Social Media B2B

Much of my time recently has been spent working on and thinking about social media measurement, specifically as it relates to B2B organizations. This is a topic that could be discussed for days, even weeks within an organization, but today I am going to attempt to provide some practical advice in a few hundred words.

Before we go through the list, I think it is important that anyone who is responsible for measuring social media understands what the goals are. You must have clear and measurable goals! Nothing else in the post or that anyone else tells you on the topic of measurement is actionable if you don’t have clear goals that help drive business results.

Now that we have addressed the issue of goals, which seems simple and obvious and is often forgotten by many organizations, we can go directly into the meat of this issue. How do you measure social media?

Step 1: Understand That Social Media Isn’t Only A Marketing Thing - Social media impacts all aspects of a business, not just the marketing department. With this idea in mind, it is important that you reexamine your goals and see how your strategy impacts other business functions.

• Does it help attract new employees?
• Does it help resolve customer issues?
• Does it provide support for R&D?

The list goes on and on, but by taking time to think about all of the applications of your strategy it deepens the ROI possibilities and outlines how you should be measuring.

Step 2: Assign Value To Business Processes – To assess return on investment, you first need to understand the value you are trying to achieve with your investment. To be able to do this, you need to make sure you have values assigned to business costs and opportunities.

• How much is a lead worth and what does it currently cost?
• How much is a new customer acquisition worth?
• How much does a call center question cost your organization?
• How much is product feedback worth to future product development?

The more of these questions, and ones like them specific to your goals, you can answer, the clearer the connection you can make between your investment and return.

Step 3: Segment And Differentiate Executions – You have the resources to run a social media program. Would you like to have more resources next year? If so, then measuring overall campaign effectiveness is not enough. It is important to segment your executions and measurement methods so that you can get granular with measurement. You need to be able to understand which aspects of your strategy are driving the most value. This will help you optimize them to make the results even better and give you the support you need for additional funding.

For example, let’s say that can show that Twitter is your best source of lead generation traffic. If you know this, you can optimize your execution to determine what types of messages get the most clicks that convert and when they should be sent. Understanding this gives you the information you need, to get more support, staff or a bigger budget.

Step 4: Have Data Collection Methods For Every Action Point – By setting goals you have outlined actions that you want customers and prospects to take. If you think of these actions as a series or a funnel, then you have a process of action and influence that drives people towards your goal. At each step of the funnel there must be a method to collect data to aid in measurement.

Sample Situation: Using A Corporate Blog For Lead Generation

Action Funnel:

• Prospect arrives at the blog – Measurement: Web analytics to determine what influence sent them to the blog (ie search, social network, ad, etc.)
• Customer Clicks Whitepaper Page Link – Measurement: Web analytics to show how many blog visitors then went to the whitepaper page
• Completed Contact Form To download Whitepaper – Measurement: Is the lead captured a quality lead? If so assign pre-determined value.

Step 5: Reporting That Make Sense – You can have great results and great measurement but to leverage the results to their fullest, you need to have reporting that is clear, concise and in keeping with your leadership’s style. The challenge is that you are taking data and results from many sources and working to combine them into one report. My recommendation is to create two types of reports. One that is highly detailed and text-based so that you can know the comprehensive results of of your measurement. The other report should be top-line and highly visual. Visual graphic and comparisons work well and are easily discussed and passed around by management.

Measurement is about the details, but you can’t get the right details with out taking the biggest steps needed to get there.

How are you measuring social media in your organization?

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