More Metrics: Build a Business Case for Social Media

I should be studying for the Brand Management midterm I have tomorrow morning, but what I just read in one of the chapters got me thinking. Yesterday I read a great blog post on the relevance of social media in business and - finally - there is someone calling for metrics! Today I read about Brand Value Creation and how marketers can evaluate and measure the value created by brands. Combine the two: what role does social media play in brand value creation - so that social media efforts can be measured?

Here's the Brand Value Chain (from Kevin Lane Keller's Strategic Brand Management book):

The value chain starts with the assumption that the brand ultimately resides with the consumer and and the value creation process begins when the firm invests in a marketing program targeting actual or potential customers.

Price premium, price elasticities, market share, cost structure, and profitability are all objective measurements. So are stock prices, P/E ratio and market cap! Compare these metrics before the marketing program and then again after implementation. It may not be 100% correlated, but taking market place conditions and investor sentiment into consideration should allow marketers to attribute come of the favorable growth to the brand contribution.

Relating this to social media and the blog post I read yesterday, Tom Webber believes that in order for social media to be really effective, it needs to have a strategy that goes beyond the marketing department and allow "rank-and-file employee to be a real human, to stop the assembly line (like a Toyota factory employee can) and communicate transparently with customers and prospects". This feels like that Employee line under Marketing Program Investment.One of the big reasons why the Starbucks brand is so strong - with little to no national advertising btw - is because of the people and the service you receive at Starbucks. Social media is kind of a way that other non-retail companies can make employees be a part of the brand. That seems like a very strong association to me. (I think I have drifted from my initial thoughts on metrics.)

Back to the point, social media, when used not just as a marketing tool, but also as a way to establish a real connection with followers, can greatly affect the consumer mindset. Social media probably doesn't do a whole lot around Awareness and could play a little in Associations and Attitudes. But I bet that social media can go gang-buster for growing brand Attachment and brand Activity. Attachment: the consumer's resistance to change and the ability of a brand to withstand bad news (a.k.a. - price elasticities). Activity: extent to which customers use the brand, talk to others about the brand, seek out brand information. Yeah, sounds like social media to me: re-tweet, blog about, comment, fan on Facebook... Could be market share, price elasticities, and extension success.

Another block to the case. Thoughts?