A return on investment can also be one of following:
- Return on Engagement – How many people are you engaging with? Is this engagement showing results in terms of the number of Retweets, website sales, @mentions, Facebook likes, inbound links or traffic.
- Return on Participation – If your promoting a launch or competition, how many people through social media are participating in your campaign? Think about participating in conversations where you don’t already have a voice? Have you moved from a running monologue to a meaningful dialogue with your customers?
- Return on Involvement – This can look at the number of sign ups or the number of people who are actively involved in your social media campaign. A lot of marketeers measure involvement on blogs, how many comments do you get? Are users actively adding to your blog community? You should ask yourself is your company currently part of the conversations about your product/industry? If the answer is no, then get involved in them.
- Return on Attention – Are people listening to you more than competitors? How are you currently talked about compared to your competitors? Are you receiving negative or postivitive attention?
- Return on Trust – This is key, I can’t stress enough how important trust is online. Think about all of Toyota’s problems with it’s recalls, Toyota, are turning to social media to build trust and re-assure customers about their message that they deliver quality cars. Nearly all brands and companies should be looking to build better relationships with their key audiences. Trust is what makes a brand powerful.
Measure Your RoI
Many of the of world’s best bloggers that I follow have used social media successfully to drive significant inbound links and traffic to their website.
Let’s look at some key success factors:
- Improve your corporate reputation
- Improve the number of conversations
- Increase website conversions
- Improve your customer relationships
- Generate inbound links
- Increase your website traffic
So remember if you are thinking about getting involved in social media set out what your going to measure and remember return on investment can defined by more than just profit.