Three As’s of Social Media Measurement

This biggest question any Social Media practitioner can ask of themselves is how are we being received online? Who is checking us out? Do they ‘like’ us? Why do they like us? And how can we get more people to… well….like us?

What I've learnt from this week is that social media monitoring is one of the most important tools that every company should invest their time and funding.

So let’s break it down to the three As of monitoring. No I’m not talking AAA (or more familiarly CAA)

I’m talking about:

•       Attention: The volume of interest in your social media practices through measuring traffic.

How much attention do they pay to your social media efforts? Which groups are paying attention the most?

•       Attitude: Overall sentiment and relationship measurement.

What are the sentiments of your customers’ on the social media efforts made by the organization?

•       Action: Business results of online outreach and the most important measurement tool. A process in which one ties social media efforts to costs and revenues within the organization.

Are our efforts bringing in clients and business?

Having an online presence is simply not enough. In order for a company to grow and develop real tangible relationships online they have to measure what kind of attention they are receiving, what is the general attitude of their online efforts and how their performance is tied to the success of the business.  An example of an organization that successfully utilize the three A’s and who has an influential social web and media presence is Expedia. 

Expedia is one of the top online travel agency who has long been active in encouraging users to engage with them online. A popular tool they use to measure the online success is with the hashtag #expchat. Every week Expedia awards a $500 travel voucher for one user who participating in their online conversation using #expchat. By asking users to get involved and suggest tourist destinations to fellow users, they are creating a dialogue amongst followers. This is an easy way to measure who is predominantly having the conversations online and how they are influencing others to join in. Expedia not only encourages engagement between corporation and customer, they are also encouraging dialogue amongst consumers and understand that this is the best way to ensure that they remain so in the future.