Poll results: Getting past “warm and fuzzy”
We’ve added a new feature to Smartbrief on Social Media. SmartPulse — our weekly reader poll — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues. Paul Chaney, Internet marketing director for Bizzuka and member of the SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board, creates the questions and analyzes the results. We run the poll question each Wednesday in our e-newsletter and feature Paul’s analysis on this blog.
Last week’s SmartPulse question: How are you measuring ROI on your social-media activities?
- A mix of quantitative and qualitative, 42%
- I don’t, 34%
- Quantitative measures, such as page views or unique visitors, 14%
- Qualitative measures, such as engagement and influence, 10%
“This question is timely given that the IAB recently rolled out industry standards for measuring social media engagement. If social media is going to be taken seriously, some form of standard metrics are going to have to be agreed upon and applied. After all, the days of “warm and fuzzy” social media is over. The CEO and board of directors want to know if this stuff really does having bearing on the bottom line.
“If anything, this poll demonstrates that we are in a state of transition. The fact that more one-third of respondents have no measurement plan in place at all is telling. I expect that by this time next year, we’ll see a number of advancements in this arena — not the least of which will be analytics software that makes sense of both qualitative and quantitative data.” — Paul Chaney
Image credit, iStock
Posted by Mark Evans on May 13th, 2009 at 10:34 am
If people are interested in social media ROI, it’s worth looking at social media analytics services, including Sysomos.com. (Note: I’m on contract with the company)