Social Media Measurement

Once again we are dealing with a powerful tool...that IS NOT the silver bullet it may be touted to be...

Again, as has been discussed again and again...context is everything when it comes to social media...and web based analytics are no different...

In answering how we can measure the success of social media campaigns and what to consider when looking and raw numbers it is necessary to create context with some hypothetical scenarios...

For example...the bounce rate refers to the percentage of users that land on your page and then leave without spending any real time on it...a high bounce rate could be a bad thing if your website is content based like a newspaper or blog...having a high bounce rate in such cases likely means that there is some disconnect between how search engines view your site and how the internet user views it...in such a case it basically means that there is some sort of bait and switch as you are not providing what it expected...

However if you have website for an accounting firm or even a dry cleaner...where the name, phone number and address of the company is all that is needed...then the bounce rate is not the best indicator...

Another type metrics with different values is the page of entry...for example if your website is a e-commerce operation and people tend to enter to a page with a specific product then you can use this metric as guidance...maybe you should promote this specific product more then others...or maybe there is a basic or high level version that you could stock but are not...perhaps there is also an opportunity to stock complementary goods...or if you're receiving a tonne of traffic but no sales then perhaps this page of entry can be used as an indicator that you are charging to much...

The bounce rate and point of entry are some of the more popular metrics...but the mere fact that you can get so much detailed information allows a company to do all sorts of cool things...specifically it allows one to reduce the dependence of what Avinash Kaushik calls faith based decisions...

One example would be to run a couple of versions of the same website in a week or over two weeks...changing one or two variables as you go...and seeing which one drives the traffic according to your intentions...be it purchase, content consumption or whatever else...

Finally much broader metrics like devices, geography or the sites that send traffic are all awesome guiders of the effectiveness of your website...If your getting a lot of mobile views but have done nothing to optimize your site for mobile users then this may be an area of improvement...if your selling digital products and geography is not a factor then it is worth while seeing what you can do to drive traffic from far and away places (like have a duplicate site in another language)...and finally by looking into the sites that send you traffic, you be able to do some real world networking or even find areas of relevance that you weren't aware of before...

Of course it should be noted that just like knowledge based organizations...there can be a disconnect between the data and context...in short...in order to make effective use of the data an organization needs to be able to react...something that is much harder for large companies then for the little guy...who is free of functions and silos and massive marketing initiatives...