#MeasurementMonday: Evaluating the Shift in Social Media Marketing Measurement

Have you noticed the shift in how brands are addressing social media marketing measurement? At The Motherhood, we’ve seen the focus slowly move from impressions and clicks to other metrics like purchase intent and engagement.

BuzzFeed, a major leader in the online social news and entertainment industry, recently announced that it is changing the way it measures its content and audience. In an effort to look at itself “more holistically,” the site is abandoning the unique visitor metric and embracing a range of new metrics based on unique goals and content distribution.

We expect more and more brands and agencies to follow this line of thinking – moving beyond impressions alone in social media marketing measurement. The question on everyone’s minds: “Is there a more effective way of a measuring a social media campaign’s success, and if so, what is it?”

The Motherhood has been involved in influencer marketing since its inception, when blogs were just beginning to take off and social media was in its infancy. We’ve regularly led the conversation about measurement with brands and bloggers through primary research and an active feedback loop with influencers. We will share some of those insights on Mondays moving forward.

Follow along with our #MeasurementMonday Series as we tackle social media marketing measurement – one of the most difficult aspects of influencer marketing.

As the online marketing industry evolves, so will social media marketing measurement standards. The Media Rating Council recently released Social Media Measurement Guidelines to create more consistency in terms and measurement metrics across the industry – a “common reality point for setting expectations and evaluating results.” These standards will provide a baseline for comparing metrics across media platforms so results can be clearly and accurately communicated to clients.

Furthermore, the PR industry’s Barcelona Principles, a set of concepts created in 2010 to measure the efficacy of PR campaigns, have been updated in in the past year. These principles are designed to provide consistent, industry-wide standards and practices to guide measurement and evaluation of online public relations efforts.

While measurement standards provide a good starting point, each social media marketing campaign is unique, and there are many factors to consider when evaluating success. For example, when do website traffic, downloads, purchase behavior and more come into play? How do they compare to an impression? It can be difficult to measure all of these factors on a standard scale.

The key is to identify your campaign “win” and primary success metrics prior to kickoff.

In our #MeasurementMonday series, we will tackle these topics and discuss ways to create clear social media marketing measurement standards. Tune in next week for The Motherhood’s tips on how and why to define your campaign “win” before getting started!

We’d love to talk to you about the different marketing and measuring tactics that are right for your brand! Email contact@themotherhood.com for more information.

Read all of our #MeasurementMonday series posts HERE!

Brands and bloggers, what are some difficulties you’ve had when trying to measure results of blog and social media efforts? Share your comments or questions in the comments, and we may address your issue in an upcoming #MeasurementMonday post.