Enough with Social Media ROI, Already

Breaking news: ROI may well not matter for your social media program.

That is, according to Dave Fleet of Social Media Today. It's a financial term, with a set definition that carries a hefty weight in companies.  However, that doesn't mean you can always relate your programs directly to it. 

For the ROI formula to work, you must be able to measure the cost and benefits of your in dollar amounts.  The problem is the cost is easy to assess, but the gain can be difficult to attribute. For instance, what is the $ gain of improving customer service, increased employee engagement, or relationship-building?  

Taking these situations into consideration, ROI may not be the right measurement for you.

It doesn't mean your program isn't valuable or your program isn't worth measuring.  It means you need to find appropriate ways to tie your measurements back to your objectives. Everything should lead back to your objectives.  This allows you to make adjustments to your program to perform to your (or your client's) needs.

"The fact that you're not measuring ROI doesn't mean you're not measuring success or impact. In fact, it may just mean you're measuring the right thing."

This has definitely hit home for us at REACTOR.  Our first goal for our Great Social Media Experiment was to measure the true value of social networks to increase ROI for service-based business.  As the weeks have progressed, we have begun to question the ability of social media to increase ROI.  After reading this article, I think it's time to change our measurements, like Fleet suggests, to tie back to our objectives: to make the REACTOR name and concept more widely known among businesses. 

See the entire article here.

(via @paulbarron)