I’m quite often asked by the people we work with whether jumping into social media is a good idea because it’s so hard to measure whether it’s actually having an impact. In many cases, people want to know how they will know whether social media is directly leading to more customers. 

It’s a good question. And people should definitely be asking themselves why they’re getting into social media. But my suggestion is that perhaps we need to think about it in a slightly different way. Here’s a quick quiz....

Has anyone in your company ever done one of the following:

•Advertised on TV, radio, outdoors or print 

•Sent out a media release

•A sports sponsorship

•Picked up the phone

•Sent out a newsletter 

Can you directly measure the number of new customers as a result? 

Your website and social media shouldn’t be seen as something that needs to be measured differently from any of these activities. It serves the same purpose, whether that’s marketing, communications, recruitment, networking or customer service. That is not to say that you shouldn’t measure what’s happening online. It’s definitely a useful activity. 

Perhaps being blessed with too much information actually makes it tougher for staff wanting to introduce social media. In the past, not knowing the detail meant people could easily overstate the impact of different communication channels – that’s not so easy in social media.