Question: What is my ROI from Using Twitter? Answer: It depends
March 10, 2009 by Chuck
7If you can believe it, there are still people who are resistant to using Twitter. I know, it’s a startling thought. I’ll give you a minute to compose yourself…................................ready? Ok, well, the active Twitter users among us have seen the value proposition and realized either through our own lens or the lens of another that it is an incredibly powerful tool. We all have heard the reasons for not engaging in Twitter:
-Who really cares about Twitter?
-Nobody will care what I have to say.
-What’s the point in paying attention to Twitter? It is just a passing fad
-Twitter is just a time sink.
And on and on and on it goes… I think those questions/thoughts come from the premise: “What do I get out of using a service like Twitter?” Said another way: “What is my ROI from using Twitter?” It definitely is a complicated question, with no clear cut answer. What I will say is that the folks who care more about number of followers, or number of retweets, or number of times their blog was talked about are largely missing the point. Sure, all those things are important to a degree, and often make you more influential within the broader Twitter community, but I want to take you to a more local level. What is YOUR community getting from you and what are YOU getting from your community? As David Alston notes in this post, one of the many benefits of Twitter is that you can create a “birds of a feather” network. That is to say, a group or community of people who have similar interests as yourself. Most of the people I follow are advertising, public relations, digital communications or social media professionals. Similarly, most of the people who are following me fit into one of those four niches.
So how do I measure a successful Twitter experience? I certainly don’t look at number of hours spent (as an aside, it is my opinion that the most time you will spend on Twitter is cultivating your community and not necessarily reading/sending tweets), or the number of new followers I’ve gained (though it feels nice). No, I measure successful Twitter experiences based on whether or not I learned a new piece of information, was introduced to someone with a similar set of interests that I wouldn’t have otherwise known or even whether I learned something that may be helpful for a colleague at Dix & Eaton.
Two things are important to note:
1. I’m not 100% sure that any of these are truly “measurable.” In fact, I don’t think any of them really are. This might surprise you coming from the research guy, but that doesn’t bother me. I treat Twitter as a collective of like-interest and like-minded individuals that are a fantastic source for new ideas and feedback. The numbers are irrelevant.
2. This post could apply to companies, but applies to individual users of Twitter only. I definitely think some of the more quantitative metrics (time spent, followers, retweets, etc…) all make sense for companies trying to gauge their impact on the Twitter community.
At any rate, these are just my perspectives on Twitter. What about you? How do you “measure” your ROI from using Twitter?
Positively Cleveland uses Twitter. We, of course, have to provide some ROI. We measure followers, posts and all that sort of stuff. But I think the most significant things you can track are 1) re-tweets, showing your posts are interesting enough that someone took the time to pass them along, 2) meaningful interactions (Did we, as a convention and visitors bureau, recommend a hotel/restaurant/attraction? Did we provide event or shopping ideas? Did we provide useful travel information?) 3) Links to our website or blogs (using Snipurl or similar program you can track how many people clicked on a link showing what you post resonants the most) and 4) Are we part of the conversation? (If everyone is talking about places to get Cleveland-centric gifts, do we have that information available to locals and travelers? If someone expresses a need for certain type of tour, are we following up on that?) Overall, are we listening and participating in the meaningful conversations about our destination?
I’m very interested in hearing what others have to say about Twitter ROI. As we everthing in Soc Media, when we have to translate value to our stakeholders, that sometimes proves tricky.