Loopholes to avoid when measuring performance of your Social Media Marketing Strategy

A marketing campaign as part of a business process needs to be measured. It is easy to measure performance in conventional marketing methods. However when it comes to Social Media it is still hazy to attach costs to activities and apportion results to specific actions. There are various tools and applications that can be used, but there is still debate whether what they measure is a true reflection of a return on investment of a social media campaign. Campaigns can never be similar. Objectives and results will always differ. Target audience also differs even though we may be using the same forum. With a clear strategy it is possible to identify performance measures for our Social Media Campaigns. Activity in Social Forums, may tempt us to view popular campaigns as successful. But what is success for one campaign might not be considered such for another. There are two types of popular campaigns that we need to be aware of and how they can or should affect/influence our campaigns.

Firstly we have viral marketing campaign. In Social Media, a viral campaign is one that has almost everyone sharing it.  They fall in love with the campaign and are motivated to share it with the next person. The campaign is extensively shared at not extra cost to us. Sharing of company information is good for brand awareness. However the reason this information is being shared might not be in sync with our marketing objectives. Yes, we want as many to know about us, but we just being known, is no assurance for a competitive advantage. We can only attain the competitive advantage if the objectives of our campaign are met.  A wrong interpretation of the popularity of a campaign, might lead us to conclude that we are successful when in actual fact, those sharing our information might never be converted into actual or potential future sales. I am reminded of the ALS Ice Water Bucket Challenge that once went viral. The originators of the concept, wanted to raise awareness on people living with the ALS condition and also to fund raise. I had close to 100 followers on Facebook that I saw participating in the challenge. Of all of them, there is only one who donated to the ALS foundation. The rest just did the exercise for fun or for its popularity. Partly the managed to raise awareness but I am not sure if the fundraising objective was met.

Secondly we have trending topics. Trending is a buzz word for popular topics mainly on Twitter but also applicable across all other Social Media Forums. Twitter has a column on the left side of its main page where it shows trending topics. Whilst it is possible to have our campaign trend and even appear on the front page of twitter, this might not help us meet our objectives.  Recently we had the official opposition party in South Africa run a campaign to promote their newly elected leader. He is a young vibrant man and CNN actually called the "Obama of Soweto" referring to his home area. The campaign #askmmusi was meant to get ideas from South Africans on their expectations on their new leader. That the topic was trending confirms that their brand got a boost. However whether their objectives were met might remain debatable. The interesting questions that came out of the campaign which received a lot of attention, had little to do a political leader. So if we use the matrix that the campaign was trending to measure the success of this Social Media Campaign, we might mislead ourselves.

Trending and Viral marketing can not be used as performance measures in our Social Media Marketing Strategy. But we can not ignore them. We actually need to build our campaigns around them because they give us insights into what our potential market is interested in. Should we have a campaign that trends or goes viral, we need to identify opportunities that we can capitalize on. Attention on its own will not lead to a competitive advantage.

How are you measuring your performance in Social Media Marketing? You can share with your valued comments below. Should you be in need of assistance in this regard, we are more than willing to assist.

Social Media Marketing Strategy as a Parameter for Performance Measurement

Most organisations have performance measures. Some make use of various systems to manage their performance indicators. I once worked for an organisation that was obsessed with figures. Statistical analysis was the most revered performance indicator. The actual activities of the various departments which had a positive influence on statistics were not paid much attention to. The data that we collected was pregnant with information that unfortunately was not utilized to its maximum advantage. Each department operated independent of the other. When customer complaints overwhelmed us; we hired a Public Relations Officer to spin around the bad word about us from dissatisfied clients. Customer complaints would be channeled to the PRO department and the offending department carried on with life as usual. A Social Media Strategy in this scenario, could have helped us with customer engagement.

Social Media Marketing is premised on Inbound Marketing where we attract customers through sharing valuable content about us. The scenario described above, would have been better managed if we had a way of listening to our clients. Actually, it turned out that one of the issues refereed to the PRO department involved serious fraudulent activities that were affecting both our clients and the company. The information that is shared in Social Media activities is so vital and can be useful throughout the organisation and not only in Marketing. It is critical for any Social Media Strategy to be able to communicate relevant information about us but at the same time listen to what stakeholders say. A Social Media Strategy worth its salt should be a mine of data for all aspects of the organization.

It is very challenging to come up with performance measures that satisfy the needs of all stakeholders. Through the desire to share relevant content with our customers, we will have to set standards meet them. If we share content about our products or our processes and customers prove this not to be true, they will never come back to us. If we are found to honor our word, the content about us will become the best advertisement that will buy us loyalty. In some organisations, departments are viewed independent of each other with some actually having bad faith on others. With an astute Social Media Strategy, departmental activities form the core of the content that we share with clients. Each department has to play a part that will attract potential customers. Performance measurement can then be attached to the communication gathered from customers and potential customers.

Inbound marketing says, look at us, look at what we are doing, what do you think about it. How else can we measure ourselves if not by how our market thinks about us? If you were wondering where Social Media Strategy belongs in your organisation; it belongs in the boardroom where strategies are formulated.