“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
Zora Neale Hurston (American folklorist and Writer, 1903-1960)

Despite the rich data sets that now exist in the social web, marketers are confused and overwhelmed with the tools that are currently available to them to gain insights into this data. In order to get a comprehensive and accurate analysis, marketers are having to use many tools (as many as 10 – 30) and compare results to improve the accuracy.

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“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.”
Zora Neale Hurston (American folklorist and Writer, 1903-1960)

Despite the rich data sets that now exist in the social web, marketers are confused and overwhelmed with the tools that are currently available to them to gain insights into this data. In order to get a comprehensive and accurate analysis, marketers have to use many tools (as many as 10 – 30) and compare results to improve the accuracy.

None of the tools that are currently available (SM2, Radian6, etc.) accurately measure sentiment and opinion because they are based in keyword combinations. Marketers are still left with sifting through large amounts of data using multiple tools to understand the relevance to their product, brand, industry and competitive positioning.

More importantly, for greater insight, correlations should be made between existing customer and prospect data from CRM systems. Finally, if done correctly, an ROI calculation should be derived from key metrics in the data and analysis for ongoing monitoring and measurement.

An annual marketing survey released by Alterian in February found that a startling majority of marketers fail to implement analytics to measure the success of their efforts. Only 47% of the 1500 marketers, agencies, marketing services providers and systems integrators polled asserted the use of analytics in their campaigns.

Alterian’s study demonstrates this statistic that marketers found analytics “difficult.”

“Marketers are still using multiple applications to do their job, with around a quarter of respondents using more than seven applications on campaigns. With more than half of those surveyed (51 percent) using between three and six applications, it means that a vast majority of marketers are attempting to analyse data from disparate systems, with little or no integration.”

The Challenges of Measurement

Zora Neale captured the essence of research but marketers should approach it with a purpose that includes measurement on a regular basis. Measurement — with all of its success metrics— is the only way we can validate our strategy and justify the spend. Research provides the insight but it is measurement that continually drives the evolution and optimization of the strategy.

Tags: Social Media Measurement

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 12:00 AM by Wendy Troupe and is filed under Wendy Troupe's Perspectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.