To What Value, Social Media?

by Dan Bailey

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

At last – social media seems to dawn on corporate America as critical mass adoption rather than a passing trend. And if companies want to go where people are, well, the people are in online social networks. But the ongoing questions remain: how to measure social media marketing impact, how to attach value to social media?

In light of just such questions, Facebook has been experimenting with analytics reporting models for advertising – and has just announced ending its advertising conversion tracking program. Instead Facebook going forward focuses on social context (and presumably semantic web algorithm) driven advertising. Sharing, recommending and liking social media activities (or what in marketing is often called net promoting) are what online communities are all about anyway. So why not measure the viral spread impact of messaging among friends? Hence the “viral” in viral marketing…

Examined from this lens, incept approaches to social media marketing still apply and achieve valid measurement. For example, a viral campaign could incentivize customers to take and share unique photos involving a pizzeria’s artwork on the pizza box. The incentive could be pizzeria rewards for great customer viral activity, and hence, social media measurement is achieved.

Why not have the marketplace conduct one’s social media marketing? And send measurable counts, to corporate, while at it?

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