I decided to check Facebook for the first time in a while last night. Post one was from John ranting about his awful repair experience at the car dealership. Post two came from Monica in Maine, complaining about taking her two school-age sons to the State Theater in Portland and instead being subject to a frat party. Post three hailed from a SIPA member friend who sadly had his scuba-equipment trailer broken into, losing valuable stuff. And post four came from Lynn, stuck in traffic on I-95 at 1:30 in the morning.
That’s a lot of venting. Only Monica followed up, saying that she exchanged emails with Lauren at the theater and all was well. Monica has 995 “friends”—so it was probably a good idea for Lauren to respond to her. I’ve had recent conversations with members who tend to dismiss social media—“I don’t know anyone making money from it,” they might say. (We have a category in the SIPAwards for Social Media Success Story that drew just two entries—and one I needed to coax in.)
But, of course, you can’t dismiss it. We’re all there in some form or another. Any big event now gets reported on at least partly through Twitter, whether it’s the bombings in Boston or this past weekend’s White House press dinner. Celebrities and athletes think they’re better off with their own words rather than the reporters’, and that’s proving a fallacy as well.
Maybe the problem is with ROI and our expectations. Maybe the key phrase should be, “I may not know anyone making money from it but I do know people losing money because they are not on it.” With an active LinkedIn, Facebook and especially Twitter audience, you are much more likely to hear about any problems that customers/subscribers/members have with your product(s). Thus you can be like Lauren at the State Theatre and correct them. Maybe we need new call letters for measuring social media like Prevention of Loss on Investment. (What’s the PLOI on that initiative?)
The upcoming SIPA 2013 Conference, June 5-7, in Washington, D.C., will feature both a session and a roundtable on social media—and many networking conversations on ROI and PLOI. Social Media: The Big Picture for Marketers will be led by Gabriela Zabalua-Goddard, vice president, multilingual content & editor in chief, AARP, and a new speaker for SIPA. I think it will be particularly beneficial to have a social media speaker who deals mostly with older audiences. It should give the session a relevance it wouldn’t have otherwise. (She’ll also have a co-presenter to give other views.)
And what are we to make of my Facebook findings? Obviously, people like to vent, and social media gives us the perfect forum. We also want our bad experiences to be made right in some way. That’s perhaps the biggest reason why you need to spend time monitoring Twitter and such. People may not tell you what’s wrong or what’s on their mind, but they will tell others. You want to be in on—or at least listening to—those conversations.
Ken Wasch, the SIIA president, told me a story recently where he was trying to choose between two cities for his family to visit in Japan. He went on Trip Advisor and saw that one of his Facebook friends had traveled to and commented on one of those cities. He messaged her, she tweeted him—or something like that—and within minutes he had his answer. No money was made but it certainly qualified as a success story.
Or I just saw that I missed out on a fancy reception thrown by the furniture store Room and Board this weekend. So I got on their email list, and minutes later they’re now a sponsor on my Facebook page. Things move fast today. That’s why coming to the SIPA 2013 Conference is so valuable—do you know how much you will miss by not being among the hundreds of people in the room?
Talk about Prevention of Loss on Investment.
Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline