By Chris Lee

The UK’s social media marketing industry has burgeoned in recent years. As the need to measure the effectiveness and impact of campaigns, and to strategise on future social media engagement, has grown so an active community of social media marketers has got together on a monthly basis to tackle these very issues.

Measurement Camp, the brainchild of Brighton-based social media agency NixonMcInnes, describes itself as a “monthly meet up for people to discuss different ways of tracking social media campaigns and activity. We compare tactics; think of ways to improve it and wonder if there will ever be a standard set of metrics against which to judge success by.”

According to NixonMcInnes’ co-founder and meeting compeer Will McInnes, attendees are “all here to help and all here to give.” NMK’s Chris Lee went along to the January meet-up to get social...

Measuring Up

Measurement Camp aims to include presentations, discussions and practical work groups into its traditional two-hour slot, and invites guest speakers each month. January’s event kicked off with a discussion around “the most important contribution herd thinking makes to social media”, to which attendees paired off into twos, then fours, then eights to see if they could achieve a consensus.

Measurement Camp attendees, typically from marketing, PR or copywriting backgrounds, did generally concur that the most important thing “herd thinking” contributes to social media is the ability to rapidly build up momentum, quickly identify key influencers – such as celebrity bloggers – although it does increase risk.

As one attendee commented; “When you get [social media] right, you get it very right. But when you get it wrong you get it very wrong.”

The debate continued with a presentation from Internet statisticians, comScore, on the effectiveness of social media advertising, and culminated in an open discussion followed by an update on the industry’s upcoming social calendar.

Max Factor

One regular Measurement Camper is Max Tatton-Brown of technology PR agency, AxiCom. According to Tatton-Brown; “if you've ever been along to one of the larger social media events and come away disappointed by the same old case studies and lack of interactivity, Measurement Camp is the place for you.”

Tatton-Brown believes that the focus on discussion, presentation and discovery back toward the bigger picture of social media measurement helps generate a creative atmosphere for debate.

“[Measurement Camp] is a collaborative exercise, the highlight of which features small groups bashing out solutions to the participants' real world problems,” he told NMK. “Short punchy presentations are tied strongly to real life case studies and serve as a starting point for discussion rather than dominating it. Because of the broad audience, you hear from a much wider range of examples than the standard well worn touch points.”

For more on Measurement Camp, visit its website or follow it on Twitter.