When Intuit wanted to analyze market sentiment about TurboTax, they used Radian6 to collect approximately 40,000 blog posts about Intuit and its competitors between January 1st and April 15th of 2008.
âNone of [the team working on this project] felt artificial intelligence was going to come to their aid any day soon,â says Jim Sterne in his book, Social Media Metrics: How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment.
That should give you some idea of the state of social media analytical tools, particularly for analyzing market sentiment. With a few exceptions, they are practically nonexistent.
So why did Sterne write a book about measuring something with nonexistent tools? I finally found the answer to that question on page 156: âI try to avoid getting deep into specific tools in my books. They change so fast that enumerating specific systems or services ends up more confusing than not over time.â
So if you want a book that actually contains detailed instructions for using social media analytical tools, youâll have to keep waiting. This is NOT that book.
Sterneâs book tells you WHAT to measure and what NOT to measure. And he gives very general advice on how to do it without going into too many technical details.
He gets off to a good start by quoting J. C. Penney: âGive me a stock clerk with a goal and Iâll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and Iâll give you a stock clerk.â
So donât even start a social media marketing campaign until you set some goals. What do you want the campaign to do? What results do you want to see? Which key performance indicators (KPIs) will you measure?
To make it very simple, Sterne proposes the Big Three Business Goals:
- Raise revenue
- Lower costs
- Increase customer satisfaction
Thatâs it! You really donât have to worry about anything else.
âIf the work you do does not result in an improvement to one or more of these Big Three Goals, then you are wasting your time, wasting money, spinning your wheels, alienating customers, and not helping the organization. You can always think of something to earn more, spend less, and make customers happier.â
Social media can absolutely help you lower the cost of doing business. You can use Facebook and Twitter to survey your customers. Who needs focus groups, questionnaires, and expensive market research reports?

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Sterneâs book contains many case studies of companies doing just that. The bookâs organization follows the traditional sales cycle:
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- Get your marketâs attention.
- Earn their respect.
- Get them to like you.
- Get them to interact with you.
- Convince them to buy from you.
He devotes a chapter to each one of those steps.
And he brings up some very interesting points. Itâs easy enough to count how many followers, fans, and subscribers you have. But do they really read all of your tweets, Facebook updates, and blog posts? How do you know?
Sterne would ask, âDoes it really matter?â It doesnât matter how many fans, followers, and subscribers you have. It doesnât matter how many people comment on your corporate blog. It doesnât matter how many people buzz up your news release.
Only one thing matters: did they take action? Did they click your banner ad, visit your website, or pick up the phone and call your company?
If not, you are obviously not engaging them. And if youâre not engaging them, they probably will never buy your product or service.
In Sterneâs words: âWhile social media becomes more and more important from the standpoint of getting the word out, the impact of that word is still going to be measured by the number of people it drives to your web site, your store, and your wallet.â
Sterne does give many resources and websites, presumably of companies that are developing social media analytical tools. Companies like Omniture, Tealium, and FMS Advanced Systems Group. He calls the FMS tool ânascent,â meaning it may not be ready for prime time just yet.
But itâs up to you to go to the websites, take a look at their analytical tools, and see if they will give you the data you need.
In the chapter on Getting Buy-In, Sterne seems to imply that you should just ask your technical people to develop their own tools!
And did you know that there are apparently robots that can scrape, follow, friend, tweet, and retweet? âWhen itâs time to tote up how many people had an opportunity to see your message,â Sterne advises, âmake sure youâre only counting people.â
But of course, he never tells you how to do that. Are there any analytical tools that can distinguish between a robot and a person? If there are, Sterne doesnât mention them.
So in the absence of good social media analytical tools, you might just stick with your web analytical tools. Do you get more activity on your website when you blog or tweet? Do your sales increase when people buzz up your blog post on Delicious, Reddit, or Digg?
Try to correlate your social media campaign with metrics available now. And remember, it doesnât count unless it results in a sale, a savings, or a satisfied customer.
Check out 4 Ways to Measure Social Media and Its Impact on Your Brand.
Social Media Examiner gives this book a 3.5 star rating.
Is anyone out there using social media analytical tools, ânascentâ or otherwise? If so, weâd love to hear about your experience. Leave your comment in the box below.
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