ROI

LinkedInvestment: Eight ways to improve your Social ROI

by RandallCraig on April 19, 2012

Filed in: Blog, Blogging, Make It Happen Tipsheet, Professional Development, Social Media

If you spend 10 minutes on LinkedIn each business day for the last two years, you’ve made an investment of 86 hours… or two weeks of vacation. Up that to 15 minutes, and you’ve gobbled three weeks over the year. How satisfied are you with the return on your time investment? If you’re like most, then the answer is… you know you can do better.

If you’re going to spend so much time on LinkedIn – let alone Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or the other social networks, here are eight practical ideas to improve your ROI:

Be intentional: What specifically are you hoping to achieve with the tool? Professional support/professional development? To close more business? A new job? Or something else?
Complete your profile: This means being thoughtful in your use of keywords, not just filling in blanks. And writing for your reader
Change your status strategically: You are judged by the quality and frequency of your status updates. Irrelevant or too frequent posts harm your personal brand.
Multi-lingual profiles: If you are fluent in another language, create a mirror profile in that language. If someone searches for keywords in this other language you’ll show up.
Add a blog to your profile: Not only does this improve your search results, but it also lets people know how you think. Don’t have a blog? Check out Six Steps to Strategic Blogging at http://www.randallcraig.com/six-steps-to-strategic-blogging (no cost)
Be more active in groups: Choosing the right groups (and participating in them) is really today’s version of networking. The ‘transactions’ of asking and answering questions translates directly into reputation and relationships.
Connect to the real-world: Use LinkedIn proactively before real-life meetings. Check out your connection online before speaking to them directly, and reach out to people who know both you and them.
Measure and manage: Set your calendar for three months time from now. If you haven’t made progress towards your goals, then re-examine what you’re doing with your social media time.

This week’s action plan: Most people already have done 3-4 of these items. But what about the rest? This week, improve your LinkedInvestment by changing how you spend those 5-10 ‘social’ minutes each day.

LinkedIn Trivia: Where are you on the LinkedIn pecking order? It’s not the number of connections, but how long you’ve been using the tool. LinkedIn assigns each person a unique serial number – starting from 1: The longer the number, the more of a veteran you are. Find your LinkedIn number by clicking on the “Profile” menu, and looking for a long string of numbers in the URL. (My number is 1566001 – what’s yours?)

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig

@RandallCraig (follow me)

www.RandallCraig.com
www.ptadvisors.com
www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com

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Social Media Measurement

by RandallCraig on April 12, 2012

Filed in: Blog, Make It Happen Tipsheet, Management, Planning, Social Media

Tagged as: Measurement, Monitoring, ROI

How do you know if you are successful at Social Media? While the answer a few years ago may have been it’s so experimental, we’ll have to see, the answer from some today is similarly dissatisfying: Social Media ROI is comparable to computing the ROI of a telephone. We can do better than this – we are no longer in the age of experimentation.

Consider these four approaches:

Relative to plan: Before embarking on a Social Media program, forecast the impact of your efforts: how many page views, likes, new connections, user-generated submissions, sentiment, comments, tweets, retweets, or shares are you expecting? And in the real world, what are you expecting in terms of real-world change: decreased customer service phone or email volume, increased leads, or increased product sales? You need not forecast everything – just what is important to you and your organization. Forecasting specific numbers at the outset puts a stake in the ground, and improves accountability… measurably.

Change from prior period: Instead of a comparison to plan, consider measuring growth over time. Be careful though: the growth number is only useful when the investment (time and budget) are also compared over the same period. A 50% year-over-year growth in Twitter followers is meaningless if the work effort to achieve the growth grew by 200%.

Relative to an industry benchmark: A 15% return might seem great, but if everyone else is getting 30%, then 15% is not very good at all. The social web has been around for a few years now, and benchmarks, common practices, and rules-of-thumb are just now starting to become more common. We recently completed a national survey of 400+ associations and not-for-profits; the benchmarks are invaluable. (The 100+ page report is available at http://budurl.com/2012csae.)

Business impact: It’s far more powerful when a Social Media activity directly impacts a real business measure – something that is on the financial statements, either revenue or cost. Some examples: Increased sales due to a YouTube campaign. The effectiveness of Twitter to improve customer retention. The reduction in recruitment fees when using LinkedIn.

While all four measurement approaches are valuable, business impact measures are by far the most. If you are tracking relative to plan, to changes, or to industry benchmarks, follow the measure back to the impact on the business itself. If it doesn’t impact the business, then why measure it at all?

This week’s action item: Create a Social Media Scorecard, highlighting your most critical measures. Not only will it keep you focused on achieving your results, the scorecard is a great way to communicate progress to your colleagues.

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Social Media Stop Sign

by Randall September 13, 2011

How long ago did you (or your organization) start your Social Media “work”? Likely, a few years ago. First came LinkedIn: you filled out your profile, asked for (and responded to) connection requests. Then you asked for (and responded to) recommendation requests, asked (and responded to) questions, and joined a number of groups. Then you [...]

Viewpoint: 47 Tough Social Media Questions

by Randall March 22, 2011

How does your organization decide to invest in Social Media? With all of the fluff being written on the topic, it isn’t surprising that finding a list to help executives make better decisions is tough. Based on our experience advising clients, here is my contribution, with questions in no particular order: 1. What are the [...]

Special Social Secret Sauce – Improving Social Media ROI

by Randall March 9, 2011

Despite the frenzy everywhere else, many senior executives look at their corporate Social Media initiatives, and wonder why there isn’t a better return on their investment. Many marketers, despite implementing clever campaigns, secretly worry about the same thing. Here’s the question: is there some special social secret sauce that can dramatically improve results every time? [...]

Online PR and Social Media for Experts, Authors, Consultants, and Speakers

by RandallCraig January 7, 2009

After a grueling amount of research, writing, and editing, Online PR and Social Media for Experts, Authors, Consultants, and Speakers is now available. Check it out at www.OnlinePRSocialMedia.com. The book itself is 130 pages, and while it is aimed at “experts”, it is completely appropriate for those with expertise working within an organization, whether they [...]

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