Katie Paine's Top 10 Social Media Measurement Tips

So, you are doing social media. You are probably following Katie Paine's Top 10 Social Media Keys to Success and keeping your eyes out for Katie Paine's Top 10 Social Media Mistakes to Avoid. And now you want to know if your social media is working, and how to demonstrate its value. Here is your answer: Katie Paine's Top 10 Social Media Measurement Tips:

#1. Take time to define your social media success. Get your managers and coworkers to agreed on audiences, goals, and measures of success.

#2. Develop specific measurable goals and objectives. Remember: SMART objectives are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

#3. Measure engagement (for instance, comments, shares, or any measure related to your organization's goals) rather than old-school media metrics, like eyeballs and AVEs.

#4. If you are just starting to measure your social media, then start small, with an easy-to-handle project.

#5. Learn to measure results, rather than activity.

#6. Learn to measure influence, rather than popularity.

#7. Use measurement to connect your social media program with your organizational goals.

#8. If you can't use the term Return On Investment (ROI) in a strictly financial sense, then don't use it at all. Instead, express your results in terms of your organization's goals.

#9. Use your metrics to learn and improve. Don't just wave them around to show you've been busy, use them to develop a plan to get better results.

#10. Use your measurement to save you time; learn how to not to waste it on efforts that don't get results.

If you'd like to learn more about measuring social media for nonprofits, read Beth Kanter and Katie Paine's Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using data to change the world.

(thanks to the salesforce blog for the image)

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