A March 2010 survey by Chief Marketer showed the click remained on top, with 60% of US marketers reporting they measured performance in click-throughs. Fewer than two-fifths measured overall return on investment (ROI).

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Surprisingly, marketers worldwide were most likely to measure their campaigns through page views, registrations, and the volume and origin of site traffic.

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So far, “registrations” is the most interesting metric as it can be considered as a conversion metric, however, click-throughs and pageviews are really not sufficient to understand your site performance.
Looking at the bottom of the document of the interesting ways of measuring success: content download, transactions, engagement (which is a little vague), and increased knowledge. Those are all methods of demonstrating effectiveness that can determine your content strategy and marketing channels moving forward. But ultimately, each time a campaign is launched, the methodology for measurement needs to be customized to the goal at hand. Click-throughs and hits are not a universal metric for every campaign.

Some metrics that might appeal to me as a marketer include:
Likelihood of a customer to become an advocate for my brand
The spread of information across the Web – especially via social tools
Sentiment of comments generated by a post or campaign
Effective integration of offline calls to action and online actions
These are just a handful of suggestions for different types of measurement. As I said, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. What are some unique and different measurement standards that you’ve seen evolving?

the lack of understanding when it comes to entrepreneurs understanding what has to be analyzed in order to get to know about how successful their businesses are.

As I recall it was Comcast that in answer to an ROI question said that companies often “mess up” when approaching ROI in this space.

really liked the data! It showed that though click-throughs are the most prominent factor, that everything else is slowly creeping up from behind. Personally, interaction I believe is a key factor, especially since I know I’ll clock around sites but that doesn’t mean I’ll remember them or pass on that site to someone else.

I defintely agree that one way to track ROI on Social Networking is how often others are referring/reposting/retweeting/commenting. Not just by the number of followers or friends.

his is a simplification of the “partner engagement model” we use, but it should illustrate how different metrics combine in a strategy. They go from broadest awareness and funnels down to retaining the relationship:

[step] : [metric]
1) Reach : page visits
2) Engagement : user takes action, e.g. downloading white paper
3) Enablement : user uses a tool, builds something with it, eventually putting something in market
4) Demand generation : helping partner build leads and sales pipeline
5) Loyalty : user comes back to use more services/products, upgrading

My key point is that before you decide how to measure success, you need to know the outcome you expect and how it relates to your overall engagement strategy and business.

How do you quantify/measure the “likelihood of a customer to become an advocate for your brand?” While I understand why you’d want to know this/measure it, it seems very subjective/nebulous.

a service that would discern from the word choice the sentiment of comment in a post or campaign. And how would we determine if that customer became an advocate?

The Semantic Web is very revolutionary but the concept has been around for a while. The creator of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee was among the firsts to defend a more intelligent approach of the Internet in… 1999. Currently, we have systems such as the HyperCard which allows, making documents and hyperlink the documents jointly. Whereas the Web is for everyone, any person who has a server can issue the documents, so that everyone who has access to Internet can consult it, and any document can be hyperlinked with each other.

The concept of hyperlink is one of the founding pillars of the Web as we know it today but it’s also something very basic and the point of entry for a more intelligent Web.

For Instance when a user browse a Web page which includes a technical term such “top-kill”, and the user would like to know what does the particular term means. You might be aware that you can search the meaning of any phrase by making use of a different websites. Of course, by using Google or any other major search engine, the user can easily find a definition or illustrations in the context of what this terms means. If the author of the text where the user find the term as linked the term to another page or an external site like Wikipedia, the user can also navigate to this page and find more about the term. Instead, we can imagine that the user’s Web browser allows him to select the term select a command to find out the meaning of that particular word or phrase.

Today, most of Web pages are written in HTML. HTML describes the structure of information and doesn’t provide the meaning of this information. Now, if computers and applications can understand the meaning behind information they can be very more helpful than today. For example, they can learn and memorize what we are interested in, they can improve our search experience by understanding what we are really trying to find… With the Web Semantic, there is no limit, your computer or application can automatically recognize people, places, events, companies, products…

It’s a Digital switch between a Document-based Web and an Object-based Web. It can understand the relationship between them.
To make the Web more Semantic, we don’t have to heavily invest in expensive solutions, we only need to enrich the existing HTML code with Semantic markups such as RDFa (resource Description Framework – W3C valid) and Microformats (no namespace, no new tag). Many major websites have started implemented such as LinkedIn, Yahoo, Flickr… Do you?

Organizing the discussion
Effective collaboration requires a right mix of people based on the skills/expertise mix, and clearly-defined roles and decision-making. Oil Companies, independent experts, Lobbies and Activist, Volunteers and ONG, Politics and governmental agencies, media and the crowd… everybody is interacting with everybody else creating a lot of noise with few positive and efficient things we can retrieve from there to positively impact on the events. In terms of crisis management, it’s very important to clarify the role of each other and being as transparent as possible. It’s also essential to explain the context of each decision and the environment. Here, no one seems to know specific roles & responsibilities and the decision-making process. Then of course the issue of trust is evident.

Collect, Measure, Analyze and Recommend
The disaster is covered by the media 24/7. Satellite cameras, observations from special submarines, on-site investigations, 3D/wheater simulations… We know exactly what’s going on effective collaboration. The phenomenon is even increased by the use of the Real-Time Web. However, not a word about what do next, how can we (at any level, do something more than just keep looking for somebody to blame). Unfortunately, the disaster is real, there is no coming. Of course, we can wonder about the cause, ask for more regulations, sign petitions… it won’t change the immediate situation. The oil is getting closer to our cost and we keep watching this non stop flow of oil like hypnotized by the situation. Today, we have tons of measurement tools, some are private other public and can be used by anybody. Using all this data and combining it would be a first step in the right direction. The share of information between governmental agencies is critical when it comes to a major disaster. Remember Katrina? Remember the local authorities and the FEMA? Once this data have been collected and share, the analysis is key. Understand a situation is important but identifying actionable data and recommend actions is mandatory for such a crisis. Sharing the results of the measurement and analysis with third parties could generate thousands of actionable insights and concrete solutions. For example, the US is the largest and most innovative GIS (Geographic Information System) market in the world with hundreds of laboratories and universities, the data is standardized which makes it easy to share. This would be a great place to start.

Crowdsourcing
Top hat, top kill, cut a cap, junk shot… one idea succeed to another failure and so on. This crisis is also a failure of imagination. We often see that the reality is outside the boundaries of where people are looking. That holds true for group problem solving as well. One of the contributions we should expect of effective collaboration is to stretch the imagination of the group for what external factors might happen or for the potential solution space. With all the comments out there, the millions of opinion and hypothesis, how can we filter the noise and gather the best ideas, regroup them and look at trend or innovative ideas. BP is now looking at external solutions with the participation of celebrities like James Cameron or Kevin Costner. Are they the only having good ideas and available solutions? Yesterday, a former VP of a oil company was explaining on the air that he was very surprised by the fact that nobody was currently trying to recuperate the oil at the surface of the sea. He mentioned different technical solutions which have been successfully used in similar situation. Why not enabling collaboration between these experts, the oil companies, the government and the technical system providers? Why not letting more experts and people express their ideas about the potential solutions? In this case, Crowdsourcing would be an appropriate answer. Wired Magazine as defined the term as: “the intend to substitute the selective contracts and specific formation of work forces by means of massive participation of volunteers and the application of auto-organization principles”.

Taking action
Again, the Oil spill is probably one of the largest environmental disasters in the US history. It will generate immediate and long term consequences on the nature, people and businesses. However, the crowd and the media are not currently focus on the consequences, they analyze the causes and look for somebody to blame for.
Collaboration is a key element in such circumstances; it’s about bringing people together to solve problems, not about dividing people and politicizing one’s own position. This won’t be productive and the main issue will be the same or worse the day after. The large amount of resources spent in this process is not utilized to find solutions. The fact is nobody knows how to fix this problem right now. It shouldn’t mean we have all to wait for the oil to reach the Coast. BP, the government, activists and volunteers can use this small time frame to coordinate, recruits, teach safety requirements… The use of social media can help achieving these objectives faster and reach a larger population.