Blogworld 09 - Social Media ROI

OK, the first keynote went well, now it's time for the first panel session. This one is populated by real estate folks who are using social media to drum up business. You can find out the details of the session here. Here are my quick notes.

• Jim Marks: Define ROI - traditional financial measures can be used - how much money do you generate from social media. A more difficult measure is Return on Influence.

Mike Simonsen - He takes the attitude that Return on Influence is more important.

• Sherry Chris sees the Return on Influence as important and uses social media for branding. From Web 2.0 Expo, Aaron Kim had a better take on this. Much more concrete.


• Jim is sticking with the revenue side of this. Aaron Kim would agree.


• Mike is playing the goodwill and karma cards.


• Dan Green is hitting some good notes. Time invested in social media is time not spent doing other things.


• Sherry is seeing opportunities and connections being made because of her participation on the social media sites. It's an echo of what Laura said in the first keynote.


• Dan spends about 132 minutes a day on social media marketing. He figures his hourly wage for blogging is $245 an hour after taking into account the sales he has made because of connections he made on line. It took Dan 5 years to get to this point. It took him 18 months to get his first lead with social media.


• Jim maintains that you must have a strategy to your social media efforts and you must keep track of the time and effort you invest.


• Rob Hahn, the moderator, says if you can't measure it, you don't have a strategy. Turning the question on its head, the question is when do you decide to quit?


• Jim maintains that the question is over, blogs are worthwhile.


• What should you measure? Dan: inbound inquiries. Mike: unique visitors to your site. Sherry: sales calls that come from the social media sites. Jim: traffic and conversion are the only two to measure.


• A questioner brings up a good point - we can measure ROI on this because it's on a computer while the rest of the things we do during the day aren't measured. Social media sure beats sitting around in the office and playing solitaire.


• How do you improve your social media ROI? Jim: figure out how to get people to follow your links from Twitter to your blog which is where you'll convert visitors to business. Sherry: don't do the same thing on every site. Each site is very different. Mike: Be informative and interesting in order to make connections. Dan: Market to the people who are predisposed to buy from you. Don't market to Google, market to the people who already know you. The word of mouth from supporters will bring you business.


• Jim is a big fan of the hand-written note for cementing relationships. Rob agreed and quipped that the next big social media invention will be the pen and paper.

Jim Marks, a hard-nosed business man, made some great points.