Commonsense Social Media Measurement as a Diagnostic Tool

I am willing to bet that a very small fraction of online outreach has a measurement component baked in. I think there are a lot of people moving in that direction, but even if they do measure, it is usually something fairly meaningless to business objectives, like fan follows and web traffic. Or on the other side, they over measure and it leads to paralysis.

Both of these kinds of measurement aren’t helpful. What is helpful is measurement that acts as a decision-making tool. A good measurement program can help to:

•Diagnose: Adjust communications, get better

•Prioritize: Build into planning, make decisions

•Evaluate: Demonstrate ROI, Value

Zoetica Media published a whitepaper late last year on social media measurement that came from a chapter I wrote in Geoff Livingston’s book, “Welcome to the Fifth Estate.”

In this post I am sharing the AAA Framework for measurement developed in that whitepaper. The frameworks is pretty simple, it encompasses looking at a combination of Actions, Attitudes and Actions that people make in response to online engagement.

The AAA Social Media Measurement Framework

Attention: The overall volume of interest, these include fans, traffic and other analytics. Can also include measuring clips.

Attitude: Overall sentiment and relationship to the brand.

Action: Business results of online outreach and what actions people take as a results of a campaign, outreach effort, or sustained online presences in social networks online.

The issue isn’t the availability of the data, but instead is how to narrow down the data you do use, and determining which are most important. Some of the most common reasons people aren’t measuring include feelings that is is too hard or time consuming, that it costs too much, that they don't really know how, and the most insidious, they are afraid that measurement will provide proof that what they are doing isn’t working and they might get fired.

The truth is that if you use measurement for what it was intended, a way to improve performance and prove value, it can be your ally. Below is a PowerPoint presentation with more information and the copy of the whitepaper is below that. Happy measuring!

PowerPoint Presentation

Commonsense Social Media Measurement

Whitepaper

Commonsense Framework to Measure Social Media