Like a good pilot, aviation marketers should chart a course for identifying social media direction, measurement metrics, and business results.

The Altimeter Group published an open research study entitled “A Framework for Social Analytics”. They propose a social media measurement compass as a way to keep social media activities on course and measure social media’s impact on achieving business goals.

My interpretation for aviation marketers is that they should take a granular look at their business operations for areas of opportunity beyond marketing where social media can enhance business process and revenue generation.

6 points of the social media measurement compass:

1. Brand Health

A measurement of how people feel, talk, and act towards your brand.

Measurement Metric:

• Sources of positive, negative or neutral sentiment
• Number of brand followers
• Number of re-tweets

2. Marketing Optimization

Social data used to learn how programs perform, and drive decision for making new content and campaigns.

Measurement Metric:

• Revenues
• Conversions
• Leads per dollars spent compared to outbound marketing

3. Revenue Generation

Understand the role of social media in the considered purchase process and then fine tune it to support ways influencers and purchasers use social platforms in context with your brand.

Measurement Metric:

• Leads by channel
• Conversions by channel
• Stated intent to purchase

4. Operational Efficiency

Understand how social media delivers hard and soft cost containment over time.

Measurement Metric:

• Percentage of inquiries in social channels that were resolved with out 1-to-1 chat or call center call

5. Customer Experience

Social media’s impact on the customer’s attitude. How people talk about your brand or product when you’re not there.

Measurement Metric:

• Common key words
• Common topics in social platforms and networks versus CRM/Call center

6. Innovation

Monitoring the social web for feedback and ideas that identify opportunities and reduce risk.

Measurement Metric:

• Terms such as “idea,” “I wish,” “I love,” “I hate” in relation to brand and competitors

The above metrics represent a small fraction of what can be learned and measured. With that said, aviation marketers will have to build their own set of metrics based on data that is important to executive level decision makers in their business. One thing to remember is that if the metric does not correspond to a result, it probably is not worth measuring.

Click the link to view the complete presentation “A Frame work for Social Analytics”