Social media marketers 'should consider metrics more'

Advertisers making use of social media would do well to invest more time and effort in ensuring they are capable of effectively tracking and measuring marketing returns.

This is according to E-consultancy research analyst Aliya Zaidi, who said that measuring social media marketing returns "is of key importance" but can often prove difficult to put into practice.

She explained that advertisers should refrain from perceiving measurement as something to be tacked onto existing campaigns as it can be hard to call for social media marketing budget increases when it is not possible to demonstrate how successful such strategies can be.

"To derive the most value from social media, marketers need to first tie down exactly what they want to achieve and then determine how to measure success," Ms Zaidi remarked.

Meanwhile, experts at the recent Conversational Marketing Summit in New York discussed the issue of metrics and possible alternatives to the cost-per-thousand impressions and click-through rate measurements for online advertisers, as well as whether metrics should be standardised, CNET News.com reports.