The impact of social media on a company’s brand can be evaluated through a variety of methods – ranging from KPI reporting to building advanced analytical models. The below is a list of some potential methods. Note, when analyzing social media impact, be sure to control for social media only and exclude the impact from other advertising channels (e.g., traditional media).Key Performance Indicators—Social media platforms often provide a range of key metrics that can be downloaded and tracked over time. Some of these include:Reach and Number of ImpressionsSocial Interactions (e.g., Number of Followers / Likes / Shares / Brand Mentions - e.g., tagging, etc)Click Through Rate Standardized Analytics Platforms—Most social media platforms include a standardized analytics platform that will provide an accurate evaluation of depth and breadth of audience reached, brand perception, etc. These can be quite insightful and will typically serve most companies’ needs for evaluating brand impact. To tie brand impact to cost (effectively measuring Return on Investment, or ROI), then an analytical model is needed to measure investment against impact. Analytical Model—To conduct a detailed analysis, an analytical model can be built where the dependent variable is the brand impact and the independent variables are the various marketing efforts and other social media actions. They key here is to define “brand impact” and how it is measured. This could be defined several different ways including brand perception (measured directly, or determined indirectly), sales uplift, consumer sentiment scoring, etc. When looking at brand impact from a specific channel (e.g., social media), the model should account for impact from all other channels that build up a brand image over time as well as take into account any lag effects. The model should then isolate what the brand impact is from a specific channel (e.g., social media). In other words, what would be the brand impact without any social media activities. The difference is the impact from social media. Many consulting and established marketing research companies have such models readily available and it is often more efficient for companies to engage an outside advisor than attempting to build a model from scratch.