In the world of sports, “scorecards” are thin rectangular pieces of stiff, shiny paper used for keeping game records and, especially in team sports, for identifying players by name, number and position.

Like their print world namesakes, digital scorecards used in social media applications can provide both long-term looks at extended programs and campaigns, plus quick “snapshot” status reports of current activities and “players.”

Digital scorecards provide more than just a screen populated with fancy performance graphics. Like business intelligence (BI) dashboards (see Part I of this post), they can be full-fledged business information systems designed to help organizations achieve strategic objectives. They can help measure the past, monitor the present, and forecast the future, allowing an organization to adjust its strategy and tactics in realtime to optimize performance.

While dashboards track metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) and present data with colorful charts and graphs, scorecards typically are used to document strategic programs, initiatives, metrics, goals and timeframes.

The Social Media Marketing Scorecard can focus on relevant details from particular campaigns.

Netbase Insight Scorecards are designed to be used by business professionals, including consumer insights managers, market research managers, marketing managers and brand managers engaged in social media activities.

The Netbase Insight Scorecards provide three key metrics of online brand equity, shown in comparison to the competition and with one year of historical trending:

• Share of Buzz—How much people are talking about your brand.
• Net Sentiment—How positively they perceive your brand.
• Passion Intensity—How emotionally charged their feelings are.

In addition, the Scorecards track the volume of conversation around a set of key conversation drivers. These can be known brand attributes or they can be themes that emerge from a social brand audit.

Kaplan-Norton Balanced Scorecard

The Social Media Marketing Campaign Scorecard is based on the traditional Balanced Scorecard – a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals.

The Balanced Scorecard was originated by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton as a performance measurement framework that added strategic non-financial performance measures to traditional financial metrics to give managers and executives a more ‘balanced’ view of organizational performance.

In their 1996 “The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action,” Kaplan and Norton evaluated business impact from four perspectives:

• Financial
• Customer
• Internal Processes
• Learning and Growth

Social Media Benchmarking Scorecards

A Nov. 2010 report by Forrester Research titled “The ROI of Social Media Marketing” contains a benchmarking scorecard (inspired by the Kaplan-Norton book) geared toward helping brands evaluate how and why their social media initiatives work (or fail).

According to the Forrester report, the best way to properly value the impact of social media marketing investments and assess social media initiatives is to align objectives, metrics, targets and strategies across four perspectives:

1. Financial: Has revenue or profit increased or costs decreased?
2. Digital: Has the company enhanced its owned and earned digital assets?
3. Brand: Have consumer attitudes about the brand improved?
4. Risk Management: Is the organization better prepared to note and respond to attacks or problems that affect reputation?

The benefits of a balanced scorecard will allow companies to align measurement on all corporate objectives, rather than focusing simply on sales.

“A properly designed social media marketing Balanced Scorecard validates achievement of broad-based objectives rather than merely counting dollars,” the report states.

Part I: Social Media Marketing Campaign Reporting – Dashboards

Contact Digital Eye Media for information on how to Create and Manage your Social Media Marketing Campaigns: P: (949) 900-3017; sales@digitaleyemedia.com.