Social Media Club | Atlanta

Photo Credit: Plastic Girl

A great crowd of old and new friends joined Social Media Club Atlanta at Sandy Spring’s 5 Seasons for our September 17th “Social Analytics: Measuring the Relationship between Brands and Consumers” event. Panelists Jim Anderson of Vitrue, Jim Snyder of Net/Net Analytics, and David Vanderpoel of North Highland and moderator Peter Fasano shared their insight and experience in the measurement of social media metrics, analytics, and ROI.

The ability to measure and analyze hard data and metrics has been one of the significant appeals of digital marketing and advertising. Impressions, time spent, conversion rates, geo-targeting, visitors, and path analysis are just a few of the valuable metrics used by marketers to justify their investment and measure their ROI.

Unfortunately, since social media is a work-in-progress medium this measurement is a little trickier. The consensus from the panelists was that first and foremost there can be no meaningful social media measurement without first setting goals, valuations on engagement, and reasoning for involvement in social media. Once these are established it is a matter of testing and mining multiple analytics solutions and triangulating the data into conclusions and reports that reveal ROI.

For David Vanderpoel the process includes focusing on the efficiencies of assorted social media platforms. Discrete and branded URLs, offers tied directly to social media, testing, and departmental budget offsets are ways to begin showing correlations between social media and business goals. In their interest in putting a value on engagement, Jim Anderson and Vitrue have developed a proprietary algorithmic technology to measure online conversation — The Vitrue Social Media Index (SMI). Vitrue’s SMI provides a snapshot in time that takes into account a multitude of sharing, engagement, authenticity, influencer, mention, and meta data. And at Net-Net Analytics, Jim Snyder works with clients to incorporate existing measurement tools like Google Analytics and Omniture to test and measure referrer data to arrive at ROI.

Sometimes the ROI can be simple. The cost-offset of initiating a long-term social media engagement versus running an out-of-home one-month billboard can be significant and can show direct impressions-based ROI that favors social media. Likewise, the seemingly inane focus on a brand’s number of Facebook fans can be justified by looking at the fans not as bragging right notches in a bedpost but rather as a group of people that has given you permission to market to them.  A healthy number of people raising their hands to receive appropriate marketing messaging is valuable and worthy of activation when the time calls for it.

So keep the faith.  While the metrics and ROI aren’t as easy to pull as other disciplines, with the right approach, testing, and innovative triangulation social media ROI can be within reach.

A special thank you to RealPlayer SP for their generous sponsorship of this month’s event and for sending Real’s Lacy Kemp to discuss and demo the social and portable features of their new player.

Gerard Babitts Analytics, Events Engagement, RealPlayer SP, Social Media ROI, Testing, Triangulation