“The two worlds of social media”

In Chapter 5 of “Measure What Matters,” Katie Delahaye Paine describes just how to begin measuring social. The most interesting part of this chapter, in my opinion, was when she went into the two worlds of social media—the sites that you “manage and control yourself” and “sites over which you have no control” (78).

I never really thought about it this way, even though it is completely true. You can have the prettiest website, the most engaging content or the quickest blog post. However, if a conversation is started on social and puts your company in a bad light, it will combat all the hard work you’ve done on those sites.

Paine first explores measuring what you can control, regarding Web metrics and engagement (78). Engagement is such a huge buzzword recently and here are the three reasons why:

1. Engagement is the first step in building a relationship between your customers and your brand.

2. Customer engagement helps promote and protect your brand.

3. Customer engagement can make your products better.

The third reason made me think back to “Groundswell” in that listening to your customers can help with new product development ideas or improvements to existing products. Paine describes the different levels of engagement, which were very interesting to read about. I was able to relate to those and think about which companies I am in the lurker phase and in the loyalist phase.

It’s scary to think that even though you produce this content, the masses may hate it and talk about it “without any influence from you” (84). I highlighted this quote in my book because I never really thought about social this way: “Whether you like it or not, all of your social media efforts represent only a teensy tiny fraction of the conversations taking place in the marketplace” (84).

How are we supposed to keep track of all these conversations? By measuring and analyzing them, of course! Paine then goes through the “Seven Steps” to help measure these conversations that you can’t control.

Social media has allowed the customer to speak their voice freely, which has taken some of the control away from the company. Being able to analyze these conversations will allow the company to make improvements and eventually influence the conversations.