December 2, 2010 92 Comments

They Will Never Understand

People who ask what the ROI of using social media is will never understand the value (not the ROI) of things like Facebook and Twitter. I asked my gang of friends and colleagues and contacts and potential customers and clients (because in my world, they are all mixed together) a question on Facebook. Here’s what I got back:

facebook advice 1

Facebook advice 2

Facebook advice 3

Facebook advice 4

And Look at THIS from Peter:

Facebook advice 5

Peter’s advice actually goes further than I can screen capture (because I’m not smart at using Skitch enough to do so, at least).

People who ask you about ROI won’t ever see that there’s a huge value in my being able to know all this about Berlin before I show up. That is, unless you tell them about human business, and about how building relationships matters, and what you’re working on is much bigger than just straightforward sales.

Am I wrong?

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  • http://twitter.com/hdrubin Harley David Rubin

    Hey Chris: Putting my Escape Velocity on hold (briefly) to celebrate a new job — courtesy a Facebook connection I made a year ago with a fellow DFW copywriter (who I’ve never met in person but cracks me up), who referred me to a colleague of his who was hiring for a client-side position. And I start 12/13. Social networking works.

  • http://www.summerhills.com Bangalow Accommodation

    This is an incredible response to such a simple question. I have Retweeted this now. It just shows how easily a concept can take off in Social Media, and yes, how someone who doesn’t get it, just doesn’t get it. You have to be part of the animal, be the animal, to understand the animal. A wonderful post.

  • http://www.summerhills.com Bangalow Accommodation

    This is an incredible response to such a simple question. I have Retweeted this now. It just shows how easily a concept can take off in Social Media, and yes, how someone who doesn’t get it, just doesn’t get it. You have to be part of the animal, be the animal, to understand the animal. A wonderful post.

  • http://twitter.com/GreenHitShirts GreenHitShirts

    I have been amused three times in the past week by people who choose to announce their immovability and relative ignorance by proclaiming that they don’t waste their time tweeting messages about “what they had for breakfast” to the world. No point in telling them the depths of knowledge I’ve attained from bit.ly links to magical places of learning. After all, Twitter is just grapefruit, flapjacks and orange juice, right? Right?!

  • http://www.twistimage.com/blog Mitch Joel – Twist Image

    People see ROI as a direct line to revenue. There’s an economic value well-beyond just revenue (that then moves towards revenue). Part of that is intelligence, information and a better access to consumers.

  • http://martynchamberlin.com/blog/ Martyn Chamberlin…

    Chris, you use Facebook different than most people. You yourself admitted you’d deleted your fan page, so you did this with your “personal” account. Most people have a few hundred friends – not the 4K+ you have. For most people, Facebook is a waste of time. Not only is there no visible RIO, there’s nothing else visible either. Just people blasting out their noise.

    Sure, Facebook’s a great tool for you. It’s not for us.

  • http://twitter.com/Mike_Kunkle Mike Kunkle

    Chris, if you haven’t already, check out “Training on Trial” by Jim and Wendy Kirkpatrick. It’s an interesting perspective for measuring training effectiveness, and an extension of Donald Kirkpatrick’s landmark work on evaluating training (four levels: reaction, learning, application and results).

    In this book, they articulate their position for tracking “Return on Expectation” rather than ROI (which is advocated regularly in some Training circles as the holy grail). Since I’m ensconced in the sales training/performance improvement world, I still think ROI is required for some of my work… but paradoxically, there is a cost to conducting an ROI analysis, so doing ROI studies ultimately reduces your ROI. ;-) So, typically, I recommend it on special projects or spot checks for ongoing programs. Generally, ROE (per Kirkpatrick’s “expectations,” not “equity”) and Kirkpatrick’s partnering model, is pretty appealing. I think you’ll enjoy it and see relevance.

  • http://www.softmusic-dm.com teena

    u should ..learn ..how to love ppl ..nt german

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  • Mitch

    That’s pretty neat. I know whenever I really need some help I head to Twitter, and invariably within the hour there’s someone giving me some advice, and to date it’s always worked. You’re right, ROI isn’t always about how much money one might be making.

  • Dave

    I like the idea of building a human business first. I’ve often preached the value of relationships and how you can’t put a dollar sign on trust, friendship, and communication unless it isn’t there and you don’t have the business.

    In this case, you have done a great job of building up your friends, colleagues, and customers into a network that will respond to you and don’t just look at your posts as clutter….which with the increase in volume of advertisings is invaluable.

  • http://beachrentalca.com Beautiful Beaches Resorts

    In this book, they articulate their position for tracking “Return on Expectation” rather than ROI (which is advocated regularly in some Training circles as the holy grail). Since I’m ensconced in the sales training/performance improvement world.

  • http://beachrentalca.com Beautiful Beaches Resorts

    In this case, you have done a great job of building up your friends, colleagues, and customers into a network that will respond to you and don’t just look at your posts as clutter….which with the increase in volume of advertising is invaluable.

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  • Larshaahr

    visit the Oxymoron restaurant in Hächisher Markt in Berlin !

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