I recently read an article on eMarketer titled, “Marketers Split on Whether Social Media Will Deliver Measurability”.  I thought this chart was a great illustration of the prevailing understanding of social media measurement.

Measurement is defined as the act or process of assigning numbers to phenomena according to a rule.  Counting.

If you accept this definition, than, the majority of marketing honchos seem to be doing just that.  Assigning numbers to a new phenomenon, social media, in an attempt to better understand it.  Using hits, visitors, and traffic statistics for a website to gauge the effects of a social media campaign is indeed measurement.

Company X launched a social media campaign and saw an increase in site traffic.  Excellent.  So what?  What does that really tell you?  Does it mean the campaign was effective?  Not necessarily.

How many widgets did Company X sell as a result of that increased web traffic?  Did aided and/or unaided brand awareness rise as a result of that campaign? Did customer attrition slow?  Aren’t those the questions that CEOs, CFOs and CMOs really want answered?

You could measure all day long and never answer those questions.

Quantification, on the other hand, is defined as the ability to give or assign value to an action.  Quantification bridges the gap between what measurement can offer and what the C-Suite really wants answered.  Quantification can tell you the value of web traffic increases. When you quantify the effect of your social media campaign, you’re determining its value in relation to the goals of your organization.

Why are so many measuring, when quantification is what they really want?

Social media monitoring tools have gained quick and widespread adoption.  They have all of these great, colorful data visualizations and slick charts that count things. These tools are fantastic at measuring. Yet, counting or measuring isn’t enough to inform strategic decisions.  For CMOs to substantiate performance and justify investment, they need to calculate value.  They need to QUANTIFY.

Social media monitoring tools count.  SOCIALtality quantifies.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, rants and raves on the subject of measuring versus quantifying.

Check out one of our latest posts, “3 Reasons SM Monitoring Tools Can’t Calculate ROI” for a more detailed breakdown of the limitations of monitoring tools and check out our About section for an description of our quantification solution.

If the subject of ROI challenges and quantification is one that interests you, we’ve started a great discussion group called Quantify on linkedin.  Love to add your perspective to the discussion there.

Tags: social media analysis, Social Media Measurement, Social Media ROI

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 at 1:39 PM by MattC and is filed under Social Media ROI. 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.