We’ve talked a lot about “enterprise social media,” or embracing social across the enterprise and integrating it into every department where possible. When it comes to thinking about embracing social analytics across the enterprise, we all tend to get a little worked up. The social team says, “here’s what you need to take,” and other teams say, “those metrics don’t work for us,” and then the whole web comes crashing down when someone mentions three small letters: ROI.

In 2012, if you want to make an impact with social analytics learn to accept that you don’t need to re-invent the wheel just because you are tracking social. Though there are certain things that need to be specific to social, most need to be specific to what you are already looking at as an organization. It’s hard to stay on track with all the new formulas, buzz words and high expectations floating around so let’s work together to build out a list of guidelines.

Here are my top ones:

• Don’t pile on the metrics. Just because you can track everything doesn’t mean you have to, so keep things simple.
• Tie your tracking back to a business objective. Make sure you can show how tracking that metric is going to help your efforts.
• Find the why behind the numbers. Tracking an increase over time is great, but knowing why that increase is happening is so much better.
• Visualize the information. Just because you understand that spreadsheet doesn’t mean it’s going to hit your point home to your execs.
• Keep it fun. The culture of social media is relaxed and connected, so bring that into your reports by sharing pictures or specific posts from users.

Now it’s your turn. List your guidelines in the comments below! What are your guidelines for bringing social media analytics across the enterprise? What do we all need to do in 2012 to make analytics more integrated, engaging and valuable? 

Want to learn more about making an impact with social media analytics in 2012? See chapter four of this month’s ebook.

Tags: enterprise, formula, guidelines, metrics, roi