The lead story in today’s SmartBrief on Social Media deals with the idea of “word of mouth equity” — the notion that you have to be able to measure a word-of-mouth program’s effect on consumers, not just its reach. While not all social marketing is word-of-mouth marketing in the traditional sense, almost all good social efforts have a word-of-mouth aspect. Being able to measure your reach and your impact is at the heart of demonstrating social success.
Measuring the results of a social-marketing campaign can be daunting at first — and the need for a demonstrated return on investment is one of the sticking points social skeptics return to again and again. That’s an issue we try to help clarify each day in the SmartBrief newsletter. We’ve talked extensively about the benefits of word-of-mouth advertising on this blog. We’ve even done several special reports on ways companies are quantifying their successes through social media. But we’ve never really asked you what you’re measuring — or wish you could measure.
So how about it: What metrics are you using to chart your social success? What are the key questions you’re trying to answer? How are you collecting your data? What are your blind spots? What are the questions you wish you could answer but just don’t have the data for?
Image credit, Galushko Sergey, via Shutterstock