ROI on Social - a quick thought bomb

We've all heard it from our managers - "This social media thing is all well and good but what return are we getting?"

The best answer to this is "Well what return did we hope to get?"

It is amazing how often that little question goes unanswered at the very beginning of a campaign.

On a high level it is relatively easy to use even just facebook insights to track reach and engagement (virality they call it - 2% or greater per post is good). If you have the basics of Google analytics set up you monitor traffic to your website from your various social outlets and hopefully you can even go one step further and attach this to sales. (This is of course just the starting point there's a world of tools out there to help measure social effectiveness)

But in reality what should happen is you plan a campaign in which social is a factor and you say "what role do we want social to play in this campaign?" and then develop measurable tactics to achieve those aims. Often it won't be pure sales, it might be customer engagement, 'likes', reach, exposure - social for the arts is great for anticpation building and pre-show knowledge building. If you define success from the outset you will be in a much better position to justify the investment with your boss.

An interesting counter point is whether your business approaches social from a campaign by campaign basis or from an 'always on' basis. I think it is important that you have this conversation internally as they are two very different things with different benchmarks, one is quite outcomes/sales driven and the other is more about the brand and customer relationship - the need different benchmarks.

Think also about the wisdom of being always 'on'. Human relationships are not always 'on' some of my dearest friends, I may not speak with for months on end, the relationship is not weaker because of it. Natural relationships ebb and flow, start-stop and start again. As an organsiation you may not need to be posting to your "friends" every day, it might be better to only talk to your likers when you have something to say that is of interest to them.

I hope to expand on ROI further in coming weeks thanks largely to links and resources provided by @stephenellis_ and @artsoz watch this space.