Next is “measure and adjust.” In this scenario, the marketer has a reasonable ability to quantify his social media efforts, and these measurements lead him to believe that his efforts are not working (failing). This is distinctly different than the “dead end” scenario, because even though the manager does not believe he is succeeding, at least he is making some attempt to measure social media effectiveness. Since the components are being measured, there are probably some good clues about what is going wrong. This means the manager can evaluate and adjust the social media strategy accordingly. If the manager can do this well, he can move toward the “iterate for success” quadrant.
In that space, the marketer has both a reasonable ability to measure his social media efforts (quantifiable) and the belief that his efforts are working (succeeding). Since the components are being measured, the manager can purposefully iterate to improve even more. This is hard to do but obviously worth the effort.
The other path is “naïve optimist.” Here, the marketer has only a limited ability to measure his social media efforts (fuzzy), yet believes that his efforts are working (succeeding). We believe most marketers actually start here. They believe social media are worth the effort, but are not quite sure how best to measure their efforts. This quadrant is tricky because although it is a reasonable place to start, you want to move out of it as fast as possible so you don’t get stuck here.
Managers have two good options for moving from “naïve optimism” to “iterate for success” and one poor choice. Let us examine the poor choice first.
If the manager does not change anything, he will likely migrate to the “dead end.” This is because the lack of measurement will eventually lead to deterioration in the effort’s effectiveness over time, particularly as competitors are able to do it better.
There are two better options. First, the manager simply starts to measure social media efforts, discovers things are not working as well as they could be (“measure and adjust”) and then directs his efforts toward “iterate for success.” In the shorter path, the manager starts measuring and discovers the efforts are succeeding, moving directly to “iterate for success” from “naïve optimism.” In either case, the goal is to move away from fuzzy measurement and toward quantifiable metrics where the manager can get a real handle on what is working and what is not and then follow the best path that will get him where he needs to go.