Jason Falls wrote an excellent post showing how equivalent SEO value to your social media initiatives is a good, financial metric you can take to the Boss…and she will (or should) ‘get it’. While it isn’t a perfect solution, by any means, I think it is a good starting point to move towards more accepted metrics.
2010 is going to be all about Social Media ‘growing up’ and starting to find its place in the fabric of an organization and to do this, the more ways we can show financial value, the longer we are all going to be in business! So, SEO equivalent value, is a good opener. Another good one, which can be demonstrated without the need of an industry standard metric based around engagement, and can equal a £ or $ sign is Cost Reduction.
The ROI debate is going to continue unabated. There was great stuff done by Oliver Blanchard in 2009 explaining the hows and the whys of social media ROI measurement. Also, KDPaine on how we should be analyzing the different types or levels of engagement and the affects of it rather than the action itself before we can get to a price – and we probably won’t get a universal one, rather accepted metrics based on a specific industry or objective.
However, cost reductions is one that I think is sometimes overlooked. Below are some examples:-
Research –Social Media Monitoring and gleaning insights from an online community can be a cheaper alternative to focus groups and traditional market research see Dell Ideastorm and My Starbucks Idea
Recruitment – Earnst & Young have over 35,000 fans on their Facebook careers page. LinkedIn is also a great resource and can cut the costs of recruitment agencies and the time it takes to find your next team member
Customer support costs – Integrating social into customer service can reduce the time spent dealing with enquiries or better than that, can create a self supporting community – Apple support forums, other than ‘global admin’ positions is self supporting by the community. I’d love to know what the cost savings on that is.
Efficiencies - less meetings, savings on travel, phone bills. There are so many good social tools like gotomeeting, even Skype can do a job for one to ones.
Increased productivity by integrating collaboration and internal social tools like Yammer and Basecamp
Employee Retention – less cold calls, better team collaboration, being treated like an adult!
Would love to hear any thoughts, or even better any examples you have.
