The Paine of Measurement
While planning content for the September issues of The Measurement Advisor, I was keeping in mind that this is Measurement Month, and also that next month is our annual Summit on the Future of Communications Measurement (learn more about it here). As usual I turned to Google Analytics to see which of our recent articles you dear readers have been most interested in. It turns out that our piece in June on Simplified Social Media Metrics was very popular. At which point I realized that most of what the future holds for communications measurement revolves around social and digital media.
And so there was our topic for the month; our next two issues of The Measurement Advisor are all about measuring social and digital media. Below I run through what we have in store for you, but first…
…it’s a good news/bad news scenario:
The good news: We have the solution to your social media problems
More than three out of four marketers report having regular conversations with their boss about social media ROI, yet only 9% are actually able to quantify their return, according to the latest Social Media Marketing Industry Report. In this month’s coverage you’ll get plenty of help with that, with articles on:
- Understanding common terms
- Why the new normal invalidates all your old metrics (and 4 ways you can adapt)
- The six steps to follow when creating a measurement system
- A checklist
- 5 of the best Social Media Measurement Mavens of all time
- Tips for calculating social media ROI
- How to develop a custom index to help you measure social media engagement
- How to budget based on 3 decisions and 3 rules
- Common mistakes and how to fix them
The bad news: If you’re in PR you probably don’t need to read this issue
Essentially, PR has lost the fight for managing social media. According to Simply Measured’s State of Social Marketing Report 63.2% of social media teams live within the marketing organization, up six points from 2015. And, by the way, there’s probably only one of you: 46.3% of firms report that their social media “teams” are essentially teams of one. Only 4.5% of companies assign social media to the PR team, and that’s down by half since 2015. I don’t necessarily think that’s a great omen for the industry, but as we say, the data is the data. So if this isn’t relevant to you, please email these articles to your digital marketing or social marketing team.
Happy Measuring,
