July 9, 2009
It’s a Wonderful (Social) Life
If you’re still thinking about social media as nothing but another channel, to quote George Bailey when he was trying to calm his bank’s nervous customers, “Look, you’ve got this thing all wrong.”
Sure, we need to pay attention to traditional measures of ROI. At one level, social media is just a medium. But social media is also a practice. And as a practice, it has value well beyond its ability to simply deliver eyeballs.
In a salon.com excerpt of his new “blog positive” book, Say Everything, Scott Rosenberg hints at a critical point when he suggests that one cannot measure the value of blogging simply by calculating the impact a blog has on its readers. One must also calculate the impact the blog has on the blogger!
What does that mean?
Just this: In order to calculate the true ROI of social media marketing, one must measure both its impact on the market… and on the marketer!
It’s a conversation-centric marketing world. A two-way marketing world. Not only is it easier than ever to talk to your customers and prospects. It’s easier for them to talk back.
What we are seeing at Media Logic is that the value of this new ability to “talk and talk back” is far greater than the sum of its parts. It has become clear to us that the daily dialog required for effective social media marketing (which we make easy with products like Zeitgeist & Coffee) has the potential for a greater positive impact on our clients’ business practices and products than even we thought possible.
To make sure social media marketing efforts are properly funded, brand managers and product marketers must take into account the value of engagement and conversation when calculating ROI.