None of the orchestras indicated they have implemented or established metrics for measuring social media activities. However, the majority of the orchestras (73%) recognized the need to measure social media activities and the remaining 27% were currently planning metrics for measuring social media.
This is one of the findings I found most interesting. In addition, the majority do find the need to measure and two-thirds of the managers rate importance of measuring social media at least a four (out of five). This, I believe, truly indicates that orchestras are at the brink of a strategic use of social media.
But they don’t quite seem to be ready to answer the tough questions. I can’t stress enough to read the wonderful report Are We There Yet? to get yourself ready for those tough questions. In a comment on yesterday’s post, I detailed an example for goals, objectives and milestones that should make measurement clearer.
Back to the survey, it seems contradictory that the question on what exactly managers measure yielded some results. Just over half of the managers claim to measure ticket sales and incoming traffic from blogs and social networking (even though they indicated earlier that they have no established metrics). Perhaps they are tracking these numbers, but have not connected them to a social media goal yet. And I wonder how many managers really do measure ticket sales that stem from social media efforts, or if they rather measure general online ticket sales.
Tracking these measurements then seems to fit more under social media monitoring, rather than measuring. Google Alerts is the main tool of choice for managers to monitor social media. It would have been interesting to see how many use the “comprehensive” alert versus the “news” alert. Obviously, you can’t monitor social media with just a “news” alert. Frequency of monitoring was not surveyed, but it is perhaps an important indicator of how involved the monitoring effort really is.
Just as the engagement question before, the relatively narrow framing doesn’t show the full scope of measuring and monitoring. Qualitative research on the topic, including interviews, would be a welcome addition to find out how managers keep on top of what’s being said in the social media sphere.
For more on social media monitoring (or listening), read Beth Kanter’s wiki on the topic with some great instructional materials.
How do you interpret the results? And how would you go about monitoring and measuring your social media efforts?