Can "community artifacts" be measured?
I was lucky enough to escape yet another New England ice storm for a trip to #CES in Las Vegas. Jeff Pulver’s Social Media Jungle brought in interesting people from around the country, who in turn raised even more interesting questions about whys and hows of social media, including:
- How to steer your own pirate ship, and when to interact with those that don’t “get it” (and what does that mean, anyway)? [Chris Brogan]
- What are some different lenses for thinking about social media ROI? [Ben Grossman]
- How can companies adjust when rules of brand control and traditional tactics no longer apply? [Susan Etlinger]
- How can companies avoid common mistakes when starting out with social media? [David Berkowitz]
- When people participate in online community, what are the “artifacts” left behind? [Robert Scoble]
The question about the artifacts really intrigued me – what are the traces we leave behind when participating online? On Twitter, if I delete someone from the list of people I follow, their conversations (if they are influential, and if they are connected to my other followees) will continue to break through.
These community artifacts feel like a meaningful, but comparatively hard to quantify, measure of influence. For example, on Twitter, people frequently retweet others’ messages, repeating and spreading valuable content. This type of rebroadcast can be quantified: Dan Zarrella created a terrific tool to track individual Twitter users’ levels of retweets.
But beyond the repetition, how do we measure the way influential people consistently introduce valuable ideas, topics, and memes? For example, if David Armano launches a charitable campaign for a victim of domestic violence, his page views and retweets are easy to capture. But how do we track the far-reaching effect of his content and measure the new ideas he’s responsible for germinating? This may well be an instance where “not everything that matters can be measured”.
Photo credit: kimba
Great recap. Given how we’re both helping marketers tackle these issues from different angles, it will be really interesting to see how these artifacts evolve, how we can effectively track them, and then how best to manage and respond to them.
Thanks for the shout-out, Perry! It was, as always, great seeing you and sharing tangible and actionable ways to approach the tough questions marketers ask (or are asked) every day.
To a limited extent, I agree that “not everything that matters can be measured,” however I do think that we say it too quickly sometimes. In my experience, most of what matters CAN be measured, but there are two main barriers that lead people to write that fact off:
1) Measurement is demanded too quickly
2) Absolute/complete measurement can be expensive
There are a number of reasons these two main barriers are so disruptive to measurement in this space, but the pre-eminent ones are as follows:
1) In social media, generally conversations are what drive influence and results. However, these conversations do not take place on a company’s quarterly or yearly financial schedule–they are inherently organic and occur on that basis. When companies demand measurement before their initiative’s results have played out, we end up with a skewed, inaccurate, or (worse) non-existent result.
2) One of the best things about social media is how scalable it is. But when budgets are limited (especially in this kind of economy), I sometimes agree with HBS’s Andy McAfee who accurately posits, “There is not enough ROI for figuring out ROI. It is an intellectually bankrupt exercise.” The fact is, the kind of complex and creative measurement it takes to form an accurate picture of results will likely be more expensive than the initiative itself rendering the whole foray into the initiative a net negative.
Instead of acknowledging the above realities, those still searching for simple, fast measurement fall into the trap of thinking “everything that can be measured does matter,” which isn’t true either. I believe it’s the responsibility of those who understand this dilemma and apply holistic, rational thinking to it to help guide organizations find a viable solution so that new media and social media marketing aren’t thrown by the wayside and deemed “unmeasurable.” That would be a shame.
Thanks for the comments, guys.
David: Your anti-PowerPoint use of manila folders was particularly inspired (as were the insights on pitfalls, of course).
Ben: It’s a tricky balance isn’t it? One doesn’t want to throw up one’s hands and say social media ROI is immeasurable, or to fall into “everything that can be measured does matter” (which is how CPM became so inflated).
I think we’re all learning as we’re going, developing measurement techniques that let companies quantify the results and get to a level of ROI that satisfies a CFO without turning into a “intellectually bankrupt exercise”.
Hi Perry,
Great debate going on here, and I’ve some ideas on the measurement side of the questions above. Measurement for social initiatives ought to be based on conversions, whatever your definition of a “conversion” is, right? These include making a sale, getting someone to sign up for a newsletter, a re-tweet, or just recruiting someone to your point of view.
We’ve thought a lot about measurement in social arenas for recent work we’ve done. I’m not saying that these are hard and fast methods of measurement, but when people demand to see numbers for something as intangible as “influence” or “brand building,” creating something around these parameters has helped in the past.
1) For web sites: show a shift in sources of traffic from Google to user groups, your blog, etc — sources other than Google. This is a good way to demonstrate a more engaged user who’s coming to your site for some reason other than happenstance/search.
2) More engagement on the site; i.e., people are uploading content, conversing with one another, using tools provided, etc.
3) An increase in this type of user showing up. These folks rack up more page views, spend more time on the site per visit and return more often (demonstrating loyalty)–just a better user/visitor.
4) Creating brand evangelists of these visitors. If you can show progress in having other people–through THEIR blogs, Twitter, user-groups, Facebook pages, etc.,–evangelize your site or service then you’ve recruited them to strengthen your brand’s awareness.
Just a few thoughts.