Monday 21 November 2011

ROI on Social Media HR Campaign

The last blog addressed how does HR leverage social media and this one answers the second questioned posed on how HR proves the return on investment (ROI) on a social media campaign.

The proof is in the pudding - ways to measure your success
There are a number of types of measurement tools that is at your disposal including:  qualitative (hard to measure indicators like trust and loyalty), quantitative (numbers), comparative (from other sources), competitive (against your competition).  From my research you need to look at a number of success factors in your social media campaign such as:
  • Activation:  What do users do on their first visit?
  • Retention:  How often do users come back?
  • Acquisition: You want to see all the media sources you are using, volume and compare who is the best performer (# of hits, etc.)
  • Referral:  Do your followers drive referrals to your account and other accounts?  For example:  Are they sharing their 'happy' experience on Facebook.
  • Revenue:  Qualifying your customers, # of sales, sales revenue $, etc.
  • Measure:  audience demographics, channel source, campaign theme.  For example: come work for a 'cool' company
Some on-line tools that I am aware of have a price tag and others are free.  (hootsuite.com, google.com/analytics, viralheat.com)

Qualitative intangible yardstick measures
Historically it has been hard to prove hr measures with a direct link to improved productivity and profitability.  Through my research I believe there are some ways to measure the unmeasurable:
  • Loyalty/trust:  positive comments made by followers, amount of conversations, how many go to your website afterwards, is there any increase in job applications.
  • Satisfaction:  any good suggestions made on your blog.   Are you able to implement the ideas?
  • Authority on the subject matter:  the amount of blogs that reference your website, (see below bibliography) retweets on Twitter, referrals
You could incorporate all hr functions on to the social media platform but there is only enough hours in the day, human power, and budget.  I encourage leveraging social media and attempt it on a few sources at first and on only one campaign such as recruitment as a starting point.  Try to get volunteers (fellow employees) on board and use your marketing and communications departments if you have one.

I describe some ROI tools for social media on my YouTube video....please click play below.



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