From Old Spice to Burberry, brands throughout the C&T industry are investing in social media campaigns. But the single biggest question every social brand pauses to ask is "what value do they generate for our business?" There are a vast number of metrics, tools and services which are each claimed to provide the most important method for measuring social data. However, since the field is so new, there is no consensus on which data is most relevant to track. Some believe that viewing social media as a numbers game-for example the number of likes a brand has on Facebook-completely misses the point: "Many brands assume that social media is a channel and message game (measured by reach and frequency), when in fact it is a behaviour identification and response game," says Social Media Consultant Richard Stacy. What is increasingly being seen as the most important metric is engagement, since it is only when consumers are interacting with a brand that the brand is successfully connecting with its community. And it is in this way that social media begins to bring value to a brand. "The benefit brands can get from social media is the ability to become much better connected with their customers," says Stacy. "This is a huge benefit if approached correctly, but very few brands are doing this, preferring instead to use social media to try and push messaging and content at consumers who don't really want it. A key challenge for brands is in realising that the things your consumers want to talk to you about are not the same things that you want to talk to your consumers about, or that you want your consumers to talk about," says Stacy.
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