I have been on Twitter and Facebook and utilize them heavily to watch Baltimore work. So my interest is purely local, although I watch the big people as well.

I have tried to maximize the @people that I follow in Bmore and have a hard time getting past 1000. I use FB to mostly follow companies and organizations and that tops out at about 200.

At this point whoever I am missing are not really paying attention. So that leaves a lot of room for growth. Of those participating, only a small number work at it productively. It seems to me that in a Bmore City market of 1/2 million, exposure to sm is pretty tiny particularly when you add the noise factor.

Not saying that we shouldn’t measure of course, but I can’t really go much farther than my brand meeting your brand and over time (perhaps years) what that leads to. (working the people economy here, not the product economy) Of course, when you deal with the big, established brands it is a whole different ball game, but I am really not interested in any brand larger than say a CenterStage or a Baltimore Community Foundation. Enough said, thanks for the brain stimulation.

You have really brought forward some great thoughts here. ROI is important and I would never argue the reason to measure it. But I think some people are forgetting the importance of measuring other metrics that paint a equally important picture. We’ve been measuring brand awareness for decades, yet I’m not seeing social media measured in terms of awareness/exposure. It has been proven that increased brand awareness generates more leads. If it didn’t no company in their right mind would buy TV advertising. We know that developing relationships increases conversion of leads, social media is a vehicle to develop relationships. We know that continuing relationships after the sale increases retention, but so many are so focused on ROI that they are blind to keeping customers. We’ve known forever that it is cheaper to keep an existing customer than to get a new one.

Depending on your customer base and products ROI may not be the big winner for your company. But that doesn’t mean that increased brand awareness and/or increased customer retention aren’t important to the bottom line. It just means that social media may not be the best direct response vehicle for your company. But it certainly doesn’t mean that social media doesn’t have a higher conversion rate for the leads it does generate. See my point? So I encourage others to look at how social media impacts each stage of your customer life cycle and measure it’s success where it has the most impact and look at the other benefits as icing on the cake.

Thanks for chiming in. It’s only a matter of time before you catch the Buzz!

Nichole

The organic nature of social media is a primary characteristic. I just met you. How do we measure that interaction? Can the value be measured? Is there a value, hopefully yes, is there a measurement for it? Is it really too small to measure? And yet it does have a value.

ROI is a frequently used excuse, I think, for organizations that hesitate to use social media. We all have many reasons for not doing what is good for us. If social media were a pill, we would take it. But only a few people want to compete in the Olympics, most only want to comment on it. Social media can be measured, but since it can be used well with small results and to many varying and different degrees, the pitfalls of measurement may not be as beneficial as the feeling that you get when you have the opportunity so solve someone’s problem using an efficient communications tool.