I often get the question: “how do you show return-on-investment (ROI) on your social media program?”
It’s a common question, and one that I usually answer by saying: “it depends on your program goals.”
That answer may seem like a cop-out, but it’s very true.
Are you using your social media program for networking? For marketing? To position yourself as an expert? For online activism?
The ROI for any of the above goals could be very, very different.
I know some folks who simply measure their effectiveness by the total size of their audience (number of Twitter followers or Facebook fans, for example.)
I know others — non-profits or political campaigns — who measure success based on amount of money raised.
Our firm, for example, helps many clients utilize online tools for advocacy. As such, our ROI for those clients is very simple: how many people can we convert into activists.
The steps to do so are quite simple:
- Build/recruit your following (or fan base)
- Deliver clear-cut “activism” requests (email your Congressperson, take this survey, etc.) to your followers/fans.
- Measure the results — who and how many took action on your request?
Now, there’s certainly a lot more that goes into the program — especially on the front end. To build that following/fan base, you have to provide compelling content and engage the community effectively. That will build your base of potential activists.
It’s the same as any effective communications program: build your narrative to draw in the audience; then engage the audience to take action on your behalf.
There are a number of great tools to help you track your progress, no matter what your goals are.
For Twitter, we use HootSuite and Seesmic Desktop.
We love HootSuite mostly because of the “Hootlet” — a bookmarklet that allows us to easily tweet whatever Web page we are currently viewing. But HootSuite also has great tracking tools built-in to its system, so we can easily monitor which Tweets receive the most clicks, and to even plot our click-throughs on a map.
Seesmic Desktop is simply our favorite Twitter client — because it easily allows us to monitor numerous Twitter accounts (and Facebook accounts) at once.
In terms of Facebook, we utilize fan pages for most of our clients, mostly because Facebook pages provide “Insights” that consist of useful analytics such as interactions, video views, page views, demographic and subscriber data.
With our email campaigns, we track open rates and click thru rates — in addition to how many people actually take requested actions (donate, forward to a friend, email a legislator, etc.).
Then, of course, we utilize Google Analytics to measure the visits, reach and effectiveness of our Web sites.
Using all of the above, we can tell not only how and where our networks are growing — we can provide our client with detailed statistics that show directly how our efforts are impacting the goals of each individual campaign.
In short — you find the ROI in the numbers. And the numbers will mean success or failure — depending on your goals.