The ABCs of Social Media ROI & Measurements

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of DC second annual Social Summit and sharing some information on social media ROI and metrics. Earlier this summer I posted on top tips for measuring ROI and getting strategic with data, touching on the idea and importance of actionable data, or rather, data that helps draw meaningful conclusions and future actions to optimize programs.

At the Social Summit, I wanted to take this concept further and share memorable, easy suggestions for measuring ROI that were actionable and scalable for any organization – things as easy to remember as your ABCs.

The full length presentation is included below and posted on SlideShare for download, but here were the three, simple areas I shared for all organizations to remember when embarking on measuring social media ROI:

Analytics – measuring the right data

1.  Analyze goals of you social media and decide what metrics to measure based on those goals

2. Allot the right tools to help collect the data and make the process simple

3.  Assign the right resources to collect the data on an ongoing basis

Benchmarks – Taking raw data and reporting in a comparable way

1.  Begin making a master report that serves as the central repository for all social metrics

2.  Baseline your activity metrics to provide a starting point for reference when comparing data in the future

3.  Broaden benchmark metrics once you feel comfortable with reporting, ongoing activity and preliminary success

Conclusions – Taking the analytics, benchmarks and trends and drawing meaningful conclusions

1.  Compare anomalies, spikes in engagement and other data to the content and/or events that drive the result (see presentation for example charts)

2.  Cluster together similar tactics such as Tweets, blog posts, mentions, Facebook posts to determine trends (examples in presentation below)

3.  Continue the evolution of your programs by gathering as much actionable data as possible

Have any tips yourself for measuring social ROI? Maybe some ideas on integrating these metrics with website reporting for maximum efficienc? Share here – bonus points for keeping with the alliteration theme!

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