Should you count the shots on net? Social Media in Review

In the sports world there is the saying “there’s no I in team.” It is used to express the importance of every player on the ice, field, or court. No matter how many goals one player gets, they cannot take on another team by themselves. Social media marketing is very similar. As tempting as it is to look at the final score, or the Return on Investment (ROI), and accredit the scorer there are many more players, or metrics that aid in achieving the outcome. ROI equations – gain from investment subtracted and then divided by the initial cost of investment (Finance Formulas, 2014), are used to gage whether a new investment or marketing strategy is profitable. In terms of social media investments, however, John Heggestuen of Business Insider suggests that many organizations are realizing that social media “isn’t a transactional engine or sales machine,” (Heggestuen, 2013). Therefore, ROI calculations aren’t as effective when measuring social media strategies. Which raises the question as to how an organization can evaluate the effectiveness of their online campaign. Heggestuen continues to suggest that corporations are now focusing on new metrics such as “audience-building, brand awareness, and customer relations,” (Heggestuen, 2013). He states that this does not mean that the budget for these endeavours diminish, but rather, emphasis is placed on the measurement of social awareness and reach, rather than financial transactions (Heggestuen, 2013). Russ Henneberry, uses the analogy of basketball assists when explaining the effectiveness of social media in his ExactTarget article, “How to Truly Measure the Success of Social Media” (2013). He says that in business, as well as sports, great emphasis is placed on the bottom line – or the fin...

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...e audience size, which means that the content would have to be interesting enough to engage with the audience and have them want to click on a website link, and/or join the membership.

Social Media analytics allow for an organization to measure and track the process of their social media campaign. As Henneberry claims, companies need to look at more than just the outcome and analyze the building blocks – the assists, which helped them get there. That way they will be able to measure the effectiveness of their social media campaign, and improve upon it in the future. Awareness, engagement and traffic show the planning, execution and evaluating phases of a campaign. They each build off each other and aid in the success of an organizations ultimate goal. After all as the Canadian Tire Olympic commercial says, “there is no such thing as an unassisted goal,” (CT, 2014).