The Need to Change Measurement Strategies

You may be wondering, do we really need to change measurement strategies and do it all over again, or can we simply add a few more metrics (social metrics) to what we are already doing? It is quite simple—keeping the same measurement strategy as before indicates that nothing has changed in the business, and that the new channel is merely being added as a one-way channel: customers can either ask questions (and hopefully get answers), or the organization can put out information (that hopefully customers will seek and read). By not altering the measurement strategy, an organization indicates it doesn’t care about what happens, but is solely reacting to external pressures rather than developing an internal strategy driven by well-defined objectives and the use of social channels as a means to achieve those objectives. So, yes—you do need to change your strategy, with all that this implies. Let’s start with a case study to highlight one organization’s change in strategy. This is a great example from Gail Moody-Byrd of SAP on how to change a measurement strategy to take advantage of social media.