More And More And More Social Media Measurement

The PBS Media Shift Blog thinks there is a problem with web measurement. One - it's confusing. Two, the numbers are inconsistent. Three, the value is often different than that which we measure. The answer is to not try and measure all of the web with a single unified measurement.

As nice as it sounds, everyone I talked with — publishers and marketers and measurement firms alike — don’t think it’s possible to have a unified traffic measurement with the current complexity of the web and all the activities going on there.

I think there's a lot to be said for that, and in many ways, the problems we have in the advertising space revolve around metrics for the wrong targets. Social media really confuses the matter, because web analytics are completely unprepared for measuring the value of social media. In theory, it makes sense that 1000 regular visitors of say, a home improvement site are a better match for Home Depot advertising than a site with a 1,000,000 average visitors, but try telling someone responsible for placing Home Depot ads that you want the same money for just a 1,000 uniques!

In fact, most advertisers are sorely lacking in the metrics to measure social media (mainly because it's a constantly moving target), which explains why advertisers rely on Page Rank and Alexa rankings to determine if they are going to put their ads on the site. SEO gurus know this is not a good way to do it, but does anyone have a mathematically proven way to improve the metrics?

Nathan Gilliatt tries, with an excellent post on the way to sort out social media measurement. He gives us four ways to measure social media, and explains how each can be tracked.

1. Measure Online Audience
2. Track Social Media Content
3. PR Measurement
4. Market Research

The criteria for each is different, because the goals of each is different. My earlier post said the goal of social media should be the goals of the business, and after further thought, that sounds too obvious - but if social media is thought of as a tool rather than a destination, I think it can be achieved. Of course, social media is often sold as a destination, precisely because we lack the means to measure its results in a way that is compelling to advertisers.

A fifth way to measure social media is personal branding, as described by Ron Livingston over at Buzz Bin.

This matters more to small companies, instead of big ones, but one has to wonder why personal branding works for small companies, and if that can be translated to the larger corporations. I think that answer has to do more with the ability of small companies to make changes in the way they do business, which favors the small and nimble.

So where does that leave us? One of the major problems with advertising in social media is companies use the same banner and text ads they use in mass media sites to gather the attention of those in the social media space. They don't work well, which is why Facebook users have such a notoriously low click-through rate for advertising.

If our goal is to determine what works best for advertising, we need to determine first, what works better than banner ads, and second, who has the influence to deliver them. Video has the power to compete in social media spaces, and it can be measured in terms of impact (by number of views) no matter the number of uniques on a site. 1000 views from a 1000-reader site is just as good as 1000 views from a 1,000,000 reader site.

So if advertisers could determine what sites were truly influential in reaching targeted audiences, they could use video to drive their brand. So the real question, is who is influential. How do we measure influence? My next post will address that issue with a new project I'm working on.