Calculating the ROI of Monitoring/Listening efforts + Methodology Worksheet
Erin Korogodsky is Lithium's social media quarterback. Obsessed with social media, Erin has worked with clients like Newell Rubbermaid, Wieden Kennedy and Vista Print to monitor their brands and brainstorm engagement strategy. She is a frequent blogger on the Lithosphere (as ErinKoro) and you can follow her on twitter at @erinkoro and one of the team on @LithiumTech
Since I’ve been working in social media at Scout Labs and Lithium Technologies, people ask me all the time how to calculate the ROI of their monitoring/listening efforts. Typically, my response is “I don’t know – what’s the ROI from answering your phone? Reading your email?” Admittedly, this is a bit cheeky. That’s for good reason - I don’t know what you know. What are you listening for in the first place?
- Lead generation?
- Ideation?
- Customer service?
- Brand awareness?
Clearly, each of these areas has their own KPI’s, costs and potential savings. The ROI doesn’t come from listening; it comes from what you have learned by listening. Start with KPI’s because they lead you to ROI.
When I was invited to speak at the 2011 eMarketing Summit a Special Event @ InnoTech, I thought this was a hot topic to tackle. I really wanted suggest a place to start, identify what to measure and put it into a format that’s easy to share with your team.
Since the event was in Portland, I absolutely had to get Dean McBeth from W+K to join me and frame the whole thing around the much-talked-about Old Spice Campaign. Who can blame me? These spots took off like a rocket ship that has yet to land.
While not everyone has the budget or even goal of creating a campaign of that scale, there’s much to be learned from the measurement methodology. Quickie overview came from Susan Etlinger of Altimeter and goes like this:
- first measure the volume and gain insights from what you can learn about your industry.
- Then look at your own company and competitors.
- Finally, look at products, events and campaigns.
Thanks again to Dean for joining and adding so much color commentary to boring old research and math. Something about that Old Spice guy just makes everything sing. Or whistle, whichever the case may be.
Slides / Methodology spreadsheet from the presentations are below and attached. Thanks to all who attended!
