A little more on ROI

As discussed in my last post, ROI stands for the return on investment. This is quite important in terms of social media measurement for a couple of reasons.

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research writes about in his post on how important ROI is now during the recession for many professionals working in PR and marketing. Since the affects of PR and marketing are very subtle and not easily definable, it makes sense that these people would be the first jobs to be eliminated. It is especially hard to measure what the effects of social media are in achieving corporate goals.

ROI is one of the best factors that can be used to show how these technologies are achieving target goals because shows monetary results not just qualitative ones.

Bill Johnston of Forum One Networks, also has a really good post in his blog on the survival of online communities. I think that his points are very relevant to the importance of being able to justify the use of social media in a corporation. One really interesting point of his, is that by having qualitative data you are then able to explain to the organization the cost of not participating in social media. This could be potentially beneficial because it would show how competitors would have an advantage over you as well as provides solid financial proof of the usefulness of social media. 

So ROI is a very useful concept for corporate communicators to understand because not only does it explain how productive your efforts have been but it also could potentially save your job.