What is your ROT?  You know, your Return on Tweets?

According to a survey, 4 out of 5 marketers could not make a connection from Twitter to higher revenue.  Why is that?

There are two main reasons: 1) They don’t get IT or 2) They don’t GET it or 3) They shouldn’t get it.

1) Most efforts try Twitter because it is the IN thing to do, without even really know why why they are doing it or how.

2) Then they try to calculate the ROI of their time on Twitter and don’t see a relationship.  When looking at Twitter, it is true that few can directly link revenue to Twitter, like Dell.  But that is not the point.  The point is to engage the customer (or potential customer) – the revenue is something that will happen.

3) Many realize that they shouldn’t be using Twitter for the reasons they are, or even at all.

Yet, at the same time, you can’t fault a company for trying.

So, they are either using it incorrectly or they shouldn’t be using it at all for the reasons that they are.  How do you fix that? Keep trying or change your Twitter goals.

Last week I had a meeting with a client of mine who asked me if I knew how to do ROI on social media/learning.  My answer was, yes, but there isn’t a magic bullet.

For example, there isn’t a formula that will come up with what you want.  Sure, there are plenty of examples of ROI, but they never tell the full story.  For example, after I created the GTSCommunity Portal we saw 20% of all interaction with the technical support team originate through the portal.  What is the ROI on that stat?  We could calculate out what a phone call costs and how much we have saved by not having the team on the phone.  We would come up with a number that would be very nice.

Yet, what about those times when that information they answered for that one person answered it for another without the second even contacting the team at all?  Or what about those times when a customer searches for other information, finds it, is satisfied?  Or the times when they find another customer with the expertise they would like and they make a connection and benefit from that? Or the time when a prospective customer sees the online support they are receiving and that is just one more reason to purchase the product?

Can we ever capture these?  Not really.  We can see the indirect effects of them right away.  (Yet I don’t want to discount what we CAN measure, which is a lot.  There is a lot of proof there as it is.)

Then I thought about Stephen M.R. Covey’s TRUST video (Can’t find original, but this will do.)  He said that TRUST is measurable.  And he is right – to a degree.  There are a TON of other ways that TRUST can influence things that are not directly measurable.

So we go to the next question.  Do we measure what we can measure, and call it good?  Or add in there some Super Stories that show the value.  Or stick to the numbers? Or is there another way?  My personal way is evolving, but I would love to hear the opinions of others.

Flash back to yesterday’s objection, “How will you measure that it is working” should have been labeled, ‘How do you measure if it is being used and adopted.” This is what I had in mind knowing that ROI would be a separate topic today.

Christine Martell pointed this out in her comment from yesterday when she said,

“Not so sure about this being a new way. Seems like your list is looking at the activity rather than the result. Aren’t we looking for behavior change at the level of contribution to the business? Things like are they doing their jobs more effectively?”

She is so right. We do want to want this to change behavior. But now even the behavior question is in question. What behavior? With traditional learning we expect certain behaviors to result and we try to measure that. With social learning we are looking for different behaviors, but the same end results. Let’s look at both of these.

The first is more cultural. It is adopting and changing more than just what they learn, but also how they learn. They are the ones in charge of their learning and teaching each other. Instead of being forced to go to training (something we can have control over the format and measurement), they are being allowed and encouraged to learn on their own. For many, this is a new concept. Not necessarily a new practice, but in a way it is a new permission that we let them learn from each other. This involves trust. It involves the expectation that they are accountable to their own learning. Here are some more ideas to measure.

The second is more of the traditional ROI. How do you know that it is producing bottom line results? So many people say, “You can’t measure this. There is no traditional ROI model that will work for this.” I agree but disagree. There should be an adaptation, but we can still see bottom-line results. And, honestly, the numbers are not always the best ROI. Because the ROI is then used to make decisions. The results that come out of these environments may not have a hard and fast ROI at first, or may be very difficult to calculate.  The subjective results, however, can be very powerful for those who make the decisions.  From them they may be more than on board – they back it 100%.  All this, but they may never have looked at a formal ROI on it.

This isn’t always the case. But my point is that we can’t overlook the stories, the experiences that are so powerful – and then sharing them – in our quest for an ROI.

Rachel Happe suggested some measurements of ROI. A lot of them are for environments that face the customer, but some are for internal. Among those were:

# Number of new product ideas

# Idea to development initiation cycle time

# Retention/Employee turn over

# Time to hire

# Prospect identification cost

# Prospect to hire conversion rate

# Hiring cost

# Training cost

# Time to acclimation for new employees

Remember, we are looking at the final outcome, not necessarily “did they learn”. Because, honestly, we don’t care if they learn if they don’t use it for the benefit of the company. So the benefit is what we measure.  Other’s measurements might be:

# How large one’s network is

# Number of meetings taking place (or, more intuitively, are NOT taking place)

# Number of travel arrangements made (or, again, NOT made).

This is certainly not an exhaustive list. What others are you thinking of?