WeAreMedia Module 6: ROI - What information do you need to quantify and understand the benefits of your organization's social media strategy?

Photo by Jill Greenseth

This week we are working on Module 6: Considering the ROI, an evaluation process and analysis of benefits, costs, and value of a social media strategy over time.   This module covers the basic building blocks to using ROI - benefits, value, and metrics as well as how to use quantitative and qualitative information to help you learn how to improve your social media strategy or understand the impact over time.

But where to begin?  You start with these questions:

Benefits

• How will the social media strategy contribute to effectiveness of our staff to serve our stakeholders?
• How will the social media strategy help us build better relationships with our key audiences?

Value

• How much time or money can we save?
• Will the social media strategy translate into earned revenue or increased donations?

Those are hard questions to answer.  So what if we had a little fun, like played a game of Mad Libs (you can still add yours) to generate some examples of the benefits and value of a social media strategy for nonprofits. 

Want some inspiration?   Check out the fun that Holly had with Social Media ROI Mad Libs at the NTEN Blog.  Or Read Connie Bensen's ROI of a Community Manager and Chris Brogan's 12 Ways To Sell Your Boss on Social Media and then go over to the wiki and add your mad lib.

Once you've identified the benefits and determined the value, the next question to ask is:

What type of quantitative and qualitative information do we need to track to measure our success or learn how to improve our social media strategy?

That's where the scale comes in.  You need a number to know where you are.  Now that you have identified the benefits and translated into value, what benchmark or metric will you choose to measure your success.  Once you have a benchmark you can evaluate your organization's previous performance or compare to others.  Not sure about metrics?  Get some inspiration from The Social Organization's Social Media Metrics List and Collecting All Social Media Metrics

Finally, numbers alone won't tell you everything.  Let's go back to that scale.  Did you drop the weight in a healthy that way so you can keep it off?  How did you it?  What worked? What didn't?  What qualitative data will you collect to help you understand the benchmark and improve your social media strategy?

What metrics and qualitative data do you collect to measure and understand your social media strategy benefits and value?   Add it here.

Comments

[Erica]

Hey Beth - I hate to say it but the weight loss metaphor really turns me off here. Maybe a building metaphor instead?

[Beth Kanter]

Probably a reflection of my need to get back to weight watchers ... can you unpack the building metaphor?

[Erica]

I guess I was searching for something positive, rather than negative: building something rather than losing something. It might be along the lines of a recipe with taste tests... It's true it's hard to come up with something authentic that has metrics. Hmm.