The Measurement of Social Media?

1) Community Growth: Just home many members are you adding each and every month or week? Heck you can even ask yourself how many new members are you adding a day! You can ask what this number is when you compare the numbers of web site hits or forum post comment s or views. Are you getting enough and are you creating an individual benchmark for yourself?

2) Content Rating: Do you measure how effective a given article of post is based on the number of “thumbs ups”, comments, views, retwitter, a link to it on twitter or getting it featured on a Ning site? This is gold in getting new views and new followers.

3) Traffic: Page views are not top dog with all the traffic and pass though’s going on but it is still important to measure the kind of traffic and his your site is getting.

4) Call deflection: In support instances if customers and prospects are brave enough to stick their online necks out and be bold enough to answer a question or deflect a criticism you need to reward them

5) Sentiment: Avid online SMer’s are working on how to make and work with both positive as well as negative posts and conversations. Outside of the time that it takes to sift though social media content to date it doesn’t hurt to do it once in a while (weekly perhaps) Yet, the largest consensus that I have found is that sentiment analysis is still in is infancy and has a long way to go from being an automated process. That being said, someone might have and put forward a solution next week, or even as soon as today. Such is the rate of SM change.

Larson Notes & Satire: Most “experts” are in agreement that to date establishing a standardized matrix of community can work in sites with a standardized purpose. But not free falling sites like Facebook. Idea generation, supporting and so called emergencies have a greater tendency to spike hits and activity rather than give back long term (over a month) residuals.

When posting anything remember your customers and prospects might not always like what you have to say. Heavens knows I have said a few things online that have gotten my virtual butt kicked. But ask yourself, was what I posted (or is what I’m going to post) helpful? Did I solve a problem?

When tracking hits remember to watch out for the bot attacks. It might seem like a lot of hits are pounding on you but those little bots come and go. Keep a close eye on comments and thumbs ups, not the counter.

Some of your customers and prospects will view your site as a question solver and will look at it for questions they will NEVER call up and ask your customer service people.

And always keep an eye out for your online reputation. Once something is out there it can drag you down. The scary part is it might now happen immediately. It something is posted today, some negative detractor might find it 6 months from now and act and talk about it like it is current news.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
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