These days it seems like every organization uses social media in one form or another. As adoption into business strategies heighten, evaluating internal metrics like Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can feel social, too.
Used with internal and strategic business measures, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) always contain numbers that are contextual in nature. Rates, ratios, and percentages are great examples of relating one number in a metric to another.
Context for relating metrics have shifted to include more than traditionally internal business operations. Over the last few years, as social media platforms have attracted daily users, new ways to influence customers with media have multiplied. For example, customers are long accustomed to downloading a pdf has been long established. But there are now multiple ways to display pdf content, from appearing in a Slideshare profile for a business to within a Linked In profile of a key employee. The bottom line for many businesses, including banks, is more online exposure of sales methodologies - ones that were once circulated on internal channels.
Another consequence is an increased attribution complexity among influences. Assigning traffic sources to campaigns can be blurred. Thus, the context of what is being measured becomes difficult to answer questions as to if a KPI is really valuable.
To better assess context, consider evaluating KPIs against the dimensions of social media where possible. Dimensions are essentially the “location” at which a metrics records. So matching that “location” to business objectives forces a clear understanding of the business and some reasoning to what is possible (or what good questions can be asked.)
For example, take raw numbers or simple integers. Social media adaptation has made number of tweets or likes popular reporting data. Numbers are especially used to justify “Reach” – the volume of people contacted in a campaign. But numbers alone are ineffective as KPIs. They lack context to indicate a metric’s value relative to a desired effect.
Comparing raw numbers in a relevant time period to a business’s operations can provide KPI-compatible metrics that can properly compare one social media platform’s value to another. So comparing platforms by visits can be adjusted to visits/month or a delta to determine which platform experienced the most response. Regression modeling of such data against other data sources is also a useful technique to determine influential relationships.
The need to adjust KPIs is evolving. According to eMarketer, marketers are increasingly studying ways to measure across platforms. Survey respondents who integrate cross channel data increased from 72% to 86%. This is notable particularly as interest in social media ROI grows.
Raw numbers do have their place in analysis. But by placing attention of numerals to ratio and time periods, bank marketing analyst can make metrics more relatable to KPIs essential to business objectives….and gain more from social media interaction analysis.
