Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

There are a number of ways to effectively measure the success of a social media campaign, depending on what goals you set going in. By tracking page visits, registered users, time spent on sites, and traditional survey statistics like satisfaction and ease of use, you can start to develop a set of KPI’s to measure how the initiative is going. Combining the numbers, you can develop formulas for tracking engagement, loyalty, brand awareness, or other goals you may have.

Like with traditional CRM, which numbers are most important varies from company to company. One executive may want to reduce call times in the contact center, while another may focus more on first-call resolution and not care as much about call time. The same is true with social media. Some private social networks have thousands of registered members, but only a few post comments or visit regularly. Other sites have a few dozen very engaged customers who provide great feedback. Just make sure your company decides upfront what the goal is, otherwise there’s no benchmark to measure success against.

There’s much more detailed information about metrics in the book Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li, two Forrester analysts. However, in my podcast with Bernoff, he said that so far no one has developed a universal set of metrics for social media. Both he and Paul Greenberg, the other speaker on the podcast, agree that measurement varies widely depending on the technology used (social network, wiki, blog, etc…) and the company using it.

Have more questions about metrics? Comment below, or email me directly at jnedelka@1to1.com (questions emailed may be posted to the blog with permission, minus any identifying or sensitive information). Also, visit www.getpastthehype.com for more of 1to1 Media's insights into social media.