The idea for this blog post came to me after a conversation on Twitter with @annholman and @juliabramble, where we were debating the importance (or unimportance, as we concluded) of influence measurement systems such as Klout. And it got me thinking, not just about influence measurement but the challenges of quantifying social media as a whole.
Social media activity and conversations are notoriously difficult to quantify in exact terms – whatever you CAN measure, is the minimum of what is actually happening, in my (humble) opinion. It is nigh on impossible to quantify what is essentially human interactions – sure you can utilise a host of social media monitoring systems, pimp your website analytics within an inch of its life and watch your Google Alerts like a hawk. But the truth is there will always be bits and pieces that slip through the net. And it may be these bits and pieces that have the most value to you, yet they are completely off your radar.
This comes as a surprise to many clients and decision makers – we have been spoilt with endless statistics and pretty graphs from the yonder-year of online marketing. And yes, for some areas of digital marketing this still rings true but social media is a different beast entirely. How can you really measure something as organic as word of mouth or human conversations, with their subtle nuances and references? Not well, is the answer you are looking for.
A few months ago I was investigating the range of social media monitoring systems available for a client of mine. If you follow me on Twitter you would have felt the pain of this process. I trawled the web, asked for recommendations and got attacked by eager sales reps on Twitter (never, ever mention the words ‘social media monitoring’ in a tweet, they will find you). Yet every system I tried out always let key data and conversations slip through the net or was missing some key functionality – making me even more reluctant to part with my marketing budget for something I just felt didn’t quite cut the mustard.
I will concur that the top-end tools, such as Radian6 and Brandwatch are more accurate than most but unless you have at least £500 a month to spend, you can wave goodbye to the benefits of these systems.
And don’t even get me started on sentiment analysis… I’ll save that rant for another post.
The same applies to Klout, which assigns users with a ‘Klout Score’, claiming to “measure influence based on your ability to drive action”. Your Klout score is based on three factors, according to their website:
- True Reach: How many people you influence
- Amplification: How much you influence them
- Network Impact: The influence of your network
All summed up in this handy little dashboard for you:
In theory, this seems like a good idea but in practice is it a truly accurate representation of how influential someone is in the real world? By the very nature of how your Klout score is calculated you should assume that this calculation of influence is a very vague indicator, because it only focuses on your visible online activity (and it is A COMPUTER). There is no weight given to the conversations that occur online behind closed doors or (shock horror) in real life. Or the fact that you can tweet loads, build up a heap of less then influential followers who have no tangible value to you or your business to dupe your score. Or you could have taken a step back from your online activity to focus on actual clients or to escape those on the constant hunt for ‘influencers’. The list goes on, I could go on but I won’t – point made, I feel.
So how to wrap up this post? Well, it’s how I conclude most posts about social media by emphasising that this is about establishing relationships with other human beings whilst contributing value to your community. By giving a little bit first you will go a long way and by not becoming obsessed with numbers you will go even further. It is the relationships you establish within social media channels that are of true value to your business or to your clients – whether this is with your customers, journalists, bloggers or potential partners. And how do you measure a relationship? Well, essentially you can’t because we are human beings and they are computers – there are some things about one another we will never understand…
I really enjoyed your post – it’s refreshing to read an opinion that shows the reality of human interaction from a marketing perspective. I, like you, am amused by my klout score and while I enjoy seeing how it changes over the course of time, it can’t ever truly reflect influence because people will always talk offline.
I guess the point I always come back to is this – given that social media monitoring is inconsistent unless you have a chunk of budget to spend, how do you present a case for social media activity to the purse-holder who is used to seeing detailed a ROI proposal?
Thanks for your comment Sarah and glad you enjoyed my musings! I think it will always be difficult to demonstrate accurate ROI for social media because of the nature of the beast – in that it is a form of marketing based on culturing relationships and how do you put a figure on that? Also, the fact that you may establish a relationship with someone over a number of months but you may not see a return immediately and when that return occurs, it is often difficult to track it back to the original activity. I don’t think anyone has come up with the perfect answer to this dilemma yet!
I don’t think there will ever be one answer to the ROI of social media – it’s going to be different for every campaign and for every business. I think the key to presenting a successful social media proposal is to steer clear of ROI and look at the key outcomes you’re looking for. It could be the formation of new relationships with existing customers and up-selling to them, or expanding your reach to develop new long and short term customers. Simply having the goal of increasing interactions through social media will have an effect on the business as a whole.
Great post and I completely agree with your points regarding measurement of human interaction. Trying to squeeze social media into ROI metrics just doesn’t work. I prefer the approach ‘what’s the ROI of social media?’ answer – ‘what’s the ROI of your mobile phone?’ approach. (This only holds true when you have a strategy in pace for your social media strategy of course!)
I value hugely the relationships I have built on social media networks whether they appear to benefit my business or not. To me they enrich my life – and a business without richness and quality behind it, in my opinion, won’t go very far. I believe that clients are waking up to this element of social media and are also reassured by the leads generated. A combination of the two makes for a good measure of ROI for me!
Interesting post and a great carry on from the brief chats we had within the 140 character restriction on Twitter earlier this week. My point about influence and the measurement tools such as Klout, Kred and PeerIndex is they need to convince me there is social science behind the whole measurement analysis that is robust, valid and reliable.
Influence is an output of social capital. Social capital is about not only your influence in a closed network (such as a team) but also in how you bridge structural holes by brokering new conversation and connection between people who don’t know each other. I’ll not get bogged down in this in any great detail as I could drone on for days about it but, until these tools demonstrate real depth and science, I’ll unusually remain skeptical about the whole process.
For me, the measurement focuses far too much on the numbers and not truly on the reach nor amplification. Its about the profoundness, extent and sentiment of those conversations and connections that really count and I can’t see how algorithms, just yet, are capable of giving a bona fide analysis that you can base important decisions on.
And, and its a big ‘AND,’ Klout, Kred and PeerIndex only measure online influence not offline, and unless I’m mistaken, we still all live in a physical world where the true engagement, participation and, consequently, real influence happens. Influence online is only part of the picture, yet main people seem to be selling it and treating it as a utopia! That is plain dangerous, naive and in the worst cases ignorant.