Do social media and online community metrics really matter?

"After talking with many people about this question and seeing/hearing others talk about it, what I've concluded is that metrics do *not* matter for those who can't easily or cost effectively measure, report, or analyze the statistics associated with their social media and online community. :-)"

Lawrence - Love the quote... when we are consulting with clients new to social media we have a section of our presentation titled "Eighth Grade Math Revisited" to cover metrics and ROI. There are always two groups in the meeting, one who wants to know every detail about metrics and those who don't want to try and understand.

In today's budgetary world, continued funding means proving the value of your community. Remedial math is coming back into vogue...

Mike

I don't care for metrics. I care more about peer review. When I buy a car, I care less about crash test dummy statistics and more about reliability reports from other owners. When I try a new restaurant, I care less about Zagat ratings and more about word of mouth reviews.

Then again, I'm not a numbers guy; I'm a people person.

Asked the stellar Katie Paine a variant of this question in person after her presentation at the PRSA travel confab in Pgh. this past summer.

As regards the topic of estimating ROI to cost justify social media-optimized PR initiatives in particular, where the objective is specifically building brand equity, I understood her to say, in essence, never try to quantify ROI to the client in terms of a dollar expenditure for an equivalent ad buy.

This on the heels of an earlier presentation by Laura Ries, author of  _The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR_.

Community's a whole different story altogether, though.

How are the metrics actionable?  In a community, all that you're doing seems to be measuring velocity.  Outside of providing that to advertisers, is there any real information in here which can be translated into action?

Pretty reports are fun to look at.  Take Xobni.  Totally changed how I use Outlook - can't live without it and I curse Live Mail (Outlook Express) client for not having it.  But the analytics?  Who cares?  Meaningless data but fun to look at.  I tend to think the screenshots above are the same.  Fun to look at but full of meaningless data unless there is a way to take action to impact a graph in a predictable manner.

Matt, the ability to take action rests on having enough information to make decisions in the first place. Otherwise, you're just taking shots in the dark. Don't think of these charts and graphs as the end of the story, but as a way to start the next one. :-)

Dean and Lawrence,

 I couldn't agree more that the ability to chart a course requires navigable metrics.  Lawrence, your story about taking action on Answer Rates is perfect and gets to the heart of my question - WHICH metrics matter for social sites?  The ability to adjust tactics and strategy depend on measuring the right trends.  

I think the right restatement to the question you asked in the original blog isn't DO metrics matter, but WHICH metrics matter.

Hey Lawrence - this looks like great stuff.

I say that metrics DO matter - a lot! Communities are not successful unless you can monitor their success and health. You guys seem to be doing a great job in this department.

How do you measure "sentiment" - are you looking for specific words or phrases?

I like your user "social technographics" report too.

Anyone who says this stuff is not important, has clearly never had to manage a large community

A couple of weeks ago, I had posted some teaser screenshots of the 2.0 release of our Harvest Reporting

A couple of weeks ago, I left the following comment on my post about " Do social media and online