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This study aims to investigate how a sample of US municipalities use social media for strategic communication, focusing on efforts to effectively measure and evaluate that communication. Research questions focus on measurement and evaluation practices, as well as the motivations and impacts associated with these practices.

This research uses a qualitative approach. Interviews were conducted with 12 municipal government personnel responsible for social media communication. The self-selected participants represent 10 states and all US Census regions. Data was content analyzed and categorized according to four research questions, with emergent themes described.

The results show a diverse set of approaches and motivations, with surface-level measurement and evaluation methods. Initial efforts at more ad hoc use of social media are moving toward more deliberate strategies, but limited resources inhibit progress for some municipalities.

Few studies exist which explore how US municipalities formally measure and evaluate their social media activities as part of their overall strategic communication efforts. This study adds to the existing literature by providing insight into the measurement and evaluation practices that municipalities use to assess their social media communication. The study also provides a basis for larger and deeper investigations of municipal strategic communication practices related to measurement and evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are using social media and how they should measure its return on investment (ROI). The measurement of economic value associated with the use of social media by business is discussed in order to construct a model designed for analysing the ROI of social media for SMEs. The importance of a planned entry into the social media arena, formulation of measurable goals and objectives and understanding the business process are presented as vital pre-cursors to measuring, and indeed attaining, ROI.

A literature review was compiled to explore the current thinking that exists on business use and measurement of social media in mainstream academic literature and other business-oriented publications. Primary research in the form of a survey was conducted with SMEs to determine the usefulness of social media and how SMEs measure its ROI.

SMEs find some social media applications more valuable than others but 65 per cent of the companies surveyed did not measure the ROI. An overarching framework, aimed at SMEs, is presented which advocates that SMEs should take a strategic focus and plan their use of social media, and draw insight from both quantitative and qualitative data when measuring ROI.

Most existing research on social media is related to large organisations and tends to focus on technical and commercial use rather than examining the value and ROI gained from social media from an SME perspective. This paper offers a simple framework to help SMEs plan their use of social media as well as measure its true value.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on measuring the contribution generated by social media when used for business purposes, distinguishing between metrics and methods for data collection and data analysis. Organizations worldwide have widely endorsed social media, but available studies on the contribution generated by these technologies for organizations are fragmented. A performance measurement system (PMS) framework to monitor social media is theoretically derived, highlighting the methods for data collection and data analysis and metrics to quantify social media impacts in terms of financials, network structure, interactions, conversations and users’ opinion.

This is a qualitative research based on a literature review of papers in management, information technology, marketing and public relations.

A PMS framework to quantify the contribution of social media is theoretically derived, distinguishing between metrics and methods. PMS metrics support the measurement of the financial and relational impact of social media, as well as the impact of social media conversations and users’ opinions. PMS methods comprise different approaches for data collection and data analysis that range from manual to automated data collection and from content to sentiment analysis techniques.

The PMS framework contributes to the academic literature by integrating a unique model of the available approaches for social media measurement that can serve as a basis for future research directions. The framework also supports practitioners that face necessity to quantify financial and relational contributions of social media as well as the contribution of social media conversation and users’ opinion.

It seems that the Internet boom, which started at the end of the 1990s and finished with the spectacular collapse of the so-called dotcoms, is probably over. We are currently enjoying a period of fast and stable growth. This is manifested by the growing number of both Internet users and companies which – to an ever-increasing extent – use the Internet as a form of communication (both internal and external), promotion, sales etc. Expenditures on Internet advertising are growing continuously and now constitute more than 25% of all advertising expenditure. A natural consequence of this development is the need for the standardisation and organisation of the world of the Internet. These activities will result in a greater awareness of the benefits which this medium provides, increasing the possibilities of its use, and – most importantly – the opportunity to evaluate the return on investments made on the Internet. Nowadays, it is clear that many companies are striving to increase the quality of their activities on the Internet or to improve the effectiveness of such activities. As a consequence, the number of companies that look for indices which would enable the making of more precise and effective decisions in the scope of online operations is growing.

This chapter is dedicated to the phenomenon of the increasing role of the Internet in business, including the scale of its use by Polish and international companies. We present the most commonly used measures of marketing activities on the Internet and in social media. This group includes the indices which make it possible to determine whether a company actually needs a website. Other measures allow for the improvement in the effectiveness of the activity on the Internet, whereas others specify the costs of activities on the Internet and often serve as the basis for settlements between a company and advertising agencies or companies specialising in website design. It is worth emphasising that the Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned (PESO) model, worked out by Don Bartholomew,¹ is the basis for creation and description of indices concerning social media. This model has gained certain popularity in the social media industry. It does not, however, specify how individual indices should be named and calculated. It maps already existing indices and adapts them to specific levels of marketing communication measurement. All the measures indicated by the author of the model have been grouped into five major areas: exposure, engagement, brand awareness, action and recommendations. This model– similarly to all models of performance measurement – inspired by the sales funnel concept, adjusts certain standard indices and proposals of measurements for specific levels. Additionally, the measures are divided into four types, depending on who the owner of the content is: Paid (P) – refers to all forms of paid content; Owned (O) – all websites and web properties controlled by a company or brand; Earned (E) – the contents about a given brand created spontaneously by Internet users; and Shared (S) – the contents shared by Internet users.

Understanding what organizational factors enable a successful social media presence is a relevant issue for academics and practicing managers. The purpose of this investigation is to thus develop and validate a scale to measure a social media marketing system (SMMS).

This paper follows a rigorous scale development process based on three stages: item generation, measurement development and instrument testing. The validity and reliability tests were conducted using data provided by social media managers and the managers' supervisors.

The results validate a 25-item multidimensional SMMS scale that exhibits adequate internal consistency, reliability, construct validity and nomological validity. The results also show that the SMMS scale positively correlates with outcomes that are key to firm success (social media strategy success and marketing performance).

This paper conceptualizes SMMS through four dimensions, namely formalization, human resource management, co-creation and marketing planning, and the paper associates SMMS to important firm outcomes. The newly developed measurement instrument adds to the small repository of research scales relevant to social media and can serve as a springboard from which future work can understand social media from both an internal management perspective and an integrated outlook.

As social media are essentially different from traditional media, due to their social networking structures and egalitarian nature, conventional media metrics are not appropriate. Social media networks have nevertheless become another communications channel that companies use to achieve their marketing goals. Even though the measurement of marketing constructs in social media is elusive, a comprehensive means of measuring engagement is proposed for a successful social media site: Twitter. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

A measurement for customer engagement based on conceptual reflections is presented in the context of Twitter.

A new environment fostered by internet obliges companies to manage social media accounts and to assess engagement with company brands. To do so, companies need to analyze engagement trends by means of a metric, helping them to design an appropriate engagement strategy. The proposed metric provides much needed insight for companies to fine-tune their engagement strategy. Moreover, a means of calculating engagement from the parameters that Twitter makes available to the public is also proposed.

The metric for engagement in Twitter that is proposed in this paper will be the starting point for future improvements through a conceptual and empirical discussion on this issue.

This is the first proposal specifically designed for Twitter, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, for measuring engagement.

This paper aims to discuss the individual participation and involvement affecting the user engagement in social media and to answer the following research questions: Is it possible to measure the individual participation and involvement of social media within organizations? Which factors should be analysed in order to increase the individual participation in social media? Which KPIs should be selected in order to increase the user ' s engagement and increase individual participation in social media? Can social media in a company be measured in terms of their impact on KM?

This paper presents a case study that describes how Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used to monitor and manage the applications of social technologies, which include many tools facilitating the participation and collaboration on the web. The case study was applied to the information and communication technology area of Eni S.p.A., which is an integrated energy company active in over 70 countries in the world.

Based on the indications obtained from the case study, a methodology is proposed to select and develop the appropriate KPIs in order to manage and monitor the application of social technologies. The methodology turned out to be able to monitor collaboration and knowledge sharing activities among employees and to incentivize participation and involvement of employees who use the company ' s social media.

Organizations can use the suggested methodology as a guideline for managing and monitoring social media inside a company. The possibility of continuously modifying the adopted social media tool by means of corrective actions together with the possibility of adapting the KPIs to new situations make the present methodology an efficient management approach to take on the multifaceted activities of a social media environment.

Few case studies dealing with the applications regarding the implementation and management of social technologies within organizations have been carried out. Similarly, even if some empirical studies have been proposed to analyse what motivates and prevents employees from sharing their knowledge through social media, there appears to be a lack of studies which have taken into consideration the evaluation of the actual benefits in terms of individual involvement and participation, knowledge sharing and increase in performance.

This chapter presents results of a qualitative study among European champions in social media management. It aims to describe a strategic process and its implications for social media strategic management.

The chapter is based on four in-depth case studies involving both primary and secondary data analysis and interviews.

Social media management is governed by similar principles as corporate communication management. However, there is an important role of personal preferences of senior executives for an effectiveness of the strategic process.

The model allows describing the social media management in the multinational companies. Organizational learning process drawn in this chapter can be directly applied in the multinational companies from various industries.

Social media create an environment in which established actors need to learn how to communicate socially. Sophistication of the tools requires sophistication of the strategies and processes.

This chapter analyzes companies from various industries which are considered successful in social media strategic management. It creates a model which is applicable in various industries. It provides also insights into social media strategies from the research among social media global leaders.