Gary Stein at Clickz shares his list of The 5 Biggest Mistakes Measuring Social Media.

Check them out. It's a good post, well-written.

But, it's written from the perspective of a social media agency. That doesn't discredit the post, the perspective, the author. That's not what I'm saying.

However, it's not the perspective of a business owner, founder, principal, CEO, CFO. Their perspective is... cash. And in particular, cash-flow.

I remain amazed at how so few social media agencies, marketing boutiques, branding agencies, whatever, talk about... cash and cash-flow. For their clients. And how their agency improves the cash-flow of their clients.

Now, maybe that oversight is the oversight of the client. Perhaps. But that oversight is short-lived among those organizations who continue to survive and thrive. The rest continue to overlook their cash-flows and soon have none and no cash to discuss. And no business to discuss, either.

Ultimately, you do two things in any organization, for-profit or not.

  • You either increase cash-flows or you decrease your cash-flows.
  • You either increase your cash reserves or you decrease them.
  • You either retain control of your destiny or you relinquish control to lenders and investors.
And all metrics, results, tactics and strategies downstream into this metric. Otherwise, the organization no longer exists.

The advocates of social media too often overlook a grand opportunity for its advancement (and theirs). And that opportunity rests in connecting their metrics (conversations, clicks, follows, friends, whatever) with a key metric for their client: cash-flows.

Failing to even discuss, much less measure, social media's impact on a client's cash-flow not only is the 6th biggest mistake, it remains THE biggest mistake in measuring social media.


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