The ROI of social media for some organizations is zero. This statement is hard to write because it goes very much against a common assumption about social media.
I once had a job interview for a social media specialist position with the manager of a non-profit organization. I was trying to explain that spending money on a social media specialist might not accomplish anything for her non-profit. She said no one else was telling her that implying that I was probably wrong.
Have you ever heard of the bandwagon effect?
If not, here is a description,“The bandwagon effect is a psychological phenomenon in which people do something primarily because other people are doing it, regardless of their own beliefs, which they may ignore or override. The bandwagon effect has wide implications, but is commonly seen in politics and consumer behavior.”
It seemed during the conversation with the director that she has assuming social media must have some value to her organization without examining the alternative option or what the value might be specifically.
She didn’t seem to have any vision or even a single metric to use in order to determine if the social media efforts and money spent would or would not be successful.
The idea for some organizations is that if you have a presence on social media and share about your products and services that somehow, almost magically, you will get new customers, or in the case of non-profits, more donations.
“You just put yourself out there.”
Again, without any specific details, your social media accounts could grow and continue to expand until you have tens of thousands of followers or hundreds of thousands. Maybe, one day, you will get a million followers!
This very vague thinking reminds me of the first wave of Internet companies that didn’t have solid business plans, or even viable products or services. The very hazy strategy then was “driving traffic”, meaning getting as many people to your website as possible. It didn’t matter who they were, or if they had no interest in what you were selling.
“Go big, or Go home,” was another. Did you ever hear anyone say, “Build it, and they will come?” This later statement is from a fictional Hollywood movie called Field of Dreams. That slogan is not true. At least 75% of new startups fail, for example.
The problem with these slogans is they are too vague to be meaningful in practical business terms. Today, with better judgement and analytics you might think no one would accept such platitudes.
For a software company, I increased their Twitter followers by about 40%. Did the increase result in a single quality lead signing up for a demo or a sales call? Nope, not one.
I also increased the company’s followers from 4 to 72 on its G+ profile (Google’s defunct social media platform), and there were thousands more visitors to its company page. Was there a single quality prospect who signed up for a demo or a sales call. Nope, not one.
Did it, in general, slightly improve the company’s brand? Maybe, but that’s debatable isn’t it?
In business or the management of a non-profit we need to be aware of specific questions and concrete metrics.
For a company in the self-storage industry, I increased its’ Twitter follower count by about 80%. Using Google analytics I could see the number of monthly referrals from Twitter was about 4-7 total, so it didn’t matter in any way.
Yes, a few more people visited the Twitter profile, and you could see that using Twitter analytics, but did it drive any new business? Mostly likely not.
I did using social listening and engage with people who indicated an interest, so perhaps there was a little relationship building but overall it didn’t accomplish much.
With social media, you have to know specific details about your target audience and how to engage with them. What if your target audience doesn’t use social media, and you didn’t know that but you hired a social media specialist and spent $32,000 in a year for no results, except getting some more followers?
And those followers couldn’t give a poop about what you were doing on social media?
For some organizations social media might be relevant and a productive use of resources. For others, it simply isn’t.
Making decisions based on assumptions and vagueness can waste a great deal of money and damage businesses.