In my first blog post, What’s Your Social Media Strategy?, I addressed one of my two favorite questions, asking organizations about their social media efforts. Today, I am focusing on the second: What’s Your Social Media Score?
As with the strategic question, I can often hear a pin drop when I ask, “How do you know if you are doing a good job?” Unfortunately, the majority of organizations in the social media space have no clue, due to a lack of performance-measurement tools. Across industries and organizations both large and small, most lack objective-based, key performance indicators, of which help inform decision makers. Think about that statement for a minute…
Imagine this situation hypothetically: you’ve recently committed nearly $100,000 in an advertising campaign for your company. The SVP of Marketing asks for an in-depth analysis on the results of your campaign for her board presentation next week. Your answer? “Well … gee, I don’t know.” I’m guessing that it would be a bad day for you at the office. Organizations closely track return data on expenditures or investments like advertising, capital equipment, and personnel. Why? Because they are expensive!
Why are organizations making this mistake when it comes to demanding performance data for their social media program? There are several reasons, but I think the use of quality social media metrics links closely to Jon Troen’s comments on organizations mistakenly equating dollars spent directly to value. Another major contributor is the lack of a strategic framework that I have spoken to previously.
As an executive, manager, or supervisor of your organization’s social media program, you need to ask your team a couple questions: how well are we doing, and how are we measuring success? The Catchfire Media team can help you answer those questions. Our firm has developed a comprehensive social media scorecard system which evaluates your program and helps you target strengths and weaknesses across a wide range of parameters. Armed with data from our social media monitoring tools, we will help you see if you are meeting your goals.
There’s an old adage that states, “What gets measured, gets done.” Getting your social media team to focus on measurement will assist in getting the job done well.
[Photo from aussiegall on Flickr / CC BY 2.0]
