ROI from social media and online tools can be difficult to determine - especially for government or not for profits who aren't selling widgets. Back to basics to align your efforts with your departmental objectives.

1. Improve the ROI from
Social Media
Mike Spear
Director of Communications
Genome Alberta
@mikesgene

2. • Former journalist with a CBC President's Award, Farm
Writers' Award, and CBC Peer awards and RTNDA awards for
my programs or newsrooms
• SysOp with CompuServe of Columbus, Ohio in the 90’s
• Former Comm & Marketing Manager for Alberta Beef
Producers
• Published in peer-reviewed science journals
• Part of the DC-based BIO Communications Working Group
• One of the founders of ScienceBorealis.ca

3. • Genome Alberta is a not-for-profit research
funding organization
• Funded by 2 levels of government, academic
institutions, and industry
• Our communications goals centre on:
• Awareness
• Education
• Position Genome Alberta as a source of
information
• Prepare us for later
• Reporting to government

4. ROI measures the return on an
investment relative to the
investment’s cost.
It is mostly an accounting term
and used in social media metrics
because it is simple.

5. But it is not simple

6. Government & non-
profits tend to polarize.
Agencies and public
affairs bureaus cannot
expect a monetary return.
There is an obligation
beyond digital media.

8. Rural areas
have less
digital use
Internet
speeds are
slow
Needs are
different

9. Moral
incentives need
to replace
material
incentives.

10. "Half the money I spend on
advertising is wasted. The
problem is I don't know
which half.“
John Wanamaker , Department Store owner
in the late 1800’s, and early marketing genius.

11. So back to basics:
Your Social Media measurement is about
guiding principles or departmental objectives,
not the tools.
You can’t count what you don’t have so
if the problem is the service, the process,
or the product, digital tools and metrics
won’t fix it.

12. Go back to your objectives and make it part of
your report on time and money spent.
Things you can count:
• Users who submit a form
• Landing page hits
• Social media followers, members, users
• Comments
• Replies
• Surveys
• Bounce rate
• Vanity metrics
• Location

13. You can’t count:
• Quality of interaction
• Change in behaviour from PSA’s , etc.
• Long tail developments
• Retention
• Word-of-mouth
• Cause and effect
• Relationships
• Too much data or bad data
• Things you don’t know

14. Some basic guidelines:
• Establish correlation
• Be specific
• Trends and baseline information
• Preparation and groundwork
• Manage expectations
• Unintended consequences
• Ying, Yang, Apples, Oranges
• Predictive metrics vs outcome metrics
• Definitions
• Integrate, re-use, and recyle

15. Massachusetts Senate Upset (2010)
• Facebook Posts: Brown (128), Coakley (58)
• Facebook Fans: Brown (70,800), Coakley
(13,529)
• Tweets: Brown (142), Coakley (144)
• Twitter Followers: Brown (9,679), Coakley
(3,385)
• YouTube Videos: Brown (57), Coakley (52)
• YouTube Video Views: Brown (578,271),
Coakley (51,173)

16. David & Goliath

17. mspear@genomealberta.ca
@mikesgene
@GenomeAlberta
http://GenomeAlberta.ca
http://GenOmicsNews.ca
http://ScienceBorealis.ca