Measuring

Return on Investment
Beekeeper Group Prepared for Independent Sector Connec5ons Session November 11, 2012
1

Social Media :

Mike Pane8a

About Beekeeper Group

Beekeeper Group embraces a fresh, community-based approach to cul5vate and grow your hive of supporters. Design, develop and execute crea5ve and engaging public aairs and advocacy campaigns for clients in the non-prot, associa5on, and corporate. Some of our services included web site crea5on, mobile app development, stakeholder recruitment, coali5on services, online and social media community management, and digital video.

About Mike Panetta

Partner, Beekeeper Group Elected Ocial in District of Columbia, serving in 3rd term as U.S. Shadow Representa5ve. Award winning online and poli5cal strategist with top honors from the the Webbys, Tellys, American Associa5on of Poli5cal Consultants, George Washington University School of Poli5cal Management, and the Public Aairs Council Former shopping mall Santa Claus

Why This Matters

Fundamental shiW in the power of communica5on and the distribu5on of informa5on. Fragmenta5on of media landscape con5nues on a relentless pace - there is just so much content being generated all the 5me.

VS

Social media is a lter everything in a feed is veZed content. You asked to friend/follow the en5ty that posted it at one 5me.

Standard in Congress
Congressional oces are integra5ng social media into their opera5ons to beZer understand cons5tuent opinions and for outbound communica5on

Nearly 2/3 of sta surveyed (64%) think Facebook is an important way to understand cons5tuents views

Be sure to Like the Facebook Page of your Reps. and Senators

Nearly 3/4 (74%) think that it is important for communica5ng their Members views

Source: Congressional Management Founda5on

Media is Listening Too

Almost every state capital and issue community has a very ac5ve reporter community thats hooked on social media

89% of reporters look to blogs and 65% are looking to social media for stories Reporters oWen look for hashtags to nd quotes or real-5me updates from insiders Great way for them to get sources and leads

Being a reliable source on social media will lead to calls from reporters looking to do stories on your issues
Source: Cison/Newhouse School 2011 Digital Inuencer survey

Isnt Social Media Free?

Yes, but not like this More like this

It takes care, feeding and nurturing to get a return on your investment of 5me and resources

Isnt It Like Rainbow Dust?

Just sprinkle some on and watch the magic?

Sorry, the real world s5ll

existsas do your real world goals of recruitment, membership, and advocacy.

How Do You Measure Results?

Coming to an understanding of what denes success and what metrics maZers is the rst key step to determining ROI. Not everything can be measured, but many things can.

Ques5ons to ask include:

Who are you trying to reach? What to you want them to do? Remember: social media only a tool, its not a communica5on strategy in itself

What are some metrics?

Dont put too much stock in vanity metrics numbers of likes or followers Focus on metrics that advance your membership, communica5ons, or advocacy goals things that are easy to equate with value in your organiza5on

Items to look at include once to show the level of interac5on: Conversions on membership campaigns Number of messages generated to Congress Spreading and sharing of key messages Media men5ons Set up campaigns so you can see how social media is moving the needle use tools like Google Analy5cs, bit.ly, TwiZer Counter, and others to gain insights.

Set Up Deep Analytics

Assuming you have conversions that happen online, you can track the user source and ow using Google Analy5cs Set up a lter and goals and then you can see how many people took the requested ac5on from Facebook, TwiZer or other social networks. Knowing where people are coming from and what they are doing will enable you to customize content and deploy resources accordingly.

So How Do You Determine ROI?

Once youve determined the key benets of items in your goals, assign each of them a value (new members, renewals, leZers to Capitol Hill, etc.) Add up the costs of things that are considered an investment in social media. (sta 5me, consultants, etc.) A rough formula to determine value is to divide benets value by investment items to arrive at ROI Some things are hard to measure or give a value toso this is imperfect science.

A Sample Case Study

You have an $35,000 a year employee who is tasked with being the Social Media Manager those items are es5mated to be 50% of that persons 5me. ($17,500 investment) You have 3rd party consultants on retainer at $2,000 per month to help with developing strategy, and technical work that your in-house team cant do ($24,000 investment) The total investment in this work is now $41,500 Are you ge@ng that much value in return?

Heres What You Got

Looking at your analy5cs and other sta5s5cs you were able to determine that over 6 months the following were directly 5ed to social media eorts:
3x Increase in trac to your website 400% growth in new pe55on registrants

250 new donors Rapid growth in social media conversa5ons that involve your organiza5on

Tripled the number of followers on social networks

Was that worth $20,750 over six months?

5 media stories, 2 radio interviews and one television appearance that was sparked by social media ac5vity

Twitter Example: What to Look At

Followers are good, and should be grown, but thats not the most important metric as only a small percentage will see your tweets Look to see who interac5ng with your message men5oning you or a specic hashtag on TwiZer Are you engaging in conversa5ons, are you getng inquires via direct message or @ replies? Look for referrals and conversions from t.co in your stats that will help measure the return

Facebook Stats

Facebook Stats

Facebook Stats

Google Analytics
Google Social analy5cs provides you with the tools to measure the impact of social You can iden5fy high value networks and content, track on-site and o-site user interac5on with your content, and 5e it all back to your boZom line revenue through goals and conversions You can see what networks, what messages, blog posts, tweets, etc. are driving you towards goals You need to spend some 5me setng up the goals, funnels, and user ows to be able to measure

Things to Remember
You need organiza5onal goals before you can measure return on investment

There are tangible things you can measure, but some ROI is dicult to quan5fy be needs to be accounted for Dont get too hung up over vanity metrics If you set up the right analy5c structure, you should be able to say which social network led to the most ac5ons, dona5ons, or other measureable ac5on

This plavorm lends itself to experimenta5on dont be afraid to try new things if something isnt performing

Mike Panetta Partner, Beekeeper Group mikep@beekeepergroup.com @MikePanetta @BeekeeperGroup