The Case of the Missing Social Media Metrics — a few thoughts on our lives online

Photo via Stewf, Flickr

In order to convince a company, or even an individual, to embrace social media you have to prove ROI. You and I both know this already.

However, in order to prove ROI you really need to start talking numbers. We’re talking about referral visits, search engine visits, time spent on site, click through rates, acquisition rates, and so on and so forth.

When it comes to online advertising and web analytics, there are plenty of concrete metrics. Most of these have been tested for over a decade and are now ubiquitous. More importantly, there are many tools and resources that can meet our needs and provide these metrics.

Unfortunately, I have yet to see any social media company truly embrace metrics and provide their own reporting service. Yes, Facebook did supply us with Facebook insights. Insights; however, is pretty awful even when it is working (which as of recently isn’t very often). Twitter too has failed to provide us with a reporting platform and although many third party providers, including bit.ly, are trying to fill the void, it’s just not good enough yet.

Every platform should place metrics and reporting functionality at the top of their priority list, even if for no other reason than to appease the brands and organizations that can help monetize these platforms.

Questions that we need more insight into:

Where are referrals coming from?

What is the conversion rate of visits to fans/followers?

What is the average time spent on individual pages?

What are my Entry and Exit page rates?

What are my form abandonment rates?

Damn it this could go on forever but yet progress seems to be non-existent. Social media companies, we all want more metrics in a quick and easily accessible way.

As a marketer, what other metrics are important to you? Are Social Media meeting your needs? Do you have everything you need to prove ROI?

Tagged as: analytics, Facebook, metrics, social media, Social Networking, Twitter

Urs E. Gattiker

This is interesting but I am a bit worried, the indicators you suggest I would see as moderators but ROI is a financial outcome

http://commetrics.com/articles/implement-5-tips/

Hence, maybe you should also address if those drivers you suggest in your blog post are the most important ones needed ... might depend on the objectives set by the company?

thanks for this post and yes we need social media metrics ..... http://howto.commetrics.com/influence/

Urs
@ComMetrics

rikin

Urs - I think where we differ is in semantics rather than our belief of what's needed right now.

When it comes to ROI - we ultimately want to know that each additional visitor from YouTwitFace led to an X% increase in purchases. That's the fundamental equation when determining the effects of social media on our bottom line.

However, I believe we're missing a huge set of metrics on a level deeper than that.

For example, A Facebook page was launched with links to our main site. Well, using current web analytic tools we can track Facebook visitors and ultimately the percentage of them that went to checkout.

As owners of social media platforms we are struggling to obtain analytics within the platforms themselves. Such as what sites linked to our Facebook page? What was the time spent on our Facebook page? Which tabs within Facebook were most visited? What was individual link performance on each page?

I use Facebook here merely as an example because of its importance in the social web but essentially it is this insight that is needed to leverage social media and get a better idea of performance. Once we are able to understand what works and what doesn't, we'll have a solid barometer on the strengths of our efforts and our ability to provide ROI.

Mark Evans

I'm not sure that I agree with your assertion that social media company needs to provide metrics, although it's not a bad idea. The analytics provided by social media service providers such as Sysomos (my client) provide an extensive snapshot of what's happening on the social media landscape and who's driving the conversations. It's the kind of data-driven information that companies can use to change/improve how they do business. I would also argue there's a lot of metrics within these kind of services, although maybe not the kind of metrics done by Quantcast or Google Analytics.

Mark Evans
Director of Communications
Sysomos Inc.
www.sysomos.com

rikin

@Mark

Thanks for coming by. I've used Sysomos in the past and will attest to
its benefits.

I still think there is a lot more work to be done by both the
platforms and third parties.

As end users of these tools we are always looking for more. It's a
double edged sword because we also refuse to sacrifice ease of use.

Matt Cheuvront

Spot on Rikin. We've yet to experience a SM platform that provides us with clear (or any, for that matter) metrics. As you said, third party apps serve their purpose but there should be much more available, especially given that these platforms are becoming such an integral part of company marketing/advertising/communication plans. With that being said, I have no doubt that the next wave in the 2.0 world will incorporate measuring tools and metrics into their core.

rikin elsewhere on the web

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