“Measuring is Knowing’’

Is the famous Dutch saying relevant in terms of social media?

It very much is! And the knowledge that social media measurement provides can be very valuable for every business or brand. In what way? This we are exploring and discovering step-by-step in our research and findings.

The focus questions this time are: Have Dutch companies measured social media impact so far and are they interested in doing it?

According to our findings most of our respondent companies have not thoroughly measured or analysed social media impact before, either because they did not see the need for it or they did not know how. Many of them have been using a combination of analytic tools already available to monitor social channels and others tried to do it with web analytics like Google for example.

Things have changed  and currently almost 48% of our respondents are already actively monitoring social media and trying to measure its effects, and 30% are still not doing it but are interested.

This change in the approach towards social media comes because companies have realized how influential this medium can be. If a company is not on social media that does not mean it is not affected by everything that is being said about it. Customers (potential and actual), competitors and partners are there – discussing products and brands, creating communities and forming positive or negative attitudes.

That is why not only companies actively using social media are showing interest in monitoring it. Measuring for their clients, monitoring their competitors or simply checking what of their website or blog content is being shared and commented on. All this information can be of great use and all of it can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, blogs etc.

Social media can also be the perfect place for dialogue, getting to know potential clients or partners better, learn their opinion and finally engage them in various campaigns and activities. So, analysing social media is not only about knowing what is going on there, but being able to influence it.

All in all, Dutch companies are monitoring social media to some extent and in their own way. But they have realized how important it can be and are searching for tools to help them do more and go deeper into the social media analytics.

What data can be measured on social media, what it can be used for and what tool provides this data, we are going to explore this in further details in our next posts.

So, stay in touch for some more interesting insights.