Measuring blogger engagement

By victoriak

By Simon van Wyk

How do you measure the impact of blogger engagement and other social media activities? Because you’re able to collect more hard data for online activities than for traditional marketing activities, there is an inherent assumption by management that online magically provides an answer to the old dilemma of “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the problem is, I don’t know which half.”

The thing is, it’s not nearly as simple as that. Although a lot of data is collected, it still needs to be harvested, organised and interpreted. And if you want to express the data in terms of return on investment (ROI), you need to be able to match the ROI framework used in other parts of the business.

House Party head Scott Rhodie, interviewed for this month’s HotHouse podcast, says making that connection with measurements in the rest of the business is important.

“The social media space is still immature. Any measurement should be viewed in the context of overall marketing ROI. Social media is just another part of marketing, another marketing tool. Everything should be measured under one umbrella.”

Another factor that makes it difficult to measure the impact of social and digital media is that ROI measurement is different for every company and every campaign. “There is no universal baseline you can use.”

He also points out that the convergence between traditional and digital media makes it important to integrate online media measurement with other marketing measures. “The Westfield ‘All I want for Christmas is a Westfield gift card’ campaign – that’s enjoyed nearly 500,000 Facebook status mentions. Is that social media, advertising, or both?”

Scott also warns against just relying on hard numbers for such campaigns. “Social media is more than just figures. You need to try and measure actual engagement – you’re not just pushing your message all the time, you’re creating ambassadors for your product.”

Don’t rely too heavily on the numbers. Remember, what you’re trying to measure is human behaviour – one of the hardest things to understand or predict. As Ralph Paine, the publisher of Fortune magazine said back in 1960: “If we can put a man in orbit, why can’t we determine the effectiveness of our communications? The reason is simple and perhaps, therefore, a little old-fashioned: people, human beings with a wide range of choice. Unpredictable, cantankerous, capricious, motivated by innumerable conflicting interests, and conflicting desires.”