Almost every day I read articles about the difficulty of measuring the impact of social media on a brand. There are big debates not only about how to measure, but also about what to measure. But perhaps it is worth taking a step back to ask, "Why should you measure social media?"

I’ll bet the answer for many marketers is, "because we can" (if they are comfortable with their ability and the metrics they’ve chosen), or "because we should." Neither of which is really a good answer. By taking the could/should approach you likely end up with a lot of meaningless, useless data rather than actionable information.

In Douglas W. Hubbard’s book, How to Measure Anything, he presents a great framework for the right Web analytics thought process - shifting your mindset from "how or what to measure" to "why to measure" by focusing on these simple questions:

What business decision does it support or affect?

This relates to the bigger overall question of "why?"

a) Are you going to shift spending or resources from other marketing campaigns and programs to social media if you can prove ROI?

b) Are you already spending time and money on social media marketing and need to justify the decision?

c) Are people talking about your brand on social networking sites in a negative way? Do you need to change your customers' and prospects' perceptions of your brand?

d) Or is it just cool to know that people are talking about your brand?

What is really being measured?

You're probably tracking visits and traffic referred from social media sites, and maybe you're even tracking the behavior of these visitors. It's simple to set up a Google Alert, so maybe you're also tracking buzz and mentions.

So, of what you do know and can measure about social media visitors, why does it matter?

a) Well performing traffic is valuable and you want more.

b) Times are tough, marketing budgets are being cut and you need to justify the spend.

c) You have a branding problem - you need to know what people are saying and create a plan to address this problem.

What do you currently know?

If you are using any Web analytics software you can determine the number of visitors coming from social media sites by looking at the referrer information. For some, the domain may be enough detail. For others, knowing the URLs of the specific referral pages on the social networking sites is important.

If you're using a more robust Web analytics tool that allows you to segment, you can track the behavior of this social media traffic, as well as their conversion rates, revenue and time on site. You may track this at an individual site level, or you may group all of the social media sites into one segment and look at the traffic as a whole.

If you have a Google Alert set up you can see what people are saying specifically about your brand (and/or your competitors’ brands), more broadly your product or service, and even more generally your industry.

Most importantly, you know the time and money being spent measuring social media.

Armed with the knowledge of what you know and what it costs in both time and money, you can determine what the value of knowing more is. If there is a quantifiable upshot in increasing sales or potentially fixing a brand problem, it may be worth taking the next step of investing more time and money into social media marketing.

For more information on how to measure social media read:

• Measure Social-Media Efforts to Grow Revenue, Lists and Leads
• Concrete Results from Social Media
  

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About the Author

Joy Brazelle is director of product marketing and client services at ClearSaleing. She spends her days with her two professional passions - analytics and helping customers spend money more wisely by making informed decisions. Analytics has been her priority for over 10 years, helping clients build and grow their online presence. She has enjoyed the best of both the agency and the product worlds. Joy has also been a member of the Web Analytics Association since its launch in May 2006.

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