Social Media ROI: Managing And Measuring Social Media Efforts In Your .

Program Validation by the NumbersLooking at Performance Data as Actionable IntelligenceAfterwordIndex

Foreword: ROI Doesn’t Stand for Return onIgnoranceI’m often asked, what’s the ROI of social media? To which I answer, you can’tmeasure what it is you do not value or know to value.Sounds simple enough. But, the truth is, determining value is not an easyprocess. But then again, whoever said using social media effectively in businesswas easy.is wrong.As in anything in business, the ability to tie activity to the business values iscritical. If we are to commit time, resources, and budget to social networks, ourinvestments must be justified. Indeed, social media strategies must prove longterm value and contribution to the bottom line in order to evolve into a pillar ofbusiness success. But how do you measure something when best practices, casestudies, and answers in general are elusive? We are struggling to prove the meritof an important ingredient in the future success of business because precedentshave yet to be written or tested.While many companies are already investing in social media, the reality is thatmost are done without the ability to demonstrate any return on investment. Thetruth is that you succeed in anything if success is never defined. The good newsis that success is definable and attainable. It just takes a little work.well,honestly, a lot of work to tie intended outcomes to the “R” (return) in ROI. And,even though social media, as a platform and series of channels, is inexpensive orfree to host a presence, time and resources still carry fixed costs. To that end, ifwe enhance our presences or apply greater resources, the investment goes upexponentially. It comes down to the old adage, “time is money.”Everything starts with the end in mind.Success is not a prescription. There isn’t one way to excel or measure progress.But that’s the point. We must first design outcomes into the equation. What dowe want to accomplish? What’s the return we seek? Are we trying to sell,change, drive, cause, or inspire something specific? Are we reducing customerproblems as measured by inbound volume, open tickets, public discourse? Are

we trying to shift sentiment to a more positive state that increases referrals as aresult?Success requires definition based on intentions, goals, and mutual value.acrossthe organization from the top down, bottom up, inside out, and outside in.Success is defined departmentally and also at the brand level. And success is tiedto desirable actions and outcomes. As we’ve already established, it’s impossibleto measure the ROI for something if we haven’t first established the R (return) orthe I (investment). No amount of new acronyms will change this, yet we see newterms introduced as if we’ve already given up on defining ROI: return onengagement (ROE), return on participation (ROP), return on listening (ROL),return on fluid listening (ROFL), return on ignorance (the new ROI). In the end,everything carries cost and effect.The debate over ROI is only going to gain in importance. But that’s where weneed to go in order to gain the support we need to expand our investment insocial media. You’re in good hands though. Olivier Blanchard is indeed one ofthe few who can help. Here, he has written a comprehensive guide that will helpyou at every step, from planning to program integration to management tomeasurement.Thanks to Olivier, you’ll find the answers to your questions and also answers tothe questions that you didn’t know to ask.As they say, failing to plan is planning to fail. The success of all things socialmedia is up to you to define, quite literally.—Brian SolisPrincipal, Future WorksAuthor of Engage: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses toBuild,Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web

About the AuthorOlivier Blanchard is a brand strategist with 15 years of B-to-B and B-to-Cmarketing management experience ranging from manufacturing and distributionto new media and consumer goods. He manages BrandBuilder Marketing, abrand consulting and marketing management firm that helps companies combinetraditional and new/social media, and the Red Chair Group, which deliversexecutive social media training worldwide. When he isn’t writing, speaking, orconsulting, he can be found on his blog at www.thebrandbuilder.wordpress.comor on Twitter at www.twitter.com/thebrandbuilder. An avid triathlete,photographer, and travel junkie, Olivier lives in South Carolina with his wife,two children, and their roving pack of wild Chihuahuas.

AcknowledgmentsA lot more goes into a book like this than people realize, and I need to thank afew folks who contributed to this one in their own particular way.First, because without them, this book would not be what it is, I want to thankmy team of editors and reviewers: Greg Wiegand, Leslie O’Neill, Kristy Hart,Betsy Harris, Maddie Grant, Bart Reed, Erika Millen, Cindy Teeters, KristiColvin, and Scott Gould. Had it not been for their tireless work, this book wouldstill read like a choppy first draft. Thanks also to Pearson Publishing and the Queteam for being wonderful human beings. I also want to send a particularly warmthank-you to my acquisitions editor, Katherine Bull, for fighting for this project,taking a chance on an unpublished author, and patiently seeing me through to thefinish while chasing me around the globe for the better part of six months. Herdiligence, professionalism, and particularly her patience are a credit to herprofession.A very special thanks to Brian Solis, one of the smartest people I know, foragreeing to write such an elegant foreword for what is essentially a meat andpotatoes business book.Kudos to Rob Moyer and Microsoft’s channel distribution team for introducingme to F.R.Y. Without them, a lot of this book would make very little sense.From the bottom of my heart, thank you to Dr. Judith Bainbridge, who manyyears ago in a small classroom at Furman University inspired me to write morethan term papers—and more recently to Steven Pressfield (though he may notknow it) for picking up where she left off.I cannot thank enough my courageous clients, the faithful readers of theBrandBuilder blog, and my Twitter tribe for pushing me to be smarter and morefocused on solving business problems than I would ever have been on my own.This book is in no small part the result of our many exchanges over the years and

would not have ever seen the light of day without you.I also need to thank a few key people without whose support, sense of humor,and encouragement, doing what I do wouldn’t be nearly as fun: Kamran Popkin,Trey Pennington, Kristi Colvin, Jim O’Donnell, Alicia Kahn, Bobby Rettew,Drew Ellis, Phil Yanov, Adam Gautsch, Evan Tishuk, Geoff Livingston, KimBrater, Gabrielle Laine Peters, Jacqueline Collier, Michael Kristof, DebbieMorello, Roby DiGiovine, Scott Gould, Cd, Andy Sernovitz, Guy Kawasaki, theClogenson clan, Ben Schowe, Misty McLelland, Ellen McGirt, MichaelDuffield, Kelly Olexa, Clay Hebert, Seth “Click on my head” Godin, JimMitchem, Amy Wood, Gemma Went, Gavin Heaton, Isaac Pigott, AmberOsborne, Keith Privette, Joseph Gier, Peter Shankman, Hajj Flemings, JeffreyJacobs, Geno Church, Beth Harte, Yann Gourvennec, Keith Burtis, ValeriaMaltoni, Scott Gould, Chris Brogan, Daniel “Raptor” Agee, Karima Catherine,Andrew Davies, Matt Ridings, Peter Kim, Tom Asacker, Mike Wagner, ScottMonty, Christopher Barger, Francois Gossieaux, Jon Evans, David Armano, TomFishburne, Ken Sparks, Hugh MacLeod, Raul Colon, Steven Matsumoto, FrankRoth, Steve Woodruff, Tom Peters, Jay Baer, Robert Lavigne, Owen Greaves,John Heaney, Jeffrey Summers, the SmartBrief team, the PVSM Social MediaPunks, the LikeMinds, WOMMA, Ungeeked, and SMC Greenville communities,my co-pilot Chico, and of course Instigator #149. I routinely learn somethingvaluable from all of you.To my parents—Alain and Francine Blanchard—merci for teaching me toquestion everything and draw clear ethical lines in the sand. I suspect that youhave been watching in complete horror the degree to which I have applied youradvice from day one. You can stop worrying now.Finally, a deep word of gratitude to Lisa, Ethan, and Rowan for the love,patience, and support with which you showered me in the long months it took toput this book together.

We Want to Hear from You!As the reader of this book, you are our most important critic and commentator.We value your opinion and want to know what we’re doing right, what we coulddo better, what areas you’d like to see us publish in, and any other words ofwisdom you’re willing to pass our way.As an associate publisher for Que Publishing, I welcome your comments. Youcan email or write me directly to let me know what you did or didn’t like aboutthis book—as well as what we can do to make our books better.Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems related to the topic ofthis book. We do have a User Services group, however, where I will forwardspecific technical questions related to the book.When you write, please be sure to include this book’s title and author as well asyour name, email address, and phone number. I will carefully review yourcomments and share them with the author and editors who worked on the book.Email:feedback@quepublishing.comMail:Greg WiegandAssociate PublisherQue Publishing800 East 96th StreetIndianapolis, IN 46240 USA

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I. Social Media ProgramDevelopment1 Creating the Social Company 32 Aligning Social Media to Business Goals 133 Planning for Performance Measurement 294 Establishing Clarity of Vision, Purpose, and Execution 41

1. Creating the Social CompanyBuilding a social media program for an organization is hard. I won’t try toconvince you otherwise. The truth of it is that it takes patience, long hours ofintricate planning, and a razor-sharp focus on getting things right. When youlook at the companies that first started to successfully integrate the social webinto their business models—companies such as Ford, Starbucks, Virgin Airlines,Dell, IBM, and Best Buy—what you often don’t see is the mountain of diligentplanning it took for them to get there: the research, the team work, the block-byblock building that went on behind the scenes. What those friendly Twitterinteractions and expertly managed Facebook walls don’t tell you is that behindevery corporate success story in this space is a basic operational framework thatplaces all the right elements in the right way and at the right time. Social mediasuccess doesn’t happen by accident. It is engineered.It is also important to note that success in social media doesn’t happen overnight:Reach, attention, and influence cannot effectively be bought in this space. Theyhave to be earned and developed, much like friendships are earned anddeveloped. In this way, social media is different from other forms of mediaalready employed by the business world. The “spend and reach” campaignmentality of “traditional” media does not produce long-term results here. Thesocial web requires more subtlety and commitment, which is why terms such asrelationships, trust, and conversations are such popular buzzwords inprofessional social media circles: These three words describe the social web’slifeblood, especially as it relates to business.Evolution, Human Nature, and the Inevitable Socialization ofBusinessOne of the fundamental reasons why social media has been so readily embracedby the general public is that it helps connect people with each other in ways that

are valuable, meaningful, and convenient, on their own terms, and on anunprecedented scale. Bear in mind that Facebook isn’t “Brandbook,” Twitterisn’t “Promotweets,” and YouTube isn’t “CorpTube.” After decades spentenduring thousands of daily marketing messages being shoved at them acrossevery communications channel known to man, the public found in the social weba means of turning the messaging off and turning instead to what mattered tothem more: relationships, trust, and conversations. Businesses planning todevelop a presence in social media therefore need to tread lightly and payattention to the unspoken rules governing interactions in this space.The secret to how social media works won’t be found in marketing or businessbooks. It doesn’t live in data about digital influence or the purchasing habits ofweb users. In order to understand the true power of the social web, you have tolook into the nature of humanity itself: We are social creatures. We crave socialinteractions. We love to belong to social groups, listen to stories, shareexperiences, and contribute something of value to the groups to which webelong. Thirty thousand years ago, we gathered with our tribe around thecampfire. Today, separated by thousands of miles, complicated schedules, andbusy lives, we instead gather around our social networks to fulfill the sameneeds. The technology and the world around us may have changed, but wehaven’t. We still crave those interactions, that dialogue, that need to participatein social dynamics, and social media has given us a means to do just that.What smart businesses have always known is that tapping into this need forgroup validation and social connections is the foundation upon which brands andcustomer loyalty are built. As far back as the first days of commerce, the morebusinesses treated their customers like friends, the more those customerspreferred to do business there. The more businesses made their customers feelwelcome, the more these customers recommended the experience to family andfriends. The more businesses built an engaged community of customers aroundthem, the less likely they were to ever have to discount products and services toattract business. This type of mentality created the business cultures that madebrands such as Apple, BMW, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and more recently Zapposso successful.What these companies managed to do was reject the notion that customers weremere “numbers” in an elaborate game of marketing and sales. More to the point:

These companies made sure that no customer was ever made to feel like theywere a “number.” Their success, and the success of companies like them,depended on this critical point: connecting with customers on a deeper level inorder to develop them into outspokenly loyal repeat customers.Over the last few decades, however, scale, automation, and modern marketingtechniques have conspired to make the special relationship between customersand the companies they do business with difficult to maintain. Fifty years ago, aregular customer might have been greeted by name when she entered the store.Nowadays, only when she produces her rewards card might a part-time clerk beprompted to address her as a valued patron. In a cruel twist of irony, efficiencyand growth made companies forget the value of being social, got in the way ofbuilding lasting bonds between frontline employees and their customers, andmade the “social company” the exception rather than the rule—that is, untilsocial media came along to potentially make things right again.Sometime in 2008, when businesses started noticing the almost exponentialgrowth of activity on social networks, the term social business began to make itsway into business development conversations, and the opportunity fororganizations to leverage the social web to improve their business became anincreasingly common topic of discussion among business managers. Could asmall engineering firm in Portland, for example, benefit from a presence insocial media the way that a major global brand might benefit from it? Did socialmedia offer the same opportunities to B2B industries as it clearly does to B2Cindustries? These joined hundreds of equally pertinent questions being askeddaily in conference rooms around the U.S. and the world, but the fundamentaltruth of it was that they could all be answered in the same way: If you want totake the time to build relationships with customers the way businesses used to,then yes, social media is worth a closer look.In and of itself, social media is not particularly complicated: It is a set of easy-touse platforms and technologies that allow people to talk with other people.Social media is the new campfire, the new market square, the new water cooler,only it lives on our computers, smart phones, game consoles, and othernetworked devices. It can be accessed from virtually anywhere and pretty muchat any time. As applied to the business world, social media recalibrates thequestion of B2B or B2C into a concept as old as human commerce: Allbusinesses, regardless of industry, vertical, or sector, are fundamentally

“P2P”—people to people. Understanding that businesses rely first and foremoston connecting people with one another (buyers and sellers, managers andemployees, and so on), then building relationships based on value, preference,trust, and convenience is the first challenge facing executives trying to grasphow social media fits into their business models. It is this emphasis on humaninteraction that constitutes both the essence and the elusive “secret sauce” of thesocial company.What does the social company look like? One way to put it would be to say thatit is business, evolved. The signature characteristics of the social company areessentially the antithesis of most corporate entities today: The social model ismore human, less burdened by departmental silos, fluid with its communications(both internal and external), and with a much flatter operational structure. Yousee some of its cultural qualities emerging in companies such as Zappos and BestBuy, albeit not yet fully deployed. In a bizarre twist of irony given that moderntechnology is responsible for

6. Social Media Confidentiality and Nondisclosure (NDA) Guidelines 7. Official vs. Personal Communications Guidelines 8. The Employee Digital Citizenship Contract 9. Training Resources 10. Social Media Guidelines for Agency Partners, Contractors, and External Representatives 8 Laying the Operational Groundwork for Effective Social Media Management