Stop Measuring Social Media

…Unless You’re Actively Engaging!

By Jack Monson, Director of Digital Strategy, QiigoYou can spend all day measuring social media. But if you are not regularly publishing and engaging in social media, then all that measurement is a complete waste of time and money.By regularly publishing, I mean multiple times per day, on all your pages with a good portion being original posts or links back to original content. I’ve spoken with many marketing execs who ironically don’t have the resources to post this aggressively because they’re constantly monitoring and analyzing every word on social about their industry.Sure, monitoring and measuring the broad spectrum of social can give you some insights. The measurement industry people will tell you that you can make key business decisions with this information. Perhaps…but if you’re making important decisions about your organization based on what a few people may remark on social media, then perhaps you’re in the wrong seat.Other Noise Versus Your MessageLook at the big QSRs – do they care? I hope not. Thousands of people say nasty things on social about chicken nuggets and $5 pizzas every week. But guess what? Millions of people still buy chicken nuggets and $5 pizzas every week. Those brands are actively putting out their own messages and not focusing on all the chatter.What about the social channels you can’t monitor?Those who over-measure have a particular fondness for Twitter. Why? Is it the most influential? No. Is it the biggest? No. But, it is the easiest to monitor and measure. Tweets are things that can easily be counted but might not necessarily count.Facebook and Instagram have real barricades to monitoring anything but your own content. They count, but can’t be counted. And Snapchat? No chance.So most “share of voice” reports out there are only measuring a less important portion of a tiny fraction of what might be captured about of what’s being said about the brand! Please reread that last sentence in your most sarcastic voice possible.[author]About the Author: Jack Monson is the Director of Digital Strategy at Qiigo. He has been helping global brands, enterprises, and franchise systems with Digital Marketing for nearly two decades. He blogs at Social Media Workbench and is the co-host of the weekly Social Geek Radio program and podcast. Reach him on Twitter at @jackmonson.  [/author]