Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

One company's ROI tally for social media

How Reality Digital calculated the ROI of its social media programs

September 21, 2009 06:00 AM ET

Computerworld - Reality Digital Inc., a San Francisco-based technology company that helps other businesses launch social media campaigns, is a big proponent of calculating ROI -- for its own uses of social media as well as for customers'.

CEO Cynthia Francis says calculating return on investment starts with understanding what you want to accomplish: Do you want to promote internal collaboration? Establish real-time connections with customers? Generate and track sales leads?

Then, you have to figure out what tools will help you achieve that goal, she says.

"The idea that everyone should have Facebook and Twitter is not true. You have to think about what people and customers want. Maybe all you need is a blog with three people in your company blogging. Bigger companies might want to be in all the public environments," Francis says.

In addition to a Web site and e-mail newsletters, Reality Digital uses Twitter and Facebook to interact with existing and potential customers.

Here's how the company's numbers break down:

  • Total investment for social media programs (including technology costs and PR agency hours): roughly $3,000 per month
  • Total sales leads generated in April, May and June: 72
  • Average sales leads per month: 24
  • Average cost per sales lead: $125
  • Lead conversion to sales opportunities: 11.1%
  • Lead conversion to closed deals: 1.4%

"Given the typical size of our deals, the annual cost of our social media programs is covered by revenue from one closed deal (annual contract)," marketing manager Lawrence Mak wrote in an e-mail about the figures.

He adds: "Because we started our social media program only three months ago, I consider it to still be in ramp-up phase. I expect cost per lead and conversion metrics to improve as the program matures over the next three to six months."

Main story: What's your Twitter ROI? How to measure social media payoff



Jump to comments

social media

Additional Resources

WHITE PAPER
Approximately 60 percent of data migration projects overrun time or budget, while some fail completely. Download this white paper, "Enhancing Your Chance for Successful Data Migration," to learn the critical steps you need to take to execute a data migration project with minimum cost and risk to your business.
WHITE PAPER
Read the Gartner research note to learn why the TCO of a server-based computing deployment used to deliver all applications to users is around 50% lower than that of an unmanaged desktop deployment.
WHITE PAPER
Economic downturns have a tendency to accelerate emerging technologies, boost the adoption of effective solutions, and punish solutions that are not cost competitive or that are out of synch with industry trends. This IDC White Paper presents the results of an IDC survey of 330 companies in Western Europe, Asia/Pacific and the Americas that measures the receptiveness to Linux and takes into consideration changing views driven by the disruptive economic environment that businesses face today.

What People Are Saying