Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Can Social Media Efforts Be Measured?

I was recently asked if social media efforts can be measured. In fact a client of mine shared that she feels as though she's been "spinning her wheels" simply because she hasn't yet seen what she deems a fruitful relationship (i.e. new sales partner) develop from her efforts.

My client feels this sense of what I call "The Treadmill Effect"(where you are contstantly running, but never seem to arrive anywhere) because her efforts are not entirely targeted or purposeful. Therefore, she has not accomplished her goal. Simply stated, it is because she did not start with the end in mind.

To really "dig" into the processes that can be measured, I came across this great article today. This quote gets to the heart of the matter:

"I’m going to take the last bit of this mammoth post to say something critically important. Every single metric above - every single one - is tied to something else that doesn’t have it’s own metric. It’s the strength of the relationships between people. That’s nearly impossible to put on any kind of yardstick, but it’s the underpinning of ALL of these things. Better relationships drive better business, period. You may not be able to measure the relationships themselves, but all of the metrics above are indications - the results, if you will - of how well you’ve cultivated those relationships on a human level."
Get A Yardstick, Mar 2009
Read the entire article. You will thank me!

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