Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Taking a Core Measure of Social Media Marketing

In this section, we start by suggesting a core brand-oriented metric — the single metric that you must map your social media marketing objectives against. And not just that. You must map your brand against this metric on an ongoing basis. We call it the social media marketing score, or the SMM score. It’s inspired by the Net Promoter Score, which asks customers, regarding the specific product or service, the question “How likely are you to recommend the product to a colleague or a friend?” It then subtracts the number of detractors from the number of promoters to give a single Net Promoter Score. You’ll notice that although the Net Promoter Score is fundamentally a loyalty metric, the SMM score is a brand-health metric, but based on customer interactions, too.

As you look at the SMM score, keep in mind that the industry is still in the throes of determining the best holistic metric. Check out the Social Media Advertising Consortium (www.smac.org ) for more information on this subject.

The SMM score is designed to be a pivotal measure that recognizes the participatory nature of branding and, more directly, your brand’s health compared to all of your direct competitors in the social web. Think of the SMM score as the blood pressure for your brand in the social web. It’ll tell you how you’re doing but not why or what to do about anything that might be going wrong. Those questions are answered when you dig deeper into understanding the ...