Questions, Variables & Meseaurement of Social Media

Be aware! This post will show how much the comprehensive exam I had weeks ago is still haunting me. :)

So this week, I started to think about how to measure the value of social media, and I couldn't help thinking about operationalization, that is, to specify the measurement on variables in relation to a concept.

The concept is obviously social media. Variables are multiple depending on what questions you've asked. You may ask what is the increase in traffic to the organization's web site with the implementation of social media; or you may ask how is the interaction going between the social media users and you; or you may directly ask what is the sales driven by the social media. Other variables may include and are not limited to attention, retention, perception, engagement, etc.

With different questions, your inquiry will look much different. Some more qualitative, and others more quantitative. Various measurement tools are attached to both approaches.

Qualitative
Perhaps you want to know something about the reputation of your business/product/service, the ongoing conversations, and customer relationship. You may ask-

"Do we have a voice in the conversation about our product/service/overall industry?"
"How is our voice different from our competitors?"
"Are we making monologue or having a dialogue with our key publics?"

In-depth exploration and human analysis are involved to catch interaction and competition, and get answers to this kind of questions. Also, tools such as Sentiment analysis and opinion tracking may be used to get a picture about the conversation.

Quantitative
If your questions mainly address numbers, ROI, sales, profits, traffic, SEO ranking, you may take a more quantitative approach. Tools such as Google Analytics and Feedburner can help analyze blog traffic, subscriber count, keyword optimization, etc. I recommend this article if you want to learn how to use some of the most advanced tools and metrics. Also, for reference, this article introduces more than 50 tools designed to track traffic.

The key takeaway is that organizations need to ask clear questions, specify variables before they get down to choosing tools and metrics to measure social media successes.