March 29, 2011
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Of all the subjects I know related to social media, none seems to bring greater angst than measurement. It seems to me people measure the oddest things for the strangest reasons.
For example, they measure how many people follow them on Twitter, without measuring how many followers actually do something that helps their business. One small business professional told me she was trying to measure the dollar return on each of her tweet posts, which seems to me as achievable as measuring the dollar returns of saying “hello” on a phone.
The problem comes partly because there are so many things you can measure in social media, and an almost equal number of services offering to measure them for you. While not too long ago there seemed to be no measurement data related to social media, now business owners must swim fast to avoid drowning in a swamp of the stuff.
KD Paine, founder of KD Paine & Partners, a 20-person firm in upstate New Hampshire that measures marketing programs for large companies, has a simple answer to the complex question:
“Measure what matters.” Not coincidentally, the advice is the title to her new book.
Want to read more from Shel Israel? Check these out:
Paine has had an interesting journey in transitioning her own company from old to new media measurement service. She’s been consulting companies on the topic for 24 years.
The things you measure may have shifted from press clips to engagement, but at the end of the day, it is essentially the same. Old media and new media sentiment remains positive, negative or neutral.
In her book, Paine argues that you can measure almost any aspect of social media, including the sacred ROI, but the exercise doesn’t begin with social media. It begins with old-fashioned business objectives.
From there, the book walks readers through a series of straightforward questions to determine what should be measured and how. A sampling:
- Who’s your target audience?
- What’s important to them?
- Why do people buy your product?
- What are your key messages?
- Who influences your audience?
These are not rocket science questions and most small business folk can answer them in a blink. The challenge is to stay focused on your initial objectives and not get bruised bumping into trees in the social media forest.
Paine’s organization is best known for working with large enterprises, but she insists, “The whole book is written with small- to medium-business owners in mind. The idea is that what really matters to your business are your relationships and you need to constantly measure the health of those relationships if you're going to survive.”
“Small businesses have to prioritize," Paine says. "The job of what to measure gets easier when you focus on the objective.”
Check your balance, review recent transactions and pay your bill on the go.
