Sarah Kay Hoffman

One of the best sessions I went to at SXSW was, “How to Make Money with Social Media” with Jamie Turner. (After the session I downloaded his book on it for my iPad2; it’s a work in progress that I’m so excited to hammer through.)

Jamie’s session was on Social Media ROI. Everyone wants to know about it, everyone needs to have it, and yet very few are practicing and proving it. Let’s start with a few slides from Jamie’s presentation:

Calculating Customer Lifetime Value - Jamie Turner

Calculating Customer Lifetime Value 2 - Jamie Turner

Calculating Customer Lifetime Value 3 - Jamie Turner

These slides are practical, helpful and very matter-of-fact. They prove that there is a way to calculate ROI. This puts it into simple terms, terms that any marketer should be able to understand and comprehend.

After leaving Jamie’s session that day, I began to think even more about ROI and Social Media. Anyone who says there is no way prove or calculate it is wrong. Where there is a will, there is always a way. But what’s really important here is that word, “will.” To me, the “will” is the what/how:

What are you trying to measure? What are you trying to track? What are you trying to prove? What is the bottom line goal?
How are you measuring? How are you tracking? How are you ultimately going to prove? How are you going to arrive to your bottom line goal?

We don’t land upon the ROI at the beginning. The ROI is the outcome, the measurement that takes place on the back end. The time, investment, effort and work happens in the beginning. But before we dive into time, investment, effort and work we must understand what we want to prove in the end.

Think about what ROI means to you:

Reduction in customer support calls?
Positive brand mentions?
Sales for a specific product?
Largest YouTube channel (your category specific)?
Community Growth? (Huge initiative for Shawn McPike & I! See -> Sunday: “Vince Young Steakhouse – secret braintrust discussions of “The ROI of Community”)
Etc., etc.

Once you determine what ROI means to you/your brand, put those KPI’s/metrics in place from the beginning. Determine how you will measure in the beginning, middle and end. Make sure you know: What is your beginning? Middle? Ending? Do you have them?

Clearly, there are a ton of questions with ROI. Just as with traditional marketing and advertising it took some time for the measurements to be put into place. But it has been done. No one runs any traditional campaign sans-numbers. But take it one step at a time. Start at the beginning with the end in mind, and figure out the clearest path to measure along the way.

I found this presentation from Stefanos Karagos this week that got me even more excited about ROI. Hope you will enjoy it, too!

Social Media is Dead. Long Live Social Media ROI

More to come! Thank you for sparking so many thoughts & ideas, Jamie!

….just a digitally addicted country girl with a (gluten-free) foodie-fitness flare

Two things about SXSW I loved: Food & Fun! These are two things I love even without SXSW. Food and fun, as they apply to SXSW reminds me of:

Gluten-Free Food: I was absolutely 150% impressed with the fact that there was an entire section of food options available during SXSW for food-intolerant people like me.

Gluten Free at SXSW

My favorite were the Sonoma Veggie Burgers. Usually veggie burgers contain some form of wheat in them, so it was fantastic to be able to eat a gluten-free burger. Bonus? Of course, they had gluten-free buns!