Social Media Metrics

Jim Sterne has written an outstanding book called Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment which releases this week.

This is the third book in my New Rules of Social Media book series (following Inbound Marketing and Get Seen).

Readers of my blog and those who have seen my talks will know that I am very critical of the old "ROI" version of measuring marketing. You can hear my Epic ROI Rant where I go off on the topic for a few minutes (resisting the dropping of F-bombs the entire time).

A decade ago, I was vice president of marketing and PR for a NASDAQ-traded business-to-business technology company. We measured success in two ways. Our lead generation programs were measured via "sales leads": the number of people who requested a white paper or who tossed a business card into a fishbowl at the trade show. Our public relations programs were measured via a PR "clip book", a gathering of all the clippings of magazine and newspaper articles written about the company. The book represented a month's worth of clippings and was usually bound for us by our PR agency.

Fast forward to 2010.

Social media gives everyone—not only B2B companies but also consumer brands, consultants, nonprofits, and even rock bands, churches, and colleges—a tremendous opportunity to reach people and engage them in new and different ways. Now we can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an e-book, a Facebook page.

But how should we measure?

A debate has raged in recent years. On one hand, people tried to adapt old (but successful) offline measurements to the social media world. For example, many marketers slapped squeeze pages onto practically all content, generating "leads" but preventing people from sharing. On the other hand, a cadre of social media proponents argued for no measurement at all, since "social media is just different."

Fortunately, Jim Sterne came to the rescue with this terrific book.

Jim Sterne knows more than anybody about how to measure marketing investment. He is the producer of the international eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits and is the co-founder and current Chairman of the Web Analytics Association.

I particularly like that Social Media Metrics is crammed with examples from real-world companies for you to learn from.

Far from an academic tome on regression analysis, this is a practical book packed with ideas you can apply to your business today.

This is certainly an important and timely book and I thank Jim for writing it and for doing it as part of my series.

For a fun overview from Jim's perspective, read his article in ClickZ about Social Media Metrics called Don't Buy This Book

If you are struggling with how to measure your investment in online marketing, I hope you will consider Jim's book as a place to turn for help. If you do, let me know what you think of Jim's ideas.

Comments

[David Siteman Garland]

David - Just listened to the rant for the first time. Oh man was that epic. This looks like a great book and would love to have Jim on rise if we can somehow connect.

[Nigel Burke]

Thanks for the book recommendation David. I am very keen to read a book that explains meaningful measurements for social media.

[Anne Sorensen]

Thanks David for the tip! Another one for the reading list! A speed reading class is timely .. so much good information ..so little time! :)

[Nicolas Vega]

If this book is like inbound marketing, i´ll hope the best results. Thank for your comments.

[60SecondTweets]

Hi, David --

I've been a big fan of yours for quite some time.

I've read "New Rules" and have been an email subscriber to your blog for longer than I can remember. (Truth be told, I've been an email subscriber for 12 months or something. But at my age, 12 months is 'longer than I can remember.')

All that said, I'm not sure I agree with your Epic ROI Rant, especially given today's economy and the internet's ability to accurately measure the conversion of a prospect to a customer.

I suspect Dell Computers is happy they've measure the ROI of their highly-successful DellOutlets Twitter page.

And I suspect Comcast is happy they're measuring the ROI of their ComcastCares social media play.

I know your Epic ROI Rant is a sound bite that doesn't completely reflect your entire perspective on this. But if it all comes down to little snippets of information, I fall on the "Social Media ROI" side of the argument.

Keep up the great work with your blog, your speeches and everything else you do. And thanks for your review of Jim's book. I'm going to check it out.

Best,
Jamie Turner
The 60 Second Marketer

[David Meerman Scott]

Thanks for jumping in Jamie

My main issue with ROI as it is measured today is an insistence in always bringing it back to a measurable sales result.

Question -- what is the ROI of your blackberry or iPhone?

There are other ways to measure success.

David

[60SecondTweets]

Point well-taken, David.

I think you (or someone else) also once said, "What's the ROI of the landscaping around your office?"

The point was that some things, like landscaping or your iPhone, just can't be measured on a specific-ROI basis.

Well said, my friend.

Best,
Jamie

[David Meerman Scott]

Thanks Jamie - yeah, I've used that landscaping one a lot.

[Adriel Michaud]

You raise an excellent point; time to A/B test the landscaping around my office!

[David Meerman Scott]

Adriel - yup. Let's compare ROI of roses vs. tulips.

[Igorverhoeven]

Also available in Holland at selexyz.nl

And check the Google Preview of this book on our site.

http://www.selexyz.nl/product/9780470583784/sterne/social-media-metrics-how-to-measure-and-optimize-your/

Regards, Igor

[Claudia Guzman]

This book is surely a hit now that almost everyone is using social media as their marketing tool. It is a must that every marketer knows and understands how to measure and optimize their marketing investment using this tool.

[Ricardo Bueno]

David: Thanks again for the link to the "epic ROI rant" - we appreciate it!

And thanks for the book recommendation. In my work, I deal with real estate agents and brokers who always ask the kinds of questions addressed in this book. Would be a great read I think and an excellent resource.

[Martin Seibert]

Cool book.

We are creating a social media metrics application at http://www.twentyfeet.com that will centralize all your web stats in one place. We only have twitter, facebook and bit.ly so far. But I would love to get feedback from you guys about it, as soon as it gets live in the next weeks.

I will take a look at the book also. That's for sure.

[Lillian]

What did we ever do without the internet?