Social Media ROI = 5 Simple Steps to Measure Social Media ROI

There are, without question, myriad soft benefits of social media: elevated customer service, real-time market research, influencer engagement, crisis management, brand protection, brand equity and word-of-mouth marketing. But, many companies want to be able to see ROI (shocker, I know.) They want to know that social media is a sound investment of their time and money.

Here’s how to do it in five simple steps:

1. Determine Your Social Media Spend. This includes hard and soft costs, including your time. Yes, time! Social media is not free. Your time has value; in fact it is your most precious, non-renewable resource. If you spend $100 a month on various social media tools and technologies, and you invest five hours a month at an hourly rate of $100, then your social media spend is $2,100/month. Count it all.
2. Determine your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). This is a terribly important metric, yet most companies don’t know it. Know it. If you get clear on the true value of a customer, you can make better business decisions. More importantly, if you can engage customers and inspire them to share your brand with their trusting communities, it will boost their CLV dramatically. That’s where the power of social comes in–not so much for customer acquisition, but for customer retention–and evangelism (where the real value is). Marinate on this: If I buy your $200 shoes and go away forever. I’m worth $200 to you. If I buy your $200 shoes and you keep in touch with me, inspiring me to share my experience in social media, and 30 people buy your shoes as a result of my endorsement, my CLV just shot up to $6,100. Ask your current customers how much they roughly spend on your product each year, then, multiply by 20 to arrive at their CLV.

3. Determine New Customers Via Social Media (SMC). Track conversions using Google Analytics or any other website tracking software. Google Analytics allows you to slice by social. This takes time, but it’s necessary if you want to understand your ROI from social media.
4. Determine Impression Value (IV). There is value in impressions; it’s what traditional media sell. To determine IV, add up your impressions from Twitter and Facebook, cumulative YouTube views, website traffic and any other online source. Divide that total by 100 and then multiply by an industry-appropriate CPM (cost per thousand impressions).

5. Calculate Customer Service Value (CSV). Social media can reduce customer service costs, which is a tangible value. This is a subjective one, but you need to take a crack at valuing it. For example, if you feel like Twitter provides $1,000 of customer service value a month, write that in. It matters.

Now, let’s add up that Investment Return, shall we? (Customer Value/20 (years) x Number of New Customers) + Impression Value + Online Transactions from Social Sources + Customer Service Value.

Social Media ROI = Investment Return – Social Media Spend (Step 1) / Social Media Spend (Step 1).

source: http://socialmediatoday.com/eric-harr-resonate-social-media/463590/5-simple-steps-measure-social-media-roi

Dave

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27 March 12 at 11:42

Consumers, Brands and Social Media

Social media plays a role in how consumers are learning more about certain brands according to a joint study by Performics, the marketing branch of Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center, and ROI Research, an analytics and technology firm.

Research shows that Twitter drives most consumers to look for a product on a search engine, with 48% searching for the product after reading about it on the popular micro-blogging website, compared to only 34% on other social media sites.

Michael Kahn, Performics Marketing Senior Vice President, said, “Being in a social network is like going to someone’s barbecue. People are talking about the experiences of their lives. The sharing experience that happens in the physical world also happens in the social.”

Likewise, 30% of 3,000 active social networkers admitted to learning about a product, brand or service on a social network site such as Facebook and Twitter. Twenty-five-percent actually visited an online retailer’s website after learning about the product on social media sites. Forty-four-percent of survey respondents have already recommended a product on Twitter and 46% claim they would recommend a product on Facebook.

Consumers are more tolerant of brand marketing messages than previously thought and open to online interaction in regards to various products, services and brands. To read more about how consumers are finding out about and recommending brands, read Laurie Sullivan’s full article here.

Source: MediaPost Publications, Online Media Daily; November 5, 2009

Power of Social Engine Script

As half of social websites are based on this script it deserves few words.
from my experience it is one of the best engines. Fast and flexible.
But for fast and interactive portal would recommend Boonex Dolphin new version 7. Not bad either.

Social engine is PHP script working on SQL database. It’s comming with installer so you can set it up in 5 minutes. All you need is access to your hosting control panel and FTP. Once you download socialengine, probably zipped. Extract it on local PC or on remote server. up to yourself. Upload files, from upload folder. Open www.yourdomainwhereyouhaveuplodedscript.com or folder/subfolder on that domain with/install on the end and just follow the installation. It is so easy as it sounds:

• How do I install SocialEngine?

To install SocialEngine on your server, download SocialEngine from the client area, unzip the file with WinZip, and follow the installation instructions in install.html. Installation only requires that you upload several files via FTP, create a MySQL database, and run the SocialEngine installation script in your browser.

• If I upgrade to a new version, will I lose my customizations or admin panel settings?

This depends on what type of customizations you’ve made. If you’ve simply created new files and linked to them from SocialEngine, it’s unlikely that you will lose any customizations you’ve made. If you’ve edited the core SocialEngine code and you overwrite it with the new files from the upgrade package, you may lose your customizations. To avoid this, you can refer to our changelog.html (provided in the SocialEngine zip) to see which files we’ve changed in each version. If you want to ensure that you don’t lose any changes you’ve made, you can use a file comparison program to compare your files with the newly updated ones. Regardless of the changes you’ve made to your source code, it’s unlikely that you will lose any of your admin panel settings when you upgrade.

• How do I move my installation to a new server?

First, check to see if your new host provides a migration service. If they do not, you can move the installation yourself by exporting your MySQL database using cPanel or PHPMyAdmin, downloading all your SocialEngine files to your computer desktop, importing your MySQL database on your new server, and uploading your SocialEngine files to the new server. Remember to set the proper permissions on the new server (as described in install.html).

• Can SocialEngine be installed in a subdirectory or subdomain? Absolutely! You can install SocialEngine on any location on your server.

more info:

http://www.socialengine.net/faq.php

demo (thats how it looks like straight after installation):

http://www.socialenginedev.com/home.php

The benefit of SE it’s quite flesibale and quick. Comparing to boonex dolphin. It is like Boonex is Windows (easy to use) and SE is GUI based UNIX system (easy but giving you option to customize a lot).

Plus you can get skins so it can look exactly like facebook or myspace. EXACTLY same look and funtionality. You can build up your own facebook.

Sign up for free hosting with free providers (byethost) where you can host your SE script absolutly free, also pick up free subdomain like facebook.isgreat.org. So It will not cost  you a penny.  Good luck and enjoy your online community :).

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9 March 12 at 05:20

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9 March 12 at 07:30