How do you consider the intangible benefits of social media?

Flickr Photo by Maurice

In the comments of a post I wrote titled "Reports of Social Networking's Death Are Exaggerated,"  Paul Caplan from Content to Be Different said

I think the point about measurement/evaluation is vital as long as we don't get hung up on stats etc. I have been trying to work with clients (Gov and Charities in the UK) on taking a broader qualitative look at how the discourse has shifted around their issue or brand or whatever. If those dipping their toes into the Live Web see success in terms of eyeballs rather than changing ideas, conversations and content relationships, they may well be put off.

When I clicked over to check him out, I discovered his e-guide for nonprofits and social media called "Trust Me I'm Telling You Stories" commissioned by the Media Trust in the UK.  (They've also published a booklet on social media case studies in collaboration with ICT Hub).   I went straight to the section on Flickr

Sobell House is an Oxford based hospice. It uses Flickr to host all of its photos. “It’s so much easier than the running battles with designers or having to administer them,” says fundraiser Kevin Game. Sobell House encourages its supporters to upload their photos and link them into the charity’s images. Sobell House has found that people contact the charity after finding images on the site. Some ask if they can use the images and some just want to know more.

Kevin is exploring the possibilities of using the site to make contacts outside the charity world. “Flickr builds a community of photo users,” he says. As an example, the local Harley Davidson group attended a fundraising walk and took photos which are part of the Sobell House album of the event. Kevin is adding the tag “Harley Davidson” so that any other bikers looking for picture of their beloved bikes will find his images and his organisation. Maybe those bikers are also looking for a charity to support.

I visited the photo stream and indeed found the set for the Midnight Stroll and lots of photos of Harley Davidson riders.  I wanted to use one of them for this blog post, but the licenses were set to "All Rights Reserved,"  I'm noticing that some nonprofits have specific reasons for doing so and others do not understand or know about the value of Creative Commons licensing.  I wonder which scenario is at work here?
At any rate,  it is a good example of how NOT to spam the Flickr community.  Simply tagging your photos with the right tag can help other Flickr users find them.    This is more a note to myself - because I'm really sloppy tagger and sometimes I forget to add tags at all.    I finished a draft of an article where I advise people to fill out the title and description and tag fields for their photos.  It's time to eat my own dog food.

So, let me close the loop and bring this back to my earlier social networking posts (#1, #2 and #3) and Paul's specific comment about what success might look at for nonprofits and caution not to hung up on the quantitative side.  He is saying that to appreciate the change in conversation or attitude shifts you need to also look at the qualitative data and perhaps identify those intangible benefits.

This brings me to using the Harley Davidson as a metaphor for qualitative and quantitative data.   You can measure how fast you're riding the motocycle, how far down the road you traveled before your stopped, and now many miles per gallon you're getting.   But will those numbers tell you what's like to have the wind in your face and the sense of riding on the open road.   

The point here is that you need to collect both quantitative and qualitative data to come to a complete understanding of both tangible and intangible benefits.

My question is how are you collecting and using qualitative data?  Do you find valuable?  Do decision-makers find it valuable?

Comments

[Paul Caplan]

Thanks for the links et al. As an example of qualitative analysis, I did some work for the RAF in the UK. They'd taken the brave initiative of giving one of their guys in Kandahar a video camera and set him up a YouTube page [http://www.youtube.com/user/royalairforce]. The guy was a natural. Real voice. I was asked to do an evaluation. As well as churning some stats and graphs etc, I did a discourse analysis of how the lad was talking but also how his commenters were talking with him. I looked at how the 'RAF story' was being created and repositioned around this guy, his stories of ups and downs and real life. By using the tools of discourse analysis and lingustics, I helped (hopefully) the client see how venturing onto the Live Web was about opening up storyspaces and using voice to make new connections - connections and conversations that could construct a new story for the 'business'.

Sure the client wanted the Excel spreadsheets tracking numbers of views, comments etc but by widening the analysis we could discuss the broader discursive shifts they had set in motion and so look at how to move it on by engaging constructively and creatively with the conversation community they had set in motion.

My fear about a purely quantitative analysis is that this wider Live-Web-conversation-relationships-narrative world can be lost. And also that charlatan agencies with clever software can flog evaluation services with no real sense of the new spaces they are supposedly analysing.