NTC08: ROI of Social Media, Part 2
Posted by at Mar 23, 2008 09:19 PM CDT
Categories: Social Media

An interesting thing happened during the various sessions concerning the ROI of social media; A lot of people showed up to listen, and no one had any answers. I had a conversation with Eve Smith of Easter Seals about this and we decided that the silver lining was we weren't behind anybody else. The confirmation that nobody else seemed to know how, or even what, to measure was comforting, in a sense.

I was especially interested in the results of the impromptu survey Beth Kanter took during her session, asking how many of audience members were formally, informally, or not at all measuring their social media ROI. The results were overwhelming for the latter, and I was just dying to jump in and ask, "Is that because you don't know what to measure?" But I didn't, so I'll ask it here? Are most non profits not measuring the ROI of their social media efforts because they don't know what to measure?

If there was anybody willing to go out on a limb and provide a solid opinion on the ROI of social media, it was Justin Perkins, whose calculator says negative 90%. He was quick to follow up with a challenge for the audience to beat the calculator, but also a warning to put your efforts to better use. My opinion is that Justin's calculator is a decent start, but far from complete. Here's why:

  • It measures cost versus revenue, but it only takes into account donations and advocacy related income. What about the myriad of other ways an organization has to engage and profit from a constituent, like volunteering, event participation, and referrals?

  • It fails to account for the pace of content delivery in social media. By assuming that each person engaged by social media will only donate once, it assumes that people follow the same patterns they do with email. In social media, it is acceptable to present new content on a daily basis. For example, Defenders of Wildlife post a new update in Facebook with a very high frequency. Now, if the content is angled just slightly differently, it's like a whole new campaign. The opportunities to support the organization are presented more frequently and in a more varied way, and I think they'll eventually result in more frequent support.

I do recognize that more frequent support isn't exactly in evidence yet, but my suspicion is that the frequency of support is actually up, but the actual donations are being made yet. By that, I mean an individual is looking more often at the content of an organization, and they are mentally engaging more often. The trick will be to figure out how to turn the mental into the financial. 

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