This is a guest post by the great Rebecca Denison, an up-and-coming superstar in the PR/social media measurement space. Check out Rebecca’s blog (especially on Thursdays…) or chat with her on Twitter.

So we all know that social media is a game-changer. All the social media folks have been talking for months about how we cannot apply the same tactics and strategies to social as we have to traditional media. If you apply the same thinking to measuring social media, should we apply traditional methods to this new medium?

My gut reaction is to say absolutely not. This is social media, and all the metrics that matter to traditional media measurement should be thrown out the window.  But traditional metrics have been used for years, and a second look makes me wonder if all of that work was for nothing. The goals of traditional media were not entirely different than the goals we now have for social media, why should all of our measurements change?

Recently, I read a blog post which suggested that traditional data-mining techniques could be easily applied to social media. There is some truth to the idea that traditional methods could work with this new media. But it’s definitely not the entire solution because there is no easy solution.

Traditional media measurement can provide a framework to start measuring and monitoring social media, though, it’s just the end goals and methods for measuring that are different:

1. Clip count -> Number of mentions. We used to count clip count, and now it’s always good to start by counting the sheer number of mentions your brand or company has online. This is obviously not meant to be the only measurement you track, but it’s a good starting point.
2. Circulation or impressions -> Subscribers or unique visitors. Again, this metric does not paint a whole picture, but it does add a level of measurement that is useful. This allows you to get a good estimation of how many eyeballs are actually reading your content or content about your brand.
3. Syndication rate -> Number of inbound links or retweets. Syndication rate measures how often an article is shared across publications, that this was often seen as a means of measuring influence. Similarly, the number of inbound links a blog post gets or the number of times it is shared on Twitter gives a similar measurement in the social media space.
4. Sentiment and content analysis -> Well, the same thing. Let’s face it. Sentiment analysis and topic analysis hasn’t changed very much. We are still curious as to what people are talking about online (just as we wondered what articles were about), and we want to know if people seem to be satisfied or not.
5. Ad value equivalency -> Social efficiency. In traditional media, ROI was often calculated by focusing on how much money it would cost to take out an ad as long as a tracked article. Social media marketers are now focused on click-through rates and how effective a blog post or ad was based on how efficient it was.

While these measurements are by no means the only way to measure social media efforts, they are without a doubt a great start. One key measurement that is missing is engagement, but that is something we are all still struggling to quantify.

What do you think? What other connections do you see between traditional and social media measurement?

Photo credit: aussiegall

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Tagged as: measurement, Rebecca, Social Media