

The Challenge
How to set appropriate
expectations
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But first…
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8

Criticism
• Bad execution
• Locked children out
• Encouraged false conversations
• “The problem is that Skittles attempted to
enter the social network without really
engaging in it”
9

Effects
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0

It all begs the question…
What were they really trying to accomplish?
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1

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2

How much time will it take for
a social media strategy to
help my business?

The POST Process
• Define target audience (People)
• Define Objectives
• Define Strategy
– Rules of engagement
– Assign responsibilities
– Analytics tracking
– Etc.
• Define appropriate Technologies
• Launch
• Measure results, optimize, repeat
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4

Morals of the story
• Take the time to nail
strategy/planning
• Quality of execution is
everything
• Launch of social media
engagement is only the
beginning

And whatever you do…
Don’t give in to execs who
try to rush deployment

Which metrics can help me assess my social
media campaign for each type of objective:
awareness, acquisition and retention?

Prioritizing Metrics

Measuring awareness from SM
• The basics: traffic, links, rankings, time interacting
with you/your site
• Spread/sharing of assets: use tracking codes
• Sustained increase in keyword volume for your
brand
• Online buzz: use monitoring solution like Radian6
• Social bookmarking
• Interaction with widgets/apps

Measuring acquisition from SM
• Direct links/sales from SM efforts, shared
content, etc.
• Conversion rates from SM; value of SM
customers
• Email newsletter subscribers, RSS subscribers,
etc.
• Gain understanding of who you’re reaching
via SM that you couldn’t reach via traditional
means

Measuring retention
• Audience empowerment
• Purchase rate/value and lifetime value of
customers from SM
• Quantity and quality of conversations
– How many customers are having issues resolved
through SM?
• Ability to answer questions, nip customer
service issues in the bud

Measuring engagement
• Joining the community
• Submitting a comment/rating/review
• Contributing UGC, incl. questions/replies
• Saving a social bookmark
• Favoriting videos
• RSS subscribers
• Clickstream data

Measuring ORM from SM
• SERPs
• Content of online chatter
• How your content is tagged
• Keyword trends

Rules of thumb
Define concrete KPIs beforehand; zero in on
your real objectives

Rules of thumb
Allow campaign (and its KPIs) to evolve

Rules of thumb
Look at the campaign holistically

Rules of thumb
Keep your eyes peeled for unintended
consequences

Rules of thumb
Use SM to gain an understanding
of who you’re reaching

Pesky qualitative considerations
Engagement
Audience empowerment
Influence
Community
Trust
Transparency
Instant feedback
Ability to flip the script
Coolness factor

How to beat back the monster
• Focus on what’s important,
and what you can reliably
measure
• Study others
• Do projections

What’s important? ROI!
ROI =
Value of benefit
--------------------------------------------------------
Planning and development + Ongoing costs

Projecting ROI of a forum
Baseline numbers:
• Number of customers
• Number of customers participating in forum (~1% annually)
• Additional customers viewing content (Spectators) (~5% annually)
Then estimate:
• Total support calls these customers would have made (~1 call per
customer)
• Support calls avoided b/c of forum (assume 33% find answers on forum)
• Cost savings from avoided calls (assume $10 per call)

Projecting ROI of ratings/reviews
Baseline numbers:
• Site visitors
• Sales at typical conversion rate and transaction value
Then estimate:
• Visitors seeing reviews (~20%)
• Increased conversion rate and transaction value
• Net additional sales

Projecting ROI of a company blog
• Advertising value (visibility/traffic)
• PR value (press stories written about/driven from
blog content)
• Word of mouth value (referring posts)
• Support value (support calls avoided)
• Research value (customer insights)

Parting thoughts
Measurement must evolve beyond web analytics
and now focus on community insights.”
- Jeremiah Owyang
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and
not everything that counts can be counted.”
- Albert Einstein

Thank you
Marianne Madden
Marianne.madden@gearyi.com
619-756-6729
Twitter: melondrama

References
• Chart, slide 18
• Slides 32-35: Groundswell