What's the "R" in Your ROI?

What do you base it on? For months people have been dancing at the tune of the Google PageRank Toolbar and basing their ROI on it, at least partially.

Yesterday's news about many top ranking blogs being demoted was a downer. As I wrote in my FC Expert blog post today, Google's math puzzles customers.

As explained by Google

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages' relative importance.

Google's core business remains the search business so they employ complex automated methods to make human tampering with their search results extremely difficult. What does PageRank mean to you and to the reason why you blog?

There are many lists out these that use Google PageRank as one of the measurements -- AdAge Power150 comes to mind, and so does the M20. Being on one of these lists may be a good thing for your blog to be noticed and read. Yet it may not be the "R" in your ROI. What's the real return you're looking for?

I suspect that CK may say that learning from the community she's helped form around marketing topics of interest is part of her "R". The Diva might add that helping organizations (and people) understand the value and power of building a social media strategy for their business is what matters most. I really light up when I have deeper conversations with like minded people who may stumble upon one of my posts and decide to stick around and meet the person and vice versa, I love discovering well written and thoughtful resources and getting to know the author(s). Red carpet treatment for people who share ideas in the comments.

We talk about ROI in businesses all the time. When it comes to your personal pursuits, as it might be the case with blogging, what is your return on the time invested? A couple of weeks ago I talked about the "I" of social media being involvement. What's the "R" for you?

[image from Search Engines on Flickr]

Comments

[Joe Raasch]

Hi Valeria,

It is nice to pop into Google Analytics and see that someone checks out my blog once in a while - even better when I write something that stimulates conversation!

And yet...the "R" for me is Raasch: my last name. I would write my blog even if no one read it. See Seth Godin's Labor Day post for more on that.

It is akin to using LinkedIn just to see how many connections one can get v. truly making network connections that add value to both parties.

I find reading/commenting on other blogs, like yours, to be the best way to get my views to the world v. trying to game any ranking systems to get people to read my work. Because, it really isn't 'work' after all.

[Xavier Vespa]

Hi Valeria,
I couldn't agree more and am glad someone brought that up. Ecommerce and bloggers don't have the same SEOs objectives at all. An ecommerce needs traffic based on keywords. A blogger needs comments based on ideas.
That's why I think that Google is not doing such a bad thing after all, since top bloggers are usually on top because their pagerank strategies are so close to those of spammers.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Joe -- there's a time for every purpose and a place for each different type of connection, too. So my contacts on LinkedIn may be different from the ones in my (inactive on my part) Facebook profile, to the people who are active here to the ones I chat with on Twitter or (even better) on the phone (so primitive!) and face to face. My desire is to be of service -- where and how depends very much on the other. You an an R, aren't you?

@Xavier -- I think both Darren and Brian made the case for content and having a business plan as well. In fact, today Brian (Copyblogger) posted an excellent example of how he is driving his business for the long term v. depending on external "gratification" for his R.

[Joe Raasch]

Hi Valeria,

I agree with you completely! My point was that it isn't the tool that matters, it is the intention.

[Geoff Livingston]

Funny you mention the Ad Age 150. I delisted both of my blogs because I think the system is gamed ;) But beyond that the brand impact hurt more than it helped, so I passed on it.

Google's broken Page Rank system doesn't mean anything to me. RSS subs does (your almost at one k).

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Joe -- going back to your original comment, this is writing and thinking together. In a way I think may of us wish it could be the same in organizations. How many proposals have you written today that have gotten you a green light to action?

@Geoff -- I'm amused by Power 150. My debut was at #80 and after 8 months or more of blogging I'm still pretty much there. The more things change, the more they stay the same. You come here and read to get ideas and find original content, not because I might be on some list. Clearly I'm not going anywhere on that one ;-)

[Carolyn Ann]

Well, first things first: I'm with Joe on my blogging. Except I don't even use Google Analytics!

I admit to some suspicion about Google's Page-Ranking algorithm. The secrecy behind it is a little too devious, and it emphasizes the clique, the cult of the popular and so on.

As a case in point (and I'll be blunt: my words on this little protest sparked some, er, hostility!). There's a transgender store not far from Euston Station, London called "Transformations". Surprisingly, it's not very popular - despite having been in business for quite a long time. (20+ years?) Anyway, there was a protest organized that had the aim of removing the store from the top-rank of the Google listing: the protest failed for a variety of reasons, not least being that no one seemed to have cottoned on to the fact that Transformations (probably) paid to have the top listing. (The point of contention came when I pointed this out...) But - and this surprised me - Transformations was finally knocked off top spot! It took over a year, but the only thing it proved was that popular action can skew Google results.

Now, the organizers of the protest claimed a false victory: they hadn't told Transformations of the protest (although I doubt it stayed secret for very long!) They also claimed that it proved the democratic nature of Google's rankings. Something that couldn't possibly be proved, because no one, outside of Google, knows the algorithm Google uses. Was the displacement a result of the now-lapsed protest, or simply because Transformations failed to pay their bill? I don't think it's possible to know. And therein lies the problem: without that payment to Google, you can never be sure what Google is doing. They claim "do no evil", but their actions have all the hallmarks of being 'a little' flexible in the definition of "evil".

Anyway, back to your question: how do you measure the return on investment of creating a positive image? Uh, well, that might be a bit difficult. Traditionally, it's called "goodwill", and a reasonable dollar amount is attached to it - when a company is sold. (It literally turns up on balance sheets as 'goodwill'! Or at least, it used to... I'm a bit behind times, fiscally speaking.)

I can't help but think that it's the wrong question. If the person asking insists on a number, it might be better to ask the sales staff what they think.

But when I think of the ROI of that protest: it was meaningless. All it did was create advertising, that Transformations apparently failed to exploit, for free. If you didn't know who they were before, you certainly found out when you went looking for transgender resources on the web. The protesters were, I have to observe, all of a like-mind; I didn't pick up any fresh or new opinion beyond the "let's join the party" sort of stuff. ("Oh, Goody! A protest against a store for this or that reason! I'll join because it seems to be the popular thing to do..." Am I too cynical? :-) )

Another protest that was meaningless was some "family" group protesting Ford's decision to advertise in gay media. When Ford pulled some advertising from gay magazines, the group claimed victory: except no one had ever heard of them, and no one really cared. Ford was doing an excellent job of losing money all by itself. I just thought I'd throw that one in...

Chevrolet doesn't pay attention to its customers. Not that long ago (last week?) I called Toyota's main number and complained to them about their stance on CAFE standards. I told them I will not buy a Toyota Tundra, when I go looking for a new truck (next year?) if they persist in keeping pollution and mileage at the same, abysmal, levels. If they had blogs, I could comment on their stances: what's the Return on being directly involved with the potential customer? (Wait, I detect a similarity to what you tell us... :-) ) I didn't bother calling Chevy - I just know they pay not a blind bit of attention to their customers.

If a marketing manager needs to understand the return of interacting with consumers, they really need to get a new career. If they want to explain it to their C-levels, consider the cost of not interacting with customers: Ford lost close to $13 billion in one fell swoop. Ignore the customer at your peril.

And despite the fact that I've rambled on, I'll close with something I used to tell me staff: we existed to serve the customer. They were the ones who generated the revenue that paid our bills. All those fancy computers, nice courses in semi-exotic locales? All paid for by the people who interacted with the customer. But without the tools to interact, even they'd be hard pushed to make the required dinero.

Carolyn Ann

PS I think there was a point to my roaming... My apologies if this was overly long! And vague...

[Valeria Maltoni]

Carolyn Ann:

Are you sure you're not in marketing? It sounds more and more like you could be to me!