Expert Interview Series: Jim Sterne on measuring your social media marketing campaigns
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Jim Sterne is the founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and the Web Analytics Association. He’s also the author of the new book “Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment”.
In this interview he addresses how metrics for social media are different from the web analytics that we’ve all become accustomed to and why understanding these numbers are crucial for your company’s growth:
What are the biggest ways social media marketing metrics differ from traditional analytics that measure core product performance?
Social media brings two new metrics to online marketing that we haven’t worked with before. The first is influence. In social media, it’s critical to know who the most influential people in your marketplace are. This is a challenge for every product or subject as the opinion of a relatively unknown individual thought leader can be much more powerful than a celebrity known to many. The second is sentiment. We now have the ability to listen in on an immeasurable number of conversations and we need to discern the tone of those conversations. Everything else we can measure has their roots in traditional advertising measurement or web analytics – What bearing do those interactions have on brand awareness and business outcomes?
What is the importance of knowing detailed user metrics, like the number of comments or ‘shares’ one makes, for understanding the effect of social media marketing?
Those metrics, coupled with number of readers/followers/fans/likers, etc., are the raw material of determining Influence. If one tweeter is only followed by a dozen others, but those others retweet everything that tweeter has to say and they, in turn, are followed by thousands, then the confluence of posts, comments, followers, retweeters, etc., helps marketing departments identify whom they should treat with special care.
If a company isn’t already tracking their social media metrics, what are the first steps that should be taken to get them on their way to fully understanding the business value that their social media campaigns are creating?
If a company isn’t tracking their social media efforts, the first step is to really learn how to listen – starting with reputation management. While your bloggers and tweeters and campaign engineers are out there making noise, it would be Really important for your team to get a feeling for whether that noise is being well received or not. Companies need to know what the public thinks as an ongoing process and see if they are doing more harm than good with their efforts.
Say a company already uses social media metrics and knows who their influencers are and what the general sentiment and awareness is around their brand – what are a few ways that this company can take advantage of having this information?
The next step would be to tie social media activities to business goals and outcomes. This is a bit more complex but central to assessing if any economical value is being generated. From there, it all becomes a matter of segmentation. Does this blogger have a bigger impact in times of crisis than that one? Does this sort of information get more attention and generate more engagement than that other sort? Can we effectively cool down a negative situation better with this approach or that one? Can we create more brand equity with posts or comments on other’s blogs? Etc.
You’re the founder and Chairman of the Web Analytics Association, which has been around for nearly 6 years now. Analytics have come pretty far since then; social media metrics being a good example of something that is relatively new. What is the biggest shift you see coming in Analytics over the next year or 2?
Over the next year or two, we’re going to see analytics become more and more part of companies’ standard operating procedures. “Show me the numbers” used to be only about sales or opinion polls. Now, it’s going to be more about how the numbers related to each other.
The simplest analysis one can do is, “How does that number change when looking at this segment versus that segment?” Group A had a 45% response rate and group B had a 23% response rate. What does that tell us about the value of the target, the message, the medium or the offer? How can we leverage the differences to boost response?
Starting there, the world of analytics opens up to encompass everything from testing to personalization. It’s getting the foot in the door and now that we have that toe-hold, managers are more readily willing to consider the power of complex calculations. They are more willing to experiment. Those who do, will see quick gains and reap the benefits of a sharp competitive edge.
Jim– great interview. Now that we’re moving towards multi-channel marketing, of which social media is a bigger component, it will be interesting to see how analytics platforms adapt to assigning partial credit to multiple touches prior to a conversion. What are your thoughts on how to define and measure “conversion rate” with social media?
Good question Dennis, but the answer is pretty boring. I view social media as just another channel. So, conversion rate from social media traffic carries just as much weight as conversion rate from advertising or search traffic. But your premise is where it gets interesting… “attribution”. I’m seeing more tools pop up like Tealium Social Media that tell you if visitors from any source have seen your name out on the blogosphere before arrival. Once you know that, you can get very confused, very quickly in figuring out how much credit to attribute to each instance
Like I said – good question!
I thin anyone who has been around long enough it’s not really the front-person who knows best, I always like to see who they rely on to get a better source of information, Hence dig deep,Thanks for shining a little light on the people in the background Tad, I’ll have to wait until this weekend before I can really get into the meat of the interviewsBusiness List************Oliver
Jim– great interview. Now that we’re moving towards multi-channel marketing, of which social media is a bigger component, it will be interesting to see how analytics platforms adapt to assigning partial credit to multiple touches prior to a conversion. What are your thoughts on how to define and measure “conversion rate” with social media?