Social Media ROI - What's Your Buzz Worth?

Social Media ROI - What's Your Buzz Worth?

In Social Media and Buzz, the most commonly asked (and most nebulously answered) question is "What return (ROI) am I getting on my investment in social media and Buzzworks?"

In TNNWC Buzzworks, our "buzzology" set of messaging outlets not only includes social media, but it also incorporates focused thematic blogging and news release campaigns. Buzz is the comprehensive key to branding, name recognition and credibility -- the ultimate goal is market domination within your service or product arena.

To fully quantify your Social Media ROI is a challenge even for the most expert among us, especially given that the results may not be immediately apparent, nor measurable though any one means. Yet, in my opinion, there is one simple test metric that you can use to establish a minimal or starting benchmark for your buzzological success. If your buzz investment passes this test, it will at very least let you know if your message is being received. If your message is being received by enough members of your target audience, it's a good sign that you are, at very least, headed in the right direction.

Here's the test:

1. Establish a compelling Landing Page specifically regarding your service, product, company or cause; this is the page to which visitors will arrive if they have gotten your message, and are interested enough to visit;

2. Key your Buzz Campaign to refer your audience to that Landing Page if they are interested in learning more; in order to optimaize the benefit of the Landing Page, you should embed it with a feature (a button, a link, an application form, et cetera) which permits them to access your website and engage with you. While this is not a means of measuring your buzz power (your buzz power only brings them to the Landing Page, and doesn't necessarily guarantee any percentage of conversion to sales revenue, sign-ups, or other "ultimate" results), it will tell you about the effectiveness of your Landing Page, which is another crucial element of any targeted marketing campaign.

3. After a test period of 30 days from your Buzz campaign launch, measure the amount of total hits or visits to the Landing Page as well as the total number of unique visitors to your Landing Page.

4. Using a minimum result standard ("MRS") established by the esteemed team of TNNWC Buzzworks Baristas, you should have gotten a) one visit per dollar invested in the campaign [at minimum], with b) a minimum of 25% of those visits being from unique visitors.

5. If you achieve those results in the first month of your campaign, you are doing well enough to warrant an enthusiastic continuation. If your results fall a bit short, you might wish to extend the experiment for an additional 30 days; again, sometimes results appear at a lag behind buzzcasts.

While the above test is very basic, it is a good "quick and dirty" indicator. I hope that it serves you well.

Regarding some other ideas about measuring the ROI of Social Media, the following article appears courtesy of USA Today and may be of interest:

####

5 ways to measure your social media payoff
Traffic, eyeballs, retweets and diggs can help measure the return on investment for your social media efforts, according to Steve Strauss, "but if you are not making more money as a result, you are doing something wrong." In addition to sales, focus on brand awareness and quality relationships that can lead to opportunities, Strauss suggests. USA TODAY (3/13). ####

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle,
Chairman and CEO,
TNNWC Group, LLC

Note: This article was originally published in the blog Expert Advice and Insights from TNNWC , and is republished with permission of both the author and the publication if it appears elsewhere.

Tags, Labels, Keywords, Terms: Buzz Baristas, TNNWC Buzzworks, ROI, Social Media, news releases, messaging, buzz metrics, USA today, Douglas E. Castle, RD Watkins, marketing, TNNWC Group Membership, Mini-Media Buzz Blitz, MRS measurement, Minimum Result Standard, Lingovations, increase leads, convert leads, increase sales, branding, landing page, blogs by Douglas Castle, Expert Advice And Insights From TNNWC blog...

---

Capital, Traffic Building, International Customers and unique SERVICES.
The National Networker Publications™ produced by TNNWC Group, LLC
Resources for Business Planning, Development, Capital and Growth