We need to know if we are making a difference, or just making a fool of ourselves.”
I am participating in daylong seminar at DELL on Tuesday (almost today) about social media with Shel Israel, Chris Heuer, Connie Reece and the Dell team, including RichardatDell, Caroline Dietz and Lionel Menchaca.
My part of the workshop covers social media measurement. I will be referencing some of the wonderful work done by Katie Paine, Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang and Avinash Kaushik to enlighten the participants about how to measure social media efforts.
One of the things I will stress is the importance of having well-defined objectives. By definition, objectives have to be measurable, “What would you like to see happen and by when as a results of engaging in social media?”
But many bloggers and other evangelists see this question as devaluing the relational part of social media. In other words, they fear that reducing everything to numbers and what the company will gain.
However, I think that in social media, it might be better to set what I call Relational Objectives. This is better defined as the place where the interests of the organization and the interests of the communities they serve are aligned within the context of the relationship within the social environment. Or the place I like to call the Sweet Spot. I am unveiling this chart tomorrow for the first time, but you get a sneak peak.
But how do you find this sweet spot. First, you employ ACTIVE LISTENING, which implies more than just monitoring; then you search for ways that you can CONTRIBUTE to the community; and finally you PARTICIPATE by creating content to share. All the while, you look for places where the community and the enterprise can find mutual benefits from interacting, the Sweet Spot.
I hope you listen in to the discussion. I will be live tweeting the conference on my Twitter channel. Come follow me.
