Interestingly, while there is some push from [>>]]]> Hardly a day goes by that I don’t come across at least one article, blog post, or newsletter about measuring social media success, in particular ROI. According to a recent eMarketer article, the pressure is on marketers to focus more on gathering solid metrics to gauge social marketing ROI.

Interestingly, while there is some push from the executive suite to show how social media is contributing to the bottom line, only 13 percent of respondents in Chief Marketer’s “2011 Social Marketing Survey” said they’re very effective at measuring social campaigns. A whopping 40 percent of those surveyed admitted they were either not very or not at all effective in determining whether their social media efforts are delivering results.

If you fall into that 40 percent of marketers who aren’t effectively measuring your social media, proving ROI is a big leap forward. It’s best to start small, then work up to more strategic measurement goals. In other words, you need to walk before you can run. If you haven’t been measuring any social media or only sporadically checking out your metrics provided by the given social channel, such as Facebook Insights, where do you begin? Here are some tips to get you started measuring social media success.

Choose your objectives
Whether it’s for a specific campaign or your social media program in general, you need to identify your goals. Because until you know where you’re going, it’s hard to determine whether you’ve arrived. Many of you (hopefully) identified the goals for your campaign or program at the outset. If not, following are some objectives to consider:

• Building relationships
• Increasing awareness
• Improving reputation
• Driving traffic
• Taking action

It’s best to limit your objectives. This will help focus your social media efforts, which in turn will make measuring results and success easier. Adhere to good project management form by making sure your objectives are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based—otherwise known as SMART.

Also, think about what’s trackable in the social channels you use. For example, if you have a company blog, you can track comments, page views, and RSS opens and click through. For Twitter, you can measure replies and retweets. Knowing what you can track can help inform the objectives you choose.

Identify what to measure
Once you’ve determined your social media objectives, you can begin identifying what to measure to support those objectives. For example, if your goal is to build relationships, you could track the increase in fans or followers as well as comments and @mentions. If increasing awareness is one of your objectives, you can measure the number of shares, likes, retweets, page views, and linkbacks that a particular piece of content generates.

Think measuring likes and followers seems elementary? Consider this: 60 percent of respondents in the Chief Marketer survey still count the number of fans, followers, friends, and likes as their top metric.

Collect the data
Now that you’ve settled on your objectives and what you’re going to track in order to prove the success of your social media efforts, you need to collect the data. This can be easier than it sounds. Many of the social channels you’re probably using provide some analytics capabilities, such as LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook. And sharing services like AddThis provide analytics, too. That low-hanging fruit is easy data pickin’s.

For channels that don’t provide their own analytics, there are a plethora of tools that you can use to track social media activity—some of which are free or inexpensive, like TwentyFeet. Even if your social channels provide analytics, it’s a good idea to use a few different sources for collecting data. Each tool tracks data a little differently and can give you a different view. Also, using multiple sources is a good way to confirm the numbers.

Don’t forget to collect qualitative data, as well. Examples of customer comments and tweets show how they’re engaging with your company or brand.

How are you measuring your social media efforts?

When used effectively, virals can and do perform in ways that traditional PR and advertising simply can’t. But how do [>>]]]> A bit like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography, viral marketing is something you know when you see it, although it’s hard to define outright. All viral marketing campaigns share one element in common–an unstated agenda.

When used effectively, virals can and do perform in ways that traditional PR and advertising simply can’t. But how do you separate an excellent viral campaign from a dud?  With five key criteria in mind, let’s rate one of the more recent viral splashes: Jared Holstein’s “fake Shooting Brake” Porsche promotion for TopGear.com America:

Eyeballs

The more people see and share a viral, the higher the mission-critical eyeball count. After a false start or three, The Shooting Brake viral sputtered to life and managed to pick up enough of an audience to achieve liftoff. We’ll give it a C+ for taking the time to analyze initial seeding attempts and be willing to try again in less-than-obvious places.

Engagement

If YouTube videos “A” and “B” each have 100,000 views, but “A” has 1,000 comments whereas “B” has 10, viral “A” will have proven to carry a higher level of engagement. Here, ‘brake did really well. The ratio of user involvement in the dialog was extraordinary as viewers of both the video and still images felt compelled to toss their $0.02 in on the debate and repost for others to weigh in. A+

Longevity

Short lived but highly engaging virals that capture a lot of attention often have superior recall rates to those that stay at a slow simmer and net a greater number of views over time. The chatter surrounding the Shooting Brake viral began to diminish around the one-month mark, around the time the instigators revealed all. We’ll give this a B for performing above what one might have expected through the clever use of three separate permutations of the ‘brake.

Brand Relevance

Every viral walks the line between being so tenuously connected to its parent brand as to have no meaningful impact and being so closely connected as to not have any hopes of ever succeeding as a viral. Mr. Holstein and crew get a solid A here. TopGear is, and always has been, cheeky, irreverent, subversive, and often sarcastic. In this case, TopGear wanted web traffic to support TopGear.com and new awareness of its original content. Job done.

Reach

A viral that transcends and rises above topical environments, and is just as big of a hit among Scrabble enthusiasts as it is among Labrador aficionados, is more relevant than one that fails to break out of its defined silo. The ‘brake transitioned from automotive to gamers, back to automotive, into mainstream press, and now, by virtue of this write-up, into the industry press for marketers. That’s another A+ for bridging the gap and capturing our collective imaginations.

The sixth, unspoken variable is one that will warm every marketer’s heart–-solid ROI. Here, Holstein leveraged the sizable coffers of Microsoft Game Studios in its promotion of Forza 3 to achieve great effect with his own viral promotion. There is nothing like riding the slipstream of someone else’s online spending spree to capture value far beyond one’s own investment in a project. A+ to team TopGear on this note as well.