Social Media: tools, costs, impact, ROE, and ROI

There are so many experts telling you what to do and how to spend your time/money on social media, so I was happy to see a presentation from a knowledgeable colleague. In it, he reviewed several key issues surrounding social media: tools, costs, impact, and ROI. While the presentation is on the long side, it's a good read.

Cost Effective Social Media Measurement from geoff sharp

If you are strapped for time I recommend leaping forward to page 34 using the slide control, as that provides a case study with a quick view into a way to look at and evaluate social media efforts.

One reason this presentation appeals to me is that it attempts to define a closed loop approach to measurement and recommendations. Using initial or preliminary goals, I can look at the analysis and reports to see how I'm progressing toward those goals by choosing and analyzing a few key metrics. Over time, as I progress toward my goals or fail to reach them, the measurement allows me to re-evaluate my choice of metrics as key indicators of goal progress or even redefine my goals or sub-goals based on what resources I can apply to the process.

The key to this approach, however, is to have goals. These goals can be simple or complex, and can be co-mingled with costs, for example:

• Simply have or expand a social media presence
• Create market awareness and findability
• Create the largest social media footprint without advertising
• Create the largest social media footprint with a limited ad budget
• Use social media to drive sales
• Use social media to establish thought leadership
• Drive sign-ups to your service

Each of those goals is valid depending on your business needs and stage of business, and each has implications on both ROE (return on effort) as well as ROI (Return on Investment).  Pursuit of any of the individual goals alone or in combination has implications in terms of pre-requisites, resource allocation, and budget, which then translate to identifying which metrics you track on the way to your goal.

So, what is your goal, and how will you know when you get there?

Disclaimer: I know the creator of the presentation and have been an advocate of his measurement and ROI centric approach. Funny how I agree with it, no?