I have been the champion of my fantasy football league two of the past four years, and while I’ve had a rough start to this season, I’m still the defending champion. And while I appreciate the winner’s check, having the trophy on my desk for a year is much, much sweeter.
Trophies are important. They provide tangible evidence of accomplishment, when many forms of achievement in life, business and otherwise are inherently intangible and amorphous.
Social media achievement can be intangible and amorphous, too. So much so that there are whole companies and industries that sniff at social media in its entirety because it’s “not measurable.” But indeed social media IS measurable. I’ll reserve all the ways it can be done for another day (meantime, read Olivier Blanchard, Beth Harte, and KD Paine on the subject). To me though, what’s more frustrating than a misguided belief that social media isn’t measurable is measuring the wrong things entirely. (FYI, interviewing Olivier live on Twitter tomorrow (10/1) at 5pm eastern)
Fuzzy Math of Social Media Measurement
I understand the desire to count your Twitter followers and Facebook fans, I really do. It’s an extremely easy graph to build, the numbers almost always climb steadily upward, and it’s simple to compare against competitors.
But guess what? You’re not in the Facebook fan selling business. Nobody is. At best, number of fans shows some level of directional success, but even then the numbers are often influenced by “social media bribery” (read this great post by Spike Jones)
No Dinner. No Movie.
Examine the level of consumer commitment to your brand that’s required to become your “fan” on Facebook (or your follower on Twitter, for that matter). Let’s see, it’s precisely ONE CLICK. One. Click.
By my count, it takes 3,200% more effort to visit http://www.convinceandconvert.com if you don’t have it bookmarked (shame), because you have to tap 32 keys to get here. Versus one key to become a Facebook fan. I’ve had deeper relationships with single swallows of Scotch than what is required to be a fan on Facebook.
If you want to report your Facebook fans and Twitter followers on your social media results dashboard, I won’t stop you. But please augment that information with a statistical trophy with more meaning.
What’s your single most important social media metric? Care to share? I’ll create a follow-up post with the best comments.
RSS and subscribers.
Hands down my most important metric. I’m also measuring how many times they visit, how long they stay and what pages they are interested in.
For a larger company? I’d say it’s who is looking at your materials and why. If you can figure that out? You can start doing outbound marketing to follow up.
.-= Stuart Foster´s last blog ..Opportunity Costs: Crisis Control in Social Media =-.
Specific to Twitter (because I get asked a lot about how a client can measure his or her Twitter success), I like percentage of followers that click a given link. If you’re looking at performance over a month or so, average them.
I don’t know if that’s arcane or useless, but imo it’s useful not only in the sense of providing a baseline of how engaged your audience is – how willing they are to take the action you ask them to – but also a good way to research what sort of links perform better than others with a given audience.
.-= Jeff Stolarcyk´s last blog ..Project Mixtape Week: Friday Cover Songs =-.
Great post and spot on with what your title questions.
I think there is no single most important metric in social media, but depends more so on your specific goals and what you’re looking to accomplish. You could be looking to measure engagement on your blog, number of responses/downloads to your e-book, website activity and yes, even sales!
Whatever it may be, understanding where your business is and what goals you’ve set for your biz to take it to the next level, is an important step to realizing what your most important social media metric will be.
.-= Sonny Gill´s last blog ..Tell me one thing… =-.
Twitter Comment
RT @jaybaer Are you cherishing the wrong trophy? [link to post] The fuzzy math of social media measurement.
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Twitter Comment
RT @jaybaer: Are you cherishing the wrong trophy? [link to post] The fuzzy math of social media measurement.
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Twitter Comment
RT @tweetmeme Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Co…[link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
The metric will differ per campaign, but it should be an engagement metric. So one campaign may define this as did you complete the online game we created, and another campaign may define it as did you complete a registration process, and post it to your FB wall. It all depends.
It comes down to waaayy more than just number of fans / followers. Social media has to somehow reflect positively on the bottom line for it to be considered useful (otherwise, why are you doing it?). How many more hits is your website getting? Are you getting re-tweets and more “likes” on Facebook? How many click-throughs are you getting? Are you actually engaging your tweeps and facebook fans or just broadcasting RTs and mundane comments? Eventually, your “good social media deeds” should result in some form of conversion – whatever that looks like for your company, organization or brand.
Thanks for the post, Jay!
Andrea Bell
@andreamegan
balancemedia.com
Twitter Comment
@jaybaer what I measure: RTs, bit.ly clickthrus, responses, comments. they offer some lvl of engagement. good post!
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Twitter Comment
RT @jaybaer: The dangers of Facebook “success metrics.” Are you cherishing the wrong trophy? [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Twitter Comment
“Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy?” by @jaybaer [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Twitter Comment
RT @jaybaer The dangers of Facebook “success metrics.” Are you cherishing the wrong trophy? [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Twitter Comment
@jaybaer Love UR blog. Just finished summary for social media client-we measure power players RTs & interactions fans/followers had w/ brand
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Twitter Comment
It’s dangerous to treat Facebook fans as a key success metric.. [link to post] Great Stuff Fm @jaybaer
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Twitter Comment
After social media discussion @portlandadfed program today, timely msg fr @jaybaer Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy? [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
[...] Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy by Jay Baer — I really encourage you to read this post because it’s a great reminder as [...]
Twitter Comment
Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy | Social Media Marketing …: I’m also measuring how many times they vi.. [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
RT @jaybaer: The dangers of Facebook "success metrics." Are you cherishing the wrong trophy? http://is.gd/3MNQy
Article: (Social Media) “Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy?” http://is.gd/3N81X
RT @jaybaer The dangers of Facebook “success metrics.” Are you cherishing the wrong trophy? http://is.gd/3MNQy
Twitter Comment
Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy | Social Media Marketing …: I’m a social media strategy consultant an.. [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
It’s dangerous to treat Facebook fans as a key success metric.. http://is.gd/3MNQy Great Stuff Fm @jaybaer
After social media discussion @portlandadfed program today, timely msg fr @jaybaer Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy? http://bit.ly/rBkWv
Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy? http://viigo.im/12fN
Twitter Comment
Nice post from @jaybaer on Social Media mesaurement “Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy?” [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Twitter Comment
Like this -> @jaybaer “had deeper relationships with single swallows of Scotch than is required to be a fan on Facebook” [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy | Social Media Marketing …: I’m a social media strategy consultant an.. http://bit.ly/jQc8e
Twitter Comment
More frustrating than a misguided belief that social media isn’t measurable – measuring the wrong things entirely. [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Twitter Comment
Get your priorities straight (social media-wise): Are YourCherishing The Wrong Trophy? [link to post] #socialmedia #sm
– Posted using Chat Catcher
More frustrating than a misguided belief that social media isn’t measurable – measuring the wrong things entirely. http://bit.ly/JuJoh
RT @KatyHarrison20 RT @jaybaer The dangers of Facebook success metrics. Are you cherishing the wrong trophy? http://is.gd/3MNQy
Get your priorities straight (social media-wise): Are YourCherishing The Wrong Trophy? http://bit.ly/JuJoh #socialmedia #sm
Twitter Comment
RT @tweetmeme Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Co… [link to post]
– Posted using Chat Catcher
[...] Are You Cherishing the Wrong Trophy? by Jay Baer on Convince and Convert Blog: Where Social Media and Email Collide [...]
[...] lamenting the lack of sensible thought within companies on measurment and ROI for web/social media; Jay Baer points out that we might be “cherishing the wrong trophy” when we chase facebook fans [...]