Introduction: Almost a billion users, each of whom discover new people, new Likes, and new things to share

on a daily basis. Its no wonder that businesses would want to be a part of the action, beyond stamp ads and Sponsored Stories. But what were missing is a silver bullet that will automatically sync business objectives and social strategy and, and provide the metrics on a platter. So many a times were stuck with Likes and Comments as our only measurement parameters, which is a pity because there are frameworks out there, not universal truths, but ones which can guide us towards making our own. In the next few minutes, well look at a few options, and try to figure out Life after Like? The flow will be the evolution of measurement, and then the why, what and how of the topic.
1. Now: The Ehrenberg-Bass institute, based in Australia and supported by

P&G, Coke etc came up with this number 1.3 as the average % of fans who interact with a brand after the Like. This number is based on 'People Talking About this', Facebooks own metric based on the number of unique users who have created a story about a page in a seven-day period. This could be liking a page, liking a post on the page, commenting on a post, sharing a post, tagging the page in a photo, checking in at a place, and so on. Despite this huge list, only 1.3% of a pages fans interact with the brand, and if you take away the laziest thing you can do on Facebook Like - then it comes down to 0.45%. How did we get here?
2. Founded: In the beginning, as Facebook began rising in prominence,

brands approached it in the only way they knew- like traditional media, without evaluating the potential of the platform. The single minded objective was to get as many fans and Likes in the shortest time possible, without a thought to the value being provided to the fan. This fans race continued, until someone asked So What.. if you have a zillion Likes, is it doing something for your business? It rarely was, and we understood that there really wasnt any Return On Fans & Likes. (ROFL ;) ) We were forced to think more, and came up with a new buzzword Engage.
3. Dude, Let's Engage: From simple definitions like Monthly Active Users

as a percentage of Lifetime Likes to slightly more complex social psychology based definitions, we were all over the place. We were probably trying to match the Facebook Edgerank Algorithm itself - thats still a bit of rocket science. But somewhere in the search for the one Engagement Index to rule them all, we realised that a great engagement strategy for one brand could be a facepalm for another. There's nothing wrong with Engagement as a concept per se, the trick is in defining it correctly for your purposes.
4. Defining Engagement: When the US judge Potter Stewart was

pronouncing his judgment on an obscenity case, the words he used were I know it when I see it. Good brand engagement is a bit like that- hard

to define, easy to recognise. Fundamentally, it is important for brands to understand the kind of value exchange that they are going to focus on Is it the product? For example, a Nike+ that goes beyond exercise and tracking and is able to bring engagement into it by allowing friends to say, encourage you towards your goals. Is it the content? For example, at Myntra, we use Style Tips and trend reports to help consumers understand fashion better and apply it to their regular consumption. Is it social itself? For example, Zynga for a lot of people is about tending farms and milking cows, but if I had to simplistically put it, it is connecting people through game mechanics. The value is social itself. On the web, there are many frameworks that allow us to start thinking about this syncing of business objectives and value creation. Eg. The Altimeter Compass gives us six business goals where social can help. Booz & Co shows the various levels of the marketing funnel and how social platforms can help in each. Defining engagement requires understanding the motivations of users and how they relate to your domain. A study by IBM showed that what users wanted from brands on FB and what brands thought users wanted from them were quite different. The perception gap, if any, needs to be bridged before we proceed. The other thing to understand is that engagement is a means, not an end. Well look at a few ends in the next few slides. But first, a few other means.
5. Stepping Out for a Moment: When youre tying business objectives to

social metrics, you will face the question of what platforms you should be on. Though Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla in the space, there are other networks too, which have features that can provide additional or complementary value. You could do excellent customer care on twitter like Zappos, you could entice consumers to walk into your retail store and reward loyalty with Foursquare. You could create content for thought leadership by blogging on WP, Blogger, Tumblr etc. You could make the organisation itself more social using Yammer for collaboration. YouTube, Pinterest are channels that can (at a fundamental level) increase referral visits and drive brand awareness. LinkedIn can help you create a great employer brand. You could use Google+ hangouts to connect different kinds of internal and external stakeholders. Now, a few ends on facebook.
6. Facebook as Media: Thanks to the 850 million + user base and brands

amassing huge numbers of Likes, the platform acts as a media in itself. The chart on the left shows that Facebook is right up there in terms of referral traffic. Like all other media, it offers paid, earned, owned options. Of course, brand managers would tell you about pwned media too, when users get annoyed at brands. In addition theres Promoted Media using Sponsored Stories and Shared media, especially if you use social plugins on your site. Like all other media, it is a tube of sorts, through which you can pass content from the site/blog, introduce new

products/service features, job postings, brand and corporate communication, sales pitches and promotions.How do you measure this? Facebook Insights itself gives you demographic details age, gender, location, as well as your contents reach (organic/paid/viral, unique users by frequency to measure if were growing repeat consumers). Also available are People Talking About This, Engaged Users etc. Its a huge excel sheet. Additionally, a simple utm_source tag to links would help you track traffic to your destination in Google Analytics. If youve done tonality experiments on Facebook, a couple of questions in your Brand Track could tell you its effects. If youve tried promotions, you could either test absolute response or compare it to promotions outside. Overall, you could compare your Facebook cost/reach to other media. Timeline apps now allow a whole new way of word of mouth eg. Gaana, Pinterest, Spotify
7. Facebook for Sales: Despite the impressive stats, f-commerce is

getting a beating and many brands like GAP, JC Penney have closed their shopfronts on facebook. But there is a less vocal bunch who are using the social and interest graph to better effect. They are experimenting with exclusive deals, pre and post purchase sharing to friends on the network Tescos fitting room for F&F is an example of that, Diesel Cam is a dated but impressive example of how the brand has integrated the social network with offline stores. Using the social graph to kickstart group buying within Facebook. Levis use of the Open Graph is a much abused example as well. It can be measured by actual Transactions, transaction value, repeat Transactions, especially in comparison to other channels and as earlier, cost/sale compared to other channels.
8. Facebook for Customer Connect: Listen is probably one of the

things that every social media practitioner would advise as a first step. These days, when social platforms allow everyone to be a publisher, it provides a great way to understand what users want from your brand. Once you start engaging, from experience, setting the scope right would help manage expectations. In addition, social platforms help surface links to existing resources, helps brands take baby steps into sCRM by connecting the dots across various platforms. Another excellent use case is identifying or even creating super fans. Over a period of time, it is possible to measure the effects of these efforts by tracking reduction in Call volumes, the number of community-resolved issues, C-Sat indices eg. Turn Around Time, positive mentions of the brand on social media with relation to its customer care, and referrals on social media from existing customers.
9. Facebook for Insights: Social platforms enable brands to collate

experiences, perceptions and opinions of consumers on everything from product design and features to marketing communication and service delivery. Even if youre not keeping a watch on competition, your

consumers often draw comparisons giving you insights on perception and experience. Its also a great place to test ideas. Eg. Before Xmas, we asked users what theyd like to gift their favourite people and from many options, they chose watches. We wrote a how to buy the perfect watch for your loved one post which was well received. For insights on which offline marketing platform was working well for us, we asked on Facebook and got several insights. One excellent creative use that Ive seen recently that combines great engagement with insights is the Dominos Social Pizza asking consumers to vote for pizza ingredients, naming the pizza and finally having it on the official menu. The measurement can be through the quality and quantity of feedback, Resonance of idea among larger audience. So these are a few ways in which you can use FB and find relevant metrics.
10. Now: And that brings us now to the conclusion. This is one of my

favourite toons from gapingvoid. Business is socializing with a purpose. Like I said earlier, each brands needs to juxtapose its business objectives with social platforms and find a purpose/s that aligns well with both. To quote a famous person who founded the 850 million user behemoth Done is better than perfect. So throw it out there, see if it sticks, measure it, learn from it, improvise. Rinse, repeat. And if you find a silver bullet, let me know.