Once managers have a set of objectives in place for their social media efforts and understand that consumers are motivated to make investments in companies’ social media efforts through their interactions with the brand, the next step is to consider the strategic options for social media measurement.
Our simple 2 × 2 framework, which assumes the manager has a social media effort ongoing, neatly summarizes the choices managers face as they strive to develop social media strategy and suggests better (and worse) paths toward social media success. (See “Strategic Options for Social Media Measurement.”)
Let’s start with the “dead end.” In this scenario, the marketer has only a limited ability to measure his social media efforts (fuzzy) and believes that his efforts are not working (failing). Managers find themselves in this quadrant as a result of the “throw it on the wall and see what sticks” strategy and perform arbitrary changes with no way to measure their impact. Because measurement is fuzzy and the effort’s effectiveness appears to be failing, the manager has little insight or idea on what to do. The outcome is fairly predictable: The manager will give up on social media efforts or continue efforts that involve random adjustments without data support. This quadrant is a dead end. You don’t want to get stuck here!