The ROI of Social Media

Liana “Li” EvansSearchCamp Philly – Philadelphia, PA

October 2009Twitter: @storyspinner

Liana “Li” Evans

What The Heck Do I Measure & How Do

I Know It’s Working?

How’d We Get Here?

Monitoring & Measuring• Radian6• Meltwater• TrackUR• Techrigy• Google Alerts

• Google Analytics• Coremetrics• Omniture• ClickTracks

Monitoring Helps Keep the Pulse – Makes Sure Your Heart is Beating

Measuring Helps You Know If Its All Healthy!

Social Media’s Different

Direct Click to Purchase is Very Rare in Social Media

There’s Not A Quick Way to Measure

There’s a Lot of Manual Labor Involved

First - Who’s In Your Audience?

Second – They Use Different Types of Social Media

Third - Identify & Define Success

Different Things to Measure• Social News (Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Etc)

– Number of Votes, Comments– Traffic to Media Submitted

• Social Sharing (YouTube, Flickr, Etc)– Number of Views, Ratings, Embeds, Links,

Favorites

• Social Networking– Number of Fans, Friends, Group Members– Comments on walls, postings, media

Different Things to Measure• Twitter

– Number of Followers– Retweets

• Blogs– Subscribers– Comments to Posts

• Forums & Message Boards– Number of Members– Posts to Members, Replies to Posts

What is Your Investment

- Employee Resources- Technology Expenditures- Infrastructure Costs- Training

Last - Re-Evaluate & Tweak Goals

Don’t Fall In Love…

If It Doesn’t Work – Stop Doing It! Tim O’Reilly, OGI Keynote 7/21/09

But Remember

It Isn’t Always a Sale You Can Choose To Measure Success With

With Social Media It’s All About the Indirect Return

Involvement

Customer’s first point of agreed upon contact.

–Visit to website–Sign up for email notification–Subscribe to RSS–Became a community member

Measuring Involvement• Web Analytics

– Referral traffic to site from social media sites

• The Other Stuff (Manual)– Subscribers to email lists or RSS– How many friends/fans you have– Number of new community member

signups– Average number of posts per forum

member

InteractionThe people like you

…… Or maybe not– Conversations about you– Threads in forums & message board– Requests for more information– User Generated Content (UCG)

about you• Videos, pictures, comments, etc.

Measuring Interaction• Web Analytics

– Transactional Data • They bought something• Requested more information• Gave you their email address

• The Other Stuff (Manual)– Number of comments– Number of reviews– How much UCG was submitted– Replies to forum threads

IntimacyVisitor has an opinion based on their

experience with you– Post product or service reviews– Blog posts – reviews of

products/services– Create UCG such as videos, photos,

podcasts– Forums threads dedicated to you– Fan/Hate groups dedicated to you

Measuring Intimacy• Buzz Monitoring

– Radian6, Meltwater– Customer Feedback Data

• The Other Stuff (Manual)– Number of comments to UCG– Number of up/down votes– Number of stars on ratings– Number of reviews

• Blog posts• Product Reviews

InfluenceAudience members form an

opinion based on other community members

• Sentiment of conversations• Interaction about you• Propagation of your media

Measuring Influence• Buzz Monitoring

– Radian6, Meltwater– Customer Feedback Data

(How did they hear about you?)

• The Other Stuff (Manual)– Who’s Talking About You?

• Technorati Ranking• Influence of Community Member

– How long a member– Posting habits– Replies to posting

Real World Example

Using Social Media to Engage, Interact, Involve & Influence Your Audience

Understanding Your Audience

Hold A Conversation in a Community

Videos…. Lead To

Your Audience Creating Them

Photos …. Lead To

Your Audience … Creating &Sharing Them

Linked In Profile… Lead To

Audience Created Groups & Discussions

Networking Where Your Audience Is

Leads to Over 480k Seeing Your Message

Twittering Leads To….

Twitters Holding Conversations About You

All of This Social Stuff Lead To….

Measured Results Of Target Audience?

Summary• Understand where your audience is first• Identify and define your measurement goals

– Involvement goals– Interaction goals– Intimacy goals– Influence goals

• Defines success or failure – When to stop– When to add more

• Remember to Figure in Your Investments• Don’t fall in love – re-evaluate & tweak goals

Contact

Director of Social Media

SergentiCommunications.comTakeItInHouse.com

SocialConversations.com

lEVANS@SerengetiCOm.CoM Twitter: @storyspinnerSearchMarketingGurus.com

lianaevans.com