Social Media: Marketing or Measurement?
November 1, 2007
Matt J MacDonald has got me thinking about what Social Media truly is.
Is it a form of marketing?
Or is it really a measurement of other marketing methods?
One of the biggest problems companies face when making decisions about social media campaigns is the ability to measure it. Yet, for decades companies have engaged in branding campaigns where measurement can get a bit fuzzy.
But let’s say a company develops two TV advertising spots. One spot is very popular and gets talked about on blogs and makes the home page of Digg. The other ad gets noticed, but doesn’t garner quite as much attention. In this scenario, social media becomes a tool for measurement.
Of course, it’s not a hard metric. It’s not like analytics for a paid search campaign or ROI from a direct marketing campaign. Those are definitive numbers. But there is enough measurement in social media to know what worked and what didn’t.
In light of this, can social media still be considered a form of marketing? If so, then how should it be measured?
I’m not ready to answer that question. In fact, I’d really like a solid debate before forming an opinion, so get your comments and trackbacks ready.
But my initial reaction is that, if anything, social media is more akin to public relations than marketing. It’s about who you know and getting “earned” coverage instead of paid coverage. In PR, you have to network with journalists and know how to get them to cover your story. In Social Media, you have to network with bloggers, Diggers, Stumblers, and brand evangelists and know how to get them to spread the word.
Some PR companies measure success by equating coverage with what would have been ad spend on the same space. Is it possible, then to measure Social Media in the same way? Let’s say your piece makes it to the front page of Digg. Well, what does it cost to advertise on the home page of Digg? (Click here to do the math). You’ve essentially earned yourself that much free advertising. Which, of course, you’ll want to measure.
That’s where web analytics comes in. Check out where your referrals are coming from. If you’re getting a bunch of referrals from Propeller, and those people are clicking around on your site, staying around and hanging out, then you know it’s a good place to submit your stuff. In fact, many Digg submissions of mine generate far more referrals than they do actual Digg votes.
Of course, now I’m questioning whether or not Conversation Marketing should really be called marketing (something that’s been bothering me a bit anyway). But I’ll save that for a future post.
What do you think? Is Social Media better as marketing or measurement?
Posted in Social Media by Nathania Johnson
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November 1st, 2007 at 5:38 am
Thank you. Between you and me - I’ve never really known what the big hub-bub was about any of that stuff. It is a way to create (and measure) buzz, but I’m not sure I’d call it anything more than that.
Just one part of the puzzle.
To me - there is hardly one sustainable platform out there. Certainly not enough to build a marketing strategy around.
MySpace, LinkedIn Facebook - they’re all either weak (Linked In) or a fad driven mostly by fickle teenagers.
Digg, Sphinn, Reddit - all are cliques in the respective spaces.
The only one that has any legs to it is YouTube - and I think even that will start to have less market share as we go forward a few years.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:04 am
Measuring is always the challenge in any PR endeavor, online or brick. Modern analytics like ClickTracks and Omniture lend a good deal of perspective to traffic and conversion. Buzz measuring tools like Technorati and Google Blog Search also help justify investments in social media.
At the end of the day the client’s “impressions” of the results sometimes has to be enough, a scenario marketers work to minimize.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Interesting question. I hope you don’t mind if I link to a couple of posts that I think add something to the discussion. The first is a post I wrote a few days ago about branding through social media. I think the post might align more with your idea of social media as more about PR, but I do think you can market through social media.
The second post I came across earlier today on DoshDosh. Maki’s post is all about convincing you why social media marketing is important.
I think you have to look at each social media site as a community and understand that the members of each community will share many things in common. They become a market and if you have something to offer that a particular community wants you can market through that social media site.
Most of the time it won’t be direct marketing in the sense that making the top page of Digg isn’t going to lead to more sales to diggers. But the traffic you get will turn into subscribers and links, which will give your site more visibility in certain markets.
I think social media is marketing, but it’s not the kind of marketing that leads directly to a sale. The marketing is a little more indirect, but it’s still marketing.
November 2nd, 2007 at 7:34 am
Social Media is not measurement or marketing. Social media is a conversation with your constituencies. Whether you promote your product, your beliefs or your brand thru that conversation is up to you. If you do use social media for marketing purpose it has to be measured along with everything else in the marketing mix. Does it deliver the leads, market share or sales? Of course that can be measured by solid tracking systems. The problem with most social media efforts today is that they don’t have clear goals and if they are measured at all, most people are still trying to measure the “ad value” rather than the bottom line benefit.
November 6th, 2007 at 8:02 am
For me, Social Media isn’t a metric per se, it’s just one aspect of the overall marketing mix. It’s easy to tend towards just Social Media because it’s perceived as being “free”, but that’s not the case.
Additionally, it’s a model of doing things that’s both marketing and customer satisfaction survey combined.
As we all know, building up the contacts and respect amongst those people is a lot of hard work, most of which is unpaid time.
It’s also a layered process. While the likes of StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit et cetera can be seen as being analogous to trade & industry magazines, there’s also a comparison to be made between the people we meet on-line that promote our content. These are effectively just the same people we meet off-line who offer word-of-mouth recommendations.
Also, not all Social Media venues are equal — Digg tends not to convert too well, so all of those finely-crafted CTA’s and adverts usually amount to very little.
The currency is back-links, which have weight, which you could compare to the various denominations.
Additionally, we we use traffic volume and comments as a way of assessing our standing amongst our peers…
December 5th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
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