Measuring Social Media: Four Metrics That Matter


MEASURING
SOCIAL MEDIA.
WHAT THE CMO NEEDS TO KNOW SERIES
COMPLEXANT
Four Metrics that Matter
A publication by
FREE
G
UIDE

Contents.
01. About the author.
02. Introduction.
03. Measure conversation.
04. Measure amplification.
05. Measure applause.
06. Economic value.
07. Cross channel data.
08. It’s all about people.
09. It’s time for a change.

About The Author.
Sharif Khalladi is the founder of Complexant. He is also an award-winning
entrepreneur, international keynote speaker, consultant and the author of
The Social Executive.
Over the last decade, Sharif has collaborated with businesses varying from solo
enterprises to multi-billion dollar corporations to create value and then market,
sell, deliver and profit from that value creation while growing and strengthening
their market position.
Industry leaders such as Cisco, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Canon Europe,
T-Mobile, Mitsubishi and Yamaha Motors have capitalized on Sharif’s ideas and
strategies, successfully integrating them into their business with profound and
consistent results.
01
COMPLEXANT
   
LET’S CONNECT

Introduction.
“So, how do you measure all of this?” asked the gentleman in the grey suit and
glasses in the front row. As I saw a lot of people, all marketing executives, nod
and look at me in anticipation of the answer - I realized something. They still don’t
get this.
A few years have passed since that lecture, but it could just as well have
happened yesterday. Despite everyone being excited about Social Media, very
few companies actually really understand the contribution of these channels, even
today.
They see the millions of Twitter and Google+ followers, Facebook fans and
Youtube subscribers. The retweets, comments, shares, +1’s and their Klout score
- but what does it all mean?
02
“Don’t measure
what you can.
Measure what
you should.”
- Philip Sheldrake
COMPLEXANT   SHARE THIS GUIDE

A definitive answer to this question will be unique to your organisation and goes
beyond the scope of this document. However, as we’ll move along you’ll discover
that luckily an important part of that answer might not be half as complicated as
you may have thought.
In this free guide, we’ll look at two types of metrics: engagement and economic
metrics. I got this idea from Avinash Kaushik and it changed the way I look at
Social Metrics. As you read on, it will become clear why.
By the end of the document, you’ll have four actionable metrics to look at and a
clear sense of what to do next.
Good luck!
Sharif Khalladi
Sharif Khalladi
02
“Free monitoring
tools confuse
the market. They
make it look
easy. It isn’t”
- Zach Hofer-Shall

Measure Conversation.
Many companies tend to forget the “social” part of social media. They use social
channels to send out the same old marketing messages, trying to apply traditional
“push marketing” to new channels. Needless to say this is not very effective and
can in fact do more harm to their brands than good.
As Jay Baer states In his new book Youtility: “It’s not a new way to communicate
to customers. It’s the old way, just via 140 characters at a time. It’s the same
shouting with a different megaphone.”
Measuring the conversation rate of your social media helps you face the facts.
03


Aiming for a higher conversation rate forces you to rethink your approach,
reconsider the types of content you post and produce, and put the customer first.
You go from being “marketer centric” to being “customer centric” and start
focusing more on your customer needs and on adding value. And this is where
magic starts happening.
03
Key takeaway: Measuring and focusing on the improvement of your
conversation rate leads to a deeper understanding of your customer needs
and the development of valuable, high-quality marketing content that
inevitably leads to greater results.
CONVERSATION RATE
 =  /
conversation
rate
# of audience
comments
per post
   (
across social
networks
)

Measure Amplification.
04
One of the great things about social media is the possibility of exponential reach.
If your posts are “amplified” by “influencers” your potential reach immediately
increases dramatically, especially if that “influencer” has a large social network of
his or her own. This is one of the reasons topics tools that help companies identify
and market to influencers are so popular these days.
However, the best way to get your message amplified is by making sure it’s
valuable to your audience. Understanding the types of content that resonate well
with and are amplified by your audience will enable you to create more of it.
Other factors that come into play are content topics, post timings, channels and
geo location (certain types of content work better in certain geographical areas
than others).


04
 =
    (
amplification
rate
# of shares /
retweets
across social
networks
)
By becoming better at content creation and post timing and targeting you increase
your amplification rate. An increased amplification rate results in audience growth
as the overlap between your audience and the audience of your “amplifiers”
becomes greater.
Key takeaway: Measuring and optimising your amplification rate enables you
to understand what types of content to develop and how to time and target
the posting of it to maximize its reach and increase the size of your audience
through your (2nd level) network.
AMPLIFICATION RATE

Measure Applause.
05
While both conversation and amplification rates indicate what your audience finds
valuable, applause is a more direct measure.
On social networks, applause translates into favorites (Twitter), likes (i.e.
Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube) and +1’s (Google+). They are a direct result
of a specific follower or fan approving of your content, and a strong indicator of
where you should focus your efforts.
A key differentiator of applause is it’s impact on organic search results. For
example, if a user +1’s your content on Google+ and someone in their network
then Googles a related keyphrase, your chances of appearing in the search
results are increased. The more “social signals”, the better your rankings.


05
Key takeaway: Understanding and trying to improve your applause rate
across the different social channels helps you develop better content and
indirectly increases your search engine rankings. As search engines are
placing more value in social signals, this is an important metric to monitor.
APPLAUSE RATE
 =
 /
applause
rate
# of favorites /
likes / +1’s
per post
   (
across social
networks
)

Economic Value.
06
Measuring the economic value of your social media efforts is tricky. Economic
value is something different than revenue generated or ROI.
In fact, it can be quite simple to calculate the ROI of a social media campaign,
especially in an e-commerce type environment.
If you know the CLV (Customer Lifetime Value / the amount of revenue a
new customer is likely to generate for your company) then you can calculate
a reasonable Customer Acquisition Cost (ie 10% of your CLV) and you’ll
immediately know how much customers you will need to attain at that CAC to get
a positive ROI.
When it comes to the economic value of your social media efforts, we refer to the
monetary value of the completion of certain goals, for example watching a video
or downloading a white paper, that do not always directly relate to an immediate
monetary transaction.


06
As you can imagine, there is no one-size-fits-all formula for the calculation of the
economic value of all of these unique goal conversions upfront. Having said that,
investing the time and effort in defining and tracking the economic value of the
right conversion goals can have a tremendous impact in your organisation.
Key takeaway: Measuring economic value requires a tailored approach,
unique to each organisation. General guidelines towards the implementation
of these measurements include proper integration of keycode tracking,
connecting systems and periodic evaluations.
Here are three tips to get you started:
1. Implement keycode tracking to identify well converting traffic sources.
2. Track across systems so that you can follow conversions from one system to
the next over time.
3. Evaluate periodically (i.e. once a month) to make sure you’re measuring the
right goals, the right way.

Cross-Channel Data.
07
While measuring conversation, amplification, applause and economic value is
a terrific start and provides some terrific insights into what your customers are
looking for - it’s not enough.
You see, your customer doesn’t just live on social networks. The new, “converged
customer” lives across all digital channels and wants to interact with our
organisation across the web, search engines and social media channels.
They visit your and related websites, they look for topics that relate to your
company on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo and they spend time
on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks. They use their laptop,
desktop computer and increasingly use their mobile and tablet devices.


07
WEB
SOCIAL
SEARCH
Left: The converged media
landscape, where our
customers live in the
center.
Right: the average shopper
uses 10.7 sources of online
digital information (across
web, search and social) prior
to making a purchase
PAID MEDIA OWNED MEDIA
EARNED MEDIA
CONVERGED
MEDIA
If you’re just measuring the four metrics we’ve looked at today, you’re only looking
at a very small part of the overall picture.

07
And in doing so, you will only be able to achieve a small part of the potential
marketing results you could attain if you were able to capture and comprehend the
right data across web, search and social.
DIRECT
GOOGLE ADWORDS
TWITTER
DIRECT NEWSLETTER
SEARCHMOBILE ADFACEBOOK
DIRECT3RD PARTY SITE 21 DAYS
7 DAYS
1 DAY
Three examples of user
journeys (shopping cart
represents a conversion).

07
One of the problems that organisations face today is that this data exists scattered
in different places. Data gathered on social networks exists in your social media
management dashboard or comes from your social media agency. Search data
comes from your search agency. Web data exists in your analytics dashboard or
is provided by your web/creative agency. Competitive data comes from analysts.
In today’s digital media landscape, this is an issue, as the need for unified data is
more valuable than ever.
SEARCH DATA
SEO/SEM AGENCY
WEB DATA
+
CREATIVE AGENCY
SOCIAL DATA
+
SOCIAL AGENCY
COMPETITOR
DATA+
MARKET ANALYST
CUSTOMER DATA
=
COMPLEXANT
PULSE
Not just data on your brand, products and (potential) customers - but also data on
your competitors, their products and their customers.

07
Our organisations need to be able to capture, properly interpret and then integrate
the right data into our digital marketing efforts if we want to truly succeed.
CUSTOMER CENTRIC 5W ANALYSIS
SEARCH WEB SOCIAL COMPETITIVE
Complexant Pulse Analysis
Framework

It’s all about people.
08
In conclusion, I just want to highlight once again that when we talk about data,
we’re actually talking about understanding our customers better. Whatever we sell,
we’re in the people business first. Data just helps us do our jobs better.
So ask yourself: How much do you really know about your customers? Do you
know who they are, what they want, when and where they hang out and what
drives them? If you don’t, what would it mean to your business if you did? We both
know the answer, it would change everything.
WHO?
KEY DEMOGRAPHICS
WHAT?
KEY TOPICS
WHERE?
KEY CHANNELS
WHEN?
TIMING
WHY?
RATIONALE
COMPLEXANT

It’s Time for a Change.
At Complexant, we help companies drive and gain
insight into the revenue contribution of marketing.
We do this through comprehensive analysis, data-
driven strategy, education and execution support
across the digital marketing landscape.
Talk to a Complexant specialist to learn how you we
can help your marketing organisation evolve to the next
level. Learn about  our methodology or  click
here to contact us today.

Measuring Social Media: Four Metrics That Matter

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Measuring Social Media: Four Metrics That Matter