If it were a game of golf, that could be answered very simply; you want the ball in the hole (Goal) using the driver (tool). Similarly with social media, goals also always come before the tool, the objectives before the tactics and so on. Don’t flip the funnel here. The last thing that you need to concern yourself with is the tool to measure.
Most recently, I worked with a client who wanted to find a solution to match the measurement tool they have already been using. BIG – RED – FLAG. They did not think logically. I told them “Your business objectives should define your social media goals, which then define those objectives to influence what tactics and measuring tools you should chose.” It made sense to them in the long term, after the campaign was done when they realized their numbers were all off. Between all the other shared content and accessing an extremely complicated measurement system, we could not summarize all our findings and results in a clearly articulated document. It was a mishmash. [Note: we came into the project halfway through so did not get the chance to tell them this from the beginning.]
Jay Baer, one of my favourite bloggers, speaks to this all too clearly in his ‘A hammer isn’t a house’. He discusses how choosing the right tools for your metrics is the last item in the funnel of Social Media Metrics Sequence.
You have to know WHAT you are trying to measure first, and then audition candidates for HOW to best perform that measurement.
For a long time my team once juggled between Twitter lists, spreadsheets, shared googol docs, and email. And guess what? We still do!! These platforms allow us to collaborate, share, measure and monitor our online activity for us and the client. What wasn’t needed was a spiffy application that told me the publics sentiment for our 5th level competitor. We didn’t’ care! So why pay for something that wasn’t going to help us?
Most recently though, my company Spark Boutik, started working with a great measuring application (name not to be disclosed until I understand the full breadth of it’s ability) for the sake of trying to understand why these tools exist in the first place. It surely has helped us discover things about our business, certain industries, companies, people and a combination of that. But the ultimate question still remained “What do I do with all this data?”. It is so easy to become hypnotized by fancy charts and graphs, likes and dislikes, smily faces and sentiment grades. But it is not all necessary.
Quite simply, with all this data accumulating out of our control and understanding, it is important that you chose your measuring tools based on you metrics and ultimately your business objectives. The final results should be ones that you understand and that can tell what you did right, wrong and how awesome you are getting with Social Media (PS – if you suck at it, contact me - I can definitely help you)
Yeah, you’re right. I don’t run a tech startup. But living in San Francisco means I am surrounded by it all day, everyday. At first, I was intimidated, then I got bored of the jibber jabber, then I realized…Wooaa! These startups, this lingo, this MVP – Product/Market fit – metrics – conversions – stuff is really helping me out.
