How to start measuring social media (even if you hate math)
The authors of the new book “Marketing in the Round” explain how to painlessly launch a measurement program that will show how your marketing and PR efforts affect the bottom line.
We’ve always gotten away with “measuring” our results in terms of media impressions, reach, and advertising equivalencies. After all, it’s hard to quantify brand awareness, credibility, reputation, and thought leadership. You know whether or not you have it, but you can’t really put it in terms of numbers.
And those great big impression numbers? They feel good to a CEO who is looking for some way to show a return on you efforts.
But when the Web disrupted our industry we slowly began to see new and interesting ways to measure our efforts. Early on we looked at using unique URLs in our news releases and different 800 numbers at our events. But that wasn’t enough.
The Web has provided a huge opportunity to measure our results directly to business goals, yet most of us still shy away.
Why? Because we don’t like numbers.
We’d like you to think about it differently. Call it data or information or goodies or, heck, call it chocolate. Just don’t call it numbers.
It’s fun to see results from your efforts—and now you have the opportunity to see them every day.
Become a Ragan Insider member to read this article and all other archived content.
Sign up today
Already a member? Log in here.
Learn more about Ragan Insider.
