The Single-Largest Hurdle of Social Media Marketing
I’ve been planning on writing about this in the next couple of weeks, but after reading Bruce Prokopets at Social Caster vent his frustration (Stop Yapping and Show Me The Results) regarding the lack of real performance data showing the value of Social Media Marketing, I decided to get some of it out now.
As a self-proclaimed SMM Evangelist, my instinct is to quickly defend social media as a marketing strategy. But, instead, it lit a fire under my butt to at least put this problem out there, sooner rather than later, for people to start crunching on.
But, alas, defeat must be conceded. For now…hint, hint.
Show Me the Data
One of the largest problems that I see with SMM becoming more widely accepted as a viable marketing strategy is that performance data hasn’t been disclosed by those who are having success with it. I have seen sites such as The $15k Challenge which disclose strict performance data directly tied to ROI, and HitWise has some great data that they disclose (though this is mostly in regards to inward and outward traffic).
If SMM is going to become a widely-accepted practice, people need proof. They need evidence. People need to know that the time, energy and resources that they are going to devote are going to be worth it.
Quite frankly, while it’s a risk that I’m willing to take with my career, I don’t blame others for not taking the same risk. If a newspaper called me tomorrow asking me to advertise with them, I would certainly expect hard performance data. Plus, when it comes to business and marketing, in the end, it is about the performance.
Make it Valuable to Me…oh, AND my boss.
I sense that part of the reason that numbers haven’t been released regarding successful campaigns is that people aren’t quite sure yet what to measure. We saw this with search marketing 5-6 years ago, when all of the independent affiliate marketers were screaming about the value of search and raking in cash, while everyone else blew them off.
It wasn’t until the right tools came along to make it easy to measure performance that search became valuable.
It wasn’t until metrics were defined and the tools to record these metrics were made accessible that search marketing became valuable. Until this happens with Social Media Marketing, it, too, will remain unnoticed.
The point is that until the perception of value is easily accessible and understood, that anything is worthless.
It then becomes our responsibility to define what these metrics are to become. “Engagement,” “Attention,” etc, those measurements are crap. They’re marketing speak for marketers who lack a focus on results.
What is needed is something that outlines how each social media tactic, Social Networks, Blogs, Messageboards, etc, should be measured. Then the tools need to be put into place to measure and present this information in a clear and compelling manner.
Stay tuned for updates on what should be measured and how you can measure performance of your social media campaigns. It’s a lot more fun to talk about marketing when you have numbers anyway. 
Ben -
I’ve been checking back for more insight on your blog! Give us goodies man.