Telling Your Social Media Fortune

Inside a recent fortune cookie: “Statistics are no substitute for judgment.”

Putting aside that fortune cookies are no longer fortunes anymore, they’re aphorisms (or “sh**ty observation cookies” as my friends Constantin and Paull call them), this is a pretty good aphorism about social media.

While I believe that it’s essential that social media managers, and their marketing and PR colleagues, figure out how to measure the ROI of social media – the statistics part – I also think there’s an important judgment part of social as well.  Kat French says it’s about narrative and anecdote – that you’ve got to put aside the “idiot gauges” and figure out what the customer and brand impact really is.

You have to use your judgment to determine if social media is helping your customers, brand, product or service.

“Help” of course means different things to different people.  Help can be about brand perception, awareness or buzz; customer satisfaction and loyalty; or reducing the load on the customer service team.  The judgment part is having a gut sense of what social is doing for the brand, numbers aside.  If there’s buzz, and it feels positive, and you’re having a good time doing it and engaging with customers/brand fans, you’re probably inclined to chalk up the effort as a good one – your judgment there is probably serving you well.

Sure, that’s a really hard sell to management.  Imagine telling your boss, “My gut tells me social is working for us and it’s a good thing for our brand” but without backing it up in any way.  You might get marched out the door, or maybe just have all your social budget pulled out from under you.  By contrast, you might have lots of positive statistics, but how do you know that your efforts are really connecting with your customers?  If you can combine good judgment with good statistics, then you’re well on your way to social media success.

Happy New Year! Here’s to your social media success in 2011!

Related articles

• The 5 Critical Social Media Skills You Need To Disperse (brasstackthinking.com)
• 3 Metrics to Prove to Your Boss That Social Media Marketing is Working (hubspot.com)