Moving beyond social media metrics to business outcomes
Recently I noticed my reports are beginning to morph into something an executive can actually sink their teeth into. The first couple of reports to Sr. Management were mostly social media activities, which looked more like how I was spending my time versus what is being contributed to the bottom line.
The aha moment came after sharing a deck created a couple of months ago with Jeremiah Owyang. His comment was that we were not measuring business goals. instead it was all 'social media metrics' which are mostly meaningless.
The two in my mind are not mutually exclusive, it is important to understand what activities attributed to business outcomes. This allows you to optimize your activities and focus only on the things delivering the highest value. But, the point hit home and made me re-think how I measure.
What has changed based on this feedback? Initially we were measuring 5 goals and aligning activities to each. The activities were very much as Jeremiah pointed out, social media oriented and not business goals.
Old measurements.(See slides: External Social Media Metrics)
Shape perception of company and engage with thought leaders.
Increase social media relevance of Vignette.
Increase traffic to vignette.com.
Contribute to community by sharing insights and serving customers.
Internally, serve as a social media evangelist and cultural change agent
Moving forward when reporting to Sr. Management the details on the "how" will be left out, most of the activities only make sense to those of us who are in the trenches. I will still continue to track social media metrics but will now focus on these business goals.
Generating new leads
Building brand awareness in new markets
Managing brand perception
Providing customer service and support
The only conclusion I can arrive at on why early reports were merely social media metrics with loose ties to business goals, was that early on it was not clear how to get from one to the other. In other words, would social media actually do anything for our business.
We have been able to generate leads and build brand awareness in new markets thru social media. These results have allowed us to begin building a business case to expand the organizational commitment to social media.
So my question to you all is:
Do most companies start by measuring social media activity alone(eg. #followers, Retweets etc), then as they mature begin to optimize activities and align with business outcomes (Leads generated, sales made etc)?
