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.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

http://birkman.com/news/BMI_WP_SocialMedia2.pdf

http://mashable.com/2010/11/08/human-resources-social-media/

http://www.slideshare.net/Peopleshark/social-media-for-hr-execs

http://www.slideshare.net/gautam/how-can-hr-use-and-leverage-social-media

http://www.slideshare.net/yongfook/social-media-roi

HR Leveraging from Social Media

I had a really interesting interview yesterday and was asked by the management team some thought-provoking questions on social media and how HR can leverage from this technology.  Now, I am sent to task to discover how does HR use social media effectively and prove the ROI?  I haven't been this stumped before in an interview!  I wanted to go behind the interviewer and take the white board marker and start brainstorming on the spot.  I didn't sleep well that night as I was really excited about these questions and how to tackle them. Hence, I am attempting to answer some of them in this social media forum--my blog and then add it to my linked-in and twitter account.  [it's like a 3 for 1 pizza deal]

I will also test the model by using the below YouTube video and forward to my friends, colleagues, etc.  I will use some broad labels (like meta tags) to see if that bumps up the usage on google.  I will try one or more tools like hootsuite.com or google.com/analytics to watch the numbers; to measure the effectiveness of these tools.  Who knows I might be fixated on the numbers like a trader is glued to the S&P.
I am so revved up on this subject that I may end up making this more than one blog with the help from the input/feedback from my followers. I feel I am on an adventure to uncover the secrets of the Cadbury chocolate bar--how do they get the caramel in the center?   So here I go for the quest of the holy social media grail.

More questions to explore
I have leveraged social media in the past for: recruitment, networking, sharing best practices, branding, staying current on trends, reading the news.   How else can we use this technology tool for hr purposes?  How do we measure ROI and the success social media brings to the hr table?   It is already hard enough to measure hr efforts as a lot of our work is unmeasurable.  How do you measure the intangibles like company culture?

Costs
The upfront cost is minimal to set up a social media account as a lot of tools are free and it is easily accessible to our fingertips.  [You can even do it in a housecoat sitting on the couch.] However, there is a significant cost when it comes to the investment of time and energy of the person(s) who are involved in putting in the data, revising it, reviewing followers, auditing and measuring the success of the social media campaign.   Also, one has to stay current on all the social media tools and metrics to measure some of the following:

Social media and Web 2.0, 3.0, 4.0.....
It includes blogs, social networks, bookmarking, wikis, mobile computing, Apps, online video, etc.  There are many available to you including: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, Wordpress, Blogger, Flickr, Buzz, Digg, Google+, etc.

Like any business initiative you have to have a solid business plan and that ties in to the company's vision, mission, and culture.  You have to ask yourself what is that you want to measure and why?  The plan should also encompass who is going to lead the social media campaign, who is inputting the data, auditing content/feedback, costs, timelines, which sources to leverage, etc.  Once you have the stakeholder's buy-in, the plan established, and know what your successes are, then you can measure how your campaign is performing.


Please view the below YouTube video and read my next blog on ROI of social media campaign.....