This story from eMarketer titled, “Finally, Most Brands Measuring Social Content Effectiveness,” got me motivated to write a few words about the subject. Social media in all of its forms and definitions has become a staple in company marketing plans. It has moved beyond just creating a brand Twitter account or Facebook page. Sponsored content on influential blogs now includes sponsored tweets and FB posts in addition to “traditional” banner advertising. My most current example has been the MyNewHolland.com launch here in North America. New Holland has seen significant value in their on-going sponsorship of AgWired and this project included sponsored tweet and FB schedules as well as blog posts and interactively posting and sharing onto New Holland’s FB page. And like with all sponsored projects we have to report regularly on this activity. This includes their own internal analysis and mine which I send for inclusion in the final report.

So, how do you measure social media effectiveness? The sales guys want to know how many leads or sales were generated. I honestly don’t know how accurately you can measure that. But there are some “soft” metrics you can fairly easily measure. Here’s an excerpt from the eMarketer article.

According to the research, 80% of US client-side marketers measured the effectiveness of their social content, with social media metrics such as “likes” the most common. . . Nearly two-thirds of US content marketers said they used social shares and “likes” to determine success, the second most popular metric.

I can create a spreadsheet that lists the number of tweets along with retweets and favorites, number of FB posts along with likes and shares, number of blog posts along with comments and traffic for them and more. One of the reasons these metrics are important is because they show a level of engagement that is all about brand awareness and the content that is associated with that brand. That is more like public relations which has always been a key element of any marketing campaign.

So, how do you measure social media effectiveness? Do you use a service or special software?

The word cloud above is from AgWired using Wordle.