How to measure social media | 60 Second Marketer

How to Measure Success of Your Social Media Campaign

On Friday, I’ll be doing a full-day seminar for the Small Business Development Center that outlines how to set-up, run and manage a social media campaign. As part of the seminar, I’ll cover the three primary segments of social media measurement: quantitative, qualitative and ROI.

There are many chapters devoted to this topic in “How to Make Money with Social Media,” the book I wrote with Dr. Reshma Shah from Emory University. I’ve found that people can wrap their minds around social media measurement better when they break things down into these three categories:

There are three categories of social media measurement: Quantitative, Qualitative and ROI.

Quantitative metrics: These are the metrics that are data-centric. By that, we mean that the metrics simply measure information and have very little emotional content. These would include traffic, inbound links, online mentions and other easily-quantifiable data.

Qualitative metrics: These are social media metrics that provide information about people’s emotions, thoughts and intensity of feelings about a product or service. (For example, having the word cheap used to describe your brand is very different than having the word inexpensive used.)

ROI metrics: These social media metrics help you track your progress toward your ultimate goal, which is to make money with social media. They include metrics such as leads generated, customers retained, prospects converted and, most importantly, profits generated.

Given all that, here are some of the tools you can use to track the metrics from each of these categories:

Google Analytics: This should be installed on all websites. If it’s not on yours, fire your web design firm
GoingUp!: Another great tool for measuring traffic to your website
Coremetrics: If you’re ready to step it up a notch, this one is for you. In-depth analytics and insights
Adobe Online Marketing Suite: This used to be called Omniture, but they were bought out by Adobe. This set of tools is for the real pros.
Sprial16: This is a web-based platform that helps you listen, measure and visualize your brand’s online presence
Social Mention: This tool is similar to Search.Twitter.com in that it provides data and information about certain keywords and how they’re used online
RapLeaf: Another great tool with tons of functionality. Definitely worth checking out
Nielsen Buzz Metrics: Nielsen goes very, very deep with this tool. Expensive, but good

Those are just some of the online measurement tools outlined in “How to Make Money with Social Media” (which, oh, by the way, can be pre-ordered on BarnesAndNoble.com and Amazon.com right now). Stay tuned for more updates in future blog posts.

See you soon.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer, 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine for BKV Digital and Direct Response