Capturing the Buzz
Earlier this week the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) launched a framework for Social Media Measurement.
The framework has been designed to help advertisers and agencies apply clarity, structure and standardization to social media measurement.
Broadly speaking the framework suggests that you should first establish Intent (I) . This element demands that a set of objectives be established, which can then determine the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are most relevant to success.
The IAB framework then suggests that the KPIs are grouped according to the 4 As (A)– awareness, appreciations, action and advocacy.
Your intent will provide guidance on the relative weightings you accord to each of these and hence which KPIs you should focus on.
For example, if your intent is to create leads, then you should assign more weight to the action metrics. If your activity is designed to generate buzz and WOM, then you might focus on the awareness, appreciation and advocacy metrics.
Finally, the framework suggests that you benchmark (B). In other words you compare your metrics with other SM activity, channels, industry averages, competitors, historical data, etc to provide context and meaning.
Here at NMHQ, I’m always interested to see an attempt to provide some rigor to SM measurement and I genuinely appreciate that this is not an easy task, so this critique is intended to provide honest feedback and I hope that by outlining my impressions on this framework I am in some small part contributing to furthering the discussion rather than stifling it!
With that said here are my thoughts on the IAB Framework:
- Firstly, the fit to the IAB mnemonic seems a bit contrived. I think the elements that they propose are sound but it does make you wonder if subtleties were sacrificed for to achieve a zingy aide-memoire.
- The idea of weighting your metrics according to your intents gives some focus to the measurement – this is important; the lists of stats you could pull is endless and linking them back to your objectives means that you reach the ones that really matter.That’s not really rocket science in itself, but the core of what most measurement frameworks provide is a rationale and mechanism for applying this (the wonderful Jenni Lloyd terms these buckets – and this is by far the best metaphor that I’ve heard for this).
The four As framework is a reasonable attempt at this, but you might prefer the Altimeter approach, which has ‘buckets’ for; fostering dialogue, promoting advocacy, facilitating support and spurring innovation.
Or you might prefer Avinash Kaushik’s system that ties metrics directly to the core business variables of; price, cost, unit margins and unit volumes.
I’m not sure it really matters which you choose as long as you tie your activity and metrics as tightly as you can to your objectives (use a double knot if you must!) and assign those metrics to the relevant buckets so you can prioritise them and give them some context against your bottom line.
- The real meat in the IAB framework is the way in which they define and allocate common KPIs. To do this, they assign KPIs using a combination of the 4 As, the social media platform and by soft metrics and hard financials.What they provide in practice is a set of tables identifying common KPIs and fitting them to their framework that you can use as a starting point for your own framework. Here is an example of their microblogging KPIs:
Now that’s useful! They also do this for social networks, blogs, blogger outreach, apps/widgets, sharing, SM advertising and podcasts – that’s a pretty handy toolkit!
- My final thought (and this applies to all of the frameworks I’ve seen thus far) is that the focus seems to be on measuring owned spaces.I can guess why this is – ‘ambient buzz’ (or conversation about your brand that happens in spaces other than that which you own or control) is notoriously hard to measure and even harder to assign hard financials to – after all, what is the cash value of a positive customer review or an averted PR crisis?However, one of the key teachings in Social Media 101 is that your customers will be having conversations about you in social spaces whether you like it, or not, and whether you choose to listen and engage, or not.
We encourage our clients to listen to these conversations, to start dialogue with customers and to learn from them. We also assume that social media activity in owned spaces will have a positive brand impact that will be echoed in non-owned spaces.
Not convinced? Think about all the ‘ambient buzz’ around Old Spice Man if you were the agency responsible you’d sure as hell want to include all that goodness in your reporting!
With this in mind, I’ve borrowed the IAB model to try and create a KPI set for non-owned spaces.
It’s more focused on soft metrics than hard financials. This is pretty contentious but I think it’s justified. Bear with me on this one…
Firstly, the IAB has made an attempt to capture financial metrics for the owned spaces. This makes sense – the metrics are harder and the spend usually warrants this level of reporting.
For non-owned spaces it is a little different. Because this is ambient buzz, there is no associated spend to justify (outside of engagement time, which is the one KPI I have attempted to attach a financial metric to).
Anyhow, here it is – this is not yet complete, and I’d love your input – but it’s a start!
Image credit: Misstinykitten
Danielle Sheerin wrote this on 16.07.10 – 2 comments
It's filed in the Buzz monitoring, NixonMcInnes, Social media, Strategy, measurement box
On July 16th, 2010 at 4:15 pm, Tweets that mention Capturing the Buzz @ NixonMcInnes: Social media goodness. Translated. Created. Delivered. -- Topsy.com responded:
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On July 22nd, 2010 at 9:36 pm, Caroline responded:
Hi Danielle,
I’m currently putting together some research on social media metrics and values and found this post really, really useful.
You’ve probably already seen it but I’ve also been looking at the piece linked to here (its for Forrester subscribers only) http://blogs.forrester.com/augie_ray/10-07-19-roi_social_media_marketing_more_dollars_and_cents
I think the thing that’s hardest to get your head around is assigning a “value” to social. Clients are always asking what a “like” on Facebook is worth. It’d be great to hear if you try and assign a value to the outcomes of your social media activities.
Thanks again,
Caroline