The attend outlines a formal evaluation and measurement process call the DATA approach. The acronym DATA stands for: defining the results, assessing the costs, tracking the results, and adjusting the program (Solomon, 2015). When defining the results, the company must decide what they want to occur, what they want to measure, and what metrics will help gauge the success of a certain campaign. There are several types of results that can be measured: attitude shifts and behavioral responses, efficiency and profitability, as well as, cost savings or increased sales. It is important that any objectives are created using the SMART acronym. SMART stands for specific, measurable, appropriate, realistic, and time-oriented (Solomon, 2015). When assessing
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However, there are costs that should be considered in planning a social media campaign. Although not all costs are financial in this case, human capital should be accounted for as a cost. There are also opportunity costs. It should be considered what else an employee could be doing if they weren’t participating in the business’s social media strategy (Solomon, 2015). To track the results, a company must first identify their tracking mechanisms. The must find a baseline comparison and create a timeline. The baseline metric provides the opportunity to compare the performance of a campaign on some level. Baseline can be compared based upon competition or fluctuation of internal effort. Next, they must develop their transaction data. When everything has been collected, they can overlay the timelines and display it in a visual format (Solomon, 2015). After reviewing the data, the business must adjust their efforts based on the results. These measurements mean nothing if they aren’t used to make better decisions in the future. Using the DATA approach, a company can compare performance, understand changes in data, and validate their social media efforts (Solomon, …show more content…
In the article, “Teaching Students How to Integrate and Assess Social Networking Tools in Marketing Communications,” Schlee and Harich discuss how students responded to the challenge of using web site analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of social media promotions (2013). Not only did it help them in their evaluation, but it prompted them to try new approaches to reaching people. Students responded to the analytics study with positive feedback. They found the experience valuable and it helped them reach their specific target market. “As businesses are moving beyond just using social media for marketing communications to evaluating the effectiveness of their social media promotions, learning about Web analytics represents an essential component of the pedagogical objectives for the Blogs and Social Networks assignment” (Schlee & Harich,
However, there are costs that should be considered in planning a social media campaign. Although not all costs are financial in this case, human capital should be accounted for as a cost. There are also opportunity costs. It should be considered what else an employee could be doing if they weren’t participating in the business’s social media strategy (Solomon, 2015). To track the results, a company must first identify their tracking mechanisms. The must find a baseline comparison and create a timeline. The baseline metric provides the opportunity to compare the performance of a campaign on some level. Baseline can be compared based upon competition or fluctuation of internal effort. Next, they must develop their transaction data. When everything has been collected, they can overlay the timelines and display it in a visual format (Solomon, 2015). After reviewing the data, the business must adjust their efforts based on the results. These measurements mean nothing if they aren’t used to make better decisions in the future. Using the DATA approach, a company can compare performance, understand changes in data, and validate their social media efforts (Solomon, …show more content…
In the article, “Teaching Students How to Integrate and Assess Social Networking Tools in Marketing Communications,” Schlee and Harich discuss how students responded to the challenge of using web site analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of social media promotions (2013). Not only did it help them in their evaluation, but it prompted them to try new approaches to reaching people. Students responded to the analytics study with positive feedback. They found the experience valuable and it helped them reach their specific target market. “As businesses are moving beyond just using social media for marketing communications to evaluating the effectiveness of their social media promotions, learning about Web analytics represents an essential component of the pedagogical objectives for the Blogs and Social Networks assignment” (Schlee & Harich,