A few weeks ago, I got the opportunity to speak at Blogworld Expo about Social Media ROI, a topic I’m quite passionate about.

The full video below is the audio from my presentation synced with my slides. The slides can be found on Slideshare here.

Social Media ROI – Clay Hebert’s presentation at BlogWorld Expo 2012 in New York City from Clay Hebert on Vimeo.

Some key points from my talk:

• One of the most underused “secret weapon” social media sites is Twitter’s advanced search. There’s gold in those tweets if you learn how to listen. [tweet this]
• There is only one true formula for calculating ROI. [Profit Gained - Cost] divided by [Cost] x 100. [tweet this]
• Ignore made up “ROI” metrics like Return on Influence and Return on Ignorance. These are “smoke and mirror” metrics conjured up by marketers and consultants who don’t know how to demonstrate real ROI from social efforts. [tweet this]
• Social media is a marathon not a sprint. [tweet this]
• Baselines are not just for tennis. To measure indirect impact of social media efforts and ROI, organizations must define not only objectives (what they want to achieve) but baselines (where they currently are). [tweet this]
• Consultants and marketers who aren’t capable of understanding and proving Social Media ROI through baselines, objectives, strategies and tactics resort to made up metrics like Return on Ignorance, Return on Engagement or Return on Conversation.
• There are so many social media tools and platforms, it’s easy to get distracted chasing the latest shiny new tool. Ignore the myriad of tools until you specifically define goals and objectives. [tweet this]
• Marketers are often smarter than professional athletes, yet professional athletes are never confused whether their season was a success or not. This is because athletes have a clearly defined “Champagne Moment”. Win the championship. That’s it. A singular goal that never changes. As marketers, we must do a better job of defining the specific objectives of our marketing initiatives. [tweet this]
• Objectives should be defined using the SMART methodology (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Timebound). This can be simply framed even more simply as: “increasing or decreasing a specific metric by a defined amount over a defined period of time.”
• Different departments will have very unique “Champagne Moments”.
• Many use the hashtag measure when discussing digital analytics and social media measurement on Twitter. Follow it for interesting discussions, blog posts, links and tools. [tweet this]

A huge thanks to Rick, Dave and the rest of the Blogworld crew for letting me on my soapbox for a while. They put on a great show and I look forward to speaking at future Blogworld events.

And a note from Blogworld on how to access the rest of the sessions by purchasing the “Virtual Ticket”:

The above video is only one of over 100 recorded sessions from BlogWorld New Media Expo New York 2012. You can get all of the videos — plus bonus interviews and other bonus content — by picking up the entire Virtual Ticket here: 

http://www.blogworldexpo.com/2012-nyc/landing/introducing-blogworld-virtual-ticket/