Olivier Blanchard - Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization

Blanchard is demanding. He wont allow you to flip through this book, nod your head, and leave. If youre in, youre going to have to invest to get your rewards.

Chris Brogan , president of Human Business Works

Social media isnt inexpensive; its different expensive. The human effort required to do it right is significant, and not knowing precisely how social media helps your business and how to gauge that progress is a dereliction of duty. In Social Media ROI , Blanchard provides the missing playbook for sensible, sustainable, profitable social communication. Its about time.

Jay Baer , coauthor of The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter, and More Social

Social Media ROI gets down to the heart of the matter: How will social communications positively impact my organizational goals? Olivier takes us through a journey starting from the start, creating a strategy to achieve objectives, and in turn, the means to measure return on investment. If you want to get serious about online communications, you cant go wrong with Social Media ROI .

Geoff Livingston , author of Welcome to the Fifth Estate and Now Is Gone

Olivier explains the intricacies of building a social mediainfluenced company for every layman to understand. It is important to understand reach, attention, and influence for social media ROI. This is the book to help with that understanding.

Kyle Lacy , principal at MindFrame (yourmindframe.com) and author of Branding Yourself

Ladies and gentlemen, the social media code has officially been cracked. In Social Media ROI , Blanchard reveals how companies can apply the massive power of social media to achieve equally massive results. Incredibly practical, yet supremely enjoyable, this book offers a clear roadmap to growing your revenue in the dizzying world of tweets and retweets, likes and shares, connections and comments.

Sally Hogshead , author of Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation

If you know Olivier, you know he goes beyond the bullshit. He gets it. This book will put you in the mindset to successfully plan and achieve real business objectives with social media. Its a hard fact that good business decisions depend on real results. Olivier avoids the fluff with clear-cut ideas that will help you produce results.

Brandon Prebynski , social media strategist

Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization

800 East 96th Street,
Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 USA

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Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. For information regarding permissions, write to:

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7897-4741-9
ISBN-10: 0-7897-4741-3
First printing March 2011

For Lisa, Ethan, and Rowan, who help change the world every dayand for everyone with a mind to do the same.

Im often asked, whats the ROI of social media? To which I answer, you cant measure what it is you do not value or know to value.

Sounds simple enough. But, the truth is, determining value is not an easy process. But then again, whoever said using social media effectively in business was easy...is wrong.

As in anything in business, the ability to tie activity to the business values is critical. If we are to commit time, resources, and budget to social networks, our investments must be justified. Indeed, social media strategies must prove long-term value and contribution to the bottom line in order to evolve into a pillar of business success. But how do you measure something when best practices, case studies, and answers in general are elusive? We are struggling to prove the merit of an important ingredient in the future success of business because precedents have yet to be written or tested.

While many companies are already investing in social media, the reality is that most are done without the ability to demonstrate any return on investment. The truth is that you succeed in anything if success is never defined. The good news is that success is definable and attainable. It just takes a little work...well, honestly, a lot of work to tie intended outcomes to the R (return) in ROI. And, even though social media, as a platform and series of channels, is inexpensive or free to host a presence, time and resources still carry fixed costs. To that end, if we enhance our presences or apply greater resources, the investment goes up exponentially. It comes down to the old adage, time is money.

Everything starts with the end in mind.

Success is not a prescription. There isnt one way to excel or measure progress. But thats the point. We must first design outcomes into the equation. What do we want to accomplish? Whats the return we seek? Are we trying to sell, change, drive, cause, or inspire something specific? Are we reducing customer problems as measured by inbound volume, open tickets, public discourse? Are we trying to shift sentiment to a more positive state that increases referrals as a result?