Kevin O’Keefe, owner of LexBlog, wrote a post the other day about measuring social media.
He was referring to another post written by Seth Godin about trying to measure the unmeasurable. He wrote about lawyers and law firms and their skepticism of Social Media usage because they don’t know how to measure it.
Kevin discussed not holding out because you haven’t figured out the measurement part. I commented on his post, and decided to share it with you here.
I wrote this…
Sure, go ahead and hold back in social media if you can’t measure it!
I mean, why not hold back when you know it will allow your competitors to gain a foothold in the relationship-building spaces we call Social Media? Also, don’t go to any of those networking events you were intending to go to. Leave those for your competitors too.
Networking and meeting people?
Leaving an impression with people?
Helping people understand what you’re like as a person?
Helping people see what a great listener and conversationalist you are?
No, no, no…don’t you dare do those things until you can measure every inch of them because it’s much wiser to let your competitors do it first.
I’m not advocating giving up on trying to measure that which is first based in goal-setting. Who cares if you can’t measure it if you haven’t set goals for what successful metrics will look like, right? You do that before you engage in face-to-face networking, don’t you? Oh, you don’t have goals in mind for face-to-face networking? Hmm… Then why do you network face-to-face? I have a feeling your reasons are the same reasons most have for networking via Social Media.
Yes, of course I’m an advocate of marketing planning, but the most talented people never leave the starting gate because of fear, over-planning, a lack of admirable examples, getting hung up in committees, being too busy and analysis paralysis, just to name a few.
Let’s let common sense, and the marketing plans and skills we already have, combined with all the tools that are readily available to us, lead our marketing efforts, okay?
