Measuring Social Media Success

by Mary Kate Smither, Vollmer Social Media Practice Leader

One of the most frequent questions I’ve heard throughout my career in public relations is about the tangible value of our work.  Understandably, clients want to “see” and understand their return on investment and  measurement is a major component of every campaign we develop.  As we achieve successes for clients, it is as important to us to see the value or return on what we’re doing as it is for them.  Not only does it help us prove our worth; it also helps us quickly figure out when and where campaigns might need to adjust and evolve.  Sometimes measuring  our results is easy – we can calculate print and broadcast media hits, tally the number of new reporters or influencers who have engaged with the client and even judge the impact of events we’ve coordinated through attendees, media coverage and increases in foot traffic.  As media has continued to evolve, first into the online world in general and now into the form of social media, measurement has become increasingly difficult.  It seems as though just as we mastered calculating accurate totals for online websites successes, we were tasked with figuring out the value of tweets, comments and views. 

We are interacting with each other online more and more, yet often with more personal interest and two-way conversations than ever before.  Campaigns are no longer limited simply to traditional media coverage and in-person interaction, but now more than ever before include up-to-the-minute grassroots elements of location, experiences, feelings and feedback.  Measuring these intangibles has added a new twist to understanding the success of a campaign. For example, many of Vollmer’s travel and tourism clients, including Travelocity and The Joule Hotel have created campaigns based solely on social media.  Whether voting on Facebook to send the Roaming Gnome on vacations around the country during Travelocity’s “Summer of Possibilities” program or providing scavenger hunt clues completely over Twitter in the Joule’s weekend giveaway “Golden Easter Egg Hunt”, we have measured their success through the engagement with target audiences, including increases in fans and followers, photos taken with the Gnome, comments, promotional code usage and, most of all, the addition of second phases, such as the Travelocity Roaming Gnome’s “Cure Cabin Fever” winter tour.  In addition, Vollmer’s client, Texas Tourism, recently launched its “Be Our Texas Lone Star” Facebook contest (http://www.beourtexaslonestar.com/), which will award a customized Texas trip to one lucky winner based on one of five “Lone Star” types – beach, Western, sports, adventure and food.  As part of the campaign, the winner  will issue social media posts throughout their Texas experience.

While measuring pure social media campaigns like these may be more challenging, we have effectively shown our clients that these campaigns indeed do provide ROI and do have value.  While tools like Radian 6 and Cision exist to measure social media, we have created our own guidelines for clients who prefer that we do campaign measurement in house by building upon our existing Vollmer Measurement Model to create one that fits social media.  As with a traditional media campaign, our overall goal with any social media campaign we develop is to achieve success for our client’s objectives, and customized measurement specific to those objectives.