Facebook, Twitter, blogs and forums . . .
I live in a world when half my acquaintances live and breathe social media and other half “stay out of that”.
ROI of social media
Three years, London was abuzz with talk of the ROI of social media. As far as I could tell, this was just backwash from marketing departments who are challenged internally to account for the money they spend. When other functions see a funnel that goes from 1000 to 100 to 10 to 1 or maybe none, they rightly want an explanation for all the parties and lunches. When the rest of us say we are going to do something, we do it.
Rewarding what is excellent in social media
So today, I was delighted to see some awards for social media in the airlines sector. I want to be clear here. I am a psychologist and we aren’t the touchy-feely types the public thinks we are. We spend most of time crunching numbers and we know more about metrics and ROI than you might dream even if exists. Believe me, you don’t want to know how to do the things we know how to do and can prove with numbers.
What matters in ROI
But because we do know a lot about ROI, we also know what matters and what doesn’t.
- We must specify a decent goal.
- We musn’t get bogged down on the how.
- We must
- Make sure we have a goal that captures our sense of “why” this work helps us
- Find measures that help us see if we are getting closer
- And when we are really clever, find measures that help us learn what matters and what doesn’t.
But first the what and why in one sentence. Without that, everything else is busy work.
New awards in social media
Simpliflying has four awards for social media.
- Best social media marketing campaign
- Best use of social media to drive revenue
- Best use of social media in a crisis situation
- SimpliFlying Hero of the Year
I could imagine one more – Best use of social media to develop a community that would sustain a new revenue stream.
But there you have it. Four clear uses of social media: let the market know we are here, increase sales, deal with crises (even unexpected ones like Haiti); and simplify.
Work psychologists using social media to connect up people
Because I am a psychologist, not a marketer, I more interested in
- How to bring people together who might find opportunities working together
- How to create a space where people can develop working relationships that support sustained happy and profitable working relationships
- How to keep the relationship brimming with ideas including a strong sense that when it is over it is over and we should all move on better for having worked with each other.
That’s all we have to do to build great communities
Set the direction and ask people:
- Are we doing it?
- What’s next?
- What have we learned that we didn’t know yesterday?