ROI of Social Media is not a One-Time Deal

I was listening to this podcast by Francois Gossieaux with H&R Block CMO Paula Drum and the way in which Paula, a colleague on the Blog Council, answered the question on ROI caught my attention. The ROI of social media is not a one-time deal

What happens is that you sell it every day, because that is when it is important. Just like taxes, it's something you accrue every day and tally periodically. You take stock and regroup to plan the decisions you are going to make as a result of the feedback you receive - return is another word for feedback.

All of the things that people may be saying about you are going to happen anyway. How are you going to respond to it all? Do you need to? What can you do? Go online and find out how engagement works. You will discover that customers are not going to go away happy or buy more with a campaign, even a nice integrated program, unless you include engagement.

If customers are talking about you, why would you not want them to talk with you? H&R Block has created Digits as a place to share and entertain. Are you in a highly regulated industry? A few of the MIMA attendees I talked with yesterday are. This is a good example of what a company can do to open up to the community, even in a highly regulated industry. From the site:

Digits is your community, built with the latest technologies to help you share your thinking through text, images and video conversations. Digits highlights the connections between money, art, politics, the planet and people everywhere. You’ll get access to the tax and personal financial resources you’d expect from H&R Block ... but there’s much more here than that. Serious debate? Sure. A little light-hearted banter? Absolutely. Digits is about money. It’s about life. It’s about you. Come be entertained and join in the fun. [see the user guide]

There are two main kinds of measurements for social media. One is the micro measurement you use every day - how many community members, how many readers, how many visitors. This is akin to the strategy partially attached to Web sites. Web sites, newsletters, email copy are still important for conversion. Blogs and social media are important for conversation - there is also a viral component to them in addition to the community dynamic.

The longer term measurements are about engagement and impact on retention. These take up to two years. Is the company brand seen as relevant, for example? These are movements in awareness and they need to be tied back to the activities you have undertaken and the value of those activities to customers.

It's easy to get caught in the micro measurement and forget to trend the long term positive effect of engagement and impact on retention, especially when managing quarter by quarter. Perhaps there are some things we can do to keep our sight on the long term while we take the daily steps. Maybe the answer is not just in how we collect the data, but in what data and information we track. As well, do we take into consideration the context of those interactions?

Today we're all moving in relation to each other. What are the points of connection and what is their value? We will continue to explore ROI and social media. I agree with Paula's statement - it is not a one-time deal. With social media you have many (different) interactions, one time as opposed to the same interaction, many times that you have with traditional marketing.

The many interactions from different people, yet in a public forum, build many stories, not just the company-sanctioned story. Can you design interactions? Tomorrow we'll talk about someone who does. What's your take?

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Related posts:

Measurement and ROI for Social Media
Return on Influence
What's the "R" in Your ROI?

Comments

[mike ashworth]

I think many people are suspicious of Organisation that create Communities for people to interact within. (After all people interact with others all the time - what's the USP?)

One way for Organisations to get around this is to create the Community, get it up and running then hand it over to the people who participate in it...yikes!

Don't give them a set of rules, let the participants generate their own guidelines for use, and if that includes requesting the Company who set it up to act in a particular way, then roll with it...

Scary? for the company absolutely, however how many Companies do this at present with no overbearing mannerisms? find the edge...

Be the Catalyst that brings people and ideas together, then step back...

Without the perception that the Community is an attempt to "control the message" it will grow and grow.....

Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

[Valeria Maltoni]

Mike:

In the specific case of H&R block, the USP is the tax expertise their associates bring to the table. I don't know about you, but I am more keen on learning about tax code from my accountant than I am from my neighbor. That kind of interaction interests me for the degree of expertise there already is built in.

Two other thoughts about your comment:

(1) people suffer from blank paper (or screen) syndrome. In my previous post I talked about corporate bloggers and the skill sets they should have to be successful. The best way to build a sustainable community is with great content. So the hand over may not work if there is no content. I participated in two wikis that never took off because nobody was in charge, it was left up to the community...

(2) can you give me an example of a blogger that set up a community? Someone who has used their own resources and time to create a space for others to fill and create guidelines for - who, as you put it, rolls with it. Do you know of any blogger without an agenda (focus is an agenda), or a message?

I am detecting cynicism as to the ability of a company to create something of value to its community. Potentially even the assumption that everyone at that company does not get it. Does everyone in the community get it, then? Are company and community two separate things? To me employees are a company's first community...

Finally, I have seen communities where nobody was leading that flopped famously because there were too many people trying to control the message. People have agendas. This is not a bad thing, it's often what gets things done.

[mike ashworth]

I wouldnt say I am cynical however I do raise my eyebrow sometimes about the "communities" that some Companies set-up.

I cant say I do know of any blogger who's done what you stated, then again that doesn't mean it hasn't happened just that I haven't heard about it at this point in time.

I concur with your comment about Employees being a community. At this point in time, as you will see from the myriad of rules that some Companies have about Employees using collaboration / social tools there is some lack of trust, and that's not ideal.
People don't like too many rules (that's what governments have done and that why many mistrust them too).

There are rays of light out there, I believe Dell is progressive in this area, and that's cool.

The Company "should" be part of the Community however they often shoot themselves in the foot when they can't even get the basics of doing business correct in the first place.

I still think a Community that arises around a Product or Service because of the passion of the Customers for it, is fantastic. I've seen that happen before and it is wonderful to behold. The company has to be ready to take both the praise and the critical feedback that may also come.

Mike

[Valeria Maltoni]

Thank you for continuing the conversation, Mike. I think what we object to as far as rules go is when they are not grounded in values. We have a hard time figuring out why the rule exists in a certain way.

To use a metaphor, rules can be like emergency buttons left over from clothes you have since given to charity. They are not useful anymore, yet there they are still sitting in your chest drawer. Except for rules are sometimes applied to a jacket where they do not fit anymore.

Companies are run by boards and executive teams who set the tone on the business. Alas, organizations are still using the old industrial age org. charts by and large. You remind me about terminology, too.

I agree with you that customer evangelists are a powerful testimonial to the company products and services.

[mike ashworth]

It's an interesting point you raise about Organisations and the old org. chart. I think this is where many of the problems arise.

The Marketing function has sets of metrics, then Sales does too, and Customer Service another (get ppl off the phone ASAP - love that one!). Often these groups operate as if the other did not exist.

I think once Companies embrace a more holistic approach to their activities things will get easier.

Perhaps as Joseph Jaffe pointed out in his book "Join the Conversation" their needs to be something that crosses the functions called "conversation" and then have metrics that everyone buys into.

One of the challenges is that the various functions within an organisation have sets of Goals at the beginning of each year and often these metrics then cascade down from that.

Sometimes you can read this as "things to beat the staff up about if they don't meet the target". This is from actual experiences.

Often they are obsessed about having things to measure not just the externals by, but how the staff or teams internally are performing.

I think, for some Companies the changes required to understand this more fully will be quite challenging.

Mike