Social Media: ROI by Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) was quite an education for me. I took eight pages of notes and can’t possibly cover anything but the highlights here. All I can say is, if you want to know how social media will benefit your organization, you need to read this book.
I personally love connecting on social media, and I knew it would benefit my organization, I just didn’t know how to talk to my boss about it without it sounding like a vague task with unquantifiable results. Mr. Blanchard gave me what I needed to at least start a discussion in language my boss would find meaningful.
We’re a non-profit and much smaller than many of the example businesses in the book, but the concepts definitely scale. Mr. Blanchard stresses that social media should not be an add-on, but an integrated mechanism that amplifies an organization’s functions (his words, my summary). You have to know the difference between goals, targets, strategies and tactics. Only then should you start to determine how to use social media. It’s pointless to say, “Facebook is popular. We need a page.” Do things in this order instead:
- Goal (desired end point)
- Target (specific value assigned to goal with an infinite time frame)
- Strategy (plan of action to achieve goal)
- Tactic (means by which a strategy is carried out)
- We want net new customers
- 100 net new customers in Q1
- Use Facebook to increase reach and conversion
- Discount coupon for new connections
If you skip to #4, you have no way of knowing whether your efforts are helping meet your business objectives. His point is clear: ROI is about DOLLARS. You have to prove that your efforts result in dollars and this book shows you how to do that. It’s not a magic formula – you have to use your brain and you have to use your people skills to get your people (all of them) involved. He talks about that too.
And he shows how Frequency, Reach and Yield are affected by these same social media efforts. And he shows how all of your departments can benefit: marketing, sales, customer service, PR, product management, HR, crisis management … You name it, it will benefit.
This book shows you why you should integrate social media into your organization and how to manage it. But social media is about human interaction: it won’t work if you don’t put you into it. It’s up to you to figure out which tactics work best for you (after you nail down the first three things of course). Your people need to be involved (all of them). But it’s not enough for you to know that each of you can and should be involved – you have to want to. If it’s someone’s chore, it will fail and your customers will see right through it. If you do it right, your customers will want to help you. How cool would that be?
My colleagues and I have a lot of work to do and I can’t wait to get started!
I’d love to know if you’ve read Social Media: ROI and what you’ve implemented because of it.
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