This week, we begin a series of posts introducing the basics of measuring the ROI of social media marketing. We begin by making sure everyone’s on the same page, terminology-wise.

If you’re an awe.sm user, you’ve probably noticed that we distinguish between Posts and Shares — and if you’re new to awe.sm, or just checking out our demo, you’ll notice this soon. Here’s what we mean.

Social media is marketing — so describe it that way

awe.sm’s motivating principle is that, for businesses, social media is not a mystical being, it’s a form of marketing. Its technology and power are certainly revolutionary, and properly capturing its ROI requires purpose-built measurement, but ultimately social is just another form of marketing. This means you can classify it alongside the other tools in a marketer’s belt.

All media is owned, paid for, or earned

In simpler times, it was easy to categorize your marketing communications: advertising, public relations, and word of mouth. Here’s how you could sort those:

• Your owned media — sales brochures, store signage, website copy, white papers, newsletters… — consist of content you produce, distributed on channels you own.

   

• Advertising and PR — radio commercials, print ads, press tours, roadside billboards, late-night infomercials, leaflets dropped from helicopters… — are paid media. You might be amplifying some of your own marketing communications — like paying a publicist to pitch editors, paying a publication to run your content as an advertorial, or renting your neighbor’s building to paint a sign that’s bigger than what fits on your own shop — but if you have to pay for it, it’s paid media. If you stop paying your ad agency, your flack, and your neighbor, this media ceases to exist.
• Word of mouth is the holy grail: free marketing for you! When people recommend your product to their friends; when bloggers and journalists discuss you; when your commercial gets free replays in the nightly news… — is earned media. It was that great; you earned it. (Go you!)

These are obviously deeply connected and interdependent — for example, PR agencies take your money on the premise that your paid media will “go viral” and become earned media. And like any classification system, it’s imperfect. But it’s simple enough.

Social is owned, paid, or earned, too

• Owned: These are posts you make to your own social channels. Your Tweets; posts to your brand’s Facebook page; Pins to Pinterest albums. This is what most people think of first in social media marketing, and it’s the piece over which you have the most control — but it’s only one piece.

• Paid: As social networks mature, they tend to roll out sophisticated advertising tools, and (by sheer coincidence) brands’ organic reach decreases, so paying to amplify one’s own posts, seeding social content with paid influencers, or sponsoring hashtags or discussion topics only continues to grow. From a tracking perspective, paid posts aren’t dissimilar from owned posts — but measuring their performance is even more important.

• Earned: Any of your social posts and site content that your followers and visitors share — within a social network by amplifying (like re-Tweeting, re-Pinning, mentioning), or off your site via share buttons or tracked URL-bar sharing. Bang-for-buck, earned sharing is the most powerful form of social media marketing (users promoting your content… for you!) but too often is the least understood.

Measuring the ROI of traditional marketing requires understanding how all these different parts interact and combine. It should be no surprise that measuring the ROI of social media marketing requires a similarly holistic view. To help you optimize and create value, make sense of how your posts and shares perform individually, in aggregate, and in relation to one another.

Now that you have an idea of what we classify how, and why, you’re on your way to being awe.sm, too.

Coming up Thursday: the social media funnel. Too impatient to wait? Want to learn how specifically to optimize your social media marketing strategy? Schedule a demo.

*Originally published on the awe.sm blog