A few posts back, we examined whether Facebook fans have any real value. Naturally, fans aren’t worthless, but determining just how much value they have from a marketing perspective can be tricky. Ciarán Norris takes a stab at this $64,000 question in his column Let’s Get Social. Norris reports on a recent event called MeasurementCamp and leaves us with some valuable takeaways on how to use key performance indicators (KPIs) to make sense of the buzz generated through social media.
- Noise is the total amount of social buzz about a brand or company. This includes every mention of that brand, no matter how trivial, along with all relevant conversations. Facebook Fans comprise part of this noise, as do followers on Twitter. Noise might encompass a lot of (nearly) meaningless fluff, but there is some real value to be found amongst the chaff. Noise serves as an important baseline for measuring future marketing activities.
- Sentiment combines human context with automated analysis of data. Because computer algorithms can only go so far in making sense of buzz, it is crucial that the data also be considered from a human perspective. For example, a strictly automated data analysis of a Twitter conversation would likely interpret as positive a string of tweets about “how great Brand X is” — totally missing the sarcasm that the actual participants all understood as an insult. Applying this human context is crucial if you want to get meaningful results from your analysis of social buzz.
- Topics allow us to classify and organize what would otherwise be an endless stream of thousands of conversations. Categorizing conversations by topic makes it much easier to make sense of social buzz. People might be talking about your product, but are they raving about new features or complaining about shortfalls? Knowing these sorts of details can give entirely new meaning to what might have previously been an amorphous social media mess. Topically sorted conversations also provide a window into what popular search terms might be.
- Where are these conversations taking place? If the social buzz is coming from a wide range of people carrying on discussions in a very broad forum, you know you’ve done something right. Conversely, if buzz seems to be concentrated among niche groups, you might want to consider more targeted marketing based on these groups.
- Who is talking about you? One tweet from an industry expert or a mention on a well-known blog is worth many thousands of conversations between low-profile spectators with no real influence.
This last point is precisely where the answer as to the true value of Facebook fans and Twitter followers lies: Exactly who are your fans and followers, and how much influence do they wield?
Just something to think about.
