Measuring Social Media

An interesting discussion was held this morning through the MassTLC on Measuring Social Media campaigns, led by K.D. Paine. Social media as we all know and experience daily has had an enormous impact on how companies communicate with their customers, future employees, prospects and competitors. Vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to name a few are an integral part of strategies to move from “eyeballs to engagement.”

Companies are effectively using social media for everything from fundraising to recruitment (Sodexo saved $300,000 on recruiting costs using Twitter) to measuring customer satisfaction. Measuring the success of a social media campaign depends of course on what a company is trying to accomplish, or what problem they are trying to solve. Katie shared her experience with setting up Key Performance Indicators and then tracking results through a combination of Web tools and human involvement (surveys, calls, etc.).

Reaching customers, prospects, friends, colleagues is moving faster and more immediate than ever. Consider:

Years to Reach 50 million Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.

Fasten your seat belt, it’s only going to accelerate.

Note: Katie has kindly sent along a link to her slides, which you'll find here.