Legal Marketing & PR

Can We Honestly Measure the ROI of Online Relationships?

By Amy Derby

This weekend I attended SOBCon, a social media conference, in Chicago. The theme of this year?s conference was ?the ROI of Relationships? which, I must admit, stirred up my skeptical side a bit. How does one measure the return on investment of a relationship online? The cost/benefit of a relationship is difficult enough to weigh offline.

The concept of trying to measure the worth of a friend?s Retweet, blog comment, or Digg ? quite frankly ? seems like a waste of time to me, when so many of us are still wondering if there is any tangible value of being involved in social media in the first place. Sure, friendship is free (theoretically), but how much is our time worth?

Presenting on the ROI of relationships in social media was Katie Delahaye Paine, the CEO and founder of KDPaine & Partners LLC and author of Measuring Public Relationships. Sounds like a lady with some answers, eh?

(KD?s presentation slides are available online)

Katie talked common sense solutions to the tune of ?Goals drive metrics. Metrics drive results.? The simple message was: figure out what it is you?re measuring in order to figure out how to measure it. If you?re measuring reputation and relationships, you?re measuring something different than the salesperson is.

If your goal is to measure reputation/relationships, you care about: relationship scores, recommendations, positioning, and engagement.

If your goal is to measure sales, you care about: engagement index, web analytics, sales, marketing mix modeling.

The latter includes selling a service, which is ultimately what lawyers/legal professionals are doing, but it?s not what most lawyers are using their blogs/social media to do directly since this solicitation practice is not ethical. This might apply more heavily to non-lawyer legal professionals (eg marketers selling their services to lawyers) or others trying to use social media  to ultimately sell a product or service to legal professionals via social media channels. Bottom line: in The Land of Legal, our lives are more complicated than hunting down a prospect, selling him our stuff, and calling it a day.

But KD brought up some basics which, I believe, do apply to lawyers using social media. (I believe this because I get so many calls/emails that go ?Someone told me I should be blogging/Twittering/Facebooking, but I?m not sure why I should do it or if it?s worth my time.?)

KD asked:

• What?s the return you?re looking for?
• What?s the investment (time/money)?
• What?s your audience, and what?s your connection to making your audience do something?
• What are the specific metrics you?re trying to move?
• What are you comparing it to (benchmark)?
• Why are you doing social media? What is the purpose?

KD pointed out that 90% of the conversation out there is about the tools. ?There?s a new tool born every minute, but that?s not what it?s about. It?s about answering these other things first,? she said. I wholeheartedly agree with that!

KD said a lot of her clients say they?re in social media ?to get their feet wet? ? which is a bad goal, or a non-goal, but it?s one that comes up way too often.

Further points/questions to ask yourself, according to KD:

• What would be different if you DIDN?T do this?
• Social media might be free, but how much is your time worth?
• How much did it cost you to do this in the old fashioned advertising way? How much does it cost you to do this the social media way?

Not only do you have to know who your audience is and how to reach them, but you have to know how to influence them.

KD gave the example of hospitals. Why do people choose a hospital? Quite often part of it?s because of recommendations. If a blogger is talking about ?my doctor is the best cancer doctor in New England,? that?s going to influence other people who are searching, she said.

My question of ?How do we accurately measure this?? remains.

Personal example: I can ask every potential client who calls me how they found out about me, and many say they found me via Twitter or LinkedIn or through my blog. Others say they were recommended by another client, who I know found me via social media. (I do keep track of this stuff.) But what about the client who can?t remember how he first heard about me? How do I measure that?

For my own business, using social media is clearly worth my time because I?m in the social media business. For lawyers who are using traditional marketing methods, who utilize PR and main stream media, as well as a standard website, blogs and social media ? translation: all of my clients ? how easy is it to measure the return on investment of a social media relationship? It may be possible to measure it somewhat, but I?m not sure how easy or possible it would be sit down at the end of the day and draw up a detailed report. (I suppose this is why KD is the ROI expert, and I am not.)

I was able to dig up some further reading on this topic, which I?m planning to read this evening with hopes to achieve enlightenment: How to Measure Social Media Relations: The More Things Change, the More They Remain the Same by Katie Delahaye Paine CEO, KDPaine & Partners, LLC, published by the Institute for Public Relations April 2007

Do you (or your firm) have a social media campaign? How are you measuring the return on that investment?

Full post as published by Law Firm Blogger on May 05, 2009 (boomark / email).