Another week, another meme! And it’s another one that not only has some real value, but it also bloody tricky to answer in a way that’s not rehashing the work of other intelligent people looking at social media. Dave Cushman started it off as Measures of Engagement – convincing the disconnected, and I think it’s important to keep the second part of the title in mind. As Cush says, if you’re blogging, tweeting, and building your own widgets already, you get it – but there are millions out there that don’t, and if you want companies etc to get involved in the right way, it’s down to us to show some leadership and go outside the comfort zone of the social media echo chamber.

I disagree slightly with Cush when he says those that get social media don’t require the numbers. Case in point – the Adage Power 150, Google analytics, Feedburner stats, Twitter follower counters and all the other things we adorn blogs with. The lack of yardsticks is one problem that currently affects social media usage within businesses, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m a keen supporter of MeasurementCamp‘s proactive focus on sharing case studies and numbers. It’s fine to quote Zappos and WillItBlend ad infinitum, (and I have), but the more relevant and close to your market you can find examples, the more useful it is in convincing the disconnected. And sometimes that’s the approach you need to take, because not every manager is just waiting for you to persuade them onto Twitter or Facebook.

So measurement is a given:

The next stage is to look at what the end result should be. Is it sales conversions or advertising clickthroughs? Are your conversion mechanisms on your website, or are they affiliated via widgets?

Either way, there are two things that work across traditional and new businesses – conversions and the numbers of them.

This is where the battle begins. Social media is an emerging and labour intensive skill. It’s unlikely to drive the same numbers as an SEO campaign, unless you’re really lucky/gaming the likes of Digg.

So what we need is to start tracing the steps of the engaged and the disengaged, and be able to compare the conversion rates – that’s pretty good evidence of the power of social media (If it works…humans have a horrible habit of doing the exact opposite of what you want, at the worst possible moments!).

And controversially, that begins with the traditional web analytics package, whether that’s Google, or a paid service like Webtrends.

That’s something that’s easy to forget in the rush to start driving traffic to the site, and worrying about sentiment. If you’re already using search traffic for relevant keywords to drive conversions, you’ve already got an effective way of getting large numbers of interested people.

So does social media make your boss money?

So you need to be able to show where social media efforts site between someone accidently browsing round your site because they’re bored, and those coming because they want to buy something that minute. And where in the process social media can enhance the conversions for people arriving via search – is it product reviews, or a Q and A section, or customer service?

Why do we want users chatting?

And if you’re relying on click-throughs, you’ve got more impetus for social media. After all, if people are arriving for content rather than purchases, then it’s down to the content, and the strength of your brand and values to convince them that clicking on a third party will give them what they’re after. If I see a shoddy site, unrelated adverts, and no community or loyalty, then I’m going to distrust that banner stuck in the right hand column and leave for somewhere else before I can be tempted into clicking on anything. That’s where the ‘onsite engagement’ is important.

Isn’t a Facebook fan page a waste of time?

And then it’s onto ‘external engagement’. That’s the bit where you make yourselves available whereever an interested person might be, and do the utmost to serve their needs, in the hope they’ll get to know you and your brand and value it over your competitors. And the basis for this comes from the stats showing how social media efforts increase conversions, and clickthroughs from the first two.

So why bother with trying to get numbers?

If SEO is hugely effective for people finding stuff, and when they arrive they’re engaged and converted, then why bother with the outreach?

Firstly, depending on traffic levels, and the advertising model you use, a traffic boost from a social network (the second biggest source of traffic after search engines) can really drive a particular promotion or great piece of content. And if you can show engagement delivers a high percentage of conversions and a big traffic boost, then you’re really set.

Secondly, not everyone is using search any more. I can’t remember the last time I actively searched for a product review before making a purchase. I still read reviews, but I start by asking my network for people with relevant knowledge that I trust, and then follow their recommendations to extra content.

If you’re not getting recommended, you’re going to be paying more to get search traffic, and you’re not getting the recommendation traffic. Effectively you’re trying to run a marathon with your eyes shut and your fingers in your ears. It’s still possible to win, but it’s going to get pretty tough!

This is the bit where the new tools come in.

You can start monitoring terms via Google news alerts (And almost every social media person has a personal vanity search set-up I’ll wager!). That can get pretty time consuming pretty quickly, which is where buzz monitoring comes in, e.g. Radian6, Brandwatch, Onalytica, Nielsen etc (apologies for anyone I’ve missed). These tools provide various ways for aggregating and managing all the mentions of your brand across the internet. The one downside of having a variety of useful tools is that it prevents some of the useful comparisons – e.g. sentiment between brands using different programmes – but I’d expect the market to slowly coalesce as social media matures…

This is also where you hook into available APIs, and allow people to promote your content on the social aggregators.

And that’s about where I’ve got to!

(I should say in my defence, this has been a bit of a stream of conscious post due to upset babies, meowing cats and other distractions, so I’m really interested in as many comments as possible to help distill the right parts out of this..)

Now the more fun bit…tagging some people who will probably struggle less with this than I did at the start of my social media journey within a large media company.

If it’s measurement, then I have to tag Katie Paine, without any implied buzz monitoring favouritism I haven’t chatted to Giles for a while. I’ll also tag Ste Davies, Luke for a personal brand approach,  and Chris because he normally likes to get all argumentative.

Edit: I was going to tag benrmatthews but there was some blog address confusion, which has now been resolved…So he’s back on the list!