How to measure the results of your SMM campaign.

14 Jul 2008

HOW TO MEASURE THE RESULTS OF YOUR SMM CAMPAIGN.

With all the push for businesses to invest in and create social media marketing campaigns, more and more companies are jumping on the bandwagon. And this is definitely a good thing. But there is a common misconception that a social media marketing campaign can yield highly scalable results in a short period of time. Yet this is something that needs major clarification.

The fact is, it’s just not feasible to completely quantify the results of your social media marketing campaign.

It’s an issue that www.doshdosh.com draws attention to in this blog about ROI and social media. The blog explores the benefits of social media marketing, and how to use it to your advantage. But most importantly, it says that the results of your SMM efforts are “not direct and immediate.”

What does this mean? Social media marketing is a great tool when used properly – it just takes a little time and TLC before the results can be seen. To some degree, results can be measured by paying attention to the number of hits to your websites from social profiles, social bookmarking sites, forums, and other sites where you are connecting to your audience through SMM.

However, the difficult part to measure is the “general PR effect” of your campaign – meaning you have no way of knowing who passes your information around or who remembered your brand name weeks later after reading a cool article on Digg. Unfortunately, without personally tracking each customer down and insisting they tell you exactly how your social media marketing campaign has affected them, it’s hard to get true tracking on your campaign.

So what do you do?
Even though collecting complete stats for your SMM campaign can be tricky, you can still get a good feel for what’s working. First, you need dedicate yourself to giving each SMM tactic a good run. Keep at it. Since your campaign typically won’t start a buzz overnight, push your campaign hard for six months to a year. Keep your social profiles updated, post blogs often, respond to any feedback you get, and build as many relationships as you can. The longer you push, the more of a presence you will create in the industry. Establish your brand in every way you can then “measure” which of your techniques are working best.

After a year, you should be able to concentrate on the areas that are drawing the most attention. If your online articles are getting tons of feedback, devote your time to writing more of them. If people are swarming to your LinkedIn profile, keep on connecting with them. Maximize your time and campaign by focusing on the marketing outlets that are specifically working for you, and you’re likely to watch your clientele grow immensely.

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  • 2 Comments

2 thoughts on “How to measure the results of your SMM campaign.

  1. Hi Cathy,

    Thanks for visiting! And for all the nice comments. 🙂

    I agree that people who tune in to social media early, and are steadfast in their efforts, will have an immense branding advantage in 3-5 years. Just like people who got their SEO campaigns started 5 years ago: Now others are scrambling to catch up, and because there is so much more competition, SEO rankings are much harder.

  2. Hi Julie,

    Thanks for visiting!

    I don’t think anybody has decided on anything. There’s been some back and forth buzz on the subject. John Bell of Ogilvy says that an Ad Equivalency Metric is needed, but hedidn’t really have a solution. Or at least he didn’t when he posted this: http://johnbell.typepad.com/weblog/2008/01/the-next-evolut.html

    Here’s a pretty strong argument against the need for Ad Equivalency/Multipliers:

    http://point-oh.com/?p=205

    Seems like the verdict is still out. It would probably be a good branding metric if someone could come up with a justifiable system. Would love to hear it if someone has one.

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