Those of you who know or read me, know that I am not much of a measurement kind of guy. I have been stating for several years that the tools of social media measurement are still primitive. Besides, we have not quite figured out just what it is that we want to measure.
In previous times, we wanted to measure demographics, click-thrus, lead generation from a marketing effort and so on. This stuff is relevant I concede, but it just isn’t the essence of social media programs.
Social media is more fluid than that. It is harder to boil down onto spreadsheet numbers. It involves engagement, conversation, education, word of mouth, corporate and personal branding and so much more.
These things are layered with nuance and subjective judgment calls.
I have been called anti-measurement, but that is not the case. My argument is that there is great danger in measuring the wrong things. And what you measure shapes how you use social media moving forward.
All business practices need to be measured, evaluated, challenged and refined. Ultimately they are about money, but measuring against ROI is often the wrong number. Most marketing is measured on acquire new business, not shaving the cost of goods sold down to achieve profitability.
My argument that measurement tools are too primitive has eroded away. Over the past couple of years, the tools have gotten a lot better and the people who use them seem to have become a lot wiser on figuring out just what to measure when they evaluate a social media practice.
The other day, my friend Jeremiah Owyang, a partner in Altimeter Group, posted a blog that forecast something called Social Analytics was an important and emerging trend.
I had not previously heard the term, so I’m guessing many of you haven’t either. In a tweeted conversation Jeremiah defined the term as, “the practice of being able to understand customers & predict them using data from the social web.”
That’s an “aha” moment for me. He’s working on a report, but just the thought of social analytics captures to me the challenge and the goal of what should be measurable in social media.
I am not yet convinced that these tools exist today. Perhaps, Jeremiah’s report will show that a significant start has been made in that direction. I don’t know. I hope so.
If you can understand how I feel about your company, based on my conversation with you. If you determine that there are others like me, than you as a marketer, product developer, customer support professional can adjust course. You can make your products and services more to my liking–if I am relevant to you.
You will be able to do it faster, cheaper and with greater precision, if social analytics fulfills the promise that Jeremiah makes for the emerging category.
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I’m not sure what the fuss is here…simply using data to attempt to predict….please…. this is certainly not a revolutionary thought let alone “discovered” by altimeter. Nothing new here
Our team (@ PostRank) still gets plenty of brand monitoring-specific inquiries, but I have been noticing, anecdotally, that the inquiries have been evolving more in the last six months or more. For those for whom analytics are on the radar, simply hunting down keyword mentions is no longer sufficient.
Currently, the sweet spot involves monitoring, analyzing, and measuring both on- and off-site engagement, and for outbound campaigns, etc., the trifecta of what companies want to know seems to be Topic – Influence – Location. (E.g. “Who are the top automotive bloggers in the southwestern US?”)
Agencies and the like also seem to want to be able to sex up how they report to their own clients better — more customized reporting, branding, etc.
Shel is right in that it’s hard to wrap a spreadsheet around the psychology and nuances of interpersonal interactions and reactions online, but I don’t see that as an acceptable “excuse” to companies, and they will latch on to vendors and consultants who offer them credible-sounding answers. Of course, pretty much every vendor will have some flavour of How It All Works. :) I can’t wait to see how this space grows, evolves, and aggregates.
It’s been here for a while now, with a variety of actors trying to cope with it: from market research moguls to niche start-ups (Alenty comes to my mind).
Recently the topic is getting more attention with the joint move of Mc Kinsey and Nielsen.
It is an additional sign that social media is on the corporate radar … and this people need to have it measured to have it managed.
Thanks Shel
It’s too early for me to publish a report on social analytics just yet. We just published a report on “social marketing analytics” which is really the KPIs companies need to measure their marketing efforts.
The “Social insights” and “Social analytics” space is still way to early. However, from the enterprise side of the house (IT folks) Ray, also a partner here at Altimeter just published are report on business intelligence software. He was also attending Oracle’s event yesterday on this topic, so no surprise.
http://bit.ly/d21V7W
We should expect to see this space emerge from two prongs: 1) The brand monitoring firms are quickly evolving, Sheldon’s comment above is an indicator of a new entrant from Sysmos. 2) From the existing business intelligence software space, we’re seeing these large incumbents ‘move’ into the social space.
So, while it’s great we are early pointers to what’s coming next, it’s important to note that companies can’t even measure what they’re doing now with accuracy, let alone know what to do with predictive data.
Wow that’s the longest comment I’ve written in a while, thanks for extending the conversation.
I am eagerly keeping an eye on this as well. As a PR person I always hated the practice of measuring media with impressions — but analytics have fascinated me. I agree that we haven’t hit on exactly the right mix and there are too many platforms and tools crowding the field. I feel like as soon as Jeremiah (or anyone) figures this out the parameters may change again. Are we moving too fast to stop and measure?
Timothy,
I am a long-time fan of Caterina’s but I have to admit I have not yet checked out Hunch.com. There is a company who was wise to choose the name “Social Analytics” and before reading Jeremiah’s as-yet unpublished report, I would guess there are quite a few players in this category. I’m guessing in coming months this becomes a very popular and well-populated category.
Isn’t social analytics what Caterina Fake and her team are doing over at Hunch.com?
There has been great strides made in the field of social analytics in the past few years, and I like to think that we’re one of the key players helping this to happen. Of course there is always going to be room for improvement in the future and we will be changing as the landscape does, but knowing who your audience is and hearing what they have to say will always be one of the key factors in this new measurement world. After that, measurement just depends on what your actual goals are. Once you know your goals you can find a way to see if you’re reaching them.
I think one of the problems with measuring social media is that everyone is waiting for a “golden rule” to social measurement that is never going to appear. Because every campaign will have different goals, company A will probably not be able to measure themselves the same way company B does.
One thing you may want to take a look at is a new product we’re beta testing this summer called Audience (http://www.sysomos.com/products/overview/audience ) which will help companies to actually determine how much a internet based lead may be worth to a company. In short, it measures the ROI of social media. (I don’t usually like to push our products like this, but I thought it may be something you’d be interested in seeing)
Anyways, great post Shel and I’ll be looking forward to see what kind of info Owyang comes up with.
Cheers,
Sheldon, community manager for Sysomos
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