Finding 3 Metrics that Measure the Value of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is the process of engagement with influencers with a view to increasing the engagement between the influencer's audience and an individual or company  or "X" who aims to conduct influencer marketing... to measure the success of such online social engagement between “X” and an influencer there are a number of metrics you can use.

Influencer Engagement

One, measure the level of engagement between the influencer and "X": The process to measure the level of engagement from an influencer can be difficult because you have to pinpoint any interaction, and show that interaction over time. It's one thing to measure in a snapshot of time, but another to continuously measure the interaction from an influencer.

One step would be catalog all of the influencer's sources of media content production; Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, their blog, media columns; and make a note of any traffic from those locations to "X"'s media. Over time you'll be able to track the volume of references from an influencer. Here we are attempting to track the level of engagement from the influencer rather than the influencer’s audience.

One way to distinguish between the influencer's audience social participation and the influencer would be to track the IP address of the influencer. Within Salesforce, it is possible to group traffic from distinct sources on the web, you’ll have to list out the influencer’s media, and then set up salesforce so that any traffic from those sources is characterized as emanating from the influencer.

Audience Engagement

Two, measuring the level of engagement from an influencer's audience and "X: here you'll track traffic, other metrics, plus track any resulting conversions.  Within Salesforce you'll be able to attribute any traffic or conversions from an influencer.

Marketers are familiar with providing a tracking URL for social media and email marketing, and it’s certainly worthwhile giving such unique tracking URLs to influencers if they are open to using those unique URLs within their media, but often it’s not possible to directly ask an influencer to use a unique tracking URL because such a request will be seen as self-promotional on the part of “X”, rather you’ll produce the exact opposite of the intended interaction, the influencer may ignore “X”.

Network or Multi-Level Engagement

Three, you can distinguish engagement from an audience or other influencers who discovered "X" via an influencer. Here you'll have to track new traffic derived from an influencer over time.

While this process is difficult because it's tough to traffic indirect traffic to "X" via an influencer. It is possible to measure some results directly to "X"'s media if you set up your CRM or analytics system's to track traffic from an influencer's media sources over time. In this way you'll be able to determine if social engagement with influencers produces results, thereby measuring the value of influencer marketing and justifying the value of social engagement.