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Social Media Frustrations

I can’t decide whether I’m annoyed or frustrated. Social Media and Web 2.0 have been around for a few years now, and yet everyone is still wishy washy about measurements. Okay, they’ve been around for more than a few years, but in the last year or so, BDC’s are finally understanding what “it” is. Still, no one has vocalized a concrete and standardized way to measure it. The best part? No one even really tries.

Well, guess what? Not being able to quantify something does not fly with the people handing out the money. Nor does it fly with the BDC’s who’d like to see some sort of report about how your spending their money. I think part of the problem is this:

  1. Playing with social media is fun. Who doesn’t want to spend their day on Facebook, MySpace, writing a blog or making a “viral” video? But, what happens when the “fun” doesn’t meet the same ROI metrics as SEM, banner ads or eblasts? That’s right, the BDC is going to pull the plug. So, to save the fun, you make the BDC feel stupid and say something like, “How can you ask to quantify putting your product in front of influencers? Clearly, you just don’t get “it”.” Of course, the BDC wants to look cool and like they get “it”, so with this statement, they crawl back in their hole and your fun continues for another few months.
  2. Similar to the fun concept, few people realize how much this stuff costs. So, BDA’s tack on astronomical “strategy” costs. Oh yeah, you’ll also need an “official” social media policy. And, don’t forget the few million dollars for a blog. Didn’t you know? Blogs are magic bullets too. Why add metrics that could potentially put an end to this cash cow?

I get social media, I do. I also get its potential. But, as marketers, we’re being lazy. We’re not doing ourselves, our counterparts or our clients justice by disconnecting social media from financial value just because it takes more effort to generate a report. Remember how people tsk, tsk’d print ads when they learned that other forms of advertising were more measurable? Well, the same thing is going to happen to social media. Social media is not that complex that it can’t be measured. Show me actual correlations to incremental customer acquisition, retention and purchase behavior by a non-Prom King brand and I’ll show you some money.

Posted by Vegasbab on September 13th, 2008 Posted in Interactive Media, Social Media

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