Social media is measurable. Isn’t that the mantra everyone talks about? I think everyone would agree that social media is a little easier to get your hands around as to where the lead originated as opposed to traditional media. I sometimes think there’s too much info out there.
Social has several tools to help you measure and monitor your activities and hopefully help you take action. My question is collecting data is one thing, but what you do with it (or not) makes all the difference.
Are you looking at where your referral sources are? Are they from groups on LinkedIn that you belong to or from places like Stumbleupon? If they are coming through search, which engines are picking you up? What key words/phrases are being used?
emarketer.com recently had a post on How Social Media Marketers Can Make the Most out of Monitoring Tools that I thought was interesting. They cited a June 2011 study by RSW/US and Web Liquid of Senior Marketers. Not surprising, Google Alert was the most popular tool being used by them. It was good to see that marketers were indeed using these monitoring tools to take some sort of action. See the chart below.
Tracking is the first step, but it needs to be followed by actions. What are you doing with your social info?