Social Media ROI Part II: Structure the Ideal Social Media Program

This is part two in a three-part conversation with Olivier Blanchard, author of Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. In part one, Blanchard clarified social media myths and how to drive maximum company buy-in. In part three, Blanchard covers metrics and strategies for tracking direct ROI for social media projects.

Social media expert Olivier Blanchard laughed when asked what the social media structure panacea was.

"The book had to be under 300 pages," he joked," so I couldn’t go through every permutation."

But Blanchard does lay out some parameters that every company should follow to create a successful social media strategy. Blanchard details the "four kinds of people who touch a social media program:"

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1. The strategist: An executive who oversees the entire field.
2. The operations individual: Coordinates interdepartmental communication to build the program theorized by the strategist.
3. The social media expert: Manages programs and accounts and is the front line employee to the public.
4. The data analyst: Derives solutions and knowledge from compiled data and creates solutions across departments.

"Every social media program needs all four of these types of people," Blanchard said. "If you have those four roles, even if only two people fit those pieces you have a complete leadership structure."

In part two, Blanchard covers the ideal structure of a social media program and gives some best practices for managing it.

Part 2: Full Interview

Companies must recognize that the social media expert frequently is not attuned to the skills required to fill the other three categories. Initially, at least, the ideal person to fill some of the other roles – particularly strategist and operations expert – is, "I hate to use the word tsar," Blanchard started, "but you have to have a social media tsar at least for a few years. They’re not necessarily in charge of a budget, and don’t necessarily have the ability to fire someone’s employee, but they’re going to be the thought leader, strategic leader, and also tactically and operationally the leader of the program."

This overseer must coordinate between departments and facilitate communications between an individual in each department using social media – "and it should be nearly all of them," Blanchard said – who at least partially focuses on social media.

"Otherwise organizations tend to be very siloed," he said. "You need to have a very uniformed coordination across all silos."

The program’s focus is equally important. Dell initially began by simply putting their deals on Twitter 2-3 years ago. At the time, it was a terrific ways to drive direct, easily-trackable sales and see clear positive return on investment. Now, consumers are savvier and social media must be used to drive different types of behavior.

Blanchard suggests companies "back into social media." Think about current goals in different departments. Is it to acquire sales transactions from new customers? Are you trying to increase the buy rate, or frequency of sales transactions? Trying to push a particular product or service? How about increasing the average yield per purchase?

"Can you use social media to impact that behavior, modify and move them in these directions? Of course you can," Blanchard insisted.

Companies should look at what they’ve already been doing for years to influence behaviors to increase yield, buy rate, etc., and then decide how social media enhances that efforts.

"When you look at it that way and fit social media into those specific functions that have very specific targets" raising a buy rate from once to twice a month or increasing average purchase by two dollars, Blanchard suggests, "you can use social media to get to those targets.

With such tangible metrics and goals, it becomes easier to tie social media investment to a direct return on investment – a constant struggle for organizations.

Hear the full conversation on this topic in the above podcast. Additionally, you can check out part one of the podcast – a discussion on clarifying social media myths and driving maximum company buy-in – or finish up with part three – a conversation about metrics and strategies for tracking direct ROI with social media campaigns.