传统的市场营销，从消费者、渠道到广告、公关，在很多方面是可以量化和测量的。这为企业了解市场和消费者，制定相应的营销策略和活动，测评其效果和投资回
报，提供了一个客观的分析尺度。新营销涉及到众多新技术，信源（从企业到消费者）、传播模式（从“传者本位”到“受者本位”）等等都发生了重大改变，因
此，新营销（首先是社会性媒体）的量化指标和测量方法，成为其是否能被企业所接受的基本前提，也广为营销业者所关注。
最近，一些社会性媒体（Social media）方面的专家学者召开了一次圆桌会议，针对社会性媒体的衡量指标和方法，进行了探讨，并就讨论结果发表了一份白皮书 -
Tracking the Influence of Conversations: A Roundtable Discussion on Social Media Metrics and Measurement 。参加会议的大约30人，包括博客、营销专家、公关专家和企业市场人员。因为意见纷纭，最后放弃了寻找共同量化指标的企图，而根据每个人的提案和投票评选，选出了一组基础的量化指标，提供给企业参考使用：
- Analytics and Activity （1）
By this, the group was referring to “traditional” ways to
monitor activity around a company’s Web site or other externally facing
image. The most common measurements in this area have focused on
attributes like page views, unique site visitors, etc., but some, like
Ed Terpening, Blogging Projects Manager at Wells Fargo, question their validity: “They’re just not adequate to judge what’s important.”
- Community Activation/Call To Action （2）
For many marketers, specific actions are a method to
measure success of any social media outreach. In some cases, blog
posts, podcasts and video
are designed to entice a given individual to learn more, tell others,
or perhaps embed a video player on his or her own blog posts. The
ability to measure such an activity is necessary to know the answers to
some key questions: Is there a response to the outreach campaign? Are
recipients reacting to the message, or does it appear to be falling on deaf (or at least unengaged) ears?
The so-called “Conversation Index” (a term coined by
blogger Stowe Boyd, one of those in attendance at the roundtable) is
simply a ratio between
blog posts and comments-plus-trackbacks. What this helps to measure is
whether a blogger is doing a lot of writing with very little uptake or
response on the part of the readers, or the opposite – where the
audience seems to be hanging on every word and eager to contribute to
the conversation. This attribute is one subset of measuring participation and engagement.
This attribute is fairly self-evident – understanding who
is responding to the message, across multiple demographics: regional,
professional, vertical,
economic, and more. “At [Cisco Systems], all of our executives are out
there doing podcasts. Now the company’s saying, ‘Who’s watching? How
long are they watching?’ How do we measure buzz?” asked Jeanette
Gibson, who leads Cisco’s New Media and Operations group. “When I talk
to Marketing, they know the traditional ways – familiarity and
favorability.Well, how does that translate in the social media world?
So, how do we track those conversations among the influencers? How do you measure buzz?”
- Influential Ideas (Memes)（5）
The group took this concept to mean the “intensity” or
“velocity” of the spread of an idea or message over time. (A “meme”
refers to an idea or
discussion that grows and spreads from individual to individual into a
lengthy chain of commentary.) That is, how long does a message (or
marketing campaign, or issue, etc.) remain in the arena of public
opinion and interaction? Whether in a corporate or consumer
environment, the goal of a blogger (or PR/marketing campaign) “should
be looking for what we call ‘igniters’ – that is, people who can, by
virtue of a single post, ignite a long chain of dialogue and
conversation across multiple blogs,” said blogger and marketing
strategist Andy Lark. However, “there are a lot of ‘A-list’bloggers who
have a very low ignition attribute – they cover a lot of ground, but it
doesn’t stimulate a lot of dialogue.”
- Participation and Engagement（6）
Robert Scoble, the well-known former Microsoft blogger now
with Owyang at Podtech.net, has emphasized the importance of engagement
as a
tangible, measurable metric, as have others throughout the blogosphere
(some with quite interesting – and very measurable – ideas). This
concept is certainly linked to Boyd’s Conversation Index as it relates
to stimulation of discussion, but suggests something deeper, in which
the recipient not only responds to a message but acts on it as well.
Lark characterizes this distinction as depth: “The bloggers that are
generating the most original content, the audience is deeper, it’s more
loyal, it’s more interested, it’s more engaged,” he said. “Those are
the bloggers that can have real deep impact.”
The notion of “reach” is a difficult one to specify,
because as Steve Wilhelm, Director of Applications of Podtech.net,
pointed out, “If you write a
memo that gets to [George] Bush, Bill Gates and … just pick one other
person – it has very little reach, right? But that memo is probably
thoroughly influential.” So the “reach” attribute has less to do with
sheer numbers than it does with influence – making it a difficult, but
potentially crucially important, metric and a crucial component of Anderson’s “long tail.”
- Relationships and Connections（8）
The concept of influence within a specific community
becomes increasingly important as small communities form and niche
conversations start in
every industry. While an “A-list” blogger may have a large, diverse
audience, he or she may not have an intimate relationship with specific
influential individuals within any given community.
With barriers dropping for the masses to make their voices
heard using social media tools, the need to isolate specific key ideas
is increasingly
important. Whether referring to your company or your competitors, the
question is simply: How relevant to my company is a particular blog post
among hundreds of a given meme? This is a highly subjective but
immensely important attribute that can vary from situation to situation.
- Sentiment/Tone/Favorability（10）
This attribute is also fairly self-evident – not merely
noting that an audience or demographic is responding to an issue or a
message, but what is the
tone or sentiment associated with that response? Generally, the range
in this category is simply “positive,” “negative” or “neutral,” but
even this apparently simple scale can be complex, as content that is
ironic or sarcastic (to choose two examples) can be misconstrued by
analysis that evaluates language too literally, or by an audience or reader whose interpretation can be subject to regional or cultural biases.
In this context, content refers simply to the focus of
coverage of social media. In most cases, this means a narrow, but
extremely detailed, focus on
one subject or issue, and it explains the importance of certain blogs
within their respective niches. Content was generally seen by
roundtable attendees as so intrinsically linked to the focus of a given
social media platform as to be unremarkable; of course content is
important, they said.
根据分析，上述11项指标大致可以分为四类：
- “内容”的相关性
- 第9、11项
- 内容是否与特定的企业、品牌、产品或活动有关系
让我们来看看 Nielsen BuzzMetrics 的衡量指标。
Nielsen BuzzMetrics 是尼尔逊集团网络业务部门的一个服务，专门测量消费者自媒体（Consumer-generated Media），并提供两个产品化的服务 -
BrandPulse 和
BrandPulse Insight 。在其中介绍 BrandPulse Insight 的页面，有一段关于测量指标的描述（另外可以参考
technology ）：
- What’s the buzz about a certain issue, trend, product or piece of news? （1）
- Who’s active online, and what are these online consumers saying? （2）
- Are current trends building or waning? （3）
- Can any emerging trends be detected early, before they catch fire (or fizzle out prematurely?) （4）
- What key motivators influence and affect consumer behavior? （5）
- What are consumer/customer moods and emotions on a particular topic, or about a specific brand? （6）
- Which online consumers are likely candidates for influencer panels and relationship marketing programs? （7）
Nielsen BuzzMetric, 图片来源：网络可以看出来，其指标基本上可以套用“四类划分”的模式 -
传播模式（3、4），传播者（2、5、7）、“内容”的相关性（1）和属性（6）。当然，与前述的白皮书不同，因为是针对寻求解决问题的企业，
Nielsen BuzzMetrics
的测量指标体系少了一些“学术气息”，不仅仅涉及“What”,更关注“Who”、“When”、“How”等问题，具有很大的可操作性，对企业也更有指
导意义。
社会性媒体所涉及的新技术繁多、变化快，而且其传播模式有别于传统媒体，所以衡量指标和测量方法也处于探索的过程中。尽管如此，这个体系的一些基础部分似
乎已经不那么模糊不清了，比如，相关性、传播模式、属性，以及从传统营销的角度进行人口统计交叉分析等。各个企业的情况和需求千差万别，怎样根据特殊的需
求，发展出特定的指标和测量方法，那就是后话了，应做个案处理。