Taking the Measure of Social Media

destinationCRM.com:
SIDEBAR: The Metrics of User-Generated Social Media

Need a pneumonic device to recall what to measure? Try this one: "Only the SAVViEST marketers grasp the nuances of social media metrics." (The "Vi" in the middle stands for "Virality.")


Sentiment: The positive, negative, or indifferent consumer reaction to your brand or a topic, which can be measured by text analytics and natural-language processing.

Author (Influencer): The people talking about your brand and their social media impact (e.g., number of followers, readers, commenters).

Volume: The number of comments, blog posts, tweets, links, etc., about your brand, your competition, and your field.

Virality: The reach of your brand and relevant topics around your brand (e.g., how many people are reading, posting, linking, and sharing).

Emotion: The reasons that a consumer felt good, bad, or indifferent that point to how you can resolve her problem or how your business can change and improve.

Source: Where the conversation is occurring (e.g., Twitter, blog, discussion board).

Topic/Issue: The context (e.g., product, customer service, advertising, competitor, etc.) in which your brand is being discussed. Nielsen’s Brand Association Map helps visually associate the relationship between terms; a Google AdWords keyword-expansion tool helps improve the relevancy of your selections.
Source: Alex Burmaster, Nielsen Online