Just coming back from a Social Media summit at Aston Science Park, where a handful of speakers told businesses and consultants about the positive aspects of social media – the ability to communicate, share stories and ‘help their business’.
It was an interesting introduction, but there was a bit of an elephant in the room when it came to spelling out why companies should be doing this, and what the actual results would be. Getting closer to your customers was the driving force behind CRM, and there is much debate about its benefits to the bottom line (sorry, will reference this allegation in time!). What is the return on social media?
On further, preliminary research (ie Google), there are some interesting views.
Jason Falls comments: “The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.”
Aaron Urchmacher has come up with some practical tips on qualitative and quantitative measures of success – customer engagement, search engine rankings – and advises “…have a success metric in mind before you begin”.
Further views come from KD Paine covers this in more detail – certainly I will be exploring her views. But her reported views are that it is about what you are gaining from the conversation (comments etc) – and this is difficult to quantify.
Marketing metrics are an interesting area at the best of times. Businesses have spent years measuring the wrong things, and that’s really coming home to roost (cf the High Street). Customer interactions and results can be measured, but they are often ignored (customers and their interactions).
So isn’t this just a reiteration of the arguments about measuring the right things? That what matters to business isn’t cold, easily understandable data, which can be read and processed from the comfort of an office? You should be out there listening to your customers every day, delivering the best solution for their needs?
Heresy indeed to the traditional marketing model of push push push.
But can we not change now? Won’t it be easier in a year or two’s time when a business has an active community of advocates, engaged in the development process, rather than just recipients of the (albeit economically necessary) waste that is mass advertising?
Can we not start measuring the right things?
It’s funny that this web thing has gone from championing SEO and PPC through its ability to measure results, to move on to championing the ‘conversation’, which proposes a completely different concept of measurement. But the theory is there, from the balanced scorecard onwards. It’s just going to take a seismic shift in business attitude to see the benefits.
It’s a fascinating area to me, and I’m keen to hear other views. It may be even something I cover in my upcoming Masters.
