The following examples come almost verbatim from a slide in the Tales from the Trenches, How Organizations Are Measuring Value in Social Media session, at the MarketingProfs Business to Business Forum (June 8 & 9, in Boston, MA).
Presenter: Katie Delahaye Paine is CEO and founder of KDPaine & Partners LLC and author of Measuring Public Relationships, the Data-Driven Communicator’s Guide to Measuring Success. She is also a member of the IPR Measurement Commission.)
I found KD Paine to be a highly engaging and persuasive speaker, who has really done her homework, when it comes to measuring the value of social media. (Her session ranks among my favorites from the MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2009, as far as content, organization, delivery, and immediate usefulness.) With her timely business examples, compelling statistics, and arsenal of analytical tools, I believe KD Paine could go head-to-head with any Doubting Thomas, who requires further convincing that social media is worth making the investment and indeed, quite measurable.
KD Paine’s examples below make a strong case for social media.
1. The Dept of Defense considers Twittering and other forms of social media critical to national security.
2. BMC Software measures communications effectiveness based on contribution to EPS (Earnings Per Share), that is, incoming leads from social media activities and savings using social media, as opposed to paid advertisements.
3. BestBuy measures 85% lower turnover as a result of its Blue Shirt community.
4. State Farm uses an internal blog to measurably improve morale.
5. ASPCA correlates increases in on-line donations and increased membership, with its social media efforts.
6. HSUS generated $650,000 in new donations from an on-line photo contest on Flickr.
7. NWF increased wildlife spotting as well as members, with its Twitter account.
8. The Red Cross measures the effectiveness of Twitter via lives saved and harm avoided.
9. ImmunizeBC measures success in terms of vaccines given, awareness, and traffic.
10. IBM receives more leads, sales, and exposure from a $500 podcast than it does from an ad.
11. 11 Moms turned around Walmart’s image and delivered measurable increases in sales.
12. @comcastcares [on Twitter] turned around Comcast’s customer service reputation.
13. A social media campaign for War Child delivered a 38% increase in donations and 300 new volunteers.
In the rest of her presentation, KD Paine provides many of the specifics which decision-makers require to evaluate programs, and which too often are not a part of the social media conversation.
More Information
For the complete presentation, see KD Paine’s handout. For more information on measurement, see these additional resources:
Related Links
These results are pretty impressive and begins to take these technologies from “interesting” to “essential.”
KD Paine does a wonderful job of filling in the specifics, which as communicators, we sometimes forget, in our zeal to get started. MarketingProfs B2B Forum emphasized the importance of communicators becoming more technical & analytical, aligning themselves more closely with sales & IT, and measuring the success of their programs.