Measuring the Meaning & Success of Social Media Campaigns

Outside of direct marketing, determining ROI and measurability of PR, marketing, advertising has always vexed executives and PR, marketing and ad professionals. Social media platforms add a marketing element that exec want to see tangible and measurable results from. At first glance these emerging media platforms seem to offer handy stats (likes, followers, views, etc.) to provide useful measurement numbers to demanding execs.

Intel has over 20 million Facebook likes. A lot of large companies boast millions of likes on Facebook, millions of views on its YouTube channel or videos and hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. Without a doubt 20 million likes for a B2B company like Intel is successful. However, do likes, views and followers tell the whole story? Do those numbers alone tally success or convey ROI?

There are some ways to rethink measuring the success of social media. Finding ways to link to sales; Dell claims to have $6.5 million in sales as a direct result of its Twitter activity. Also, companies can examine consumer sentiment in social media. Additionally, companies can look at re-tweets and shares as a way to measure.

There are some nifty services and tools to help track and measure some of these items in the social media world: Sysomos, Viralheat, Spredfast, Sprout Social,UberVu and Sentinel Projects.

Image via Anthony Coppedge.