“If you can’t measure it you shouldn’t be doing it” – I always used to say. My opinion changed with the social media boom. There were, I felt, benefits to getting a brand onto the SM bandwagon that outweighed the need to measure the results too soon.

Companies want to see a RIO, often in their ‘own’ format rather than anything an analytics programme can provide. Too many established outfits, however, are not prepared to invest the time or resource in learning new analysis. Sadly ‘back of cigarette packets’ calculations still drive many SME businesses. They expect it to ‘just happen’. They don’t understand how things have changed.

Sure some take a stab at SM marketing, or web marketing, or email marketing but then panic when there isn’t an immediate result. I call this Wylie E Coyote marketing.

So what’s the solution? How do we provide real detail behind our gut feel for SM?

Amber Naslund has written an excellent article on SM measurement. She outlines some of the areas you should consider.

Revenue and Business Development: (benchmark before and after SM initiatives begin)

• Speed/length of sales cycle
• Number or % of Repeat customers
• % of Customer Retention
• Number of customer referrals (new business), net number of new leads
• Transaction value per customer
• Customer lifetime value
• Conversions from blog/email subs to leads or customers
• Website conversions for leads or sales
• Organic search rankings > converted leads
• % of Converted leads from online vs. offline sources

Potential Cost Savings:

• Shorter customer service/issue resolution time
• % of issues resolved via offline vs. online channels
• Number of support calls before/after outreach effort
• Recruiting costs through online presence (vs. recruiters)
• Training costs
• % of quarterly or annual customer/account turnover
• Overhead costs for communication (measure costs of online outreach vs. analog as compared to resolution ratios)
• Number/ ratio of viable community-driven product ideas
• Length of concept-to-development cycle (use of online community as testing/focus/idea development)

Value, Awareness, Influence

• Brand Loyalty
• Sentiment of posts online – advocates, detractors
• Share of conversation/voice
• Number and frequency of mentions in media (online or print)
• Net Promoter Score (likelihood of recommendation)
• Subscribers to blog/email/newsletter
• Comments/engagement on posted material, downloads of ebooks, etc. (interaction with content)
• Inbound links to site/blog (total as well as on-topic/relevant)
• Number of Tags, votes, social bookmarks
• Fans/followers/group members for social profiles (implication of a brand following)

I recommend reading the full article  from Altitude.