Most of the interesting things I’ve been doing come out of actual problems I’m faced with – coming up with solutions, or, at least, level set expectations.   It’s like that with Social Media Campaigns – Social Programs – Social Media Strategy – working around situations where I’m helping people measure the campaigns they started.

What is a realistic time frame until  “measurable success” is evident when starting a Social Media Campaign?

I tried researching because I didn’t know the answer – but I know people who are starting campaigns, all around me, and they don’t know, either!

One thing – on the outset – it would be a lot easier on everyone doing this kind of work, including the people who are paying for it – if they looked at it as “building” something new, rather than, a marketing tactic to get measurable results, quick.

Sometimes, someone does have a quick success – they’re first video gets seen by hundreds of thousands of people  – that happens, but not too often; and it’s not sustainable.

So, here’s what I found:

Jacob Morgan – 6 months to 1 year – if your “serious” about your social media campaign (meaning – your willing to put enough time, resources and strategy in place for it to have a shot).

If you need to roll out a large scale social media strategy then it’s best to do so in phases.  If you just need someone to analyze your current social media efforts then it’s obviously going to take a lot less time.

… if you’re serious about getting started with creating and implementing a full-scale social media strategy then give yourself AT LEAST 6 months-1 year, depending on how comprehensive the strategy is and how large the organization is.

Beth Kantor – 5-20 hours a week for, at least, a few months.

“… Depending on your strategy, implementation can take anywhere from a minimum of 5 hours per week to over 20 hours per week“.

“… It is also important to keep in mind that it often takes a few months before you see begin to see results from your social media effort.

Eric Hwang – Bricks of Wine blog - Social Media is mainly for Branding, anyway – connecting it with revenue is pretty tough – even in the best of circumstances …

…. Social media is something companies should do for long-term results. Its benefits can rarely be measured in revenue or page hits and is often hard to justify to management because of this. Success can sometimes only be measured in the conversations generated and not in dollars. Wineries should be realistic about their expectations and view social media more for brand management than for direct sales results. It’s up to the person in charge of a winery’s social media strategy to manage these expectations.”

Heidi Strom Moon – maybe 6o days to chart a result, maybe 3 months at minimum

… certain needles can’t realistically be measured in just 30 or 60 days, but a reasonable trend line might be graphed in that time.

We’re launching a 90-day social media pilot program for a client, for example, and while customer lifetime value might be a valuable metric for them, it’s not gonna budge much in 3 months. So we’ll focus more on measures that might have more immediate upticks, like sales leads or media mentions.”

1. 3 months to six months, minimum with at least a half time person.
2. We don’t know the budget, but if a brand is willing to spend a bit of money, they can probably get quicker results – but then, many companies getting into Social Media now, are doing so because they want to save money, not spend it.  It was the same deal with Organic Search Optimization – it took time and the results were uncertain, and still are.

I am not going to talk about what results your going to get – that’s for another post – my main question was “how long” ….. and “what should we tell stakeholders that want immediate results”?

I can remember talking with someone, 5 years ago, or more, that wanted to have top ranking on all the search engines for their, realistically, lousy site, and spend no money.  SEO, 5-7 years ago, was where Social Media is, today.   Everyone wanted to get something,  for free, let Google just deliver the money right to your door.

But, we know, things don’t work that way – at least, not for long.

Hey, there was a time, a few years back, when my blog, Webmetricsguru.com, this blog, was getting 500 visits an hour – for weeks at a time – my RSS Subscribers were increasing by 400 or so, a month – and I was part of Know More Media’s blog network.  They blog network, did some “aggressive” tactics and “arbitrage” to generate traffic, but the link structure was such that Google gave my blog, at the time, a Pagerank of 6, and when I wrote about the “right things” I felt as if I was in Las Vegas, put a quarter in the slot machine – and the money just kept pouring out, and pouring out – where you can’t even get your hands on the money – it’s too much, and you need a truck to come over an haul it away.

But … the Blog Network went too far – and angered Google – all the blogs got penalties, including mine, even though I had little to do with whatever caused the problem – and that traffic went away, and so did the blog network.

I bring it up because sustainable results don’t come from a quirk, they come from sustained effort – and there may be ups and downs.   I like to think the same thing is true about Social Media.

Anyone who expects to succeed in Social Media should be doing it because they already “know” it’s going to succeed and is willing to spend the time and money, and grow it, internally.

And .. I’m not going to even talk about the Public Relations expectations – that’s whole different ball of wax – but one thing was brought up to me recently – that short campaigns, episodic in nature, might be really hard to measure, at all.