ROI and social media

ROI. Return on Investment. So important to the leaders of businesses, right?

After all, it’s what they know. It’s what they’re used to.

Well, it’s misguided for social media.

Yes, many of the leaders, managers and marketers that corporate communicators and PR practitioners talk with so often are still struggling to comprehend how they’ll know if the blog, Facebook page or video you’re outlining for them will translate into business.

“Why would I spend $x if I don’t know it will bring me $x in return?”

It doesn’t work that way. You can’t tie an “If I spend x, will I get x?” approach to everything.

I run into this every week in my day job and probably offer a noticeable face tick when someone in the room asks “What’s the ROI?” It’s not an unexpected question to get. It just needs to be explained in the right way. With the right words.

Because the question is not gonna go away.

In the words of David Meerman Scott, “This insistence on ROI is just a freakin’ farce… …and an excuse for fear.” You can hear him say that in a fantastic rant he posted on his blog, Web Ink Now, inspiring my thoughts here.

The social media tactics of corporate communicators and PR pros are not about ROI.

They’re about measurement.

You can measure how many people are talking, tweeting or blogging about you.

You can measure how many people are contacting you for more information about your products.

Want to reduce the online backlash against your company? Measure the impact of the tactics you put into play to change that. Did the backlash simmer down? Did you create some fans?

You have to have something to measure. You have to have objectives for anything you do. Otherwise, how will you know if your tactic was successful?

Sure, it’s tricky, for any size company. Social media is not an exact science.

Awareness, not always dollars and cents.

And as Meerman Scott points out in his rant, do you really know the ROI of that billboard or TV commercial you put out in the market?

Asking “What’s the ROI?” means someone is scared to dip their toes into the water.

Asking “What are we measuring?” is a better question, one that the communicator can lay out for the leader stuck on ROI.

Also, as someone who has entered a few awards programs for social media activity, I can tell you the applications don’t ask about ROI. They ask you to spell out your objectives, what you tried to do and outline the evidence that you knew you achieved them.

That’s what social media is about.

And thank goodness the leaders and managers I have worked with have been open to setting aside traditional thought and kept an open mind to just rolling the dice over the last few years, allowing some experimentation to see how this whole crazy world on the Web works, then refining our tactics and how we measure them.

This just in. The game has changed. Make sure your business is in it, measuring the impact of social media.

For more on this issue, Shel Holtz writes about it on his blog, a shel of my former self. And he and Neville Hobson also just talked about it on their For Immediate Release podcast.