Six Elements of Effective Social Media Benchmarking
Friday, March 5, 2010 | 15 Comments
Tags: benchmarking, social media measurement
Posted in: Guest Blogger, Social Media
Imagine for a second that you are the head of marketing for your company and are considering taking the first steps into the wonderful (and often mysterious) world of social media. You’ve heard all about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the bevy of other tools available to you, but you’re not sure which one makes the most sense for your business. What do you do? Well, hopefully for all involved you don’t turn to the “young” person within your department just because they are young. No, chances are good you will either pull some people together internally for a discussion or turn to your agency (assuming you’re using one).
So you’ve turned to your agency and asked them to help you understand how they leverage social media. What is the first thing they do? Well, they probably wow you with a lot of interesting case studies and statistics demonstrating the power of the tools. It’s at this moment you realize you aren’t Dell, Comcast or Southwest Airlines. What can you do to get the train back on track?
You would be wise to suggest to the agency (hopefully they’ve suggested it themselves) that they do some sort of benchmarking on your behalf. Benchmarking is a critical first step in any program. Whether it’s doing content analysis or surveys, you need to understand where the starting line is for your organization.
Beth Harte wrote a post last year in which she outlined the seven holy grails of PR. One of those holy grails was researched benchmarks. PR, social media, marketing–it almost doesn’t matter. Researched benchmarks are a critical first step toward the success of any campaign.
With that in mind, what are some things you can benchmark when starting your social media campaign?
- Share of conversation – My friend David Alston, and Radian6’s VP of Marketing, would likely tell you that social media isn’t all about the eyeballs. I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment, but would say that gauging share of conversation is helpful from at least a brand awareness perspective.
- Where conversations are happening – Before you launch headlong into Twitter, it would be helpful to know if your customers are actually there.
- Core messaging – Yes, social media isn’t all about pushing core messaging. However, it will be helpful to know what people are saying in reference to your brand. Implicit in that is what, specifically, is driving conversation.
- Who is influential – Everyone, and every industry has their own definition on who is influential. Be sure to define, through listening or whatever other means, who is influential in your space before you get started.
- Search – If you didn’t know this already, search and social media are inextricably linked. There are plenty of free tools that will show you what people are searching for. What are the key terms people are using? What is on the first page of Google results? Is your brand there?
- Web analytics – Similar to search, what shows up on your Web site is equally critical to what’s being said in social media. Know how many unique visitors you have, what the referring sites are and percentage of new vs. returning visitors.
These are just six things that I would recommend you benchmark, but obviously you want to come up with researched benchmarks that make sense for your campaign. What other metrics have you researched? What’s worked well? What hasn’t? Looking forward to hearing your point of view.
Chuck Hemann, a 2010 Society for New Communications Research Fellow, is currently a social media associate for WCG, a global media services company focused on the corporate and product marketing and communications needs of leading healthcare companies. You can follow Chuck on Twitter.
15 Responses to “Six Elements of Effective Social Media Benchmarking”
@chuckhemann on March 5th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Damion – thanks for the comment, sir. You and I are in sync on this one.
@markvanbaale on March 6th, 2010 at 5:48 am
Chuck, As a newly assigned Director of Social Media Strategies for an agency, what you outlined here is essential for me to make sure we utilize for our clients. I appreciate the info you have shared in this post.
@chuckhemann on March 7th, 2010 at 4:49 am
Hey Mark – great to hear that. Thanks for the input.
@marketingfails on March 7th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
So true Chuck, especially point #2 as most companies think "I just need to be there" without considering if there's anything "there" for them in the first place. Excellent bullet list! –Paul
Allie Osmar on March 8th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Great list. I would also add sentiment, both in general and in association with particular categories. This tells the other side of story (overall volume + sentiment).
房屋仲介 on March 10th, 2010 at 8:23 am
great to hear that. Thanks for the input. this is all
@KashMiah on March 11th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
One of the biggest points you mentioned is finding the influential people. Many networks and sites have grown because they've targeted the right people or have been promoted by the right people. It's something many startups and young companies forget. An old but very powerful example is the rise of Palm as a brand. All started with word of mouth because they targeted the right people in the industry, offered their technology and then made a splash as these people went on to talk about these new gadgets Palm created.
Of course, the product or content you're developing needs to be great but getting the right people to talk about it always helps, giving it credibility unlike any other
Desarae A. Veit on March 12th, 2010 at 6:19 am
Great post thanks for sharing.
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Dean Guadagni on April 20th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Chuck,
A kind thank you for linking to our Inner Architect Dell case study- we are honored.
I believe #2 on your list is incredibly important. Most companies fail to look for their prospective clients or current consumers first before launching their presence within a social network.
Here are two methods we begin with when suggesting a social network:
1. Identify which of your customers are currently using the social network your company wants to leverage. You can do this by data appending social networking information to your client database- we are seeing an average return (input email address only) of 14-20% on Facebook and 4-12% on Twitter.
2. Search using keywords, short head, long tails that are relevant to finding the conversations surrounding a brand or company.
Thanks again Chuck!
@damion_white on March 5th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Great article Hemann! I certainly echo your sentiments here. Having recently become an executioner of social media campaigns I have been surprised at how many people fail to realize the importance of finding the right starting point before embarking on their journey in SM. If you start from just anywhere (or from someone else's starting line for that matter) how can you truly know where you are going?