Executives require a list of key performance indicators (KPI) that show at a glance whether or not a social media campaign is on the road to success. The bad news is that measuring results with social media metrics isn’t a science quite yet (some might disagree). The good news is that there are some very smart people getting us closer to that goal every day. Jim Sterne (@jimsterne) is one of those people.
Sterne is the founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit and the Web Analytics Association. His book Social Media Metrics, along with Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik, is one of the more insightful books on the subject and a must read for professionals wanting to achieve measurable success with social media. The book is an impressive body of knowledge collected by Sterne, whose career in web analytics began over 15 years ago. It is chock-full of references to the companies, blogs, books, articles and white papers that have shaped and sometimes predated the conversation around social media metrics.
There are so many excellent references noted in Social Media Metrics, I thought it might be useful to deconstruct the book for you by listing every relevant reference made and then organizing them into categories. I realize you’ll likely never consume this much content, but I highly recommend clicking through to as many links as you can. If you believe that what gets measured, gets improved, and you want to improve your social media outcomes, this list was created just for you.
Bonus: I also created a Twitter list of all the social media metrics experts responsible for the research mentioned below at: Social Media Metrics Experts.
13 Blog Posts that Defined Social Media Metrics
- The ROI of Blogging by Jason Stamper
- Calculating the ROI of blogging by Forrester Research
- How to Measure Success of a Blog (120 Days in Numbers) by Avanish Kaushik
- Social media marketers can – and must – prove ROI by Jennifer Leggio
- Sentiment Analysis Overview by Text Frontier
- Delicious as a PR Measurement Tool by Higher Ed Marketing
- Evolution: The Eight Stages of Listening by Jeremiah Owyang
- Social Media Campaigns take time – 3 months – 1 year for results by Marshall Sponder
- Community Managers Must Deliver ROI: Commandments For Surviving a Recession by Jeremiah Owyang
- 35 social media KPIs to help measure engagement by Chris Lake
- Companies that Measure Social Media, Influence, and Brand by Jeremiah Owyang
- Online brand reputation or social media listening software – a comparison review of 36 tools in 7 categories by Dave Chaffey
- A social media marketing campaign deconstructed by Drama 2.0
15 Measurement Tools & Resources
- ENGAGEMENT db is the world’s first database measuring online engagement for top social brands.
- Post Rank Analytics is a scoring system that ranks any kind of online content, such as RSS feed items, blog posts, articles, or news stories.
- Sentinal Visualizer provides data visualization, link and social network analysis.
- Social Networking Media ROI Calculator
- Technorati Authority measures a site’s standing and influence in the blogosphere.
- Bazaarvoice’s Social Commerce Statistics is the latest social commerce industry statistics for word of mouth marketing, social media ROI, user-generated content, and online communities.
- Social Mention includes a sentiment rating that they describe as the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative.
- YouTube Insight is a handy analytics tool that displays statistics for YouTube Videos.
- SAS® Text Analytics provides a framework that enables organizations to maximize the value of information within large quantities of text.
- Neilson Buzz Metrics services and solutions uncover and integrate data-driven insights culled from nearly 100 million blogs, social networks, groups, boards and other CGM platforms.
- Blogscope is an analysis and visualization tool for the blogosphere which is being developed as part of a research project at the University of Toronto.
- Omniture with SiteCatalyst provides marketers with actionable, real-time intelligence about online strategies and marketing initiatives.
- Webtrends’s Social Measurement offers a self-service platform for identifying and participating in conversations related to your products and brands.
- Tools For Measurement by Measurementcamp
- Social Media Metrics Superlist: Measurement, ROI, & Key Statistics Resources by Roy Sitepu
15 Insightful Reports & White Papers
- Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter by Danah Boyd
- Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report
- Tracking the Influence of Conversations: A Round-Table Discussion on Social Media Metrics and Measurement, A Dow Jones White Paper
- Toward Opinion Summarization Linking the Sources by Cornell University
- Detecting Sadness in 140 Characters: Sentiment Analysis and Mourning Michael Jackson by Elsa Kim and Sam Gilbert
- A Method of Automated Nonparametric Content Analysis for Social Science by Daniel J. Hopkins, Georgetown University & Gary King, Harvard University
- Twitter Sentiment Analysis by Alec Go, Lei Huang, Richa Bhayani at Stanford University
- Managing Online Forums by Patrick O’Keefe
- The Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms, Q1 2009 by Suresh Vittal
- Understanding the Total Cost of Listening Platforms by Suresh Vittal
- Online Community Metrics, Best Practices Survey by Forum One Communications
- The Community Health Index for Online Communities by Lithium
- Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network? by Sunil Gupta at Harvard Business School
- Expanding the Impact of Communications Through Digital Influence by Oglvy PR
- The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators by Web Analytics Demystified
4 Key Metrics-Focused Associations
- Media Post is the media, marketing and advertising professional’s leading resource for complete news coverage, engaging events, a focused social network, and comprehensive industry jobs, directories and research.
- Center for Information Based Competition was founded to advance the thinking of how firms in customer-intensive industries achieve competitive advantage through the mastery of customer information.
- Web Analytics Association leads, unites and fosters the interests of industry practitioners, vendors, consultants and educators worldwide.
- SMAC Wiki aims to set a standard vocabulary for social media.
6 Useful Twitter Measurement Tools
- TwitterGrader is a free tool that allows you to check the power of your twitter profile compared to millions of other users that have been graded.
- RetweetRank ranks Twitter users for how often they are retweeted.
- Twitalyzer ranks Twitter users based on influence, signal, generosity, velocity and clout.
- Tweeting Too Hard identifies people posting nothing but pretentious tweets about themselves.
- Twitter Sentiment helps research the positive and negative opinions about a product or brand.
- WeFollow is a directory of Twitter users organized by interests.
14 Companies on the Leading Edge
- NextStage Evolution offers predictive intelligence, persuasion engineering and interactive analytics.
- comScore is a marketing research company that provides marketing data and services.
- Buzzlogic is a digital media company with a data-driven ad platform built to optimize advertising across the largest pool of trusted blog content on the web.
- Rapleaf appends social network data to your customer database to help you discover where your customers are across the social web.
- Scoutlabs provides cutting-edge technology and a collaborative platform for listening to customers and engaging with them across the Internet.
- Tealium is a full services Web analytics consulting firm.
- Bazaarvoice provides user-generated content features like ratings, reviews, answers, and stories to manufacturer and retailer sites.
- satmetrix is a software and services company focused on customer experience management.
- OpinionLab connects consumers and companies with enterprise voice-of-customer feedback technology.
- iPerceptions measures customer satisfaction and experience from actual customers, in self initiated, real situations.
- ForeSee Results has market research consulting and surveys for measuring website satisfaction.
- Unica is a marketing analytics solution for scalable, advanced web analytics.
- Teradata provides data warehousing technology that provides a single view of the enterprise in real time.
- Socialmetrix develops technology that allows you to listen, analyze and understand the opinion of the people online about your brand, products and services.
Did I miss any important links? I’d like to continue expanding this social media metrics list so please post any links that you think should be included in the comments section.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for the mention. I appreciate it.
Ryon,
This is a great compilation of links about one of the biggest issues in social media – thanks. Another framework that's worth looking at (since the book was published) is from UK Internet Advertising Bureau: We have written a summary here: http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/digital-marketi...
Thanks, Dave. Sorry it's taken so long to reply. I enjoyed your presentation and recommend that people read it. By the way, I'm a fan of your blog and subscribe to the feed. Thanks for all the great content!
Hi Dexter, that's a great question that has many great responses. I would suggest that you check out the rest of the posts on my blog to get more details. There are also other blogs like http://www.timsstrategy.com and http://www.windmillnetworking.com that have some great resources for you.