As an NTC newbie, I have to say that I found the first afternoon pretty exciting. I met some cool people and had some interesting conversations. I certainly spent more time talking social media today than I get to at home. My wife graciously patronizes me when I try to talk social media over dinner, and my kids only like the part where they get to create their own “guy,” as they like to call the avatars. So, today was a treat for me and I have high expectations for tomorrow and Friday.
You see, tomorrow is the day that Beth Kanter talks about The Web 2.0 ROI, and on Friday Justin Perkins will cover similar ground but presumably focusing more on fundraising. I’ve been reading about the struggles a lot of social media minded people have had convincing their powers-that-be to invest in some sort of social media effort and, of course, struggling to answer the question of what ROI the organization would receive from the effort. Both Beth and Justin know more about this space than I do, I’m sure, and they mention metrics in their session descriptions. I am excited to learn what those metrics are, but I have some concerns that I am going to hear about page views, time on site, etc.
To my mind, the success of a social network or similar social media efforts can be claimed if the organization can answer yes to the following questions?
- Did more people do something we like them to do?
- Did each person do a wider variety of the things we like them to do?
- Did each person do something we like them to do faster than before?
- Did each person do something we like them to do more frequently than before?
Clearly, these “things we like them to do” can be more than simply giving money. In fact, it seems that places like Facebook should not be seen as fertile fundraising grounds just yet, but I’m fairly certain that other actions like surrendering an email address, or registering for an event, or writing a legislator are things that most organizations can attach some dollar figure to, and so measuring the activity can be converted into some monetary value. If this is true, then comparing the volume, frequency, and speed at which these activities happen within a social media campaign versus outside of a social media campaign should be quantifiable as dollars.
I’m looking forward to learning something from Beth and Justin, and I’m looking forward to sharing what I learned and what I think about it here. See you then.
