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Tactical Social Media Monitoring and Strategic Listening vs. Social Intelligence

Posted in Social Media ROI by Wendy Troupe on December 3rd, 2009

In the beginning (somewhere between 2003 and 2005), lightning struck the primordial pool of social conversation and ignited the first evolutionary step towards understanding and the ability to measure.

The Rise of Tactical Social Media Monitoring

From that primordial social pool, lurched a new species called Social Media Monitoring Platforms. These simple data aggregators execute searches and track mentions of user-selected key words. While useful for tracking operational metrics (Forrester Wave Q1 ‘09) like volume of mention, extent of reach, etc, the lack of advanced natural language processing limited their ability to provide true strategic insight. As the demands of the environment increased (brands began to leverage monitoring capabilities), this tactical myopia set the stage for a more complex and evolved species.

The Development of Strategic Social Media Listening

Forrester defines these platforms as a technology and analytics infrastructure that mines traditional, online and social sources to extract and deliver insights to [help] shape strategy. The ability to integrate multiple classes of data, coupled with natural language processing, allowed users to range far from the tactical pool and deep into strategic forests. However, the burden of manually inputting large portions of that data and the inability of these systems to automatically quantify performance with hard metrics limited a user’s ability to focus those wanderings on a clear destination or goal.

The Dawn of Social Intelligence

Today companies are growing increasingly comfortable with the idea that the social conversation can be mined for valuable information. As laggards begin to explore monitoring, yesterday’s early adopters are synthesizing information into strategy-driving insight where possible.

Yet, the lack of a widely accepted system for accurately gauging hard performance, across a spectrum of channels, often delivers vague or fuzzy insight – insight that lacks the clarifying correlation to ROI.

At Terametric, we’re developing an automated system that breaks a brand’s outreach down by its communication channels. It then further breaks those channels down by inbound and outbound attributes.

This allows our methodology to score each inbound and outbound attribute individually and then aggregate them into a score for each channel. Each channel score is then aggregated into the brand’s SOCIALtality^TM Score.

This will allow our customers to view a rolled-up gauge of performance, then drill down into individual channel and attribute performance to develop a detailed picture of the underlying factors affecting outreach at every level – or as we like to say — Social Intelligence.

How is your brand or social media consulting company approaching the social media measurement and ROI question? Are you at the tactical monitoring, strategic listening or social intelligence stage? What do you think of our approach to quantifying performance?

We’d love to hear your thoughts…

Tags: Social Media Capital, Social Media Strategy
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Series: Do It Yourself Techniques for Difficult Business Times ~ Will the real Michelle Obama stand up?

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on May 5th, 2009

Viral communication spreads your message faster than swine flu is able to infect us. Are you controlling your message? Or is someone else?

Branding, especially personal branding, is rapidly moving to the top of my interest list (which includes transparency and security both on and off line). Feeling secure online is impacted by how you brand yourself – how you control the messages about you and your company.

Your blog is an extension of your personality. A consistent message, written in your voice, is your brand. Be yourself. And follow a few simple steps to provide your readers a YOU-nique experience. You’ve heard these before, but they are worth repeating.

Viral communication spreads your message faster than swine flu is able to infect us. Are you controlling your message? Or is someone else?

Name. Your name is a reflection of your message. If you are not using your own name, select a name that is YOU-nique, and at the same time is short, easy to remember and spell, does not inadvertently spell, sound or look like something you don’t intend when the words are written without spaces – and most importantly will separate your message from those of the vast number of bloggers competing for attention against you.
Focus. Define your blog’s purpose. Stay focused. Use your about page (the most read page on a blog) to go into detail about what readers will find and why they should return. If you have multiple personalities, create separate blogs for each.
Visual Imagery. Brand yourself with color, logo design, fonts, style. And use these every time you create a marketing piece. This is a strong visual part of your brand. I have a client who coaches couples. Her visual brand is a red heart. She always wears something red, even if only a scarf or bracelet, usually with a heart design included. When people think of you, they should have an immediate visual image also.
Identity. If I don’t know who you are, how will I find you? Build brand awareness with publicity. Link to others and ask them to reciprocate. Join social media and networking groups where your message is needed and where your peers are. Comment on other blogs, adding your blog’s name in your comment with a link if possible.
Socnet (social networking). As much as possible, customize your profiles at every socnet site in which you participate.
Transparency. Consistency, your true voice, no hard sell, valuable content, all build from the real you.

This is transparency at is best: building your brand by being yourself.

For more ideas and links, check out ChrisG’s Branding Blog Post Round Up.

Gayley Knight is a guest blogger for GMI. She is Founder/Principal of Business Her Way (a social media management company). Delighting in opening the technology world for your company, Gayley draws on her extensive network and personal business experience to simplify your online world. Showing you best social business practices and simple tech tools designed to increase your business visibility brings social media into perspective, saving you time and money. You can contact her directly at http://www.businessherway.net or via email at gayley@mothergeek.com.

Tags: General, Social Media Capital
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How to Build a Social Marketing Plan

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on March 3rd, 2009

There are a lot of word-of-mouth elements such as blogs, microblogs (a la Twitter), syndication, online communities, social networks, and widgets are that are changing the rules of business as we know them and will be the new must-haves for your company’s success. Taken together they form the basis for an incredibly powerful toolkit that will enable you to communicate, promote your company and services, engage with, educate and listen to the customer directly, and spread your ideas and products virally so that you expand your company’s reach.

Here are the fundamentals of a solid social marketing plan as they align with your overall marketing objectives.

Start Small
Depending upon the skills sets that are available to you within your existing organization and the goal you’re trying to achieve, choose a tool and familiarize yourself with it – get a feel for its culture and features. Or, engage with a social media company that has both an understanding of technology and the marketing chops to assess your entire organizational structure and how to best start out with something that can be absorbed gradually and doesn’t overwhelm you.
Define your Market Objective
Start with analyzing your current marketing objectives and look for possible synergies with the tools that are available to you. Do you want to begin building your social capital and develop customer loyalty and brand evangelists who will reach out to their network of friends to build word of mouth referrals? Or do you want to capture customer feedback and begin a dialogue with your customers to target product insights. Or maybe you want to use the blog to build your brand identity and establish your expertise. The objective should help you select the best tool.
Select your Target Market
Who you choose to target is important and will also help to determine the tool that you choose. Generally, if you’re addressing a younger market (19-35) Myspace works. Young – Middle aged professionals you’ll find on LinkedIn and Facebook. But if you have a product for kids, then Disney’s Club Penguin is for you.
You’ll also want to align with the technographics which are like demographics, only they are broken up by engagement levels. Forrester Research has defined the user types ranging from “Inactives (people untouched by social technologies) which have shriveled from 44% down to 25% of the online population in 2008 to “Spectators” those who read, watch, or consumer social content which have ballooned from 48% to 69%, to Joiners, Critics and Creators at the most involved users of the social networking space. If you think social technology is about to become a universal phenomenon, we just handed you a nice little bundle of evidence.
As a whole, the growth in consumption of online content coming from older people (middle aged -35-to-44 year-olds) especially when it comes to joining social networks and reading and reacting to content. Even among 45-to-54 year-olds, 68% are now Spectators, 24% are Joiners, and only 28% are Inactives.
So as you can see, targeting the right technographic is also important. For instance, stay-at-home moms rank high on the scale and are actively courted in the online marketing arena. Who you choose to target is very important so nose around and search for like minded people, the online publications they read and the organizations or associations they may belong to. Use a web search engine to help you out. Look for online communities that specialize in your niche. Try to identify the key influencers in that group.
Assess Your Current Web Capability
Technology is an important element of your success. There are lots of applications out there that allow you to integrate your content so that the flow of information is both inbound and outbound. Your website has to be the central hub of all of it and it has to be easy to update your content, integrate code (widgets, blogs, online communities, etc.), be easy to navigate, and optimized for search engine optimization. Moving to a Web 2.0 platform such as Drupal, Wordpress, or Joomla is the best route to take for scalability and superior content management systems.
Set a Strategy
If you are a company with a terrific new high tech product visit Tech Crunch (group-edited blog about tech start ups), see what they like to write about, and see whom you may wish to engage. If you are a nonprofit, Idealist.org is a great place to live, and if you’re a social media thought leader, Social Media Today has a great membership component that allows you to contribute to its blog. But you don’t have to have a blog to post comments on someone else’s. Perhaps you respond to someone’s request for help in a LinkedIn community, or join a Facebook group. The key point is that you begin to build a relationship with your target market.
Measure your Engagement
In the end, it’s all about building your social capital. If your social media plan is effective in building a community of people that are interested in what you do and can speak on your behalf, then you’ve begun to succeed.
Measuring your engagement including behavior, feelings, and financial impact can be a bit trickier. On a basic level, you can use free tools such as Google Analytics, StatCounter and SiteMeter (for basic traffic statistics), Google Trends (to measure conversations about your target topics), and use Twitter search to monitor conversations. On a whole level up, you can measure true engagement using tools like Radian6 and Techrigy. I’ll be doing another blog just focusing on the elements for measurement and the tools themselves in the near future. Stay tuned.

And some important pieces of advice…

Pay attention to your customers – don’t just sell.
Traditional marketing has all been one way. A company decides what messages it wants to project on its market and it broadcasts those messages out via an ad or press release. But new word-of-mouth tools are two-way media and they offer the remarkable advantage of a real conversation. Listen to your market, take into account what they have to say, and you will have a very loyal set of customers.

Content is king.
Content is critical with any of the new word-of-mouth tools. What you offer must be relevant, interesting, and authentic and designed to bring readers back. Add new content often. Remember that when content is not updated, readership will drop off, often rather precipitously. Make certain that your content (or comments) add value and aren’t just to self promote. If they are, they will stand out as such and you may regret it.

Give to get, but mostly give.
If there is one truism in using any of the new word-of-mouth tools, it is that you must give to get – and give generously. On a group at Facebook, be the one who answers the question or provides the help and advice. Your generosity will earn you visibility in the group and give you credibility.

Measure and continually realign and redefine.
Once you have selected your tool, you will want to consider how you will measure your success. What did you learn about the tool and the process that you were not aware of? What did you learn about your target group that you didn’t know before? Take the time to think about and measure what you learned.

Treat your first foray as an exploration.
Starting small enables you to kick the tires and test what works. Not everything will, but along the way you will learn the ropes. The more narrowly you focus, the greater the likelihood of your success. Some market segments are the size of an ocean. Pick one part of it to begin. Respect any competitors you may run up against. Bad mouthing is poor policy.

Remember to give help generously.
And to acknowledge and thank those who help. Then take time to think about and measure what you learned.

Tags: Social Media Capital, Social Media Case Studies, Social Media ROI, Social Media Strategy
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Justifying Your Social Marketing Spending

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on February 27th, 2009

I thought it would be helpful to talk about what we hear from customers on a day to day basis when it comes to social media ROI — marketers are aware of the impact that social media marketing can have on their overall program, but are wary of it because they have trouble quantifying and therefore justifying and the spend.

Here at Terametric, we have been successful helping our clients understand that with this new way of marketing comes new methods of measurement. Given that the end goal of social media participation is to grow the business, measurement is closely tied to the overall goals of participation.

The overall perception of marketing professionals is that social media marketing can help them get an edge on their competitors. However, just a very small percentage of their total online marketing spend is allocated to it due in large part to the perception that it can’t accurately product an ROI.

Lets put it to rest…your customers are using social media and your should be joining the conversation

In February 18, 2009, Michael Greene of Forrester Research, published “Justifying Social Marketing Spending” and described his findings as such:

“With economic turbulence causing executives to tighten marketing budgets, interactive marketing professionals have to go the extra mile to justify their investments. While only 31% of social marketers plan to increase their social marketing budgets by more than 10% in 2009, social media should be part of all marketers’ plans, particularly tactics that are free or require more time than budget. Social marketers should concentrate on using the inexpensive and free tools that energize their active and influential customers and create a personal engaging experience in an unsettling market, resulting in success toward the back of the traditional marketing funnel.”

Yes, ROI matters but don’t let that stop you

Still, overall, marketing managers are late in adopting social networks marketing strategies even though they have become a main attraction to users and can begin to explore these areas without a budget. Social networking marketing initiatives can be relative inexpensive (company blog, pod casts, joining existing social networks) and in the current market conditions, marketing managers should explore these opportunities which require time more than budget.

Marketers should start to explore the influence of different campaigns including a Twitter presence, Facebook fans page, and/or official blog but only if they have the conversational skills, dedication, and a willingness to explore new ways to communicate with customers and stakeholders.

You must define your goals for participation before finding the right metric

At the end of the day, if your objectives are not clearly defined and you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, you can’t develop the metrics to support it. The metrics for measuring word-of-mouth effectiveness, for example, are going to be very different than the metrics for brand loyalty.

Traffic is still relevant

By itself, traffic says very little. You have to look at overall trends to understand your overall visitor growth. Volume of referral traffic from social networking sites is one metric that can be tied to social media, repeat visitor growth is also another. Fundamentally, a visitor who comes often and participates in your community is an evangelist and ranks high in your social capital. If your blogs relevancy can also be measured by the average number of comments, PageRank, etc.

Business size and product/service offering affects measurement

Measuring ROI for small businesses is easier because the marketing mix isn’t that complex and the customer touch points are easier to track whereas a big company requires a fairly complex modeling because there are many more possible drivers of revenue.

Towards that end, metrics for the small business are typically measured with little analysis beyond traditional metrics and larger companies will spend more time pouring over engagement metrics and developing detailed analysis to determine influence.

We are firmly in the camp of using ROI to make the case for social media budgetary allocations. But the approach reflects the overall marketing goals and organizational makeup.

What does your social media dashboard look like? What are your social media goals and what are the metrics that you track most closely to determine your success?

Tags: Social Media Capital, Social Media ROI
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Team Obama Named Fast Company’s World’s Most Innovative Company and it is the Community Concept that Ruled

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on February 12th, 2009

It was Obama’s “triple O” or his online operation which “took a skinny kid with a funny name and turned him into the most powerful new national brand in a generation,” said Fast Company. As they described on their cover, Team Obama beat out Google, Facebook and Amazon to be their No. 1. Obama raised our awareness as to the power behind social networks.

The Obama team was the first to have the vision to use the technology in a way that further defined the statement – it is not the technology, it is how you use it. They took the political election playbook, applied it to an online community framework and targeted the young voter (considered unreachable).

We can all learn a lot about the tools they employed but one important fact is the big take away — they inspired their constituents with a consistent and clear message that resonated with them and they empowered them with community tools and a presence

“The online community that elected Obama raised more money, held more events, made more phone calls, shared more videos, and offered more policy suggestions than any in history.” — Fast Company

Here’s a bit about how his team covered the bases and a link to his community site “MyBo”:

Multi-channel campaign
“Hub” Web site
My.BarackObama.com (“MyBo”)
Barack Obama’s blog
Barack Obama on Flickr
Barack Obama’s YouTube channel
Online search and display ads
Barack Obama on LinkedIn
Twitter & the Barack Obama Campaign
Social networking with Barack Obama
Email-campaigning
iPhone application
Text messaging & mobile
MyBo community Video [6:26]

This cross channel format allowed him to penetrate all areas of the Web space which became his most powerful mechanism of communication. I recommend taking a few minutes to watch the instructional video they used to rally their constituents online.

Tags: Social Media Capital, Social Media Case Studies, Social Media Strategy
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Mainstream Dinosaur’s Media Survival Kit ~ Ways Newspapers Can Embrace Social Media and Avoid Extinction

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on December 19th, 2008

You’re hearing it all over the news ? the Internet is choking traditional news sources. In particular, the print world (newspapers and magazines) are being severely affected by the economic downturn and shrinking ad revenue and it is putting the proverbial nail in the coffin. But the writing was on the wall for some time. News organizations are starting to change and embrace social media but are they looking at is as another marketing channel like SEM or are they willing to listen to what their readers want and allow them input in the conversation of generating news? This conversation has to start and evolve and within it, there are several opportunities that news outlets can take advantage of. Before we recognize what opportunities there are in this medium, we’ve got to look at what is currently going wrong. Here’s a brief synopsis of the problems facing the news media today and where the opportunities lie.

Problem: The daily printing of news is too expensive and there’s shrinking readership. As a result, newspapers are cutting the amount of news that is being generated instead of reducing their dependence on print to publish their news.
Opportunity: The inherent value here is their intellectual capital…their ability to investigate and incredibly well informed, well-written, and objective news and editorial. People don’t have time to read newspapers during the week and they’re using online aggregators (like Goodle Reader) to narrow the focus of news that pertains to their area of interest. Cuts for daily publication should be made and rely on a weekend publication when people make time to sit down to read the newspaper.

Problem: Traditional ad revenue sources are decreasing and can’t sustain large publications.
Opportunity: If less $$$ is spent on print, more should be spend looking for new opportunities to generate small amounts of ad revenue online using crowdsourcing. It’s the Obama fundraising principle here and it works. Google adwords already has this capability and the beauty is, it only subjects a reader to ads that are relevant and related to the content that is being consumed.

Problem: People rely on their network of friends and colleagues to hear about news that they might have happened upon in the newspaper.
Opportunity: In the short term, and for the weekend publications, it is still fun to take the time and sit down and come across articles that you would not have searched upon online. In the longer term, social media connections will replace even that model because articles will be shared and spread virally.

Problem: The one-size fits all model to disseminating news doesn’t work anymore nor does printing just the lenghty article format.
Opportunity: Readers want to scan news items first with “snipits” where they can get the “just” of the news and then drill down for more detail if/when they choose. It is somewhat reminiscent of the Wall Street Journal’s homepage where multiple columns are devoted to short paragraphs of larger news artcles within the paper. Readers also want to source certain topics that are relevant to them and organize it so that it is easily digestible. This should be how new is delivered, in print and online.

Problem: Packaged print that is delivered without any other opinion weighing in is not trustworthy and therefore people are looking online for commentary and engagement to further their awareness of an issue.
Opportunity: News and the people who deliver it have to be more accessible and tranparent. They have to be more willing to engage in conversation with its readers for it to be become a “trusted source” of news. Blogging is a great way to allow conversations to proliferate and encouraging guest blogging further expands the amount of news and commentary.

Problem: Handheld devices are getting more user friendly for print and video and more green. The iPhone and Blackberry Storm are some of the new devices that make it easier to digest online content.
Opportunity: Mobile marketing and dissemination of content just got a whole lot easier. This might sound radical, but you’ve just replaced print with mobile technology so that people can get the news they want, when they want it, 24/7. It also tremendously reduces our dependency paper which is oh so green!

Problem: News cycles have shrunk and it is a 24/7 model that is expected because of twitter, blogs and even CNN; print can’t keep up making it hard for print newspapers to be the first to break stories.
Opportunity: If sources of news and learning about news is spread using social networking, it becomes a whole lot easier to break the news first and write intelligently about it so that it is spread virally.

Problem: The traditional idea of a journalist and who they represent is eroding. Because there are so few of them, they are not truly representative of the diversities of the general population and therefore can’t represent it appropriately.
Opportunity: Citizen reporters are becoming more popular that can easily expand the reach of regular news teams and help journalists and reporters get a better perspective on the topic at hand. Blogs are also more informal and therefore don’t require the level of sophistication that news media requires. The Web is more about leveling the playing field and allowing everyman to have a voice to share ideas, raise awareness, and to protect the little guy. The successful journalist or columnist will be able to engage with its community to gain greater insights through conversations and input from citizens and therefore produce better stories.

Problem: The idea that print limits the amount of news that can exist due to its physical limitations is another strike against good representation of a community. Given the last 8 years of the Bush administration, there was a lot that we didn’t hear about and should have.
Opportunity: Those boundaries are limitless online. Let the readers decide what is relevant and interesting and let that help drive your news selections and strategy. There’s a wealth of information within your community. Harness it and the opportunities can be rewarding and can be expanded to sourcing news from around the world. The one thing missing from our news sources is outside perspective and understanding how we’re viewed in the rest of the world. If we are to be competitive, we have to understand the world and relate to it in constructive ways.

Problem: The corporate media conglomorates that own newspapers may have some influence over the content of their newspapers which ultimately make readers suspect and represents a conflict of interest- which ultimately erodes trustworthiness.
Opportunity: The Internet proves every day that content is king and good content will proliferate. If there is any need for transparency, the news source must adhere to it to gain the confidence of its readers when they point it out. This is where loyalty and strong relationships can develop – if you can develop advocates for your product, this is the most powerful word-of-mouth marketing takes place.

It might look grim if we look at what is happening to the business model of news media but there are some real opportunities to embrace which will redefine how news is created and consumed. To sum it up, social media, blogging, news aggregators, being green and tapping into new online revenue sources should enable the media organizations to survive and flourish in new ways. It is essential that they exist in our society to support cultural diversity, enlightenment, and to shape the larger global community.

Arthur Miller once said that a good newspaper is “a nation talking to itself.” Social media can generate conversation and also spread it so that we can talk and hear from other great news contributors from around the world.

Please weigh in on my observations. I welcome your input!

Tags: General, Social Media Capital, Social Media Strategy
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How to Integrate Social Media into the Structure of an Organization

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on December 9th, 2008

To talk further about my previous post about why social media is critical to your short term survival and long term prosperity, I thought it might warrant a further discussion about how social media infiltrates your organization. Which departments should it live and why, what types of expertise can be tapped to participate and when should it be outsourced to jumpstart the process?

Since this is a new medium that affects marketing, PR, product, customer service, advertising and sales, it all comes down to having a strategy which will determine the length and the scope of the organizational support that will be required. It can be as little as having a very small group that is dedicated to building community to having the entire organization using social networking tools that are integrated with all online initiatives.

Implementing a social media strategy, depending upon the size of the organization, can be either spread out into individual job functions in small to mid-sized organizations or compartmentalized in mid to large organizations. In either case, there a centralized strategy has to be driven throughout and the substantial learning curve and change in corporate culture has to be overcome. To jumpstart the process, training and mentoring should be part of the equation no matter what the size or scope of the initiative.

Here’s the argument for a social media department. Think of it in terms of the Web at its infancy. It was something that organizations didn’t feel they had to centrally manage and it was handled as an offshoot or a side show that the larger organization barely noticed. As the Web’s influence grew, smaller groups set up shop and proliferated which required a centralized group to maintain a single strategy and message. Today, it is one of the most important mediums for businesses and it’s about to become even more critical for survival.

Smarter organizations are going to tackle this from the top and make sure that it becomes an integral part of the organization and one that drives all activities. So let’s talk about what types of expertise is needed in a social media department, what type of budget and what type of oversight is required.

Executive Team Member: reporting directly to the head of the organization, he/she and attends all other high level staff meetings ensure that social networking principles are being implemented and can manage budgets, dispense reporting and ROI.
Virtual Assistants: are the social media evangelists who are responsible for implementing the social media strategy internally and externally throughout the organization and building relationships. They are responsible for monitoring and facilitating discussions, product reviews, and social networking sites around the clock.
SEO/PPC: much like today, this position tracks and reports on all Web activity by business goals including both Web site, social networking site and
CRM / Sales Networking: CRM will actually work because it has lost the systems complexity that it once had. In addition, it can easily integrate with other SAAS offerings like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. This team can use community building to enable loyal patrons to spread the word and generate leads.
PR Networking: responsible for using online social networking sites to spread the good word and the good word of others that have relationships with the organization to others. Social media is about helping others and public relations becomes a central part in building community with the larger industry and influencing it for the better.
Inbound Marketing Mavens: responsible for generating buzz about products and services as well as gaining insights into community behaviors; this position uses community to learn how to better market and serve their clientele as well as developing new methods of allowing customers to become evangelists and spread the word to others.
HR / Career Building: responsible for creating a community around career building activities from within the organization as well as supporting social networking sites from the perspective of attracting talent for the organization.
Mentoring/Training: a group dedicated to supporting community building activities that includes editorial, moderating discussions, customer support, etc. This group is there as a resource for all members of the organization that are learning about how to interact amongst themselves and their customers and constiuents using social media.
Web 2.0 Technology: this is one of the most important parts of the group because if done properly using open source technology, will allow the technology to work for the user, giving them control over their environment. It will not require the investment that it used to and its job is to continually integrate upgrades to APIs and possibly tweak them for specific business solutions.

Overall, a dedicated social media department will be able to singularly focus on the overall strategy and work with other departments to make the appropriate changes as well as providing support and training to do so.

Please tell me what you think! How have you approached using social media in your organization? Is it a disjointed attempt or is it a centralized and organized initiative?

Tags: Social Media Capital, Social Media Case Studies, Social Media Strategy
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How do Non-Profits Determine ROI for Social Media?

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on December 1st, 2008

Quantifying your social media campaign is slightly different for non-profits. It all comes down to a different way of thinking about how you reach your constituents. It goes well beyond the initial message and encompasses the response, too.

Determine Your Reach

To quantify the reach, you must consider three important measurable actions:

Engagements: Where are people talking about you? You can measure the amount of places and how many times you are mentioned.
Sharing: Which social networking sites are allowing others to proliferate information about you and how popular are they? How many are coming back to your Web site as a result.
Referrals: How many people came to your Web site from one of these sites/tools?

A good start is to measure the results of these three activities to determine the number of people you’ve reached. Remember that these are not unique instances so it is best to divide each of these numbers in half and then add them up.

Track Your Campaign Costs

Once you’ve established your reach, you’ll need to measure its value against the costs incurred to run your social media campaign. This is an activity that will become more profitable as time goes on since the effects of social media are cumulative. So take everything into consideration including internal manpower, agency fees, creative costs and media costs, if applicable.

Cost per Reach: Total cost divided by your Reach number (which was total Reach divided by two). For non-profit organizations, cost per Reach is something tangible you use to determine how social media compares to other tactics you use in your marketing efforts.

Estalbish a Donor Life Cycle

Using Google Analytics, track your donation referrals and map it back to your social media activity. This will help you to track your donor life cycle and measure the quality and quantity behind the donations and the relationships that you’re forming as a result of the online community building.

Tags: Social Media Capital, Social Media ROI
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