Business use of social media is coming into fashion. Leaders like Dell, Zappos and Comcast have embraced the highly-social Web to drive value for their organizations and shareholders. Countless others now sport a blog, tweet, stream video and look to engage their customers. What’s wrong with this picture?
For most organizations, this activity is not tied to strategic goals and is not adequately measured in a meaningful way.
Proponents of social media proclaim things like:
Social media/networking offers high ROI & business value, individual or organization; traditional organizations can’t see it.
The value of good press and reputation helps, but shareholders want to know more. Let’s start with strategy – most organizations don’t try to connect activity to goals. I read an article in a leading legal marketing publication that proclaimed the value of social networking. Maybe the author should have checked if user behavior makes this a good move — and if pushing such a measure would actually connect users to an organization’s goals. Next, measurement. This is another important step people may forget, but what to measure is perhaps more important than the act itself.
Valeria Maltoni @ Conversation Agent makes a distinction between short and long-term measurement:
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.
I even found an ROI calculator. On a side note, I like how this was put together, even if a usability headache.
So what’s the problem?
- Most social activities lack focus. Organizations with a board of directors, shareholders or strategic management groups publish endless documents addressing important segments. Social activities must be mapped to these goals in order to maximize value for an organization.
- ROI calculations – even the long term concepts mentioned above – need to be established after the critical jobs and activities are identified. Social media is based on intangible assets – skills, knowledge and values of employees. Defining jobs aligns activity to strategic goals.
Tom Davenport, in a recent post on HBR, directs his attention on the “2.0″ vapor:
And that was even before Web 2.0–a platform for everyone to share their ideas, opinions, favorite tunes, and relationship statuses with each other. It was all a lot of fun, but I occasionally wondered whether it was really good for economic productivity.
He’s right to the extent there’s a lot of clutter and fluff. As budgets shrink, executives will look for value in social media. The good news is there is a way to determine value, starting with strategic alignment.
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