Measuring the many facets of social media

Props to the folks at Edelman, who continue to push for a broader understanding and acceptance of social media within the PR and Marketing fields. Their latest foray into this area is the development of a measuring system that takes into account other social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, when attempting to determine influence. A full explanation of their methodology can be found here.

I think this is an area that those of us who strive to make social media understandable to companies and organizations will continue to struggle with and try to answer for a while—not just the measurement, but an even more basic question of “does it matter?”

It reminds me of one of the hurdles we faced when I was doing work in word of mouth marketing. Clients always wanted to know how to measure word of mouth—“how do we know exactly how many people someone talked to about our product?” Well, we couldn’t always get an exact number. We were typically able to sense buzz from week to week during one of these programs, but the bottom line was we couldn’t always get an exact number, and until a client saw some kind of results (higher sales in one region versus another, coupon redemption, etc.) there was apprehension. If we couldn’t measure exactly how useful it was, was it really worth trying?

At present, word of mouth marketing is everywhere; there’s even an organization dedicated to ensuring that it’s conducted ethically. It took some time, but what we really had to sell as an idea seven or eight years ago is now mainstream.

I’m feeling the same sort of initial apprehension in determining the value of the social media space. Clients and potential clients who come to us have been told or sense that they need to pay attention to blogs and other social media, but many don’t know what exactly it is that they’re trying to accomplish by monitoring this space. They crave the security of measurement, which in social media has been somewhat elusive. For example, commentors to a post on Valleywag today questioned the numbers quoted in the Wall Street Journal stating that according to comScore, Twitter had just 370,000 unique visitors in June. Several pointed out that you don’t need to visit Twitter’s page to use Twitter, so the data collected by comScore are likely so off that they’re useless.

Now, back to the measurement angle that Edelman is proposing. I like the basic format, as it allows for flexibility going forward. The weighting can be adjusted as interest in different platforms rise and fall, and new formats can be added as they emerge. The ability to modify the weighting will in my opinion be an important component to the success of a multi-platform measurement system. With so many different tools out there, it’s inevitable that some will succeed and some will go by the wayside, a point that I will elaborate on in another post.

Effective measurement is a necessary step in making social media relevant and broadly accepted to businesses, and it’s good to see innovation and creative thinking applied to this area.