Comments on: Social Media Metrics

By: Social Media Measurement via Network Theory | Own Page One: Search Engine Visibility Blog - Online Marketing Strategy and Tips

Tue, 27 May 2008 16:30:31 +0000

[...] recent post addressed the social media metrics debate among SEMs. Missing from these conversations, as far as I can tell, is any mention of metrics used [...]

By: doneil

doneil — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:19:15 +0000

Another great blog about social media is http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/. The author has some really neat things to say about the creation and measurement of social media.

By: jhullman

jhullman — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:32:18 +0000

Didn’t intend to imply that the list was your proposal of all the metrics we need, Rachel – I’ve edited to make that a little clearer. Thanks for reading, and for the discussion on your site!

By: Rachel Happe

Rachel Happe — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:28:23 +0000

Thanks for the link to my list of social media metrics. And a clarification – the intent of the list is not to suggest that *all* of those metrics be used but rather to provide a list of the various metrics that I’ve heard about being collected.

I’m actually a big fan of choosing 1-3 primary metrics and tracking those but which 1-3 is highly dependent on the goals and purpose of the initiative.

Great conversation. Thanks!

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 23 May 2008 02:29:45 +0000

Hey guys you have a broken link in this post. Looks like it is missing the .com

Nice post Jessica.

By: jhullman

jhullman — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:08:44 +0000

I do think there’s something to be said about social media marketing from a graph/network theory perspective (post coming very soon). In a very general way, the occurrence of power law governed networks, and thus increased possibility of viral infection flowing across the network exponentially (what I assume you mean by viral expansion loops – this term badly needs some clarification if it is going to be thrown around by marketers!) often means more bang for your buck when you invest in social media. But not all networks are power law, and even in those that are, a virus or meme is not guaranteed to reach the high degree nodes that will spread it exponentially.

But while network growth rates may be very roughly predictable in power law networks, I don’t see power law structure in and of itself as particularly helpful in proving that the audience is engaged in a way that is valuable to the company. Companies would need to define first whether all engagement equals valuable engagement (I don’t think it does). Many fads, in the form of memes, videos, etc, are spread quickly across the internet but that doesn’t mean those who helped pass them along even remember them a short while later.

Whatever the community’s structure, if you can demonstrate to your client that at time b, it is x times more difficult to remove a node from the community than it was at time a, that might be useful in proving that social media is worthwhile. But again, before these sorts of graph-theoretic metrics are going to be proposed, it might be useful to define some terms. Post coming!

By: Darren

Darren — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:54:19 +0000

The one thing I don’t see accounted for in this list is the influence of viral expansion loops, as they apply to the growth and impact of social networking. Any thoughts on the impact of this as it applies to marketing and measuring audience engagement and participation in social networking?