Why we seem to only be measuring our lack of understanding of this medium ???

I stumbled upon this interesting video recently this indeed is extremely relatable on several accounts! It completely captures the scenario most brands would find themselves in- trying to define why they are here, what they should be doing and how should they be measuring it?

The need to be online,it seems, is driven more due to a practice being commonly being adopted rather than a pre-defined business objective. It is more about giving your brand a face on Facebook rather than clearly defining and building a social identity.

This becomes important to understand as because of this, it seems we end up measuring for the sake of measuring.

The ability of this medium to generate the minutest of details as far as the metrics are concerned is thrilling for brand managers who for the longest time have tried to accurately arrive at ways of determining the ROI on traditional media.

At the same-time, the nascency of this medium within the domain of branding in general, leaves many clueless.
We’re able to define the ‘how’s and the ‘what’s’ with the ‘why’ missing or vaguely addressed within our social strategies. To add to the mayhem, we have come up with a set of standard metrics for ROI,  which seem to be the be-all and end-all of a brand’s existence within the social domain.

In a nutshell, Facebook/Twitter Presence= likes, fans, followers and followers.

Yes metrics are good, they help build, structure and evaluate. But they can be awfully misleading and myopic.

Let’s take an for the sake of clarity.

A very base metric, ideally found at the lowest rung of any branding proposition is-reach. In simple words, to say how many people have you been able to approach?

A million fans seems to be an ideal benchmark for many brands (infact it often marks the season for festivity on platforms like Facebook and Twitter)

Let’s take a step back and ask, what do a million people on a page really mean?
A million new customers? 30,000 more customers or a mere 100 actively engaging fans? In each of these varying scenarios, what is the cost of acquiring every new fan? For every campaign/contest run, what have you achieved in the end? And at what cost?

Tags: drizzlin, facebook, facebook fans, measurement metrics, ROI, social media, social media ROI, Twitter, twitter followers