Fenton just released a terrific guide book focused on actionable metrics: “See, Say, Feel, Do: Social Media Metrics that Matter”.

It is tempting to imagine social media as its own communications island where Twitter Follower counts are valuable currency that can be exchanged for internal high-fives. In this scenario there is no way to exchange social media coins for broader communication or marketing dollars. But who cares when you can boast 50,000 likes on your Facebook Page.

This is the wrong approach for three reasons: 1) it doesn’t acknowledge the complete media consumption behavior of your target audiences; 2) it cuts off feedback loops that can be mined for insights that will improve engagement and returns and 3) it limits the reach and impact of your broader communications.

Fenton’s guide divides up the kinds of metrics you can focus on under the headings See, Say, Feel and Do. As I suggest in my Community Mapping approach, the actions and metrics should be mapped against the segments of the community doing them. I really appreciate that Fenton has included a similar recommendation. I also love that they include both a space for identifying and tracking the data, as well as a place to include the insights and actions associated with it. The best of the guide book, though, is the inclusion of an example reporting form and a template to use in your own organization.

Download “See, Say, Feel, Do: Social Media Metrics that Matter” here. 

What do you think? If you downloaded the report, did you find the template useful? What aspects of the do/see/say/feel metrics approach were you already using or do you plan to try out?

This is a question for nonprofit organizations that use Twitter for outreach, fundraising, and advocacy campaigns:  do you factor your organization’s Twitter follow cost into your campaign strategy? Also, do you consider the follow cost before you start following another tweeter?

She raises a ton of issues and ideas for me and I wish I could launch into all of them right now!  Some of them include:

• Calculating cost (read: time) of maintaining conversations on Twitter
• How to leverage aggregation tools for listening so you don’t have to “listen” or read every Tweet that comes through
• Balancing your stream (both in content and frequency) so that your “cost” isn’t too high

And the list goes on.  I’d love to hear what you think about the cost or burden or even reward of following more and more people on Twitter.  What do you think?

Here’s an excerpt from his post:

Within a day his Facebook Haggadah was all over the web. It looks like David Bernstein at the Volokh Conspiracy was the first major blogger to post about it, Monday at about 5pm, and AllFacebook’s Nick O’Neill tweeted about it two hours later. Soon it was being retweeted all over Twitter, and for good reason.

If you’re Jewish or you’ve ever been to a seder, Elkin’s retelling of the story is hilarious. It’s also deeply in tune with a longstanding Jewish tradition of modifying and updating the Haggadah to grapple with modern times and norms (see Arthur Waskow’s 1960s “Freedom Seder” for more on this history). I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the viral spread and impact of Elkin’s spoof, especially as it turns out that he had a serious goal in posting his parody, which is to get people involved in fighting global warming and in particular to draw users to a Facebook app he spent months writing called “YesWeConserve.com.” The app is designed to help people find and share popular energy-saving ideas, and reports that its users have collectively so far made “186 pledges to save $6243.27 and 22735 kilograms of CO2 per year.”

…

Elkin reports that his Facebook app Yes We Conserve has gotten about 5,500 visits as a result, but only 233 people have installed it. He notes that people can use a lot of the app’s functionality without installing it, “which is what most people do.” But he’s disappointed in his conversion rate.

Why is This App Different From All Other Apps?
Should he be? It seems to me that Elkin did pretty well in gross terms, considering that his conservation app isn’t much related to a satirical retelling of the Passover story, and in essence is functioning more like an interstitial ad than anything else. Getting nearly 4% of the people who looked at the Haggadah to click through to YesWeConserve, and then getting about 4% of that group to adopt the app seems like a decent conversion rate for something that cost him nothing to promote.

You can read the full post here.

These were the thoughts I shared with Micah:

I think that social media has created an outlet for individuals to cause-align in a way that replaces the brands of clothes you wear to be judged at school, with the issues you are passionate about to be judged online. I’m not the only one seeing this trend, though, and that’s why there are SO many Facebook apps to get people connecting their individual online space with social actions they care about. What I’m sensing is that many people are overwhelmed with apps—ones their friends keep inviting them to use, ones they accidentally click on, ones they want to use but none of their friends are using, and so on. The way to unmuck the water could be to focus in on apps that let users broadcast an array of issues and opportunities from one little box, instead of installing and managing lots of little boxes.

I think 4% is great for the YesWeConserve application! I’d certainly be proud! But, given what I just said, I’d also think about how that application could create a more user-drive, dynamic space within that 400×400 box to reassure users that adding it to their profile isn’t a wasted five minutes.

What do you think?  What questions about ROI do you or your organization have when considering the build or integration of a Facebook app or similar tool?  Have you seen apps that you really like?  Ones you really don’t like?  You can read Micah’s full blog post here.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

PRESENTERS

• Beth Kanter – Beth’s Blog [Moderator]
• Danielle Brigida – National Wildlife Federation
• Wendy Harman – American Red Cross – National Headquarters
• Carie Lewis – The Humane Society of the United States
• David Neff – American Cancer Society [Judge]
• Katie Paine – KDPaine & Partners [Judge]
• Holly Ross – NTEN [Judge]

Find the conversation, links, questions and quotes on http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23roi

First, let’s settle on an example we can use to walk through all 5 steps:  you work for a small nonprofit that focuses on early childhood education, so you have lots of services for parents and partnerships with hospitals, child care facilities, and doctors offices.  You also have a volunteer program for middle and high school students to work with the children in after-school time in lieu of child care, but find that the current partners you have in the community don’t work for attracting new volunteers to participate.

1. Problem

We are usually pretty quick to highlight problems, so this is probably the easiest step!  Be sure to focus in on the problems you plan to address with your social media strategies (we all want to change the world, but that’s not a specific).  In our example, our problem is that we don’t currently reach those who could participate in our volunteer program.  Our partnerships and current communication streams aren’t ones that would easily get the attention of or shared by that group of middle and high school students.

2. Strategy

The next step is highlighting the strategies that specifically address the problem.  These 5 steps assume that your organization has already used a process to evaluate your audience and your goals and chosen tools and strategies that match the audience and organizational goals.  Assuming our fictional organization has done this, let’s say that they chose to create a blog that the middle and high school students who volunteer in the after school program author, with stories form their work, things they are thinking about, events, friendships, and so on.

3. Benefit

The benefits? These are both tangible and intangible.  It’s also important to remember that there will probably be benefits to your work that you can’t identify know or foresee!  Some of the benefits of the strategy in our example could be: opportunities for volunteers to share their stories, more word of mouth advertising, and more shared learning about the program both amongst the volunteers as well as between the volunteers and the organization.

4. Value

If we were drawing our five steps out on a white board or piece of paper, our next column would be for the values related to the strategy and benefits.  In our example we could identify a core value of connections and “community” growing around the volunteer program.

5. Metrics

So now, finally, we get to the metrics.  By charting out the problems, strategies, benefits, and values first, we give ourselves a better picture to pull out metrics. Given the answers to 1-4 of our example, some of the metrics we could use to measure our success and ROI include: volunteer participation, online “chatter,” and program growth.  So, how do we measure those items?  We can look at the number of middle and high school students applying for the volunteer positions.  We can measure how many people are reading the blog and sharing the information across the web.  We can also look at other online mentions that talk about the organization as a whole, or other programs of the organization that also link to the new blog.

In this example, we are using a blog.  Whether it’s a WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, or whatever, you have access to built-in web analytics or the option to use Google Analytics.  There are lots of resources online that shed light on the different terms and tricks to diving into your web analytics.  But, even a beginner can identify the number of unique visitors to the site.  Setting up Google Alerts for the blog address and title will help you catch whenever other bloggers or organizations mention the blog on their sites.  Tracking how many of your volunteers participate by posting to the blog and commenting on each other’s posts + other online mentions + increase in inquiries and volunteers, etc. combines both online and offline measurement and values so can help you more thoroughly evaluate both the strategy and how to address the original problem.

Remember, your strategies should be integrated online and offline, and so should your metrics.