I just finished reading a thought-provoking post by that rakish man-about-town and Agent Provocateur, Tim Malbon, of Made By Many. In it, Tim tackles the topic du jour of Social Media: Measurement. Tim nicely puts forth the all too typical scenario where a great idea gets bogged down by the desire to have the execution measured every which way possible. Rather than measure everything, Tim would have us measure one thing that has real meaning. He refers to this as Agile Measurement, which is the need to identify and use a metric that is nimble enough to allow for the vagaries of creativity. I’ll let him explain:

“Agile gets rid of fixed scope/fixed budget which is great – but that means nothing if you replace them with some dumb fixed metrics. So, I’m arguing here not for less measurement or no measurement, but for an Agile approach to measurement – which, obviously, I absolutely understand the need for.

Agile measurement should focus on simplicity and Customer Value. It should make it easier to measure the things that matter to make the service better for its users – to improve the value exchange.”

He continues…

“You should also try and measure “outcome” rather than “output”. It’s not about big numbers, it’s about having the biggest impact on Customer Value. A small community of incredibly engaged, high-value customers is much more valuable than 1 million people who registered to win a car.”

“But you should generally focus on a small set of engagement health indicators: like the number of visits per user per month, dwell time,  participation, recommendations to friends, positive buzz across other social networks leading to sustained referrals.”

And this is where I saw what he was talking about started to align with my recent thinking on Consumer ROI. To me Customer Value is another way of saying Consumer ROI.

Tim also suggests that for brands, “Maintaining a living, ongoing dialogue with users will certainly help – and is essential where the one key metric is for example a softie, like brand perception.”

Exactly. This is the notion of Commitment Marketing that I’ve been writing about as well. Tim’s post really calls out the potential dangers we’re facing right now in Social Media. While I’m all for measurement, we can’t rely on it to provide answers out of thin air. First their must be a commitment to engaging in Social Media in a meaningful way that provides value to the consumer. Once that’s been started, a simple, focused metric should be used to gauge success.

For more on engagement and measurement from those smarties at Made By Many, take a read of this story by Anjali Ramachandran.