One of my favorite presentations earlier this week at DemandCon was from Susan Etlinger, an analyst with the Altimeter Group. Her talk focused on social media’s impact on the sales & marketing funnel, but what I particularly appreciated was her framework for how to evaluate (and ultimately measure) social media success. These criteria apply equally to B2C and B2B:
- Innovation: Collaborating with customers to drive future products & services
- Brand Health: A measure of attitudes, conversation and behavior towards your brand
- Marketing Optimization: Improving the effectiveness of marketing programs
- Revenue Generation: Where and how your company generates revenue
- Operational Efficiency: Where and how your company reduces expenses
- Customer Experience: Improving your relationship with customers, and their experience with your brand
Susan finished her keynote with five specific recommendations for what to do right now, a combination of actionable and realistic next steps:
- Understand that social media and measurement is fundamentally a change management issue
- Take time to learn the data and begin to establish benchmarks
- Accept the pitfalls and imperfections of social data and incorporate what you learn into your strategies
- Be realistic about and plan for the organizational impact
- Be brave: willing to face – and stand up for – hard truths about what does and doesn’t work
