There is a lot of discussion about how companies should/can rate the effectiveness of social media. One interesting assessment is the Sprout Social Index.
As reported by Douglass Karr for Marketing Technology Blog:
“5 out of every 6 requests made by consumers on social media to a business go unanswered. Businesses continue to make the terrible mistake of utilizing social media as a broadcast medium rather than recognizing its impact as a communication medium. Long ago, companies recognized the importance of managing inbound calls since customer satisfaction is directly attributable to retention and increased customer value.”
“The volume of social media requests have increased 77% year over year. But the response has only been a 5% increase by businesses. That’s a huge gap! Why aren’t social requests getting the same attention? My guess is that consumers don’t expect a response as they do via phone so they’re not getting as upset as they do when sitting on a call that goes unanswered. But the opportunity for businesses to truly make a social impact is huge in most industries… especially knowing that your competitors aren’t responsive!”
“The Sprout Social Index is a report compiled and released by Sprout Social. All referenced data is based on 18,057 public social profiles (9,106 Facebook; 8,951 Twitter) of continually active accounts between Q1 2013 and Q2 2014. More than 160 million messages sent during that time were analyzed for the purposes of this report.”