Page 89 - Social Media Marketing

within your social programs, however—and to get you thinking about this aspect of 67
undertaking a social business effort—consider the assessment of participation, applied
knowledge transfer, and the measurement of social activity in general as a starting ■ SOCIAL BUSINESS AND MEASUREMENT
point to a quantitative guide in building and running your social business.

Collaborate

Collaboration—sitting atop the engagement process—is the defining expression of
measurable engagement. Marketers often speak of engagement: For example, one
might focus on time spent on a page, or the number of retries a customer is willing
to undergo before meeting with success. Measures such as “returning visitors,” con-
nected to concepts such as “loyalty” are also used as surrogates for engagement. While
all of these have value within the discipline of marketing—and most certainly have a
role in establishing efficacy of brand and promotional communications over a period
of time—they do not in and of themselves provide a quantitative basis for the stronger
notions of engagement as defined in the social business context. The direct observation
of collaboration does.

Collaboration between community members, between employees, or between
a firm and its representatives comes about when both parties in the transaction see
a value in completing the transaction, often repeatedly. The output of collaborative
processes—the number of jointly developed solutions advanced in an expert’s com-
munity, for example—is directly measurable. Think about counting the number of col-
laborative processes that lead to a solution, or the number of shared results. Each is an
indicator of the respective participant’s willingness to put effort into such processes. In
this sense, the quantitative assessment of collaboration becomes a very robust indicator
for the relative strength of the engagement process.

Participation

Participation is likely one of the easiest metrics to capture and track. Indicators of par-
ticipation can be gathered from existing measures—content creation, curation, and the
number of reviews, comments, and posts—and can then be used to assess the overall
levels of interest and activity within online communities.

Foursquare—Gaming Drives Participation

Foursquare is a location-based service that provides users with tips left by others when they
check in at a specific location. To help spur participation, Foursquare uses a gaming-like point
system—which itself is a useful metric for the Foursquare development team—that directly
rewards participants for checking in, adding new venues, and leaving tips—exactly the activi-
ties that increase value for the Foursquare community.

http://foursquare.com