This year will have an impact on new social media. The economy, as we all know by now, is not doing so well. This means that companies are not as willing to experiment with new media using money they can’t afford to spend. The fact is that they do not know much about measuring the results of their new media campaigns. They want to know what the results will be from any action they decide to make.
This is the underlying problem with this social media. Determining the results is still a work in progress and each medium can be measured in any number of ways, depending on your definition of return on investment for any campaign.
Don Bartholomew, Principal of Acumentics Research, which is a social media and public relations research and measurement consultancy, states in his blog that measuring a mediums click-thrus or views won’t suffice anymore. Companies want to how consumers are being influenced and engaged. They want to know the impact of their actions on the company. Simple statistics just doesn’t cut it anymore. They don’t want to experiment now, they want facts to back up their decisions.
To do this, communication practitioners need to figure out the best way to measure the results of the new media that their company wants to use. They need to evaluate the influence they have, the outcomes that come from it, and determine their return on investment.
In another blogpost, Bartholomew suggests some considerations for choosing the best social media measurement tactic. You need to know what you specifically want to track, how content is brought to the site and which sites of these are most important. You also want to know what type of analysis to conduct: automated or human analysis. Also, engaging consumers and the cost of measuring are two other important aspects to consider.
Proper measurement of your new social media is essential. Companies need to know this information before making any experimental decisions in 2009.
March 23, 2009 at 3:21 pm
The reason so many companies have cut marketing and pr recently stems from the lack of surplus these organizations have in their budgets. In dark economic times, the first cut usually takes place in the innovations fund. New social media may seem mainstream to blog writers like us, but it is extremely innovative for others.
It seems though that measuring the usefulness of new social media is all relevant to the type of company that utilizes it. The deciding factor for which of Bartholomew’s considerations to follow in measuring social media success depends on the type of audience member one is trying to reach. For instance, in order to establish what “good” content is, the social media specialist must first define it in terms of what the audience member considers good content.
The key to proving the usefulness of social media when money is harder to come by all comes down to solid research.