An MBA’s perspective on Social Media
A few weeks ago, I got named to the Top Ten Gen Y Marketing Blogs list. In his comment on here alerting me to the distinction, Jun Loayza commented that he was looking forward to getting an MBA’s perspective on social media.
I actually kind of laughed when I read the comment because, to me, social media is really nothing special. It’s a tool in our marketing toolbox, just like any other. If it can help me achieve a business goal, then why wouldn’t I support its use? If Groundswell proved anything, it’s that it clearly showed that social media has a place alongside any traditional marketing tactic, and organizations (or MBAs for that matter) who don’t take it seriously do so at their own peril.
The biggest problem I have with social media is the misconception repeated over and over again by self-professed “social media experts” that you can’t measure social media. What utter BS. Although it presents it’s own set of challenges, it absolutely can (and should!) be measured. Ultimately, it’s all about setting goals - what are you looking to achieve? Once you answer that question, figure out a way to measure your progress towards that goal as best you can, specifically focusing on how to measure social media’s contribution towards that goal. If the best is good for anything, it’s good for tracking - we have far more data on here than any print piece could ever give us.
Social media works. And you can track it to prove just that. What’s not to like?
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May 20th, 2009
Good point. I to think it’s funny when people say you can’t measure social media. I think the issue here is that there really is no set of hard and fast rules to abide by. There is no standard measuring tool for social media like there is for normal websites (ie google analytics) and because of that, people say it can’t be done. Not true! You just have to be innovative enough to find out ways to measure your goals. Most people just have a hard time thinking outside the box. That’s all!
May 20th, 2009
The only reason people say that you can’t measure something that they do is because they don’t want to be held accountable. That’s it. Glad you’ve realized this awesome simplicity as well :).
May 20th, 2009
Per usual, Karlyn, your post cuts through the clutter and gets right to the heart of the matter — social media is “just” another communications channel (albeit an important one). Our collective challenge is figuring out how to leverage that channel (as we do with other channels) in the most impactful way. Thanks for your insights on that front and congratulations on the well-deserved Top Ten distinction.
May 20th, 2009
MBA……
It’s also important to measure goals and success against some sort of benchmark. For example, we had a school with a goal to double their facebook fan page from 2,500 to 5,000 fans in a month. We put the strategy together and made it happen. But what is 5,000 fans? What does that mean to the school? That’s when you need to look beyond.
Its competitive/peer schools have 4-5x’s the size of this fan page, 20,000+ fans. So while we reached the goal and have had success and now have a larger audience to interact with, in the broader picture there is a lot of ground to cover to be reaching the audience they should have. It takes time though, and social media is not the magic bullet. We’ve already tracked several students back from the facebook page to enrolling and matriculating, including an international graduate student. (Cha-ching!)
Great post and congrats on the award!
May 20th, 2009
@Brad - I think it’s your responsibility as the consultant to come in and tell the school that doubling their Facebook fans is not necessarily a “business” goal…it looks like you are measuring conversion too (which is awesome!), but ultimately that’s what it’s all about - not the number of fans you have but your ability to convert those fans into taking actions that help the institution meet their business goals.
May 20th, 2009
Hi Karlyn,
Well put! So direct .. to the point. By the way - measuring social networking: here is one of many articles on the subject - http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/customer-support-via-twitter-salesforcecom-makes-it-legit/.
May 20th, 2009
Got here by asking a Q on Twitter: “What should an MBA student know about social media? #SMMBA” And @MBA_World wrote that your post is the answer! ;-D
Anyway, I think your observation that measurement is about figuring out your goals for engaging in social media and then identifying what measurements can help you understand your progress are the keys to “measuring” the business ROi.
Brad’s case demonstrates the danger, though, of focusing on analytics. In the end, measuring whether the fans doubled was not what mattered. Even benchmarking other schools and getting twice as many fans as all the rest, would not have mattered.
The most important return on his client’s investment came from attracting several new students via Facebook. The “metric” of doubling the number of fans might have contributed to that outcome. But it sounds like attracting new students was a side-effect.
All too often, we see clients tying themselves up in knots about the easily measurable analytics (pageviews, comments, fans, clickthroughs, and so on). They literally can’t see the ROi forest through the blinding mass of measurement data that social media can regurgitate for us.
The most valuable “return” on social media investment often doesn’t happen on your social media site at all. It may be in someone else’s comment stream, or an email with a link, or a phone call, or over coffee at a conference. Caused by your social media presence, but not “measurable” by the much-touted analytics tools.
As I think you’re suggesting, you have to be looking for the results that matter and find ways to understand the connections to your social media efforts after they happen.
It sounds like Brad was able to go back and connect the dots and, as he wrote, “Cha-ching!”
May 20th, 2009
I agree that social media is nothing special. I think its critical, but special. The buzz and hype it receives fuels that thinking that its a ‘magic bullet’. I love the quote I heard from MC Hammer when he was on the HubSpot TV. “Social media is no more than an extension of what we do naturally.” That is so true, its not magic - its communication. Can you measure the success of communicating - sure. I agree that pageviews, fans, etc. are not proper measurements of social media success. We need to focus on our core business goals and then work our way back to identify social media metrics.
May 20th, 2009
Ahh… I am literally 3/4 done with a blog post on this idea… you beat me to it. I think people decide they want to do something because they hear it’s a big deal and just jump in without thinking about what value it offers and how they can maximize that value.
My upcoming post discusses it in the context of Facebook. Great, your school or company has a Facebook Public Profile (aka Page), what’s the purpose of it? To generate feedback? To answer questions? To promote new products? Maybe all of the above Once you have a goal, the metrics will be easier to identify. AND generating the content that you want to share and deciding who you want interacting with Fans will also be easier.
Determine a strategy and the tactics will start to fall into place and become more apparent.