Tracking the effectiveness of New Media campaigns in social media
I spending a lot of time thinking and talking about social media measurement. Interestingly enough, people see it initially as a PR function. It surely is a valuable method to attempt to increase the buzz around a brand. But social media measurement is not just a PR tool. It's just as valuable as a method to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
Social media measurement is a natural extension of tools such as Google Analytics. Web statistics analysis measures the number of people visiting your site, where they are coming from, and how they got there. However, web statistics fails to measure the amount of activity or "buzz" going on off your website. Measuring that buzz is just as critical. Ultimately you want to measure the additional buzz generated against the cost of a marketing campaign. If we can't find a way to measure the effectiveness (ROI of new media campaigns), we are not going to be able to continue to justify the cost of these campaigns.
Measuring effective requires a few steps. Because it is very difficult to tie buzz back to a source, its helpful to take a baseline of the level buzz before a marketing campaign started. This can be as simple as just measuring the number of mentions or can be more complex including sentiment analysis and categorizing of content. Continue by measuring the level of buzz both during and after the campaign to see the effect of the marketing campaign. The easiest calculation to make is simply the "cost per mention".
Consider the annual Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_&_Jerry's). Once a year B&J's scoop shops give out free ice cream cones. This is done for charity, but there is an enormous amount of buzz that goes on around their brand because of this event. A very simple way to measure the effective is to calculate the cost of the event / the number of additional mentions. We will make some numbers up here just for demonstration purposes.
Let's say the campaign cost $100,0000. Let's then assume the average daily number of mentions on Ben & Jerry's is 500. We measure the volume around that date and see the few days before and after the average volume jumped to 2500 for 7 days. That translates to:
Number of additional mentions: (2500-500) * 7 = 14,000
Cost per mention: $100,000 / 14,000 = $7.14 per mention
Then assume that each mentions translates to on average 25 views.
Cost per view: $7.14 / 25 = $0.29
We actually have a number that we can now compare to other marketing efforts to see if its cost effective. The assumptions of these formulas would need lots of refinement, but measuring the effective of new media campaigns in social media is possible.
I welcome thoughts, feedback, and even arguments on why I may be wrong :)
Regards,
Aaron
_______________________________
Aaron C. Newman
President/Founder
Techrigy, Inc.
cell: 646-280-5168
http://www.techrigy.com
http://twitter.com/aaronnewman
http://conversation.techrigy.com/profile/AaronNewman
- Providing visibility into Social Media -
Sign up for your Freemium SM2 account (http://sm2.techrigy.com) and start measuring social media today.
Social media measurement is a natural extension of tools such as Google Analytics. Web statistics analysis measures the number of people visiting your site, where they are coming from, and how they got there. However, web statistics fails to measure the amount of activity or "buzz" going on off your website. Measuring that buzz is just as critical. Ultimately you want to measure the additional buzz generated against the cost of a marketing campaign. If we can't find a way to measure the effectiveness (ROI of new media campaigns), we are not going to be able to continue to justify the cost of these campaigns.
Measuring effective requires a few steps. Because it is very difficult to tie buzz back to a source, its helpful to take a baseline of the level buzz before a marketing campaign started. This can be as simple as just measuring the number of mentions or can be more complex including sentiment analysis and categorizing of content. Continue by measuring the level of buzz both during and after the campaign to see the effect of the marketing campaign. The easiest calculation to make is simply the "cost per mention".
Consider the annual Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_&_Jerry's). Once a year B&J's scoop shops give out free ice cream cones. This is done for charity, but there is an enormous amount of buzz that goes on around their brand because of this event. A very simple way to measure the effective is to calculate the cost of the event / the number of additional mentions. We will make some numbers up here just for demonstration purposes.
Let's say the campaign cost $100,0000. Let's then assume the average daily number of mentions on Ben & Jerry's is 500. We measure the volume around that date and see the few days before and after the average volume jumped to 2500 for 7 days. That translates to:
Number of additional mentions: (2500-500) * 7 = 14,000
Cost per mention: $100,000 / 14,000 = $7.14 per mention
Then assume that each mentions translates to on average 25 views.
Cost per view: $7.14 / 25 = $0.29
We actually have a number that we can now compare to other marketing efforts to see if its cost effective. The assumptions of these formulas would need lots of refinement, but measuring the effective of new media campaigns in social media is possible.
I welcome thoughts, feedback, and even arguments on why I may be wrong :)
Regards,
Aaron
_______________________________
Aaron C. Newman
President/Founder
Techrigy, Inc.
cell: 646-280-5168
http://www.techrigy.com
http://twitter.com/aaronnewman
http://conversation.techrigy.com/profile/AaronNewman
- Providing visibility into Social Media -
Sign up for your Freemium SM2 account (http://sm2.techrigy.com) and start measuring social media today.
Tags: &, analytics, ben, campaigns, google, jerry's, measurement, media, new, social
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Markus Hübner on -
What should also be included is the different value of a "view". People leaving after a few seconds, viewing a video, listening to a podcast for a few minutes and so on.
I do think that in general a view in the interactive environment has more value than a view in the offline world (print ads, posters etc.)
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Permalink Reply by Aaron Newman on
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Hmmm, hard to track the exact time spent but maybe you can attribute a factor or multiplier to different platforms. Blogs keep readers attention longer than a twitter, etc...
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Permalink Reply by Justin Kownacki on
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Ah, but a mention on Twitter may prompt action from readers faster than a blog post mention would. In fact, users in one locale may decide to meetup IRL and actually *go to* a Ben & Jerry's thanks to a couple mentions on Twitter, because Twitterers are (it seems) more naturally inclined to taking action than blog readers are.
So now we need not just a way to measure the value of views, but also a larger portrait of how those views lead to measurable action. ROI is such an amalgamation of fractured processes...
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Ok, good point, along with Michal below. I'm starting to thing next about measuring the value of a mention and will post my thoughts.
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Permalink Reply by Loredana on -
Your reasoning is interesting and correct. But my opinion is tha we can't reduce the buzz on social media only into numbers. We need a semantic solution too. What kind of mention we had generated?
It's very important to monitor the conversations that develop on networks and to understand the meaning and the effects of them on brand's image.
A semantic map created ad hoc from our goals is essential to understand the audience's perception of the brand and its evolution in relation to our communication campaign.
Regards,
Loredana
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Loredana,
Interesting. Semantic is one of those topics I've always been intimidated by. We built a sentiment analysis engine in SM2 (http://sm2.techrigy.com) but I continue to believe semantics requires so much context its very hard to do accurately.
But, Loredana, maybe there is more you can teach us about Semantic mapping. I encourage you to start another discussion - even if its just a few paragraphs. I'd really interested to see more ideas.
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Permalink Reply by Michal Geva on
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Dear Aaron,
Where is the assumption: "Then assume that each mentions translates to on average 25 views" taken from?
Thanks,
Michal
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Yes, agreed that the numbers in here are entirely arbitrary. You'd have to build a model for all these number based on your own situation. Here, I'm just trying to discuss a model for measurement.
Maybe I will start a discussion on how to measure the value of each mention - so that we can think about what a mention translates to.
Thanks for the feedback.
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Permalink Reply by Dawn Hepper on -
Aaron -- if you've started this discussion -- let me know where to find it. I'd definitely be interested in hearing other thoughts along this line of thinking, particularly, since I agree that the quality and type of interactions should be assigned a stronger weighting than other, more passive actions.
Interesting discussion and crucial in my view to getting business to engage.
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