How do marketers qualify social media success? 
The conversation is happening right now.
Last week, Danny Brown questioned the value of “reach” in a hot-button blog post.
This week, Pinterest announced a new web analytics tool to help you see what’s been pinned from your site.
And every other week, Shonali Burke gathers the troops for #MeasurePR, discussing trends in measurement, regularly featuring digital platforms.
So we are constantly investigating, critiquing and changing the things we measure and how we look at measurement. The degree of change probably falls somewhere between evolution and indecisiveness, leaning more towards evolution on most days.
For instance, it wasn’t too long ago that everyone loved Klout.
But now it gets poo-pooed for trying to measure influence with math.
I’m guilt of that poo-pooing, but I honestly do appreciate and enjoy Klout…but keep it compartmentalized.
Using Klout as a major metric is like thinking you’d be good at real estate because you win at Monopoly. #dhcx
— mikeschaffer (@mikeschaffer) February 20, 2013
So when it comes to digital measurement, the universe is constantly changing.
One constant, however, is that there are two main areas of what should be measured: Business Results (to be discussed at a later time) and WOW Factor Results.
The WOW Factor
Remember the old Nike baseball marketing slogan that “Chicks dig the long ball?”
The WOW Factor measurement deals with that sentiment – what’s the sexy thing that makes jaws drop?
Followers, Fans, Likes, ReTweets – none of these have DIRECT business impact (they can definitely have indirect impact, though, which is not to minimize their importance). In short – just because someone is a fan of your Facebook page does not mean they are a customer. But it’s nice to have more fans and followers, no?
[To close the loop on the baseball analogy, another adage to remember is that "hitting sells tickets but pitching wins championships."]
Measuring these WOW Factor stats leads you to celebrate milestones. While these are more arbitrary than meaningful, they can provide social objects to promote and/or develop a campaign around.
Perhaps my favorite recent WOW Factor celebration, and the inspiration for the title of this post, comes from Sesame Street, which recently surpassed one billion total YouTube video views.
One.
Billion.
Congratulations to Sesame Street for surpassing one of the wow-iest WOW Factor results. It may not sell one toy or convert one new viewer, but it’s damn impressive.
Naturally, with such a large number of views, they brought in their resident counting expert to make the announcement.
So I leave you with…The Count!
(Mar…
