Trying to get a handle on how to measure the effectiveness of your social media programs?  Boss asking about the ROI of your social media campaigns?

Need key statistics or metrics that will help you make strategic decisions to refine your social media programs?

Not sure what variables to measure to determine the success or your social media?  Want to know the best options for monitoring your brand’s reputation online?

My recent post How to Sell Social Media to Cynics, Skeptics and Luddites touched on the topic of metrics, measurement and ROI.  Here I’ve pulled together a collection of valuable resources, tools, & advice specifically on the topics of social media measurement, monitoring and ROI.  You’ll also find a handful of key social media statistics resources to put in your toolkit.

Social Media Measurement, ROI and Monitoring

• HOW TO: Track Social Media Analytics
  
  From Mashable: Review of some of the best tools and habits so that you can effectively gather and analyze social media analytics.

• Basics Of Social Media ROI
  
  From Olivier Blanchard: Slideshare presentation covering the what, why and how of Social Media ROI.  For more, see social media specialist Olivier Blanchard’s blog on Social Media ROI.

• Social Media Monitoring Wiki
  
  From Ken Burbary: A wiki listing 100+ social media monitoring solutions – along with the Platform, type of media covered, url, and whether it’s free or paid.

• 5 Social Media and PR Measurement Trends to Watch in 2009
  From Proving the Value of Public Relations: Predictions for 2009 in the world of measurement for social media and PR.
• The Measurement Standard’s Social Media Compendium
  Excellent list of articles on how to measure various social media channels including How to Measure Youtube, Facebook, etc.
• Calculating the ROI of Blogging
  From Charlene Li: Advice on how to calculate the ROI of your blog
• Online Community ROI: Models and Reporting – Summary
  From Bill Johnston Online Community Strategy: Highlights from study conducted to investigate how organizations were valuing and reporting on their online communities activities.
• Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations For Measuring Your Success
  From Occam’s Razor: Web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik outlines six suggestions for evaluating just how successful your blog is.
• 15 Ways to Measure Return on Engagement (ROE) of Social Media
  From PR Sarah Evans: In this post, Sarah provides 15 specific steps you can take to measure your social media- from “using a URL shortener that allows you to monitor traffic” to “using Tweetreach to follow your tweets and retweets” to “tracking the number of positive and negative comments” and more.

• 10 ways to measure social media success
  From Econsultancy: There’s so much talk about social media that it is easy for people to become cynical, perhaps losing track of the fact that it can have a positive impact on your business. So how can you determine whether a social media strategy is proving beneficial to your business? How do you know that it is working out for you? And is now really the best time to find out?

• Social Networking Media ROI Calculator
  From Dragon Search Marketing: Tool for calculating social media ROI for wide range of social media activities.
• A New Model for Social (and traditional) Media Measurement
  From Proving the Value of Public Relations: Don Bartholomew presents a proposed social media metrics model.
• The Super Metrics: Data That Matters in Conversational Media
  Video from the Conversational Marketing Summit with Rob Crumpler of Buzz Logic, Avinash Kaushik, and others moderated by Forrester Analyst Jeremiah Owyang
• Social Media Metrics Wiki
  Beth Kanter’s Wiki with a broad range of resources on social media metrics, measurement and ROI.
• What Results Can I Expect From My Social Media Campaign?
  From Search Engine Land: Good review of results you may want to measure for your social media campaigns.
• Tips For Measuring Success Of Your Blog (365 Days In Numbers)
  From Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik: Ideas, metrics and tools that you can use to measure how your own blog (personal or professional) is doing
• How to Understand Your Audience: Data Collection & Analysis
  From Dosh Dosh: Discussion of how to use existing data and how to collect additional data to evaluate your website or blog’s audience.
• Using Metrics To Harvest Insights About Your Social Media Strategy
  From Beth’s Blog: Discussion of how to pick the right hard data points (fancy way of saying metrics) that will help you harvest insights to improve your social media strategy.
• Measuring Social Media Marketing: It’s Easier than you Think!
  From Search Engine Journal: A few things you can do today to measure the effectiveness of social media.
• MeasurementCamp Wiki
  A Wiki whose purpose is to create a set of open source resources which allow interested parties to measure their social media communications online and offline. Good lists of measurement tools, resources and social media statistics.  Includes case studies of how companies have measured social media along with a comprehensive list of tools that can help you with a range of social media measurement needs from blog search tools, to buzz tracking to message board search tools to brand overviews.
• 10 Things to Know About Measuring Social Media
  From Jim Sterne on Search Engine for Marketers: Solid advice on what to measure and how to measure it for your social media campaigns. Jim is Chairman of the Web Analytics Association.
• Social Media Measurement
  From Connie Bensen: Nice post on social media attributes to measure and ways to measure them.
• Using Social Media Monitoring to show ROI
  From Connie Benson: How you can use social media monitoring to show how social media is impacting your business bottom line,
• Introducing Delicious Tag Mining for Brand Research
  From Ignite Social Media: Example of how to use delicious data to gather metrics for research purposes.
• Perhaps Social Media Measurement Shouldn’t Matter
  From Social Media Explorer: Different take on social media measurement.
• Online Community Metrics- Best Practices Survey 2007
  From Forum One Communications: The Online Community Metrics survey was initiated in February of 2007. Bill Johnston (Forum One Communications) sent approximately 150 survey invitations to online community professionals. Results include good information on metrics for measuring online community.
• Social Media FAQ: How Do I Measure ROI?
  From Web Strategy by Jeremiah: Answer to a frequently asked question – how to I measure social media ROI.
• What Is The ROI For Social Media?
  From Jason Falls of Social Media Explorer: Discussion of the challenges of measuring ROI for social media because the value of conversations can’t be easily quantified.
• Engage or Die! ROI vs. ROP in Social Media
  From PR 2.0: Discussion of ROI issues for social media from Brian Solis.
• Social Media Metrics
  From The Social Organization: Long list of possible social media metrics you may want to track including activity metrics, survey metrics, and ROI Measurments.
• Web Site and Social Media Metrics You Should Monitor
  From Problogger: Useful article…title sums it up well.
• Measuring Value From Social Media
  SlideShare Presentation from Steve Latham of Spur Digital
• Social Media Measurement – Questions to Ask.
  From 123 Social Media: The measurement of social media isn’t just about producing endless amounts of numbers. You need to think strategically and act tactically. The measurement requires in-depth analysis and A LOT of asking “WHY?” Barry Hurd provides some top questions to ask here
• Analytics Toolbox: 50+ More Ways to Track Website Traffic
  From Mashable: Review of more than fifty analytics tools to help you monitor and analyze your web traffic. (Update of 2007 simliar review)
• How to Measure your Social Media Program
  From Web Strategy by Jeremiah: Discussion of how to measure the success of your social media program and how to use these metrics to sell the value of social media to others.
• How to Analyze your Site with Del.icio.us
  From Ann Smarty: Social bookmarking is not only a nice way to get more traffic and links. It’s also an effective method to explore what people think about your site by tracking your content popularity.
• How to Track Twitter Clicks and Get Conversion Data
  From Twitip: Advice from new media strategist Hendry Lee on tracking traffic from Twitter.
• 27 Resources for Evaluating Blogging ROI
  From KoMarketing Associates: Information, case studies, success stories, and data regarding blogging ROI.
• Social Media ROI
  From Janet Fouts: Discussion of metrics you may want to consider when measuring ROI.
• Social Media Marketing ROI – Metrics And Analysis
  From Search Engine Land: a look at how to adapt currently available measurement methodologies and apply them to social media marketing campaigns.
• Social Media ROI—What’s the ‘Return on Ignoring’? : MarketingProfs Articles
  From MarketingProfs: Different take on ROI for social media, providing perspective on what is the Return on Ignoring social media.
• Social Media ROI and Statistics Reources
  From Constructing Social: Nice collection of resources available on calculating the return on investment (ROI) on your social media investment as well as general social media statistics.
• Social Media Strategy – Aligning Goals and Measurements
  From Chris Brogan: Discussion of importance of aligning goals and measurements to social media strategies.
• How to Measure Social Media ROI for Business – Mashable
  From Mashable: In the absence of any accepted metrics, businesses still need to be able to determine whether or not a social media program is making an impact.This articles offers are a few ways to consider measuring social media ROI for your business.
• Distributed Influence: Quantifying the Impact of Social Media
  From Technobabble: Download a white paper outlining the thoughts and views of several key stakeholders on the issue of measuring online influence.
• Companies Who Do Social Media Analysis
  From The Net-Savvy Executive: A list of companies who provide social media analysis services with links to their blogs.
• Social Media Research
  Social Target’s Guide to Social Media Analysis is the worldwide reference to the companies who monitor, measure and analyze online social media. Information to find services from basic blog monitoring and measurement to innovative market research and social media marketing strategies.(Note: This is not a free resource)
• Tracking the Influence of Conversations
  From Jeremiah Owyang- A roundtable discussion on social media metrics and measurement
• Social Media Measurement
  From Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang: Archives for a range of articles about social media measurement.
• ROI: What are the best “I” words for nonprofits to think about Social Media and ROI?
  From Beth’s Blog: Beth’s thoughts on what nonprofits should take into consideration when evaluating the value of social media.
• How Search-Like Are Social Media Sites?
  From Search Engine Land: Like search? Who doesn’t — great traffic, huge brand value and an audience ready to convert. Like social media? What’s not to like — huge growth, tons of buzz and an entire new marketing frontier that is opening up. For the search marketer looking at social media, how does it measure up? Which social media sites are most “search like?” This article looks at the issue and tries to chart it all out for easy comparison.
• A How-to guide to Measure MySpace and Facebook | Article | Homepage articles
  From Katie Paine: It’s possible to measure community on social networking sites. In this article, Katie provides some advice on how to go about it.
• Social Media Measurement – SlideShare
  From Kelsey Ruger: Presentation on some of the things that you can track and measure in a social media campaign. From the Pop labs SEM Workshop.
• A Framework for Measuring Social Media
  From Peter Kim: 4 point framework for measuring social media ROI
• Social Media Demographics and Analytics 2008 – 2009
  From 123 Social Media: Good overview of demographics and analytics data for social media along with a list of additional social media demographic information resources and a list list of tools for finding niche information.
• Five Tools And Technologies To Measure Engagement by Brian Haven, Suresh Vittal
  From Forrester Research: Forrester has defined five key tools and technologies that marketers need to put in place an engagement-driven measurement methodology across their enterprise. (Free but requires registration)
• WhosTalkin?
  WhosTalkin is a new social media search tool that makes it easy to search multiple social media sources. Users can search for conversations surrounding the topics that they care about most.
• Social Media Measurement- Metrics, Analysis, Growth, and Adoption
  From 123 Social Media: A handful of presentations that offer some different insights into social media measurement and analysis.
• Are You Tracking Your Top Blog Posts?
  From Wild Apricot Blog: Good discussion of 3 factors that come into play, when you start to track down the information on your blog or website that’s made the greatest impact on your audience: Readers, Reports, and Responses.
• Top 10 Reputation Tracking Tools Worth Paying For
  From Mashable: Recommended list of 10 fee-based tools to help you track your organization’s reputation online.
• Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide
  Download this free PDF from Marketing Pilgrim with detailed information on tracking and managing your company’s reputation online- includes what to track and how to track it. A must-read resource!
• Top 10 Free Tools for Monitoring Your Brand’s Reputation
  From Mashable: Brand monitoring has become an essential task for any individual or corporation. This article outlines a process for montoring your brand online and a list of the top 10 free tools for doing this.
• Social Media Listening Wiki
  From Beth Kanter- A wiki offering a range of information, resources, links and tools on social media listening (e.g. monitoring).
• How Dell Measures Social Media
  From Biz Solutions Plus Blog: An article by Richard Binhammer who is part of Dell’s Conversations, Communities and Communications discussed Dell’s perspective on ROI and measuring the value of social media.
• Don’t Say ROI Unless You Mean It
  From BizSolutionsPlus: Advice on why you want to differentiate between true measurable ROI and other types of value when considering the impact of social media.
• Tools and Metrics You Need to Measure and Monitor Social Media Success
  From Jacob Morgan on Social Media Today site: Good overview and discussion of of the key tools required to measure the success of your social media campaigns.
• 14 free tools that reveal why people abandon your website
  From Conversion Rate Experts: Review of free tools to help your understand why people leave your site.
• 10 Firefox Extensions for Web Analytics
  From Thomson Chemmanoor: A list of 10 top user web analytic Firefox extensions
• How To Set Up A Nonprofit Listening Post with Twitter
  From Beth’s Blog: Step by Step guide to using Twitter for social media monitoring. For nonprofits but good general information for others as well.
• 5 Tips to Measure Success in Social Media Marketing
  From SIMSPIN: A list of 5 steps to take to help you measure success in your social media campaigns.
• 8 More Free Social Media Monitoring Tools You Shouldn’t Leave Home Without
  From Marketing Pilgrim: Addition of 8 more tools to original list of 26 free social media monitoring tools.
• How is your Blog Performing? 19 Must Have Tools that will let you know
  From Speckyboy: Review of 19 tools that help evaluate blog performance.
• Want to Figure Out Your Social Media ROI? Consider a Plan
  IFrom Beth Harte on Marketing Profs: Plan for justifying using social media on the most basic of levels.
• 15 Tools for Monitoring a Website’s Popularity
  From Six Revisions; 15 top-notch, free, and simple web tools to help you learn more about a particular website.
• 10 Free, Innovative Web Analytics Tools
  From ReadWriteWeb: List of 10 free, innovative statistic tools available on the web beyond Google Analytics. These tools measure everything from user behavior, to search engine traffic, to real-time visitor tracking, and more. The following ten products may provide valuable data when analyzing your website traffic.
• 69 Tools to Monitor, Measure, and Track Your Website
  From Vandelay Design: Long list of tools to help you evaluate your website performance.
• TweetStats :: Graphin’ Your Stats
  Tool to graph your Twitter Stats including: Tweets per hour, Tweets per month, Tweet timeline, Reply statistics
• Dig Into Your Blog’s Statistics
  From Problogger: Advice on which statistics about your blog are worth digging into.
• Where is Your Username registered
  Site allows you to enter a user name and see if that user name is registered or available across a host of social media sites.
• HowSociable? – Brand Visibility Metrics
  HowSociable is a free online research tool that provides a simple way for you to begin measuring your brand’s visibility on the social web across 22 different social media site
• Social Media Success Metrics
  From The Social Organization: Nice list of social media metrics anyone wanting to measure the success of their social media programs may want to use. From activity metrics (like comments and trackbacks) to survey metrics (like satisfaction) to ROI measurements (like number of qualified leads)
• Social Media – How to Measure Marketing Effectiveness
  From Hubspot: Recommendations on a couple of things that you can easily track to measure social media effectiveness.
• Social Media Measurement and Brand Control
  From 123 Social Media: Good discussion of why social media measurement is important and how to go about doing it.
• Online Media Monitoring: 26 Free Social Media Tracking Tools
  From Marketing Pilgrim: Review of 26 freely available buzz monitoring tools
• 12 Reputations Every Company Should Monitor Online
  From Marketing Pilgrim: Advice on the 12 pieces of information (e.g. Company name) that you should be tracking online.
• Listening Literacy Skills: What keywords or phrases have brought you some insights?
  From Beth’s Blog: Advice on determining keywords and phrases to listen to and also on how to manage the participation side of listening.
• How to Create a Social Media Monitoring Strategy
  From Media Guerrilla: A basic outline of what a social media monitoring and engagement program looks like.
• Google Analytics Videos On YouTube
  Google’s own video playlist with ull-length presentations on advanced analytics implementation, best practices, how to create a data driven culture and more
• Measuring social media Podcast Interview
  From Market Sentinel: Podcast Interview with David Armano of Critical Mass on ways to measure in social media, and how to judge ROI.
• Developing Effective Social Media Measurement
  From Social Media Marketing (SMM) Blog: A list of parameters of an effective social media measurement plan.
• Measuring Social Media Efforts
  From Chris Brogan: Chris ponders the question – are we measuring social media or mapping it?
• What Should Every Company Be Monitoring
  From the NewPR/Wiki: Long list of things that every company should be monitoring in the social media universe (e.g. company name, company url, competitors, etc.)
• Companies that Measure Social Media, Influence, and Brand
  From Web Strategy by Jeremiah: Long list of companies that measure social media – those that are helping to apply benchmarking and intelligence around social media.
• NewPR Wiki – SocialMediaMeasurement.HomePage
  From the NewPR/Wiki- Comprehensive guide to events, analyst reports, a list of companies offering monitoring services, interviews, links to blog analytics research papers and to media coverage of blog monitoring services
• KDPaine’s PR Measurement Blog
  KD Paine’s blog covers news, techniques and developments int he world of social media and PR measurement.
• Six Free Tools for Online Reputation Management
  From Dan Schawbel on MarketingProfs: Discussion of his pick of the top 6 tools for your online reputation management program.
• 8 Ways We Get the Most From Listening Tools
  From Liz Strauss: Advice on how to maximize the benefits of social media monitoring.listening tools.
• Why Your Social Media Plan should have Success Metrics
  From Web Strategy by Jeremiah: Good discussion of defining success metrics for your social media plan along with a few examples of possible success metrics.
• Defining Success Metrics for Corporate Blogs
  From One Degree: List of the type of success metrics you may want to measure for your corporate blog.

Key Social Media Statistics and Research Studies

• How to Find Statistics on Social Media
  From Mashable: Great article by Aaron Uhrmacher discussing how to find and use statistics on social media to convey the value of corporate social media participation.
• 49 Amazing Social Media, Web 2.0 And Internet Stats
  From The FutureBuzz: Sometimes it is easy to get lose sight of just how staggering the numbers are of people collaborating, researching, and interacting on the web. Here Adam Singer pulls together some interesting social media, Web 2.0, crowdsourcing and internet statistics. (From January 09)
• Best Social Media Studies of 2008 | VisInsights
  Rundown of key studies published during 2008 on social media
• Social Media Research Snippets
  From Beth Kanter: A rich Flickr collection of social media charts, graphs and other visual displays.
• Top Social Media Sites of 2008 (Facebook Still Rising)
  From TechCrunch: Brief useful summary of Comscore’s Worldwide traffic stats recently released for November 08 (so these don’t include December). They are a mix of social networks and blogging platforms.
• Seth Godin’s Web 2.0 Traffic Watch List
  From Statsaholic.com: List of 952 Web 2.0/social media sites and their traffic rankings.
• A Collection of Social Network Stats for 2009
  From Web Strategy by Jeremiah: Updated from Jeremy’s 2008 social networking stats.
• State of the Blogosphere 2008
  From Technorati: Comprehensive research study on blogs and blogging.
• Consumers Await on Social Networks – eMarketer
  From eMarketer: High level summary of Cone’s 2008 Busines In Social Media Study. Can be downloaded from Cone here
• Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008
  From Web Strategy by Jeremiah: Comprehensive collection of social networking statistics.
• Social Media Statistics: Welcome to Social Media Statistics
  A big home for all facts and figures around social media.
• Facebook Growth Explodes, Site Reaches 140 Million Active Users
  From ReadWriteWeb: If there’s any doubt that Facebook is rapidly becoming the next big thing in social networks, you only need look at their recent statistics. According to new reports, in recent weeks Facebook is growing at a rate of 600,000 users each day, up from 300,000 to 400,000 users per day earlier this quarter. The company is also reporting that, as of today, they have reached 140 million active users.
• State of the Twittersphere – Q4 2008 Report
  From Hubspot: Akin to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere report report is based on real data pulled from hundreds of thousands of Twitter profiles accessed through the reports generated by Twitter Grader. You can download the full report in PDF format.
• Forty Million Americans Now Contribute to Social Networking Sites: Who Are They?
  From ReadWriteWeb: According to a new report from Netpop Research, 76% of all U.S. broadband users actively contribute to social media sites in one form or another, and 29% contribute regularly to social networking sites. The report also compares the online habits of these social networkers with those broadband subscribers who choose not to contribute to social media sites and finds a number of very interesting differences. The report, which is available for free until January 31, 2009 if you register at Netpop, provides an extremely rich amount of data.
• The Top 20 Social Networks of 2008
  From Mashable: Discussion of final numbers from 2008, and with them, a look at the rankings and trends within the top 20 social networks, according to Nielsen Online.

Tags:   analytics · measurement · Metrics · roi · Social media measurement · socialMedia · statistics59 Comments

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