Social Media ROI Part I: Enhance Company Buy-In, Brand Management

This is part one in a three-part conversation with Olivier Blanchard, author of Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. In part two, Blanchard covers the ideal structure of a social media program and gives some best practices for managing it. In part three, Blanchard covers metrics and strategies for tracking direct ROI for social media projects.

Social media expert Olivier Blanchard doesn’t come with the normal connotations of his title. He happened into a business education while acquiring his social media know-how.

"I was thrust into positions with former employers where I was forced to prove financially that every investment in my program’s campaign was going to yield results," he said, mentioning that most social media "gurus" come from a communications or marketing background.

His recent book, Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization, is a refreshingly detail-laden and business-oriented perspective on the perpetually nebulous world of social media. Blanchard brings a profit and loss and corporate approach to building a social media program from his decades of experience with companies such as Microsoft – the primary "former employer" mentioned above.

In a three-part series, CMIQ spoke at length with Blanchard about properly defining, structuring, managing and measuring a social media program. The discussion covered everything from how to portray a social media program to for maximum company buy-in, to how social media programs assist brand management, to which business analytics best track return on investment for every social media effort.

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The first segment discusses dispelling the myths associated with social media programs, how the corporate structure should change to better utilize social media and the role social media inherently plays in brand management.

Part I: Full Interview

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

Finally, the conversation concludes with a discussion of the metrics and strategies a company should use to track the direct return on investment of every social media effort.

CMIQ kicked off the interview with a question about the current corporate structure. Blanchard bemoaned how "social media directors tend to be pigeon-holed" into one department – usually marketing or public relations.

"In the current corporate structure, [social media directors will] fall under one department," he said. "Instead, companies should look at social media as just another set of channels that every single department can and should be using to accomplish their goals."

Companies using social media across departments are seeing results.

"Whereas companies that just have a social media guy who’s in charge of Twitter, Facebook, etc., and just looks at fans and followers and retweets – these companies don’t really see a lot of results and wonder why."

A company has to remove the marketing aspect associated with social media and realize impact these social media channels inevitably have on all aspects of brand management. Actionable data on service and product improvements, improved customer relationships, the opportunity to clarify misconceptions about products or services and crisis management are all ways social media aids brand reputation.

"If you don’t have that base [of an online community], you’re not going to be able to react quickly enough and that’s the new reality of brand management," Blanchard said. "It’s not just marketing any more."

The public now has the ability to communicate directly with any company; it’s the company’s responsibility to reply.

"You have to have a team in place that is able to manage that," Blanchard said. "If you can’t do it and the volume is so high that you can’t function and respond to all queries, what you can do is schedule a chat."

Blanchard suggests sending out printed talking points for scheduled chats to various social media channels ahead of time. Then, at the advertised time, the CEO, quality control manager, or some high up employee should take questions for 30 minutes to an hour.

"Engage with the public that way," he said. "Thank them, then ask them to come back [for another chat]."

Hear the full conversation on this topic in the above podcast. Additionally, you can check out part two of the podcast – a discussion on the ideal structure and management of a social media program – or finish up with part three – a conversation about metrics and strategies for tracking direct ROI with social media campaigns.