A couple of years ago, a study revealed that 74% of CEOs think that marketers lack serious credibility due to our talk of “trends” like social media (Fournaise Report).

Marketers are often measuring social media by taking existing measurement protocols and twisting them to try to provide some value to CEOs and CFOs. When the data measured isn’t tied to a company’s bottom line, we look like we don’t get it.

How do we measure word-of-mouth? How do we measure brand-building? Not by awareness.

We are all aware of BP (British Petroleum), but how strong is their brand after the oil pipeline catastrophe? How do we measure our exterior advertising? How do we measure our company president in a room full of prospects? Certainly not by number of business cards collected. We want to know how far he or she has moved a prospect down the sales funnel.

Social media needs to be viewed in the same light. We shouldn’t measure social media within the social media channels with Likes and Retweets. Those need to be connected to what the effort cost and what it brought in. Profits.

How well does it engage the prospect? How much value does it provide? Ultimately, how well does it bring in leads? If money is to be spent on social media as part of the marketing plan, it needs to be measured or it will certainly die a slow and misinformed death.

If you are trying to get leads through social media, then you can measure cost per lead, and then maybe, cost per acquisition. As the business value happens on the website and through the email list, measurement should take place there.

Social media posts can be tagged and tracked and followed with Google Analytics. This data can be used to help us measure content, target, channel and process effectiveness.

Nichole Kelly, author of “How to Measure Social Media”, says that if you aren’t measuring your social media, your ROI is almost certainly negative. Measure it on balance of profits and expenses and you can turn that around.