Measurement Matters

My final reading assignment for Social Media Principles is "Measure What Matters" by Katie Delahaye Paine. This book gives insight to what businesses should be looking for in measuring ROI and analyzing consumer use of social media. The first two chapters give an idea of how measurement is important and explains common misconceptions about measurement.

The first chapter discusses how measurement helps a company improve its relationships with customers and increase its sales. Measurement allows a company to compare its performance with its competition quickly and easily. The economy is all about competition, that's why it is important to be able to see where you fall on the totem pole, so you can improve if needed. Measurement also reveals your strengths and weaknesses. A company can't grow without understanding what they need to change and what needs to be updated. A large number of companies do not measure their ROI at all, especially on social, which will only hurt them in the long run.

There are a handful of myths that "Measure What Matters" debunks, which give reasons for why more companies are using measurement programs. Being a mathematics major with a statistics minor, I laughed at a few of these ideas because these measurement tools use statistics. The first is that measurement is punishment. This idea stems from employees worrying that their plans are not gaining a positive result. There is fear in failure, but the only way for someone to learn and improve their ideas is by making a few mistakes along the way. Getting a negative result should push a company to move forward and make the necessary adjustments in order to gain a positive result. Another myth is that measurement is too expensive. This idea is contradictory because measurement allows you to see if your money is being well budgeted and if you are wasting money on tools that are not resulting in the desired response. If measurement is not used in a company, it might never know if its money is being used in the most effective way possible.

There are five other major myths that include measurement creates more work, measurement is only quantitative, ROI is impossible to measure, measurement can only be done after a project is finished and 'we know what's happening, we don't need research.'

Too many people shy away from numbers for various reasons. I promise numbers are not as scary as they seem. Measuring what your company is accomplishing -- or not accomplishing-- is the best way to improve current projects and methods to create the most profit. In the end, measurement is worth crunching the numbers and analyzing the statistics.