Digigen & The TinMan

Image from Tuttle Social Club

Social Econometrics – definition – Identifying the impact of multiple media variants on conversations within the social media space.

For me, there are alot of agencies, cultures, “gurus” who view social media as a seperate space with seperate rules. There are indeed things that need to be done differently, but there are simple rules which should be followed.
For example, rule 1 always compare your social media monitoring solution and its outputs to the outputs your other media channels give you. I call this social econometrics and its this which will help us prove the success of social campaigns in the long run.

I recently read about Marketeers not really knowing what to measure in social media. Its about a month old now, but I still think the alarm bells are ringing in my head. The big issue I feel is that alot of social agencies have created the image that ROI and commerce aren’t important factors of social media. Being part of a traditional agency, we feel these are the two most important factors in social media.

Therefore, I have developed a framework which I feel could be useful for the measurement of social media activity:

The framework is pretty basic and clearly anyone who reads this will have an opinion. However, I believe that each section make sense when thinking about social in terms of research, activation and growth. (To me these are the key elements of any social media thinking)

The truth is, there is no simple way of doing this. The tools that I have dealt with to date have been consistent in one thing, not getting the completely right answer the first time around. I don’t actually think this is a fault of the tool or the person running the tool. Apart from in one case. Its not even a fault of the brief.

The problem comes from the data revealing more possible connotations each time you run it. Another influencer, another subject we hadn’t considered, more data than before. Because conversations are happening all the time and being started all the time in known and unknown places, the data set from buzz technology consistently shifts as well.

Therefore, getting buzz monitoring right is difficult and takes alot of manual intervention. It seems to me to pay to take a step back from the data and have a think about how it pans out, analyse it for yourself, then get the client involved. What do they think? What is important to them? Are we both trying to get the same things out of it?

I think the following diagram best represents the way buzz monitoring should work, a reduced emphasis on the buzz tool’s owners, and more emphasis on client and agency. Essentially, this is a top heavy approach but one which I think gives most benefit.