Measured or Evaluated

It’s amazing today that we are able to quantify traffic, hits, clicks, visits, unique visits, and time on a site. Given that internet marketing and online advertising can so easily be measured, it’s important to be note that measurement isn’t evaluation. What’s the difference of being measured or evaluated?

This comes into play very clearly in social media as an example. Many of you know that our group has a number of Internet properties and one of these properties is an email-marketing list that has been developed to engage males of all ages.  We also have a social presence on both Facebook and Twitter. What I really wanted to share was something I noted quite accidently on our askbick Facebook page. On March 30, 2012 there was a contest posting and Facebook measured this post noting 426,139 people who saw the post. I was amazed that a simple post with no call to action had almost one half a million views.

It occurred to me that although we can measure these 500,000 Impressions, it’s clear we cannot evaluate them.  In search to explain this concept to you, I came across a few blogs. Alan Johnston wrote “Business: Branding Impressions How brand building is like a mortgage” in this post he notes clearly that “Your branding budget should remain steadfast throughout the life of your business …” and this makes sense even though you can’t really confirm the ROI.

I also came across a blog post on momcomm.com from 2011, “How many Page Views Do Small, Medium and Big Blogs Get?” I was surprised that it was noted that Jennifer James, founder of Mom Bloggers Club, defined the following.

Up and Coming – 500 unique visitors monthly & 1100 page views

Loyal Following – 3,500 unique visitors monthly & 10,000 page views

Popular Blogger – 15,000 unique visitors monthly & 45,000 page views

The point here is that if one simple social media post can garner almost one half a million views, and if views are like a mortgage in a long term value; then we should be quite pleased. Additionally, if you’re not engaging in social media marketing and your competitors are, you can be certain that you are losing ground in the battle of brand awareness.

There are lots of programs, measurement tools, and software. As we all know, television survives on brand awareness advertising. Success doesn’t come in a day, and I agree with Alan Johnson on this.

Measured but not evaluated, it takes time to build a brand, and it’s one impression, one view at a time.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5 Ltd, Toronto, January 2013

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