Take the Quiz to Find Out
The Freewheelers
The Naysayers eschew measurement, calling it antithetical to the ethos of social media. This camp says that each individual voice is important and that all input should be seen as valuable. It feels that by measuring, an organization sets up a transactional relationship instead of building a more desirable, egalitarian one.
The Bean Counters
On the opposite side of the divide are the Bean Counters, those who say that business results should drive the involvement of an organization in social media. They are not very interested in the softer measures of influence, reputation or relationship building. Their focus is return on investment (ROI), and they don’t see the point of wasting valuable resources on something that doesn’t contribute to the bottom line.
The Measurement Explorers
The third camp, which we will call the social media Measurement Explorers, falls somewhere in between the other two and is happy to look at multiple measures to show the efficacy of social media. While a monetary return is the primary objective, there are a variety of ways to measure the impact that social media channels have on advancing the goals of the business or nonprofit. This moderate view is the most common-sense approach for social spaces and usually yields the best results.
Which one of these styles are you?
It likely that you are in one of the shaded areas in the Venn diagram above and I would take a hazard to guess that the more you move toward being an explorer, the more likely you will achieve success.
It’s hard to run a business or nonprofit on good feelings alone, and conversely, facilitating word-of-mouth advocacy will be difficult if the goal is to convert every touch into a transaction.
So share in the comments which style you tested out to be and if you think it is accurate.
Then you can go an read or download a free copy of the Whitepaper, from which this framework was taken, “A Commonsense Framework for Social Media Measurement.”
Here are all the posts from the Commonsense Social Media Measurement series:
- Part I: A Commonsense Approach to Social Media Measurement
- Part 2: Setting SMART Objectives
- Part 3: Measurement as a Diagnostic Tool
- Part 4: The 3 As of Social Media Measurement
- Part 5: What Is Your Measurement Personality Style?
The whitepaper was a guest chapter authored by Kami Huyse in Geoff Livingston’s book, Welcome to the Fifth Estate.
