Great post – I absolutely loved it.

Our organization is just getting its feet wet with social networking and we have primed our leadership for establishing 90-day strategies because of exactly what you wrote about above. And our first 90-day strategy is listening – how do you put an ROI metric on listening?

For us, we haven’t been “listening” so far, so the ROI will simply be the fact that we hope to have people engaged with us who are in an “OMG, so surprised that they’re listening to us” mode. Hopefully, we can be successful at this.

I hope in the near future, to have applicable metrics, but it is really tough to come up with what they might be at this early stage of the game.

My mantra these days is that it is tough to be a pioneer:). I really appreciate your pointers along the way though. Keep ‘em coming.

When I first work with a client, I ask, “what is the best way to communicate with you?” and am often surprised by the answer. Some people are online-holics, some say fax (go figgur!), some only respond to phone calls, etc. The immediate ROI might be, “How many donors (which?) would you lose if you aren’t using social networking regularly?” I actually think that’s pretty quanitfiable, as most non-profits have to describe their donor/constituent profiles in foundation proposals. Similarly, “How many/which donor circles from your constituent profile will respond if you do cultivate them in this way?” Again, in fundraising at least, we assume that each donor can, when motivated, leverage another 4-5 to the cause.

The other ROI I think could be useful is regular benchmarking. If we know what similar mission/size/operating budget non-profits are achieving with social networks, we can see whether we are ahead/behind/beside… with some numbers. Fundraising is quanitfiable and measurable, certainly, but it is a measure of the harvest, not what was planted 9 months ago and nurtured every day since. I am a big fan of starting small, as then you can make your mistakes, develop your style, in a small arena, and make wiser decisions when you expand.

@TinaArnoldi

And this:

“It also implies to many a financial cost to income ratio model, which I find too simplistic a measure for social media engagement.”
Thank you!

And thanks, all, for an interesting debate.

A few people have touched on it here, and I think it’s an important point: to consider what you are going to measure and why (which are likely to be different for every organisation), rather than necessarily trying to shoehorn social media activity into the same models for evaluation your organisation has been using to monitor and measure ‘traditional’ activity.

This makes the assumption that the ways ROI has been measured traditionally are the best, and most meaningful ways, and that these are useful models to apply elsewhere – when my experience tells me that many organisations did not take a broad enough view, integrate sufficiently well, or necessarily even measure the right things, before social media were in the picture.

It also implies to many a financial cost to income ratio model, which I find too simplistic a measure for social media engagement. I do understand, however, that this will be the kind of evaluation many organisations will want to make when deciding whether to invest in social media activity. I think that makes it all the more important to push the 3-stage ROI lifecycle point, and to understand and explain that it probably won’t ever be that meaningful to measure ROI for social media activity as a simple financial equation, in the same way we traditionally have for customer/ supporter relationship marketing.

I often think social media are acting as a catalyst, challenging organisations to better evaluate – in the round – the impact and value of their efforts and think about how they measure the true ROI of any activity in terms of its contribution towards achieving their missions, rather than be hung up on the somewhat shallow measures such as volume and income – since these are often so misleading anyway.