If they don’t improve their metrics, social media managers, community managers, and all those other PR people who have migrated over to the social side will suffer the same fate as their more traditional PR colleagues: They will lose all their credibility. They’ll get no respect. And then they’ll get fired.
Yes, we know that social media is all the rage. Every organization is diving in with a “social media strategy.” But many of them don’t have a clue about metrics. With luck 50% of those strategies will come with measurable goals and SMART objectives. The other 50% will end up in the growing heap of proof that, “Social media is a waste of time and money.”
I’m happy to report that, of late, I’ve seen a great many more strategies that do have some goals and objectives. Unfortunately, most of them are along the lines of “get more impressions” or “get more people to like us.”
Impressions: Huh! What are they good for?
Let me digress for a moment about impressions. I won’t rehash my argument that impressions are like sperm, but you’re welcome to read it here. The big problem with impressions is that they are not always a good thing. If impressions are what you’re really after, then why not just pay Justin Bieber to punch his girlfriend in your lobby? Or, do something that so annoys your employees and customers that they picket your stores and destroy your business (see anything recent about Market Basket). Neither of those tactics would do much for your business, but they’ll get you impressions. And if you are still unconvinced, read “Not All that Glitters is Gold: 5 Companies that Got Lots of Impressions They Wish They Hadn’t.”
The ultimate purpose of any promotion is to generate revenue. Or, if you’re a non-profit, generate more advocacy for your cause. So unless you can tie those impressions back to some benefit, they are worthless.
Actually, I have nothing against likes or impressions, as long as you can show the correlation to sales, revenue, more effective advocacy, or increased engagement with your content. The truth is that in 50% of cases, you probably can make a connection between them and a business benefit. Here’s a great example of how AT&T did exactly that. But you don’t need to get that complicated. Using simple correlations I’ve been able to show the positive impact that social engagement has on intent to visit, donations, downloads of white papers, and likelihood to support a cause.
But that information is not going to magically pop out of your Facebook Insights or HootSuite report. Tying social media to a tangible benefit generally requires correlating your social metrics with your website traffic, content usage, donations, or some other customer behavior.
5 Ways to Get Some Respect
The question social media managers need to answer is: “How does what you do improve our business?” Otherwise, like I said, you’re going to get no respect, and then you’ll get fired. Here are five tips to help you answer that question:
- Always look beyond your social data to see how it connects with other results.
- Remember that social is just a small slice of your total audience (and if you’re really on the ball, you will know just how small a slice it is). So, it’s a valuable thing to be able to show that social is having an impact beyond that audience. For instance, show a connection between social activity and greater traditional media pick up of your messages.
- Show how social amplifies your key messages. The Atlantic City Alliance just provided a great example. They just hosted an amazing music weekend with back to back concerts by Blake Shelton and Lady Antebellum. When traditional media reported on it, that coverage paled in comparison to the enthusiasam that was Tweeted, Instagramed, Facebooked, etc. by fans who very likely would never have paid much attention to the traditional media reporting.
- Look beyond likes to higher levels of engagement: Content sharing, video completes, downloads, registrations are far more meaningful expressions of true engagement than a mere like. Besides, research shows that more often than not people like something not because they really do, but because they really want to impress or show their appreciation of the people who shared the item in the first place.
- Ideally you’d run a regression analysis on likes, retweets, and shares against meaningful web metrics like registrations, email signups, and downloads. At the very least run a simple correlation to see if there is any connection at all. Rank order the correlation rate and focus on the ones that have the most connection to real engagement.
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Thanks to The Customer Respect Group for the image. Nice article there.
