Measurement’s Two Camps
Summer camps, ah the nostalgia. Oh, the names! I’m finding two camps when it comes to measuring Return On Investment for social media. I’ll call one side Camp Mustbecounted and the other side Camp Yacantbuyluv.
Measuring everything is a cultural norm in some organizations. Apparently Google even puts its designs to the test constantly, asking for proof of the effectiveness of 3 pixel border or a 4 or 5 pixel border. Considering Google’s business value comes from analytics, it’s not surprising that they land in Camp Mustbecounted.
In a comment on his own post on Econsultancy titled 10 ways to measure social media success, Chris Lake points out, “It is a cultural thing almost, within an organisation, as to whether or not you need to measure everything to the Nth degree.” That comment was a year ago, but I believe it holds true still, that the culture and environment in an organization can tip the tendency to measure more or less.
Camp Yacantbuyluv may protest such measurements for certain applications such as feelings, emotional responses, and so forth. But even fuzzy senses like love, loyalty, or leadership have tangible attributes like showing up when you sign up for something, giving something the time and attention it deserves, and a ensuring a lack of lies.
We say, measurement helps more than not measuring at all. A nice representation of this sentiment comes from Tom Gelb, an engineer who develops software inspection processes. He says “Anything can be measured in a way that is superior to not measuring at all.” What camp to you want to attend this summer?
-->