Measuring what matters

Each of the social media books we've read so far have focused on similar key messages: the growth of social media, social media engagement and real-time social media use. I'm excited to dig into a book with a different focus. Katie Paine's Measure What Matters is all about measuring in order to prosper and continuously improve your business.

I've worked for my family's excavating company for a little over two years now. When I first started working for the business I did a lot of job tracking - recording stone quantities, fuel quantities, equipment usage and labor expenses. This job was frustrating to me because I spent many hours a week plugging these numbers into a computer but no one really used the data for anything; it just sat there. In Chapter 1 of Measure What Matters, Katie Paine says "It used to be that 'he or she with the most data wins.' But today nothing is cheaper and easier to come by than data–especially useless data. It's having the right data that counts" (p. 4).  Since I've taken over new duties for the family company, we've added a new position and a new software system that allows the company to track all of these quantities, analyze the data and estimate job costs. As the family company continues to grow and improve, measurement becomes more and more important.

The same can be said for social media use within a business. We know how important it is for companies to have a social media presence - to listen to what stakeholders are saying about them and engage in conversation when appropriate. But how valuable is social media to your business if you're not measuring the results and evaluating what your market is saying about you? How do businesses grow and improve their social media presence if they are not measuring the data?

Measurement is about more than counting. Measurement takes data, evaluates the data's meaning and uses the evaluation to improve business practices. According to Measure What Matters, setting up a measurement program for your business can save time and money, help allocate budget and staff, give you a better understanding of your competition, assist in strategic planning and reveal the strengths and weaknesses of your business.