Benchmarking

STEP 1: Measure the Start Line

At MeasurementCamp II, the benchmarking group agreed that activities in a young industry such as social media are hard to benchmark without the resource of comparable case studies - see Case Studies. However, benchmarking an activity against itself is possible if measurements are taken at the start of the activity - see Measurement tools for free social media measurement tools. Beyond the free tools, some or all of the following can help to create a robust snapshot of the activity:

EXTERNAL:

  • Manual audit of qualitative online activity (eg. blog quotes, media sentiment, etc.)
  • Mapping (please explain)
  • Number crunching (please explain)
  • Competitor activity
  • Search results (eg. how many search results on Google)

INTERNAL:

  • Site analytics
  • Client's internal KPIs (eg. number of sales leads from web)

All this helps to establish what is being said, by whom and where the conversations are taking place.

STEP 2: Set Objectives
Remove irrelevant or ambiguous data from the initial snapshot; then the client will have its own ideas of what metrics and objectives are important. Ensure that the proposed objectives match the proposed solution for the client, and can be measured. Then agree the time period for the activity.

STEP 3: Set Benchmarks
By feeding the measurements taken earlier into an internal data set, comparison might be possible against previous client activity. Also, public comparable data may be possible to find. After that, guess.

Further Useful Info
One simple way to group the measurement of client activity is by:

  • Visibility
  • Reputation
  • Action
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