Klavs Valskov pulls a 180˚ on Internal Communication at Maersk Line

OPINIONSubtle ways to measure social media’simpactThe impact of social media on business can be difficultto measure, yet there are a number of subtle or indirectapproaches you can take.An advantage of online communicationis that it can be measured automaticallythrough web usage statistics, such ashow many people clicked on variouslinks. For social media that “live”online, some clicks are more usefulto track than others. Typical clickthroughsare actually measuring howeffective the previous screen was inconvincing readers to click to the nextpage. Those clicks don’t tell us anythingabout how useful the information wasonce people landed on the page beingmonitored.Beyond the usual click countsMany social media clicks, however,do tell us about the usefulness of theultimate landing page. When readersclick on an RSS feed button, they’retelling us that the information was notonly useful, but so useful they wantto keep seeing more of it. When theyclick on a “forward to a friend” buttonor “tag” an item, they’re telling usit’s so useful they want to make suretheir colleagues and friends also haveaccess to that information.Similarly, if your website features astar-rating system or promote/demotearrow buttons to prioritize the valueof several items on a page – such asmultiple newsletter stories, previouspodcasts/webcasts or search results –the page editor is receiving data thatpreviously could be identified onlythrough surveys: which topics aremore useful than others. This type ofinformation on usefulness can be usedto tailor future social media content.You can also make qualitativeobservations of what your audience isAngela Sinickas, ABC, IABC Fellow, is president ofSinickas Communications, Inc., an internationalcommunication consultancy specializing in helpingcorporations achieve business results through targeteddiagnostics and practical solutions. For moreinformation visit: www.sinicom.comsaying online, such as a comparisonof the percentage of comments onblogs or discussion forums versus thenumber of original postings (knownas the “conversation ratio”). You cancategorize the comments as positiveor negative to get a feel for howyour audience is reacting to an issue.You can get a sense of how engagedpeople are about a topic by noticingthe emotional heat of a discussion.For all these qualitative assessments,however, remember that the audienceslice participating online may not be arepresentative sample of the audience.Survey questions on social mediaoutcomesA survey about social media shouldnot appear within social mediathemselves because it would elicitinformation only from the biggestusers, not a random sample of theentire audience. In addition totypical questions about how satisfiedusers are with various features, thesurvey also should include questionsthat connect a particular socialcommunication with desirableoutcomes. For example, for adiscussion forum on typical ethicalconundrums at work and how otheremployees have handled them, youcould ask a survey question to seehow many employees read the forumand how many were able to applythat information to a real-life ethicalsituation they faced afterward.Another way to use surveys isa bit more subtle. On an existingsurvey that already asks aboutdesirable organizational outcomes,add a few questions about usage ofcommunication tools, such as specificsocial media. Think of these questionsas demographic items to identifydifferences among subgroups. Forexample, you could track if heavierparticipation in social media channelsallowing interaction with executivesSM impact can bemeasured in quite a fewways, most of whichdon’t cost anything(blogs, discussion boards, podcasts)is correlated with other survey scoreson confidence in leadership or leadertransparency. Another examplewould be if employees participating inan online wellness/preventive healthsocial community report higher levelsof actually losing weight, quittingsmoking or other behaviors with afinancial impact on company healthcosts. By comparing the financialbenefits of the behavior changesagainst the cost of the time employeesspend with the online community,a rough estimate of a return oninvestment could even be calculated.Pilot and control groupsSeveral years ago IBM launchedwikis for a pilot group of projectteams working on similar tasks toother teams who didn’t have accessto a wiki. Results showed that theteams with wikis not only finishedprojects faster and with higher qualitylevels, but email volume among teammembers also dropped.Another version of piloting socialmedia can be used if you want youraudience to take some action online,such as signing up for a training classor viewing a webcast. You can createunique URLs for the landing pagesand use different ones in differentcommunication about the action.This way you could compare the“conversion rate” of various tools,such as an article in a publication,an email or a discussion forum on arelated topic.So, social media impact can bemeasured in quite a few ways, mostof which don’t cost anything. Wejust need to be as creative with ourevaluation approach as we are increating the content.6 scm April 2012