Measuring the Performance of Social Media Communications

A great presentation from Valeria Maltoni on measuring how your social media communications are PERFORMING. Yes, that's right - not just "ROI" - but actual impact on the things that are important for your business.

View more documents from Valeria Maltoni.

What does this mean?

It means that YOU have to do the hard work of defining which things you want to measure and impact. You need to be actively looking at your BUSINESS STRATEGY to determine which things can remain stable and which things need to change. From there, you put in place a whole range of initiatives (some which include social media) designed to change the behaviour of your target audiences. Again - these audiences are folks that YOU need to be clear about - are you talking employees, new customers, existing customers, partners, suppliers, potential interns ...

I know, you are going to ask me "can't an agency do this for me?" Of course they can. But in my view, you want to spend your hard-earned budget on creating value for your audiences. If you understand more clearly who, how and what is interesting, useful and relevant to your audiences, then you can brief your agency to deliver real value to them. It's about planning for context over placement. Remember - the clearer you are in your briefing process, the sharper results you will get. For me, forget "reach and frequency". Show me performance and business impact any day.

Comments

[Micah]

This is a very nice post. I can see you have put hard work on your blog. I'm sure I'd be back here more often. You can come by and visit my site if you have time. See yah!

[niko]

nice pick up...i really love how marketers and agencies are more and more starting to think and behave like owners again instead of budget controllers. Output should trump input.

my old boss used to make earn my budget when I first worked for him. not just propose how the marketing action would make money, but the budget had to be earned via...well that was up to me.

Could not get the money to spend it? Well no spending. Perhaps a bit out there, but a great lesson in accountability, creativity and thinking stuff out properly..

[Gavin Heaton]

That's a great perspective, Niko. I wonder what would happen if we all had to earn our own budget?

[Bernie]

Assisting SME's to take control of their business by actually investigating their customer base and expectations is fraught with frustration and headaches. The advent of outsourcing, especially overseas outsourcing, places even more onus on the business owner to have total understanding of their operation and clients as mentioned.

Sadly, it is often 'too hard' for owners to contemplate, so instead they run with the status quo and hope for the best, or abdicate (not delegate) responsibility to the agency!