How do you measure the ROI for social media? Can you put a price on averting a PR disaster? Can you find an equation to measure the cumulative effect on social media? This is last post in a 5 part series documenting my takeaways from Blogworld 2009.
These were the questions the panel at the ROI smack down attempted to answer.
There was a spirited debate over quantitate metrics versus qualitative metric measurement between Muhammad Saleem (marektingmaven.com) and Beth Harte (community manager of MarketingProfs.com). The consensus among the group was that companies need proof positive evidence of the quantitative growth in sales and revenue, if we as social media evangelists are seeking long term employment. No one disagrees that there isn’t an intangible benefit to social media, however, we must find creative ways to document and track these benefits or they will be lost on upper management.
If we talk in terms of followers and retweets, the traditional business community does not yet realize how to translate that to value in P&L environment. So Deborah Micek, of Quansite revolution, demonstrated how authors are driving more people to their book signing through social media, than almost any other avenue. I wanted to see more examples like this from the panel.
Another interesting point that the moderator Stephanie Agresta addressed was how do you measure the ROI of a PR disaster avoided. If you stop a tweet from turning into a blog, from turning into a movement, what is that worth to you company? What would Taco Bell pay to have that BellHedz crisis avoided?
I felt that this was a topic that could have been explored in devoted track. I would have love to seen cases studies, formulas, spreadsheets, and real life examples of ROI working to drive social media.
The cumulative affect of social media is such that, each month you continue a campaign it gets easier and easier to grow it. What that means is that social media campaigns will never cost as much to the organization as they do the first quarter or first year.
As you amass followers, build relationships, and reach out the community; you will experience rising retweets, shares, and exposure over time. Each month you continue with social media should become more profitable, and if documented appropriately, you can really impress the CFO of your organization.
You might also like...
Tagged: blogworld, roi, social media
