Occasionally one blog post answers another, or at least complement each other.   I first read about Tactic Lust in MarketingProfs tonight and really like the approach (wish I had written that post)

Strategy First – Tactics Second

This post was so well written – Paul Williams actually built a map of how to do it and gave a concrete example and I’ll get back to that at the end of this post.

Meanwhile, Brian Solis goes where he likes and knows, combining Marketing and Analytics, as few can (and with more authority than most) by writing about The Maturation of Social Media ROI (btw, for a while I observed Brian chooses  titles for very carefully in order to obtain maximum SEO effect and to place his content on higher ground – as in … not just Social Media ROI – but the Maturation of it).

Brain Solis says in his post …

…. the case for new metrics can’t be made until we have an intrinsic understanding of how social media engagement affects us at every level.

What he is saying -  to understand what we are “affecting” in our business when applying  social media before attempting to measure the effects it.    And I can improve what Brian Solis is saying to this …

…. decide what you want to change before you engage.

Explains why  exact implications of social media still evade CMOs.

- 53% are unsure about their return on Twitter

- 50% are unable to assess the value of LinkedIn or industry blogs

I think the connection has to happen within one’s mind – in other words – if your a CMO and you used Twitter for a campaign  – your 53% likely to be uncertain on the return you got from it – perhaps the business goal and the means to it were not visualized clearly enough.   In other words, it’s a lack of imagination (imagination encompasses “understanding”).

Brian ends his post predicting a 100% increase in  Social Media  ROI for those companies  aligning social media investments with revenue estimates and further predicts a 333% surge in tracking revenue, 174% escalation in monitoring conversion and 150% increase in measuring average order value.   However, Brian is acting as  the messenger – like Moses, taking  us to the promised land – but stops short of entering …. while Paul Williams takes us all the way up to the promised  mount by asking and defining the following questions:

1. Why? Objective? (goal)
2. What to do? (action)
3. Where? (customer location)
4. Among? (audience)
5. About? (product/service/program)
6. Measured By? (metrics)
7. Through? (vehicle/venue)
8. By Saying? (message/call to action)
9. When? (specific timing)

.. then Paul does one better and gives us his example …

You can get most of what you need from working the form above – but you still need to imagine how social media interacts with your business goal so you have an idea of what the metrics ought to be.

What do you think?