The frustrating thing about social media measurement…
November 27th, 2009 by Lloyd Gofton
I attended Monitoring Social Media 09 last week, and it was a great event, full of excellent speakers and the attendee list wasn’t too shabby either. It was arranged by Luke Brynley-Jones and the Our Social Times team, and hopefully will become a permanent fixture on the ever increasing social events calendar.
Obviously I’m pretty late to the party in terms of reviews of the event, due to a few days off directly after the event and a hectic schedule since then. There are already some good reviews out there such as this from Jennie Lees and this from Our Social Times, which contains links to some of the presentations on the day from the likes of Alan Moore, Author & Founder of SMLXL, Neville Hobson, Head of Social Media, WeissComm Group, and Antony Mayfield, VP, Head of Global Media, iCrossing to name but a few. So, instead of looking at the event, I thought I would use the event as a catalyst to look at the progress in the social media monitoring sector as a whole, and the frustrating points that persist to hold social media, and its measurement, back. At least in my opinion.
I would like to avoid going over old ground and arguments as far as social media monitoring goes, but in truth many of the old arguments are still the main issues in the sector. This includes issues of relating traditional methods of measurement, such as ROI, to the new social media environment which requires a completely different approach. A lack of understanding of this approach to social media, specifically developing a conversation with your community rather than shouting at them, and of course what and how to measure.
There are many more issues, but these are three of the biggest and the ones that just aren’t going away. If we look at how and what to measure the tools are available both free and paid for with varying quality to achieve measurement by metrics, but there are no agreed metrics to use and how do you deal with the massive amount of data required to reach an accurate figure? This is something that even the measurement companies admit is a concern.
Then, once you have the data how do you represent it? As a purpose built formula that tells a brand it gets a 7.5 this month and an 8 the next for example, but what does that mean? Or a dashboard of results that need to be interpreted, because without actionable insights the data will be ignored.
Fundamentally there is a no standard, and although a great many smart people are trying to get there it’ll take time before we are, and it will perhaps take the entrance of one of the big boys to drive this forward - look out for Google and Microsoft doing this very soon.
So, assuming we do have a measurement formula and the metrics agreed, which are most important metrics to a brand? Well of course it varies from brand-to-brand. At Liberate Media we have found that not only does the method of measurement vary between clients, but also between individuals at the same client, and adding our own ideas isn’t always the best solution, so what is the accepted or desired measurement?
Well generally it has been ROI because that’s a well accepted model and has been utilised for web metrics previously, so surely it works? Well no, because if you’re just measuring ROI you’re missing a large chunk of the social media pie and it probably means you’ve missed the point. Opening a two way conversation with your community, listening to their needs and then responding by being useful will have many more and different benefits than ROI alone, and if you add phase one to phase two, a sale will not necessarily follow at phase three, not immediately at least. Many of the agencies at least are trying to get away from cramming social media into ROI models.
This brings us back to understanding, which is really the heart of the matter. As I said earlier social media understanding is growing, and ideas of how to utilise social media within brand communications are better than they were last year and hopefully this will improve dramatically over the next year, but it’s arguable whether understanding is based on ‘social media is important’ rather than ‘why social media is important.’
Allow me to offer two examples of the frustrating disconnect that can be apparent in social media from my conversations over the last week. (The brand names have been changed to protect my sources): Example 1: massive multinational brand with many agencies of all types is developing its marketing budget for 2010 and decides to invest a large chunk of its budget on TV because one of the agencies presented it with research that proves TV advertising is still the most valuable. Makes sense you might say, and TV is certainly still valuable but when considering the source of said research was the body developed to promote the TV industry it’s a little difficult to appreciate why the money went to TV on this basis and as a result digital channels (including social media) only get a tiny piece of the pie. Can it be because social media measurement doesn’t fit into the brand’s current measurement which is based on traditional TV formulas, or that TV is the safe bet? Probably both!
Example 2: massive digital agency tells its large multinational FMCG brand that it will develop a social media campaign for Christmas and even though massive digital agency promotes itself as the proverbial social media guru, it knows very little about social media so it outsources to a marketing freelancer who in turn outsources it to a social media agency who aren’t allowed to talk to the brand and get third-hand briefs.
So, we come to the crux of the issue. Social media will not be fully utilised by brands and agencies alike until measurement can be proven, and measurement will not be proven until social media is better understood to allow measurement to evolve. Still with me?
Okay, so I’ve done exactly what I said I didn’t want to - go over old ground, but that is my conclusion. This maybe a negative look at the current situation, and there are some excellent case studies of forward thinking brands, agencies and individuals that are driving ahead, but i don’t think it does us any good to believe we are over the education stage yet. Yes we are moving forward, yes we are making headway, new methods, ideas and tools are springing up and we are evolving, but until we can prove social media in a way that relates to, or benefits, traditional media and its measurements, we won’t truly have solved the issue. But as I said earlier we can’t really do that yet because the measurement framework has to change to suit a social media environment.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to belittle the efforts of those that have tried to build an understanding of social media, develop metrics and tools and continue to educate the market, that’s exactly what is required, and something we also try to do. What I am saying is the frustrating thing is the impact of these efforts probably won’t have a full impact until someone, probably a Google or similar, comes in and says this is how we do it, the majority accept it and we move on. The likelihood is that this ‘solution’ won’t be much better than those on offer now, but it will have support and acceptance, and that’s what will move us forward.
November 27th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Lloyd, I am totally with you on this. The truth is there are lots of really smart people out there trying to make sense of social media and the measurement of it. However, I have worked on numerous campaigns and I find that each customer has a different view of what they want measuring and what success looks like. I think as practitioners in this area it is our job to manage the client’s expectations on what can be acheived with a clever and well executed campaign.
November 27th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Thanks for your comment Chris.
I agree, we need to take an individual approach to each client, but feel there will be more standardisation of what represents positive results at least in the future.
November 30th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I think the problem is not with social media measurement, but with the way that traditional media has been calculated. For years, TV advertising has been given credit for all “sales” despite what was going on in earned media, web and online, and any other promotional activities. It wasn’t until brands like P&G and Miller started doing marketing mix modeling that people started figuring out that earning eyeballs was more effective than buying them. if we made traditional media measure itself based on actual outcomes– not just web traffic but profit,market share and gross margins, we’d might find that the customer who is engaged with the brand on social media is far les costly to obtain, and keep. But as long as everything is measured in terms of eyeballs, we’ll be forever stuck in 20th century mentalities.
November 30th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Thanks Katie
I agree, a completely different mindset is required to move forward. It’s not enough to just look at social media and try to measure it in traditional media terms. We need to look at the way social communications affect the brand/individual and measure these elements effectively, rather than resort to an old measuring stick for a new environment.