Spend A Million on Social Media With Measurable ROI? Yes, Indeed
Writing on his blog, PR Squared, SHIFT Communications Principal, Todd Defren, in reaction to a comment Rohit Bhargava made during a panel at NewComm Forum, explains what he'd do if he had a million dollars to spend on a campaign heavily focused on social media.
While Rohit expressed concern over the ability to affix ROI metrics to a social media campaign (in comments, Rohit clarifies the concern was for the ability to scale, not the ability to measure), Todd argues measurements can be made and outlined a few tactics he might employ were he to be handed a million to spend.
Many are concerned social media is a bit too soft to measure with traditional hard metrics currently employed online and off. It's a natural concern giving the newness of the medium if it can be called that.Social media guru Alisa Leonard believes social media, or as she likes to call it the "current iteration of the internet," is completely measurable and has detailed how she'd approach doing so.
With metrics like sentiment, tonality, source of conversation, effect of influencer, individual and site authority, relevance, credibility and a lot more, Alisa has an excellent start towards a "super tool" that'd put to ease the minds of those with budget control.
Comments
Hi guys,
I posted a comment on Todd's post too - but to clarify, I didn't say we could not affix ROI metrics to a social media campaign ... we do that all the time, and are getting pretty sophisticated with how we do it - including all the points that you mentioned above (tonality, influence, authority, etc). My point was that the big challenge for all of us working in social media is how we will answer the call to scale when our clients start to call for it. How will we respond when million dollar social media campaigns are common instead of rare? That's the challenge that I spend most of my time on, and one that "keeps me up at night." Not because we don't have a solution, but because this is the one challenge that everyone practicing social media today will eventually need to rise to meet.