Muscled Measurement: From baby-steps to (dare I say?) ROI

(post 2 of What Counts: How the Hell do we know we've accomplished anything?)


Previously, I wandered through a system for taking action and measuring your first steps into social media. It focused on the concept of declaring measurable objectives, doing what you theorize will achieve them, then establishing whether you had achieved the objective. You repeat this cycle, building each new declaration on what you learned from the previous. I also shared a sample list of objectives.

Today I want to add muscle to the concept. Talk more details so that we can establish a real Return On Investment (ROI) and align it with your organization’s mission/strategic goals. (I’m not ALL about bashing ROI. I just want to be able to show it intelligently, especially when dealing with a new/experimental medium. Don’t let ROI “hard core” types keep you from trying new things. Without the new things, your business/organization gets run over by others who will experiment.)

Let’s sort out some types of objectives:


Production Objectives

We did something. This is usually where people/organizations start. We wrote a press release. We sent it to our WHOLE media list. We built a web site. We built a building. It is, in fact, achievement. It’s definitely measurable.

However, in the marketing/public relations world, we want to affect opinions, attitudes, and behavior. We want to get our friends/followers to DO something, whether it be to better understand an issue (or our organization), change a behavior (i.e. volunteer, recycle more, see their doctor regularly, consider our city as a travel destination), purchase a product/behavior, or contribute to our fundraising campaign.

Production objectives CAN (and do) contribute, but I make a distinction between this and Impact objectives in a moment. So, while writing a press release, even landing a story in the news (or even a big pile of press clippings) IS an achievement AND is measurable, it doesn’t qualify as having changed behaviors or opinions. They simply mean we did something.

I’ll even go as far as to say that getting conversations to happen online (which I’ll parallel with holding an “town hall” meeting in real life) is a production goal. (Note: We can argue endlessly about these... and MBA students often do. That, in itself, can get in the way of achieving your objectives. Avoid pointless navel-gazing.)

To get 500 “friends” on our Facebook page in the next month.

To publish one post to our blog each week.

To get five article placements in major newspapers prior to our event.

To guest post to three industry blogs this quarter.

To attract at least three comments to each blog post this year.

To post all of our future events to our MySpace, Facebook, and blog calendars this week.

To launch within one month an online newsroom that makes it easy for journalists to acess our press materials.

To install Google Analytics on our web site and begin delivering/discussing traffic reports to our board on a monthly basis before the June board meeting.

Each of these is you producing something. These kinds of objectives are great. You move forward. But don’t confuse them with having bottom-line impact.


System Objectives

This is actally an advanced version of a production goal. Systems help make us more efficient. Since I already wrote about it, I’ll give one simple example:

To establish in the next 30 days a media calendar such that we are aware of our media relations needs (press releases and distribution) a year out AND that we are producing just 12 pitches per year AND that we are preparing media materials and distribution lists at least a week ahead of their use.

That’s a big fat one, but it’s creating a system to accomplish several other production objectives more efficiently. System-oriented objectives make your life easier. They help your organization accomplish more with limited resources (time and personnel being two of the most limited). System-oriented objectives usually mean you do a lot more work up front (like planning), but that you can crank out a lot more work once you have the system in place.


Impact (Results) Objectives

This is where we get back to Econsultancy's "10 Ways to Measure Social Media Success" piece I mentioned in my previous post. They were exploring where/how to apply results-oriented measurement:

Traffic
Sales
Leads
Search marketing
Brand metrics
PR
Customer engagement
Retention
Profits

This is where goals and objectives have impact on your organization’s reason to exist (and what feeds it AND you). The real ROI question:

Are the people/entities we’re supposedly serving getting what we’re supposed to be serving them?

Bonus: How do we know?

Bonus bonus: How can we improve on that?

One of the hazards to getting to ROI objectives is that you often need several production-oriented sub-objectives to achieve them. In fact, I’ll admit that when I fail to offer a solid ROI-oriented objective, it’s often because I’m trying to get that objective to do too much at once. Or that I’ve failed to break down what it is I’m actually attempting to measure.

Let’s play with examples:

Traffic (from Econsultancy's list. Note: this one toes the line between a production and ROI objective... but, navel-gazing, mind you.):

To raise our site traffic 5% (based on Google Analytics reports) by the end of the third quarter of 2009.

Let’s make that more specific:

To raise our web site’s Facebook-referred traffic 5% (based on Analytics) by the end of 2009.

How you gonna do this? With some sub-objectives:

[Production-oriented] To increase our collection of Facebook friends to 2,000 in the next 6 months.

[Production oriented] To post at least one article per week of interest enough to our “friends” to entice them to click through to our web site.

Remember, these are examples. You’ll need more than this to actually achieve that. You have to think through and establish objectives for all the major parts of this endeavor. (i.e. How are you going to get all these people to “friend” you?)

Careful here, you don't want to get mired in more naval-gazing or "paralysis by analysis". Strike a balance between clearly actionable objectives and details. You don't have to detail every bit of minutia. Think in terms of what you could provide as instructions so someone else... and know the job would get done 'cause they're pretty smart too.


How about sales objectives (another example drawn from Econsultancy's list)

To generate, via our social media platforms (Twitter, blog, and Facebook) a 3% increase in sales through our online storefront in the next year.

That’s a tough one ‘cause you have to figure out the details of how you’re going to do that... but also how you’re going to separate those sales from other factors that might affect your sales numbers. (Could the increase be due to a newspaper article? Or better Google rankings?)

You need sub-objectives here to get to that point. Consider elements like how you’ll get Twitter followers to click through directly to your storefront... or how you’ll use customer testimonials and case studies on your blog to show prospective customers how your products will improve their businesses or lives.

There will be many parts. However, linking each part to its impact on your major objectives, you have a framework for how you’re going to make social media (or any business effort, really) a worthwhile resource (staff, time, and money) investment for your organization/company.

By figuring out how your objectives support each other... and, especially, your results-oriented objectives, you now have a logical—and actionable—plan. The kind you can share with your big boss (even the CEO) because NOW it demonstrates you theory of what social media can achieve for you.

(Oh, and by going through this planning process, you typically end up proving it to yourself.)

Realize that you probably won’t hit all your objectives... especially not the first time. However, by using this logical structure, you can analyize where your plan failed (as well as where it did even better than expected). From there, you can adjust your plan to fix those elements.

Wait... did I say “adjust”? Working with objectives makes “Do it. Screw up. Adjust.” all kinds of fancy. But I still like the raw version.

Yes, it’s rigorous thinking... but that’s how we succeed in business. Or non-profits. If it wasn’t work, nobody would pay us to do it. By measuring what counts (how you can support your company’s mission and bottom line) and building a series of measurable objectives to achieve this... you’re delving into actual ROI.

...here are some other results-oriented objective samples I created when writing this:

To get 100 people to RSVP for our next event via our Facebook group.

To get at least one Twitterer per day to live tweet about our services WHILE they are using them.

To get 100 individuals to forward/share information about our new program with to/with others via Twitter (or our blog).

To get one blogger who has posted misinformation about our organization/industry to correct this misinformation in a post.

To increase subscribers/users of our web-based database 10% via social media involvement over the next six months.

...or, even better... To raise through-the door customer traffic 5% as a direct result of social media in the next year.

To reduce telephone-based frequently asked questions 10% in the next year by providing the answers via social media platforms.

To recruit, via our social media platforms, 30 volunteers who show up at our next event.

To get each of our friends/followers to bring at least two other friends/followers to join our group/account within the next month.

Though I dig the attention, it's time for you to go write your own. Go kick some impact.