Social Media ROI - A Podcast with David Meerman Scott

Jason Cormier — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:30:00 -0500

Room 214 Co-Founder, Jason Cormier, interviews best-selling author and online marketing thought leader, David Meerman Scott.

In this podcast, we discuss:

1. Old-school measurement for ROI: What is really a "lead?" People want to apply same measures to social media. Traditional measures are being applied to social media marketing when so many other aspects of business simply don't. Example: What's the ROI of the receptionist, or even the accounting department for that matter?

2. We can measure how many people are exposed to our ideas, downloaded our YouTube video, etc. but these are very different measurements compared to traditional ROI measurements.

3. David states that ultimately, the ROI argument is used as an excuse based in fear. Many companies are simply afraid of social media.

4. David's new book, World Wide Rave: How ideas spread and why people talk about you and your company. The first step in the formula for success is very counter-intuitive to marketers: Nobody cares about your products except you. To create something that has potential to spread, you can't talk about these things. As soon as your product is brought into the equation, nobody cares.

5. Key take-away: Doing lots of activities in online marketing as opposed to one or just a few, should be the expectation when it comes to increasing your chances of success.

Notes: You can check out David's blog at WebInkNow.com. I really enjoyed this interview, and am looking forward to reading his new book.

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Selling Social Media Programs Requires The Ability to Show ROI

James Clark — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:42:15 -0500

Who leads the Social Media Programs in the Enterprise: IT or Business?, this is the question Jeremiah Owang presents at Web-Strategist. It's a great post as it shows how social media and online community based programs still lack a clear position within the corporate structure.

Who's responsible for bringing together all of the active components (PR, Customer Service, Sales, Advertising, IT) to ensure the effort is properly launched and supported?

In our experience, the most well run social media programs have the stamp of approval from the heads of the business units - presidents of division VPs. In addition, these individuals were always active in the initial discussions. It was never a situation where the idea was conjured up by the PR firm, sold to the PR director, who took it to the VP of marketing, who then sold it to president. Too many dissenters along that chain of command, and that did not even include IT, which once they find out that the external PR agency recommended this program they go into bunker mentality.

Yes, social media and community programs are all the rage. New social media sites are popping up every day. But rest assured presidents and VPs are not seduced by being part of the rage. They want accountability and ROI.

Until one can show how these programs can integrate and drive overall business objectives, it's a long hard road. Even if you sell it in, by not backing it with ROI and measurable impact numbers, the effort will die on the vine. The social media guy will look cool, but after time the president just sees that person as line-item expense, and line-items expenses are favorite targets of cost conscious executives.

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Social Media ROI - A Podcast with David Meerman Scott

Selling Social Media Programs Requires The Ability to Show ROI