A tool to measure social media presence – for sector and competitor research
Social Media Metrics have to date mainly focused on the view of their effectiveness from inside the company. At Evonomie we’ve been looking for a while for an external qualitative method to measure companies’ online activities as part of a strategic review.
Internal or in-company quantitative methods are in abundance and focus on activity, surveys and return on investment (ROI). These are certainly valid metrics and there is a comprehensive list in Jim Sterne’s book Social Media Metrics. The real question when conducting research is how can you capture the metrics if you’re outside the company? You don’t have access to their analytics so need to make a judgement on what’s important and whether the information is available.
Benefits of benchmarking competitor use of social media
Reasons we want to measure the social media activity from an external perspective include:
- The review competitors’ activity, their strengths and weaknesses
- To understand where and how the market segment is using social media
- To identify opportunities
- To identify threats
- To review new markets companies may consider moving into
