“If you can’t measure, you can’t manage.” -Peter Drucker

And that says it all. If a company is throwing content out into the sea of social media with no means of measuring, then the company is throwing money away.

Reminds me of when companies first launched their own websites and the marketing directors would be excited because they got 10,000 hits the first day…thinking hits were visits.

Context.

What does this mean? And that will be the question that all social media managers will need to answer when reporting to senior management.

What does all of this mean?

Internal (Done by the Company) Measuring and Reporting

A company will want several people on this because the task is a big one. First, all of the information needs to be taken to a new organizational level. A month of posts will need to be filtered again, organized, and placed into a quantitative report that makes sense to senior management and its respective departments. Words. Graphics. Simple but accurate. And then there needs to be Qualitative Information…information that provides context to all of the data.

This event was successful because…This marketing initiative is not successful because… And, here are the metrics we used to measure it.

And senior management probably won’t like or understand the first few reports so major overhauling will be necessary.

CEO’s will ask questions like, “What does brand mentions mean? “We had 1,000 tweets on our running event. Is that good? And how does that 1,000 tweets compare to the $25,000 we spent to sponsor it? How do we measure this?”

You won’t need answers for the first round of questions like this. You will need more answers for the second meeting on social media.

In short, buzz is one thing. Measuring and interpreting that buzz is another thing.

Plan on over 3 full days a month for the first year for one person. (30 hours a month.)  A manager should plan on a full day a month for overseeing, helping to interpret, editing the report and presenting to management.

External (Subcontracting Out the Social Media Measuring and Reporting)

Almost all monitoring and measuring companies offer functionality that allows you, the company, to pull down reports. But it is all automated, which means that the data stream and filtering of that data will be there, but the organization, interpretation and presentation aspects are not there.  A company must allocate other human resources. About 2 days a month to gather and organize the information and then provide interpretation and analysis.

Few monitoring and measuring companies offer the actual assembly of these reports and interpretation by an analyst assigned to the company by the outside vender.  If the monitoring platform assigns an analyst, then it will take simply a few hours a month to review the information with the analyst and submit the report. 2-3 hours a month.

Adding everything up:

1. Internal Collection, Filtering, and Sentiment Assignment= 3 hrs./day/one person

2. Managing the External (Sub-Contracted) Collection and Filtering of Social Media (many monitoring companies do not include sentiment filtering) = 1 hr./day

3. Internal Sorting and Distribution= 3 hrs. a day/ one person + variable costs due to confusion, inefficiency and lack of support for Gatekeeper

4. External Sorting and Distribution= 1 hr. a day/ one person

5. Internal Measuring= 30 hours/month for one person to gather, organize, interpret and present data. (about 1 hour a day)  It will take another person 8 hrs./month  to prepare, add further interpretation, and write the report. Count on these hours for at least a year.

6. External Measuring= 16 hrs./month  for one person to  gather, organize and review/prepare the report for senior management. If the sub-contractor supplies an analyst and the reporting, then the workload is cut to just a couple of hours a month.

Grand Totals:

Internal Cost of Do-It-Yourself Social Media Collection, Filtering, Sentiment Assignment, Sorting, Distributing, Measuring, and Reporting =  170 hours a month + variable costs associated with confusion and inefficiencies of building the program,  lack of support for the gatekeeper, and senior management’s discontent with the reporting.

External Cost (Subcontracting) of the Social Media Collection, Filtering, Sentiment Assignment (often not included in the service)  and Automated Reporting of Data = 80 hours a month.

None of the above includes creating new media programs, writing content, and engaging. That is many more hours and people.

So, it is a matter of cost verse price. The price might be $2,000-$3,000 a month to subcontract out for a social media monitoring and measurement program. However, what is the cost to do it internally?  In real time and real salaries?

This series of articles should get companies thinking about…the real cost.