4 Ways to Measure Social Media and Its

Impact on Your Brand

Do you know how social media is helping your business? Want to find out how Twitter,
Facebook and other sites are impacting your brand awareness?

The good news is social media has finally made it to the grand stage of “accountability.” A place
where there are lots of people who want to measure it. The bad news is there isn’t a single clear-
cut answer.

However, with a few simple steps, you can build a measurement strategy that accomplishes
your goals.

Defining Terms

To start, let’s agree that brand awareness is a measure of how recognizable your brand is to
your target audience. For those looking to get ahead of the curve on social media measurement,
the first step is to align your social media metrics with metrics your company is already
comfortable with.

Also, let’s agree that the measurements for social media aren’t all that different from how you’ve
been measuring traditional media. To put brand awareness measurement into the context of the
sales funnel, the key areas to evaluate fall into three categories:  social media exposure,
influence and engagement.

With that understanding, let’s look at how you can level the playing field between your
traditional media metrics and your social media metrics.

#1:  Measuring Social Media Exposure

How many people could you have reached with your message?

In social media, this measurement is about as reliable as a print magazine’s circulation, but
knowing your potential audience does have value because it represents your potential sales lead
pool.

Unfortunately, as of the writing of this post, some of these metrics have to be accounted for
manually, so you’ll have to balance the level of effort to track the metrics versus the value
you’ll receive from them to determine their importance to your overall strategy.

A good example of where there can be unreliability in social measurement is when isolating
unique users for each of your metrics. You want to avoid counting the same person twice in the
list below, but realistically it’s difficult to do.
These measurements highlight the number of people you’ve attracted to your brand through
social media. To mitigate the potential for duplication of users, track growth rate as a
percentage of the aggregate totals. This is where you will find the real diamonds.

 Twitter: Look at your number of followers and the number of followers for those
who retweeted your message to determine the monthly potential reach. You should
track these separately and then compare the month-over-month growth rate of each of
these metrics so you can determine where you’re seeing the most growth. A great free
tool to use for Twitter measurement is TweetReach.
 Facebook: Track the total number of fans for your brand page. In addition, review the
number of friends from those who became fans during a specified period of time or
during a promotion and those who commented on or liked your posts to identify the
potential monthly Facebook reach.  Facebook Insights provides value here.
 YouTube: Measure the number of views for videos tied to a promotion or specific period
of time, such as monthly, and the total number of subscribers.
 Blog: Measure the number of visitors who viewed the posts tied to the promotion or a
specific period of time.
 Email: Take a look at how many people are on the distribution list and how many
actually received the email.

Exposure is the top of the brand awareness funnel and represents your potential sales lead pool.

#2:  Measuring Engagement

How many people actually did something with your message?

This is one of the most important measurements because it shows how many people actually
cared enough about what you had to say to result in some kind of action.

Fortunately engagement is fairly easy to measure with simple tools such as Radian 6, Biz360 and
TweetEffect. These metrics highlight who you want to target to retain on social media channels.

For a starting list of key performance indicators for engagement, this post by Chris Lake is a
great start.

 Twitter: Quantify the number of times your links were clicked, your message was
retweeted, and your hashtag was used and then look at how many people were
responsible for the activity. You can also track @replies and direct messages if you can
link them to campaign activity.
 Facebook: Determine the number of times your links were clicked and your messages
were liked or commented on. Then break this down by how many people created this
activity. You can also track wall posts and private messages if you can link them to
activity that is directly tied to a specific social media campaign.
 YouTube: Assess the number of comments on your video, the number of times it was
rated, the number of times it was shared and the number of new subscribers.
 Blog: Evaluate the number of comments, the number of subscribers generated and finally
the number of times the posts were shared and “where” they were shared (i.e., Facebook,
Twitter, email, etc.). Measure how many third-party blogs you commented on and the
resulting referral traffic to your site.
 Email: Calculate how many people opened, clicked and shared your email. Include
where the items were shared, similar to the point above. Also, keep track of the number
of new subscriptions generated.

#3: Measuring Influence

This category gets into a bit of a soft space for measurement. Influence is a subjective metric that
relies on your company’s perspective for definition. Basically, you want to look at whether the
engagement metrics listed above are positive, neutral or negative in sentiment. In other
words, did your campaign influence positive vibes toward the brand or did it create bad mojo?

You can also use automated tools like Twitalyzer, Social Mention, Radian 6 or ScoutLabs to
make it a little easier, but ALWAYS do a manual check to validate any sentiment results.
Influence is generally displayed as a percentage of positive, neutral and negative sentiment,
which is then applied in relation to the engagement metrics and to the metrics for reach where
applicable.

A great application for influence is to look at the influence by those who engaged with your
brand in the above categories. Do you have a nice mix of big players with large audiences
engaging with your brand, as well as the average Joe with a modest following?
If not, your influence pendulum may be about to tip over, because it’s important that you spend
time engaging with both influential users and your average user. Note: many of the
automated tools that track sentiment and influence are not free. And many times, you will need a
combination of tools to measure all of the different social media channels.

#4:  The Lead Generation Funnel

After you’ve measured through the influence portion of the funnel, you’re now creeping into
where too many companies are starting their measurement efforts: the lead generation funnel.
This is where the brand awareness portion of the funnel ends and the traditional ROI-driven
action begins.

Exposure, influence and engagement represent brand awareness in the measurement funnel.

Understanding your reach, engagement and influence through these primary social channels will
allow you to define your presence and impact, which can then be applied as a model to other
social networks.

Now that you’ve tracked all of this information, how do you make it meaningful? Excel is a great
tool to help organize your data. Build yourself a standard dashboard in Excel that highlights
the key metrics that matter to the organization. Create a tab for a high-level overview of
multiple campaigns, and a tab for each campaign for the time period you’re reporting on.
Ultimately, you should put the information into the same format that you’ve used to report on
traditional brand awareness campaigns, with social media as just another vehicle in the overall
marketing mix.
If you’re looking for tools to use for tracking, this post by Mani Karthik at Daily Bloggr gives a
nice view of options.

To really understand the importance of measurement, here’s a great post on social media
measurement from Social Media Examiner: Is Social Media Marketing Measurable? The Big
Debate.

Social Media Has Direct Influence on Brand

Search

Internet searchers who use social media are more engaged with brands overall and are more
likely to be looking for places to buy and brands to consider, according to a first-of-its-kind
study by GroupM Search and comScore, Inc., which revealed a significant correlation between
brand discovery through social media and online search behavior.

Conducted in tandem with social media agency M80, the study, “The Influenced: Social Media,
Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption,” revealed a direct correlation
between discovery of brands through social media and search behavior, especially more lower-
funnel searches and increased paid search click-through-rates (CTR).

The study explored the correlation between social media exposure and search behavior over a
three-month period across different verticals, including automotive, consumer packaged goods
and telecommunications. In addition to looking at total internet users, consumers were divided
into three segments based upon their exposure to a brand’s paid search, social media relevant to a
brand’s category, and specific “influenced” elements of a brand’s social media program.

The amount of time spent online varied widely among these consumer segments, the study
found:

 Of consumers participating in social media, those exposed to a brand’s influenced social

media spent 20% more time online compared with those exposed only to social media
relevant to a brand’s category.
  Consumers exposed to both a brand’s influenced social media and paid search spent
almost three times more time online than the average internet users.

The study also broke out search behavior into segments based on where queries fell among
stages of the purchase funnel. This included upper-funnel terms expressing awareness and
consideration (industry relevant terms, general product attributes) to lower-funnel terms
expressing action and loyalty (campaign brand terms, brand product terms).

Findings revealed that searchers who engage with social media, especially those exposed to a
brand’s influenced social media, are far more likely to search for lower-funnel terms, compared
with consumers who do not engage with social media. Further, consumers exposed to a brand’s
influenced social media and paid-search programs are 2.8 times more likely to search for that
brand’s products compared with users who only saw paid search.

The September 2009 study also found a 50% CTR increase in paid search when consumers were
exposed to influenced social media and paid search. comScore said this indicates that consumers
exposed to social media are more likely to click on a brand’s paid search ad, compared with
those exposed to the brand’s paid search alone.

“Social media-exposed consumers are far more likely to search for brand and product-related
terms, and click on a brand’s paid search ad,” concluded Graham Mudd, VP of comScore, Inc.
“This finding provides strong evidence that investing in social media marketing can both
increase initial brand consideration and drive higher conversion rates once the consumer has
decided to purchase.”

Additional study findings:

 Consumers using social media are 1.7 times  more likely to search with the intension of
making a list of brands or products to consider purchasing compared with the average
internet user.
 Consumers exposed to influenced social and paid search exhibit 223%  heavier search
behavior than consumers exposed to paid alone.
 50% of social-media exposed searchers search daily for product terms, compared with
33% of non-exposed searchers.
 In organic search, consumers searching on brand product terms who have been exposed
to a brand’s social marketing campaign are 2.4 times more likely to click on organic links
leading to the advertiser’s site than the average user seeing a brand’s paid search ad
alone.
 Among searchers using a brand’s product name in a search query, the CTR increased
from 4.5% to 11.8% when users were exposed to both influenced social media and paid
search around a brand.
“As advertisers consider the allocation of paid media and the greatest opportunity for return, the
topics of media discovery and influenced social discovery must be a part of the conversation,”
said  Chris Copeland, CEO of GroupM Search - The Americas. “Blending paid, earned and
owned media, and putting your brand in places where it can be discovered and part of the natural
conversation, will enable advertisers to influence the outcome of intention expressed by
consumers, and capture this heavily engaged audience.”

In other research that shows the important relationship between social media and brands, a recent
study from Penn State University showed that 20% of Tweets are brand-related.

Social Media’s Impact on Your Brand

December 30, 2010 By lee 2 Comments

Social Media marketing is changing how brands engage with consumers and in the process,
shifting the face of marketing like a snowboarder cutting through fresh powder in Lake Tahoe.

Just over a year ago Twitter was considered a non-mainstream micro blogging tool for digerati
trendsetters and celebrities and many considered Facebook to be just a social network for
teenagers.

Fast forward to today – brands and companies are using social media to connect directly with
their customers and many are bypassing their ad agencies along the way.  How the social media
landscape has shifted:
  Facebook and Twitter usage via smartphones has grown tremendously, approximately
347% for Facebook and 125% for Twitter users. Take it to the bank, these growth rates

will keep accelerating moving forward.

 Facebook now has over 600 million users world wide – I believe they will break the 1
billion mark by the end of 2011, as do many analysts.
 Facebook is now the most frequently searched term and most visited web site for 2010
based on information just released via Inside Facebook today.
 Twitter’s growth rate continues to move faster than Tiger Woods sponsors in retreat  –
over 25 Billion Tweets (messages) were sent out in 2010 and over 100 Million people
now use Twitter.
 At times the media darlings of social media appear to be Twitter and Facebook. But,
ignore LinkedIn at your peril – over 100 million people are connected via LinkedIn, with
a new user being added every second of the day 24/7/365.
 Even second tier social networks like Xing (German based) and Viadeo are growing
rapidly, with 9 Million users for Xing and 35 Million strong for Viadeo.

What does all this growth mean to your brand and what should you do about it?

1. Get on-board the train – social media marketing is moving mainstream and many of your
competitors are there. If you expect to succeed with any marketing initiative you want to
include a social component.
2. Listen to the social web. Today’s informed social-enabled consumer has no hesitation
about firing off a Tweet or doing a status update  via Facebook that can hale your
company as the best thing since a 50% off Groupon coupon at Starbucks to or the worst
polluter bar none since BP!
3. Branded content is crucial to getting established and growing your brand in the social
eco-system. It can be anything from a 140 character Tweet to a two minute video
uploaded to YouTube that is complemented via TubeMogul syndication and distribution.
Clearly, today’s content experts need a much broader skill set than what has traditionally
been considered acceptable.
4. If your an executive like Warren Buffett who can barely use email get down to Borders
and purchase “Engage” by Brian Solis and “Trust Agents” by Chris Brogan, then get
warm/fuzzy with a 20-something or the nearest marketing geek and get on/in the social
web and communicate. Remember it’s transparent and your no longer in that corporate
silo/comfort cocoon.
5. If your a large corporate brand (see point 4) you will want to flatten our your company –
effective social media marketing should involve your entire team, not just the marketing
geeks. The more the better  – think HR, Sales, Customer Service, Exec staff, even R&D –
the whole enchilada.
6. Your messaging can be anytime, anywhere and any place – the freedom is unfettered but
social conversations can be like drinking out of the proverbial fire hose.
7. Move beyond the community with your social connections. Depending on brand’s focus
(consumer or B2B) you will want to motivate your social followers to connect with you
via a subscriber list, registration via your site or some other viable call to action. It’s like
herding cats – you need compelling content that motivates users to connect with your
brand off the social web.
8. Have some idea of what’s working and what isn’t with your social media marketing
activities. There are a ton of social media monitoring apps out in the marketplace. There
are 150 on this Wiki List alone. You don’t need to belly up to the bar with a shiny new
VC-backed social media monitoring app from day one. Start with Google Analytics at
least and move up the food chain with an additional service or app as your social cred and
activity increase.