Are CMO’s Tracking Social Media and WOM?

We all know that social media and word of mouth marketing is great and powerful, but if you’re not measuring it or tracking it correctly then how do you know it’s working?  PPC for example is very easy to track and measure.  You are given clear stats as to what you put in and how much you got out.  Things aren’t as black and white with social media and word of mouth, but that doesn’t mean that companies should not be tracking or monitoring it.

According to a recent Adage article:

“The survey of 400 executives found that 56% said their companies have no programs to track or propagate positive word-of-mouth; 59% don’t compensate any employees based on improvements in customer loyalty or satisfaction; and only 30% rated their companies highly in their ability to handle or resolve customer complaints.”

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Apparently one of the greatest challenges for marketing executives when it comes to social media and WOM is ownership.  There are a lot of departments that now have a stake in social media and WOM, we’re talking about everyone from the PR department to the HR department.  Everyone now has some say and some for of ownership and accountability.  Perhaps companies need their own social media marketing department?

Perhaps there is a serious gap in education but I don’t understand how companies are having trouble monitoring positive and/or negative WOM.  Google Alerts, techrigy, radian6, etc. are all tools that are designed for exactly this purpose; to track and monitor brand and competitor conversations online.  Here’s a whole list of free online brand monitoring tools and here is a list of important social media metrics that companies should be looking at it.

Perhaps the issue is that we are focusing too much on tools and methodology and less on the creative aspect of social media and WOM.  I’m a firm believe that it’s great to know the tools and techniques out there, but that’s now what drives successful WOM or social media campaigns.  In order to succeed you have to be clever and you have to be creative.

There is clearly a problem here, what do you think it is and how do we solve it?