Mele’s Musings

Conversation Quotient

Is “engagement” just too fuzzy to measure, or do we need to abandon “traditional” online metrics to get to what the real value is?

photo: i-wisdom.typepad.com

Article excerpt: Social media metrics are still a work in progress. What’s a friend worth? It’s the question marketers are asking more and more as they plow into social media in the hopes of finding new customers in welcoming environments while going beyond simple messaging to the fuzzy notion of “engagement.” But with the rapid growth of social media has come the challenge of measuring the new ways consumers are interacting with and sharing advertisers’ content and brands. In many cases, the biggest difficulty is not just figuring out what to measure but what to ignore — and how to square the need for metrics-driven accountability with the more qualitative feedback endemic to conversation-based channels. The pressure to justify whether these stabs at so-called “conversational marketing” are paying off against business goals is increasing. Yet the immaturity of the space means few accepted definitions of success, which means many programs are judged more qualitatively, experts said.   adweek.com

Musing: Evaluating engagement is a hard thing to do, and I wonder if we have the patience or the discipline to truly measure it correctly.  Particularly in the digital space, we are obsessed with quantifiable numbers and quick decision making based on the massive amounts of data we can collect rapidly, but creating engagement is something that takes time.  I don’t find it surprising that Google is struggling with running ads on social media sites – because their model is based on rapid feedback from clicks.  However, social media advertising is really more about finding ways to create relationships with customers over time.  I completely agree with the argument that Ian Schafer makes in the article – social media is not a short-time play.  It takes time to make online communities grow, and we have to have the patience to feed and grow them over time.  Having a “campaign” mentality toward social media will only result in frustration, because the value of the relationship grows organically over time – if it is done well.  We have to be careful about what we measure, and how we measure it.  Desiring quick results will likely force us into sub-optimal decisions.