Two articles have my attention this week, and they’re both about how to quantify what you’re doing on social media.

Up first is a fairly in-depth look at the value of a like from the Harvard Business Review. I’m loving this because the data set is huge- 23 experiments with over 18,000 people. One of my main concerns about the stats we see on social media is that the research is often done as content marketing, which means the people doing the research are probably trying to sell you something. That doesn’t mean it’s inaccurate, but it always makes me a little suspicious. That’s not something I worry about with this article.

The second article focuses on (yet another) mistake that Facebook admits to making in its metrics. This one is a relatively small miscount on video carousel ads, but it’s also the 10th one made public. Companies are getting understandably nervous about spending money on social if they can’t trust the data get back. You can check out a few bonus reads on the topic from AdAge and the Wall Street Journal.

About the author:
Tara Saylor is a communications manager by day, grad student by night and curious all the time. She is also a web nerd and recovering copywriter. Tara focuses on the channels that enable communication and using metrics to improve communication effectiveness. She tweets about communication and combines as @AnokheeTara.

Blog