I’m blogging on a regular basis on the Techrigy blog  I put this post up today:

Every business wants to know how engaging in social media can increase their bottom line.

There are a number of challenges in explaining the value of social media:

  • How do you show a direct benefit?
  • How do you show an immediate return?

Answering those two questions is challenging because we also know that:

  • much education needs to take place
  • customer engagement is a long term commitment, not a short-range campaign

Social Media Monitoring Provides the Answers

Does the business have competitors? of course they do!

1. My suggestion is to set up keyword searches for the brand & it’s competitors. Then there is a two step process:

Depending on the results the discussion is indicated:

  • If the brand has more conversation around it, then:
    • Doesn’t the brand want to maintain their lead online?
  • If a competitor has more conversations around it, then:
    • Shouldn’t the brand get busy & consider their strategy?
  • If neither the brand or competitors have any conversations around them, then:
    • Shouldn’t the brand get a head start on their competition? Seth Godin suggests that whoever is first will get a lead that’s difficult to overcome.

The next question is how to show an immediate ROI.

2. Use the results from Step One you now have a benchmark. This will provide a basis for setting goals.

Using Techrigy SM2 for social media monitoring offers many ways of analyzing the conversation. It offers an efficient way to measure brand presence, brand perception, opinion & tone. And it also identifies the conversations that the brand should be engaging with.

What will provide value to the customer?

  • Is it improving customer service on the web at large?
  • Is it identifying the influencers & engaging with them? 
  • Is it increasing sentiment around their product?
  • Does the business want to gather product development information & feedback?
  • Will knowing where the conversations are taking place geographically be valuable?
  • Is increased brand visibility important?
  • What is the brand perception?

Once you have established what will be measured then goals can be set. What percentage improvement would the business like to achieve? That provides direction for the strategy.

I would also suggest incorporating web analytics into the strategy because those will most likely increase & are generally already a part of a business plan.

3. Finally what will be the ROI? The business needs to know what value the various points in Step 2 have. Using the goals & the cost of implementing the social media strategy then the ROI can be calculated.

Examples: each customer service call is worth $8 or each new customer signup is worth $5

The exciting part is that the conversations are benchmarked before you start. So moving through the engagement, SM2 facilitates the engagement, tracks it, analyzes the conversations & offers reporting at whatever level is needed.

Imagine if you could show your client the following chart. The blue line represents the benchline of the two previous months with no social media efforts. And the red line depicts the amount of conversation in the past two months surrounding their brand & products. With the tool you can help the client translate the ROI based on the value realized from their goals.

image 

After reading his article on ROI vs Value, I’m going to call out Lewis Green for his input on this.

And what do you think?

Update: I’m doing a webinar on Business Cases of Monitoring Social Media on Thurs Jan 15 at 2 pm est

More info here & sign up.

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